I am thrilled and delighted in your proposals but you must not be short sighted or fail to take the necessary steps to achieve your goal of only associating with those you consider to be an equal.

Do not loose hart though; this is the same problem that has plagued mankind since the formation of the first societies.

Gauging fellow players in our virtual world’s worth as another human based solely on their writing skills is not sufficient for your goal. The possibility for exploitation and deceit is too great. Players might simply download a UI mod that crafts their text into something that one would expect of a player such as you or for that matter a member of the blogosphere to create.

Therefore I feel you need to consider what other factors are desirable in the type of players you would like to associate with. Perhaps education level is a factor that should be considered. Income is often a quality indicator of people’s behavior and therefore should not be overlooked. The numbers of factors are endless. Much as gated communities, private schools, congressional districts and standardized tests are created to segregate those considered undesirable it stands to reason that this should be fully embraced in the virtual world.
“My hope is that as MMOs continue to become more mainstream, the ability to pick and choose the type of gamer you want to play with – as well as character class or race – becomes a priority”
Don’t worry the internet is still young, give it time and it will become segregated just like the rest of the world and you will be able to only enter virtual worlds that are filled with people just like you.

Sorry for the over the top sarcasm but your post reeks of elitism and the insidious undertones of some bizarre virtual fascism.

I understand where you are coming from I honestly do and this post is not an attack it is just sarcasm pointing out the extremes of what ideals like yours can (and do in RL) lead to. Just like in RL you never should judge a book by its cover. Your killer from WAR might be a great guy with just a lame ass sense of humor who actually thinks his name is funny or clever.

I think you honestly need to spend some time finding a good guild that fits your needs. It is not hard, it just takes some effort. You seem like a decent enough fellow and if you plan on playing WAR Destruction side, hell I’ll get you into my guild. Of course you will need to submit a writing sample as this post of yours is only at an 8th grade level according to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level;)

“The Older Gamers are members of a community for people that still enjoy playing computer games, but are in a bit of an older age bracket than the ’stereotypical’ gamer. TOG is for gamers who don’t go out boozing every weekend, who have have partners, and families. TOG is for busy workers who need to de-stress from their busy jobs and for people who have retired and find themselves with plenty of time to indulge a hobby of online gaming.”

I think we have over 25k members now and have MMOG and FPS gaming divisions that cover most of the games that are available in each genre.

While any age can be an asshat, “older” gamers seem to be much better at policing their own community and it’s been very rare for me to actually have an issue with anyone in any of the divisions I’ve been in. When I did have a problem, it’s always been dealt with in a mature way.

Playing in a good guild with like minded folks makes all the difference…

Not without engineering new Players. ;)

The best you CAN do is provide for the NATURALLY segmented audience that your game will attract.

In the case of DAOC’s RP servers, the players themselves provided the oversight… and the rules were just enough to attract mature-minded players whether they were role-players or not.

Instead, the game world should be engineered so that the player interaction is always an enjoyable experience. I know I mention EVE Online a ton, but they’ve created a one-server world in which all players of all styles can interact without their gameplay being disrupted; in fact, you are forced to interact with them, as the entire economy and world is driven by the player action.

As a WoW player — and a dad whose son looks over his shoulder regularly — I’ve left the profanity filters on and found a great guild whose policy is to keep profanity, explicit, derogatory, and insulting language out of guild chat. We have lots of players from the low teens into the late 40s and no one has ever been bothered by that limit on self-expression.

Age-restricted servers are NOT the answer either. I’d even argue they might be *worse* — because for some people 18+ will equal “adult themed.” So rather than being more mature, you may find players coming to them expecting to be more explicit now that the kids are “out of the room.” Another drawback with adult-only servers is that they get in the way of parents and their children playing together.

Just my 2 cents.

I was pretty impressed at how well those two little rules worked. They were just enough to alter the tone of the community without turning it into Ren-Faire Online. ;)