Addressing level gap among MMORPG players

Background

Here's a stereotypical gamer

Here are actual gamers

The social nature of games, especially online games, cannot be emphasized enough. People play not just for the game experience, but also for the social bonds and sense of community that form around a game or games.

Players in MMOGs form guilds and other sorts of communities

I'm trying to create a guild that specifically encourages cooperation and community identification.

Level disparity in MMOGs

"So, why do people not leave their current MMORPG even when they hate it? Because of friends. Friends can make or break a game. A MOG can be the best game ever, but if you log in and cant find a good group of friends in a reasonable amount of time, you will just quit the game. The same goes around, you may play the worst MOG ever, but if you have good friend you enjoy to play the game with, you WILL stay, even if the game starts crashing every hour for 3 months."-post off of a message board

Another way of putting it

Even players who are already friends before joining the game find that their level gap can get in the way of staying together in the game.

Design

Introduce guild events which directly address the level gap. Previous guild events were designed to bring the guild together, but they did not specifically give incentive to characters of varying levels to hang out with each other.

Escort Race!

Decided to have players form teams and race from one city to another through regions of varying difficulty. Here's the original formla used to calculate the winner:

(1 + 60-avg level + highest level-lowest level) / minutes

• encourage players of vastly different levels to party together
• resemble actual in-game situations
• allow players to use their characters' abilities, which meant that party dynamics (which classes were represented) would have an effect on the experience

Implementation

Unfortunately, only a few people actually showed up for the race. We decided to convert it into a time trial where parties of characters could try to beat the high score. They could try to do this whenever they had free time since the protocol for the race was posted on the forums.

Whether this will have an effect on guild morale and address the level disparity within the guild, I cannot yet judge. The first party of players that raced, however, seemed to enjoy it a great deal. They enjoyed arguing different strategies among themselves and coming to a consensus on a particular approach. They were both negotiating cooperative play and having fun.