World of Warcraft will look to reward players for positive social behavior in the future, according to Blizzard. It’s just one of several new community-focused features the team is looking at implementing as part of a new initiative within the WoW development team.
In a blog post reflecting on WoW’s last year and the year ahead, executive producer Holly Longdale revealed the team is “doubling down” on the social elements of the longrunning MMORPG by forming a new Social initiative that will work on new social features or come up with solutions to community-related problems.
“You are what brings Azeroth to life, and you make our game truly unique,” Longdale said. “To properly commit to this fundamental aspect of World of Warcraft, we now have a dedicated Social initiative within our development team.”
Longdale cites a number of projects and solutions the initiative is currently working on, including making it easier to connect with “like-minded players,” more tools for role-playing, and “rewards for positive behavior.” The team is additionally looking at making improvements to the in-game friends list, better integration for social media platforms (something WoW once had), and updates to the in-game Group Finder.
“The team is working on Social projects now that we hope to be able to share more about over the next year,” Longdale said.
The blog is light on details, but from the examples given, it’s easy to see the potential. Every WoW player has had bad experiences in a dungeon group where one jerk ruins the entire run, so a way to better incentivize players to play nicely with one another seems like a positive solution.
News that Blizzard will officially be supporting roleplaying (RP) is also exciting. Though WoW does have a vibrant RP community, it’s not something Blizzard has ever done much (or anything) to build features for or support, seemingly content to let the community just do its thing. In an interview with GameSpot for WoW’s 20th anniversary, Longdale said serving the RP community was an area where Blizzard could “absolutely do better.” She said the team was recently inspired by the documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, much of which is an animated film using WoW’s engine, to look for ways it could add more lifelike interactions into the game.
Blizzard recently announced player housing will be coming as part of WoW’s Midnight expansion, and a glimpse at how the feature might be implemented in the form of an in-game apartment that is coming as part of the game’s next goblin-themed update.
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