On Hanging Out

Designing social places. How does one design a social place? Does it need to be designed? Or does it appear out of thin air? What comes to mind when you think of a social hang out? A bar? A park? Maybe in your favorite bookstore. What makes you want to hang out there? As I was playing some World of Warcraft in the few free minutes of my life that I've had recently, (I mean it. I have almost no free time right now. Kind of sad for a game designer.) I spent some time just flying around recreationally. I had found a rare piece of armor and wanted to sell it at a public auction house and so I teleported back to the human capital of Stormwind. This practice is quite common as auction houses are found in only a few cities. However, what I noticed is that different cities seemed more or less populated than the others.

I will be making some in game geographical references in this post, so I realize that some of this is going to be confusing for people who do not play WoW. This is a basic map of the game. Each of the little towers is a capital city. Technically there is another zone that is shown on a different map. There is only one capital there though, and it is almost always deserted. Given the subject of this post however, that is an interesting thing to note.

So. There are two major factions in World of Warcraft. Each faction has four home cities. There are also two neutral cities that allow players from both factions to enter. (So for those of you who are counting, that's 10 major cities) However, any moderately seasoned player knows that a city like Darnassus will have maybe four people max in it at any given time whereas Ogrimmar will have crowds. So what is it that makes certain cities more popular destinations to just "hang out?" I believe that is depends on a few things. The first being the simple one, location. If it's not easy to get there, not many people will do it. How many people climb to the summit of Mount. Everest a year? (Not many, I'll tell you that) How many people do you think visit New York each year. Convenience of location contributes greatly to how popular a place is. Darnassus is the city in the northwestern quadrant of Azeroth. The other capital near it is the Exodar, an equally deserted city. If you look at the map, both of these cities are on islands and it takes a several minutes of flying to reach them. (Oh yeah. WoW is a really big game. A flight across the entire continent takes about 17 minutes) A city like Dalaran, which is up north on the island where all the high level characters quest is the most populated city. It is close to all the relevant quest zones for high level players.

However, another important aspect to creating a lively "social zone" is the type of service provided. Basically, is there something interesting to do once you are at this place? You may live next door to a restaurant, but if there are only two items on the menu, how often would you go there to eat? (Unless it's some super awesome tasty dish!)

Game designers realize that in order to keep places in WoW and other online environments populated, they must constantly be drawing in players. There must be something to keep them interested. I mentioned Dalaran earlier. Dalaran is a new city that was added in the most recent expansion and contained all sorts of relevant content for veteran players. However, this also draws newer players away from the game because they don't really have much reason to interact with high levels players. In order to compensate for this sort of social divide, the WoW designers are not including certain services in the newer cities. For instance, the auction house. In order to give high level players a reason to visit the lower level zones, the designers place content that players of all levels can use.

All in all there are probably more reasons for people to just hand out. Preferences vary from individual to individual, but if there is an interesting service in a convenient location, you are likely to draw crowds.