Community will Enliven World of Warcraft ?

Is the World of Warcraft becoming staid? Chris Dalen at Slate thinks that the repetitive nature of the game eventually leads the game to lose its initial novelty. He notes:

The real point of Warcraft is to interact with the other players—to socialize in the chat channels, team up for quests, and run each other down on the battlefields. Teamwork and competition do make the game much more fun, but everybody’s stuck in the same grind. With little at stake, your quests feel less like Frodo and Sam’s trip to Mordor than a night shift at Hardee’s.

What is particularly interesting are the solutions that he proposes. Noting the social aspects of internet gaming, he concludes that bolstering the community elements of the game environments would be a step in the right directions. For example, he argues that allowing players to create personal profiles, giving them more freedom to personalize their avatars, and creating private spaces would increase player’s involvement in the games.

Online profiles and distinctive, distinguishable avatars are a step in the right direction towards the creation of interpersonal ties online. If an online environment hinders individuals ability to develop unique impressions of individuals, deindividuation occurs and players become interchangeable based upon relatively few criteria. If a player has a certain level and stats he is acceptable to play with. In contrast, introducing profiles and unique avatars encourages players to develop relationships with other players. Rather than playing with interchangeable parties and teammates one finds oneself playing with friends.

I’m not suggesting that personal relationships do not form in Massively Mulitplayer Online Games (recently a couple wed after meeting online). They obviously do. However, these relationships would be facilitated by the types of changes Dalen is proposing.