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Forming a solo guild, or teaming up with a microguild
Chailya on WoW Ladies did something cool that I'd bet quite a few players have done-- she formed what you might call a "microguild." In her case, it's just a guild with all of her alts in it, but there are all kinds of tiny little guilds for all different reasons-- in Guildwatch the other week, we featured a guild that had only three 60s in it, that were running around doing all the old content. And in the comments of Chailya's post, there are all kinds of fun stories-- people who formed a guild with just them and their significant other, solo roleplaying guilds, and even guilds created just for comedy value (one guy called his solo guild "Attorney at Law").My story's a little stranger-- one day I randomly got invited to a guild on one of my alts, a gnome mage. Just to see what the deal was, I accepted the invite, and the guy who invited me /gquit immediately, leaving me as the only person in the guild. For a few days, I thought it was funny, having a guild all to myself. But eventually I passed it on to another person, and I don't know what happened to it after that. I'd look it up on the Armory, but to tell the truth I don't even remember the name.Have you ever started up or been a part of a micro- or sologuild? It can be a lonely experience, I'm sure, but being in a guild is a huge part of identity in the game, and people who do this (as I said, there are probably more than you think) are simply choosing their own identity rather than joining in with a big group. As a guy who likes bigger guilds, I'd think you're missing out on a lot by staying in a tiny guild or a guild with just yourself. But there are probably plenty of benefits to doing it as well.
The odd couple, playing together
Playing with friends is probably the most fun you can have in WoW-- while it's fun to solo, a good group is where it's at, and there's no better group then playing with people you know. Unfortunately, because even people who have a lot in common hardly ever level at the same rate, level differences grow quicker than expected, and pretty soon it's just not possible to play with friends without someone wasting their time.Until friendship shows up anyway. Lev over at WoW Ladies writes about an interesting duo she made with another player-- after joining up for a quest in Winterspring, they've rolled 10 levels together, and even played on their alts. And the weirdest thing is, she's 22 and he's 14, so you don't think they'd have a lot in common, but she says they play together great (she has a younger brother, and she compares their relationship to that). In the comments, someone about her age confesses to being grouping buddies with an 80-year-old person, and someone else tells a story of leveling up 40 levels with someone they met in game.Makes me kind of jealous, actually-- I've played a long time with the same people at 60 (and now 70), but leveling, I was never at the right rhythm to really grow with anyone else, either in common or otherwise. On my very first character, I played a night elf hunter (duh), and got some help from a night elf priest on how to start playing the game. I still have that guy on my friends list on that realm, and still see him play online, but he outstripped me in terms of levels a long, long time ago (he's 70, and my hunter is stuck in the late 50s). Now, it'd be nice to somehow technically be always able to play with friends (you could have instances that averaged your levels, or just play with premades, which is what I think Guild Wars does), but I think that's just one of the drawbacks of having a leveling system-- unless you only play those characters together, someone will always fall ahead or drop back.
Show your characters on Facebook
A friend who recently invited me to social networking site Facebook showed me the WoW Armory application (you have to have a Facebook account to use that link) the other day. It's a little dohicky (technical term) that will automatically show WoW characters on your Facebook profile. Unfortunately, it's as no frills as they come right now-- basically you can see the character's name, class, level, server, and a basic outline of what they're wearing. No pics at all. But if you want to automatically share your characters on your profile via Armory info, there you go.I was going to suggest the Signature Generator we posted a while back if you wanted to post a much more detailed look at your characters on Facebook or anywhere else, but apparently it's MIA. The site doesn't load at all. The Google cache shows that maybe the site's creator burnt a bridge he wasn't supposed to, and unfortunately while there are a few other sig generators around, none of them look as good (or work as well-- I couldn't get my character to come up on the other one) as that one did.So if anyone knows of a good working sig generator, feel free to throw it in the comments below, and we can all show off our characters in our various webspaces. Oh, and though WoW Insider hasn't made our way to Facebook just yet, we are alive and well on Myspace, so come befriend us there if you like.Update: Reader Nick G sends along his own, self-made Facebook app, which he says is created by a WoW fan, not "a company trying to create a social network website and drive traffic to it via a Facebook App." Which is cool, but unfortunately, when I tried to create my character with his, all I got was an error message. So if his works, you might like it more.
But I do spend time with my friends!
Upon my now bi-monthly visit to my parents' house, they inquired if I had done anything social with my friends in the last few weeks. "Of course," I replied, "we started raiding Karazhan about a month ago, and defeated the Curator, Aran, and the chess event!" They looked at me strangely, and I immediately realized that I was talking about people I've never met in person and whom I spend time with only in a virtual setting. I began wondering if I was losing touch on reality, that a video game was becoming a real setting for me to socialize. I soon realized that it was not just me, but instead it is becoming a phenomenon that is quickly becoming the norm. Every day I work with people all over the world by phone and by email, and every night I do the same thing. Some may say that it does resemble more of a work environment than a friendship environment, but I say it can be both. I log into our Ventrilo server and chat it up with everyone who is online. I have my friends, and my not-so-friends, and sometimes we work hard, and sometimes we goof around. I believe that if you take it to a level that you desire, the WoW realm can be just as much a social environment as a party with friends, a date out with your sweetie, or a business trip. Granted I've never slaughtered the undead in my sales trips, but I'd love to claim a Karazhan raid as a business expense! What social event do you take along with you into World of Warcraft?
Wii Warm Up: Antisocial behavior
The Wii is a very social console. From the marketing campaign to the pack-in, everything about it is designed to get a bunch of people together and interacting in the same room. It can even be fun to have a group together for single-player games, with everyone helping out and enjoying the events of the game together.But video games are not always social events. Sometimes you just want to get immersed in the game without all the interruptions and talking and people. Are you the kind of gamer who prefers to be alone with your games? Or do you always prefer to share your experiences? Or are there certain games that you just can't stand having people in the room while you're playing? Killer 7 on the Gamecube, for example, was something we preferred to play alone because we didn't think others walking in would have a clue what was going on. Especially since we didn't.
Get social with WiiPlay.com
Nintendo may not (or may?) be rushing to fill any social networking niches for the Wii, but that's okay, for the internet provides. WiiPlay.com, a new site dedicated to producing a community hub for Wii owners, offers all sorts of goodies, like blogs and photo pages, or just a place for Wii owners to chat. We can only assume that once online play kicks it up to full effect, sites like these will be useful for finding new Wii friends, so we'll keep an eye on them and see how things develop.
Double-sided headphones, Popular Mobile software keeps you cool
Sure, there's a bevy of ways to effectively conceal the real you while out and about in public places, but Alice Wang's new lineup of Peer Pressure conquerors let you utilize surrounding technologies to boost your self-esteem (and your image). If you're not already rockin' the iPod suit to work, and don't want your cubicle buddies to overhear faint whispers of "Everybody Hurts" in the background, the two-sided headphones are for you. They play that sad, sad song into your ears, but emit a (presumably positive) song of your choice outwardly, giving everyone around you good vibes while you're down on your luck. Next up, the Popular Mobile software sporadically and continuously sends you fake text messages in order to show off just how popular you are whilst in a group of higher-ups, and while we're not sure if each message come pre-programmed with fortune cookie taglines, it's a surefire way to flaunt your appeal. Additionally, Alice has designed the Fast Typing Keyboard in order to make your office mates think you can crank out 120 words per minute, and the Positive Printer helps printer snoopers discover awfully amazing things about you that the upbeat software spits out. Of course, we're not expecting these admittedly handy creations to make their way into Office Depot anytime soon, but we'd love to be proven wrong.[Via NOTCOT]
WoW Moviewatch: Joi Ito talks WoW
This is probably the longest movie we've ever posted, at over 43 minutes. Entrepreneur, internet celebrity and generally hoopy frood Joi Ito (of We Know/We No on Eitrigg-US) gave this lecture on WoW at the latest Chaos Communication Conference (23C3). The talk doesn't assume any WoW knowledge, but also doesn't bore those of us who do play (at least not me). It seems to broadly concern itself with WoW as a social space/social experiment, including guild organization, voice chat, real-world/WoW bleed-through, and the implications of having such a huge subscriber base. I found the video quite interesting. I wish it included the Q&A afterwards; maybe we can have our own discussion in the comments here.Previously on Moviewatch
Chat with Woz
Join Steve Wozniak online on Tuesday, 21 November at 2PM EST for a live chat hosted by the Washington Post. He will answer questions and discuss his recent memoir, iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon. If you can't make the live chat, you can submit questions and comments in advance via the Washington Post announcement page.
Widget Watch: Ma.gnolia Ma.rker
Who says del.icio.us should have all the fun in the social bookmarking arena? Ma.gnolia is one of many competitors which takes a decidedly more human approach to the social aspect of online bookmarking, offering discussion forums, themed groups, user spotlights and more. While we've blogged plenty of ways to leverage del.icio.us, it's nice to see more more tools for other services like this widget for Ma.gnolia. The Ma.gnolia Ma.rker allows you to easily post links, customizing all the standard elements like descriptions and tags, along with rating the link before you send it off. The one catch the author didn't specify is which browsers this widget can work with; I don't personally have a Ma.gnolia account so I can't test it, but if any of you readers take it for a spin, let us know if it works with anything other than Safari.
Shocking study: MMO players are social
You can always count on scientists to confirm through painstaking study what most people can figure out using common sense. With that in mind, researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found that massively multiplayer games can "promote sociability and new worldviews." The researchers said that games like Asheron's Call and Lineage act like coffee shops or pubs by "providing places for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home." Amazing! In other news, technologies like "electronic mail" and instant messaging act like letters and phone calls to connect people around the world. Intriguing!The researchers also found that online games can expose players to people who are not like themselves, providing "that kind of social horizon-broadening has been sorely lacking in American society for decades." I guess meeting middle-aged men pretending to be young female elves is pretty "horizon-broadening," but not in the way I think most Americans are looking for.For their next study, the two professors plan to look at the effect of actually talking to people on a person's social development.
Widget Watch: add this - a social bookmarking widget
The add this widget is a lightweight and customizable tool that will help you bookmark every TUAW post websites to some of your favorite social bookmarking and news sites (I think it might also be the smallest widget ever, too). Upon installing, you need to chose a background color and one of three social services (with more on the way): del.icio.us, digg or Shadows. It currently only works with Safari (with more browsers also on the way), but it unfortunately doesn't pass any selected text to the bookmark submission (like many of the available bookmarklets), so I hope that's on the todo list as well.For now, add this shows a lot of promise, and it's probably one of the handiest and out-of-your-way tools for getting your social groove on. Grab it over at DashboardWidgets.
Apple Matters launches Macitt, Apple-focused social news site
I knew something was up when I noticed my Apple Matters feed turn brown in NetNewsWire (that color means the feed hasn't been updated in over 60 days), and sho 'nuff, I was right. Today Apple Matters launched Macitt, an Apple-centric social news site (or: 'digg clone', if you wanna go that route). Logins for Apple Matters will also work for Macitt, and all the typical social news features seem to be present. A tabbed panel with a list of categories adorns the top right of the page, while accompanying tabs list top users, a tag cloud and a submit section. Yea, that's right: a big advantage Macitt has over digg's system is tagging, which other social news sites seem to be adopting more and more often.Ultimately, it looks like a strong offering that will probably be well-accepted as long as the word gets around, but I'm starting to worry about an overabundance of social news services. After all, a guy can only take so much socializing before he starts mis-tagging headlines and forgets to vote.
Pukka 1.3
Everyone's favorite social bookmarking site, del.icio.us, is great and all, but is lacking when it comes to quickly bookmarking sites as you browse. That's where Pukka comes in. Instead of being taken to a page on the del.ico.us site, as one would if using the default bookmarklet, Pukka pops up a sleek little interface on top of the page you want to bookmark, just as if you were bookmarking within your browser. Just enter a few tags, a description, and viola! Recently updated to version 1.3, Pukka now supports private posting, so you can bookmark all those "questionable" sites without fear that your friends and family will see them and disown you. Release 1.3 also introduces full AppleScript support. Pukka is available as a Universal Binary download from Code Sorcery Workshop.[via Hawk Wings]
AOL refreshes Netscape as social news site with a twist
AOL yesterday relaunched the aging Netscape.com as a social news site (yea, like digg) but with a professional journalistic twist. Check it out. Anyone can sign up, submit and vote on interesting stories from across the web in a wide range of categories from politics, money, television, technology, health and even 'do no evil'. Going above and beyond the social news bookmarking concept, however, is a staff of journalists, including TUAW's own C.K. Sample III and Fabienne Serriere, who will follow up on some of the stories and dig deeper by nabbing interviews, posting related links and keeping users informed as the situation develops (on a side note, we finally figured out why C.K. and Fabs gave us that 'we'd tell you what we're working on, but then we'd have to kill you' bit a while ago).Why are we telling you about all this since it isn't specifically Apple-related, you ask? Well, we should probably tell you the project was headed up by Weblogs Inc.'s CEO, Jason Calacanis. Granted, Weblogs Inc., including TUAW, are owned by AOL, but we could still call it crummy if we wanted to - fortunately, that isn't the case. We think it's a great concept that you should go have some fun with. Still, if you're looking for some Apple-specific details before you fire off a flaming comment, how does 'full-Safari compatibility' work for you? In fact, I think the site actually looks surprisingly better in Safari than Firefox.
Flock releases 0.7 beta
Finally, after months of small alpha version bumps, Flock, the social web browser based on Firefox, has unleashed a 0.7 beta with a whole slew of updates, improvements and bug fixes. Along with a site re-design, check out their blog entry for a thorough rundown of what's new and what's still on the way.This beta-worthy version has been a long time coming, and my copy is downloading as I write this. In case you aren't familiar: Flock has Firefox at its core, but includes a ton of features and capabilities built around the concept of using and interacting with the web - not just surfing it. Features like built-in blogging, uploading to/keeping tabs on Flickr and integrated del.icio.us bookmarking are all on the feature list. It's quite a slick browser if you've been looking for a solid, integrated tool for both browsing and participating in the web. Check it out.[via Download Squad]
Making Virtual Worlds More Lifelike
Researchers at PARC have spent the past three years studying the social aspects of MMO's, and have come to some interesting conclusions. In their minds, making the games better places to socialize and interact with others could mean an improved bottom line for the game developers - even though they may not realize it. From the article: "When faced with the decision, 'Do I put in another dungeon or do I improve the experience for (groups of players)?'" said Ducheneaut, publishers often say "'I'll put in another dungeon.' I think that's incredibly shortsighted."So what do you think - do these researchers have a point, or do you prefer the development cycle as it is?
Breakfast Topic: The N-word
There's one word that gets my goat in WoW: "noob". With spellings as diverse as "nub", "n00b" and "nubcakes", dropping the N-bomb is seen by many players as a way to enhance their own social standing -- often with the opposite effect.I'm tired of "noob" being the default insult -- of Trade, General, LFG and local channels filling up with the word time and again. Of being called a "nub" for reasons as diverse as refusing a duel, wanting to find a group and capturing the flag in WSG. Of course, sometimes we do behave in ways that deserve reprimand -- but can't anyone come up with a more original insult? Perhaps that should be the next Blizzard competition.
Cash card taps into virtual funds
The MMORPG Project Entropia is known for its economic experiments, with pieces of virtual land being bought for high real-world prices. This latest news breaks the barrier between real and virtual money even further, however; a new cash card will let owners withdraw from their ingame balances using real ATMs.Some MMOs entirely shun the idea of converting money earned online to real money, but Project Entropia is taking this to the other extreme. The game's economy is built around real-money transfer, so a move like this simply adds a logical ending to the cashflow pipeline, with developer MindArk sitting in the middle profiting from the whole process.[Thanks, pandlcg]
Free expression isn't always a good thing
Games like Mario Kart DS allow you to create your own user image, for use when trampling opponents to the ground online. Embraced by some as an outlet for creativity -- as opposed to the restrictions in place with Halo 2 emblems and Xbox Live gamer pictures -- it seems there's a downside to giving people free rein over a 32x32 block of pixels.The image to the right exemplifies this. Given near-unlimited creative freedom, this gamer has chosen to represent himself ingame with a swastika. We're sure that plenty of other offensive images are out there as emblems, too -- not to mention the number of crude designs you could make in Animal Crossing.It could be reflective of the maturity of this one gamer, or of gamers in general, but it doesn't represent us well -- imagine the reaction of a casual gamer picking up the DS for the first time.
