That’s one way to deal with it, but I think what makes grouping so potentially dangerous/annoying is that it’s so easy. You’ve got to kill all these elite Mercenaries in Loch Modan and you don’t want to wait, so you just grab whatever 20+ tank comes along and go to it.

What if there was a game that raised the bar on grouping? Like, you had to pay to form a group (bad idea, I know, no one would like that, just throwing it out there), or what if the game tracked who you’d grouped with so that you got some tangible benefit from grouping with the same players more than once (like slight increase in stamina or something from the camaraderie you’d presumably built up), or if you could add a limited number of players to a “comrades” list and get the benefit from them only (and some penalty for kicking people from your comrades list so that you couldn’t just rotate people in and out at will) or some variation of one of those schemes. Then we’d all presumably be more careful about who we grouped with. It would slow down the gameplay a little bit, but personally I think that’s not a bad thing. It would enhance the role-playing aspect a little and make questing resemble FPS play a little less (i.e., where you group up, run through some dungeon you’ve never been through before because the high-level you’re grouped with has been there eight times already and doesn’t want to look around, kill all the mobs, run out. I hate that).

Making it harder to group might make it easier to avoid the perils of grouping. Or am I crazy?

everyone knows it’s all about the doppio machiatto w/ extra foam. 😛

congrats on the anniversary, foton.

While I agree with the viewpoint of “I have met the enemy, and it is us”, I think it is still possible to change that. Why? Because just as people affect the culture they are within, so to does the culture affect those within it. It goes both ways. Therefore, if you create the right environment it will attract the right people. My friends and I proved this when we used to play Counter-Strike a long time ago (where most game servers have quite a negative environment to them). We ran a community server with a great culture and a lot of people had a blast on it and griefers where extremely rare (as they got dealt with quickly and efficiently).

Of course when you are talking about a MMO game this is a slightly different story. The players in the game can definitely help towards making a better culture within the game but most of the necessary environment needs to be defined by the developers. They need to ensure that the culture of the game will be one that supports strong community interaction. If they don’t and let it fall to the players then obviously the griefers will once again take advantage of the situation. If the developers can give some form of empowerment to the community at large to deal with these griefers than it will radically change the gameplay and make it a much more enjoyable game for everyone.

AFK Gamer isn’t closing up shop. Haven’t received that $50k check from IGE yet. It’s probably still in the mail.