I'd like to describe a social dynamic that is created from a series of design choices made by the World of Warcraft team. But first, some context.
To me, World of Warcraft (WoW) has always been one of this generation's greatest social experiments. While it wasn't the first, nor the last popular MMORPG, WoW created an interesting social dynamic out of a fantasy narrative. Players could choose which server they played on, so that they might ensure they were playing on the same server as their friends. Guilds allowed players to come together on those servers - even if they weren't already friends.
Player guilds are represented by visual items: tabards that have their own slot on the character and show on top of any chest armor; and the name of the guild appeared below the player's name (which itself appears above the player's character). So the players had factions, or tribes within the game. Tribes are one of the most basic aspects of the human social dynamic.
One of the main mechanics of the game is questing. Questing usually involved killing enemies or finding certain items. This came with problems, especially on high-population servers. Players would either kill enemies too quickly to form a meaningful group, or only one player or group would get credit for the kill and then run off. Enemy respawns meant waiting for a timer that itself was not in any way dynamic. Quests that did not involve killing had similar issues, where an item would be picked up, disappear, and then players would need to wait for it to respawn. Even grouping up would not solve the issue.
Then something happened. The developers decided to implement a server mechanic called layering. What this did was spread people out so that, while it was still possible to run into people in the same layer, it cut down on the preponderance of players overlapping each other on quests, and to some extent, allowed players a bit more time to group up.
Overall, assigning quest credit is a difficult dynamic to solve for, as there are many edge cases that require effective finesse. I'd rather not get bogged down in the details, and focus a bit more on the effects of what layering did to the player experience in WoW.
Before, without layering, all the players on a server could see and interact with each other at any time. There were dungeons (actual 'instances') but those were gated - the group you were in when you passed through the gate is the group you'd have in the dungeon. Outside of dungeons, if there were too many people in one area, you'd be placed in a fresh layer, often times basically by yourself (at least geographically). It kind of killed the atmosphere, in exchange for a less competitive questing environment.
And then it got worse. Layering became a cross-server dynamic. In order to put back some of that atmosphere, areas or quests intended for larger groups or just more people saw players from other servers added in. To denote that the player was from another server, a tag, "(*)" was placed at the end of their name. While interactions with players from other servers were more or less the same, the chances of you seeing those players ever again were slim to none.
Diagram on layering: https://i.redd.it/xpz3z1ly1dy21.png
Developer Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYuUD0o-Nz8
Object permanence is definitely a crucial part of gaming, especially for players in online games. Because digital objects can be spawned and despawned at will, with little to no context, creating even the likeness of object permanence is a demanding goal. Having other players appear and disappear without reason can absolutely destroy a person's sense of immersion or enjoyment in any game.
I don't think cross-contaminating the server populations was a good move. Either you have dedicated servers/realms for players or you don't. Many games simply assign players into regions (US/Europe/Asia), because that's what the server hosting companies do. I would speculate that even with layering, as long as it was within the same server, the social dynamic within the game would have been preserved. In other words, allowing players to interact between populations of different servers effectively voided meaningful social interaction within the game. If I know I'm likely never going to see someone again, I may not treat them the same. I'll still show respect and cooperate with them, but I may refrain from befriending them, or integrating either way into a social group.
In conclusion, design choices such as server/layer assignment have huge overarching implications for the player. The game as a whole changes in broad strokes as a result. I find many similar online experiences equally hollow because of a lack of object permanence.
Say what you will about that, but those ideas are typically difficult to describe, categorize, and prove, without dutiful, costly testing.
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