Looking for Options

I apologize if this has been posted elsewhere. been buried of late and haven't had time to keep up on all the posts as much as id like. I have not had time to watch the videos since the initial (although I have them saved to do so). So some of this may have been talked about there as well.

It's great there are plans to connect with your friends for multi-play. such as with face book and google +.

Beyond that having it so that the game itself has a built in friend-finder system would be fantastic. With multiple options/levels. A long-term game partner finder, perhaps something like a global chat, etc.

Hopefully options to form Guilds as a way of connection with people of similar tastes to use as a way to connect. Ideally a way to join multiple guilds or a primary and have secondary, alliances, or formalized guild friendships..

Whatever it is though; I know that I have a LOT of gaming friends. First off many of them do not use face book, goggle +, etc. I personally am not a fan of a lot of the social networking sites but use them because I recognize the need. Secondly the chances that all my gaming friends are going to be interested in this specific game is pretty slim.

Here's an example of how it went with WoW. I told everyone how great this game was going to be before it came out, talked it up, I pre-ordered the collectors edition and I played WoW. Being a themepark MMO I got bored with it fairly quickly and stopped playing. YEARS later some of my friends gave up the outdated game they where playing and tried WoW, long after I was gone.

In short, there is always going to be a diversity on what people are playing even with similar interests and in close circles. If I have to count on my social networking friends lists to find friends for a specific, then im going to be solely lacking for friends in game even though im not on my social networking sites. I have a LOT of gaming friends as I ran a real life RPG game group for over a decade which saw over a 100 members in that time. Similar interests, etc. But I doubt I can count on a single one of them playing this, at least initially.

I advocate an IN GAME method of finding friends also and not just leaving it to forums and groups, etc. Often people don't have time to become involved in forums to search for friends.. they have an hour tonight to play the game or an hour to go find people to play it with, by which time they cant play it. Which would you rather do? The Social networking sites are really getting nasty about penalizing people for making friend requests with people that they don't physically know.

When I was Beta testing Ultimate Collector I was pinged by Facebook with warnings several times because I was sending a friend request to SOMEONE ELSE PLAYING THE SAME GAME, with the request being for purposes of that game only even though that person POSTED THEY WANTED FRIEND REQUESTS!!

So making it quick and easy to find people to play with, form longer term relationships with, and have the ability to play with is a must.

Solo play is all in good. but I never met a solo game in my life that I did not get bored with at some point. On the other hand I played UO for close to 7 years. Difference? The IN GAME relationships I formed.. not the OUT OF GAME relationships I brought into the game. I had R/L friends that played UO.. for different amounts of time, at different times, and at different levels of time investment. R/L friends will never have the EXACT same in game needs that you do for a particular game simply because you have a real life gaming association.

The only place you are going to find people with the Exact gaming needs you have (or close), whether its play style, amount of time you invest into it, what things you do in the game, etc..... will be found in said game, not out of it (exception being forums and the like, but as mentioned earlier this can be a very times consuming and grinding way to find people).

So therefore an in game system of "connecting" with other people that play the game, is essential for any multiplayer game. Any online game I have ever played that did not have one, ended up becoming something I stopped playing fairly quickly.

The ability to connect in game with your friends from social sites is fantastic! In some cases that will be a huge benefit, especially when joining groups on face book and the like. However if it is limited to that, its going to be solely lacking.