People often talk about what’s important in Massive games. While I tend to find discussions of elements like storytelling, graphics, or theme interesting, much of that is missing the point. Why do people play Massive games? People. It’s as simple as that. While some titles make great single-player experiences too, the fundamental component of any MMOG is that second M.

Raiding, guilds, and chat elements, then, tend to get a lot of attention. And rightly so; the guild is the fundamental unit of any Massive game. Raiding is the ‘thing people do together’ in many titles, and the chat component of the game allows the whole thing to happen in the first place. There’s a missing level of granularity there, that I think is far too often overlooked: the single static group. Static groups are, in my mind, just as important as guilds to the success or failure of a game. Incredibly common, they’re one of the most joyous things about massive games. Tabletop gamers will recognize the static group, that band of comrades, immediately. That’s where my group came from, after all - a player of mine wandering away from the table (and the state).

Static group recognition, in my mind, isn’t just a nice optional feature; it’s an important concept in online gaming that goes regularly overlooked.

Of all the games out there, Vanguard is really the only one that treats static parties with any sense of decorum. It’s actually fairly interesting to me how many specific things Vanguard gets right (diplomacy, mounts, etc.) despite the overall mess of the game. This is what Vanguard’s system looks like:

The Brotherhood System
Brotherhoods are a method for you and your friends to gain experience for each other, even when some of you are offline. All experience you earn is split amongst the members of the fellowship, even members who are offline. When you are in debt or have lost experience, your experience will be devoted to repaying your debt/loss before you resume contributing to the brotherhood. Brotherhoods are completely independent from groups; you can be a member of both at the same time.

So from a mechanical point of view there’s a lot of support, but I’m actually thinking that even more basic support is required. Howabout a shared chat channel? Optional Brotherhood tabards, or some other items? (The Musketeers have hats!) If you’re in a guild and a brotherhood, wouldn’t it be great to choose which tag you hang above your head?

In short, I feel like static groups should be supported as sort of mini-guilds. Brotherhood banks, tabards, tags, housing, chat channels — they’d all be substantive additions to a game.

The underlying reason for all these components - retaining players. If guilds are ’sticky’ to begin with, then how much stickier is a small tight-knit group of people. Having a common banner to wave around would make the group feel that much more connected to the world, and give them even more of a reason to stick with a game. Keeping butts in the seats is what it’s all about, and static groups do it really really well. So why not recognize that?