Geek Reflections: The Evolution of Gaming Communities

I’ve been pondering the evolution of gaming communities. Wondering how some manage to stick together, game together or even just keep in touch in the somewhat-vague form of message boards whilst many just vanish altogether with nary a peep.

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I mentioned before that I’m a gamer-in-hiatus … hopefully just until Warhammer Online is released. Even in this break from gaming, I frequent a message board of people that hold a simple connection to one another through having played on the same MMORPG server starting way back in 1999: an online community was formed through this gaming connection.

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It all started with the game: EverQuest. All of these people thrown together on the same server in this new virtual world. Some of us grouped together. Some were in guilds together. Real-life friends playing together. Newly-made friends sharing in the experience of EQ. Competition and exploration. Love. And hate - oh, the hate.

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A community started to form outside the game through the now-defunct IGN’s EQ Vault messaging board - affectionately termed “FlameVault”. In the beginning, it was mainly discussions about the game but it soon transformed into a daily record of chatter about anything and everything: gossip, sex, flirting, sex, bitching, sports, sex, gaming, moaning and sex. It soon became a way to “know” people - whether good or bad - without actually having to play the game.

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After IGN closed down FlameVault, a charitable member of the community stepped up and started a new forum thus saving this group of people from disappearing into the ether of the internets. In its current form, it’s partially more civilised - possibly due to many of us growing old (more mature?). Some people post regularly, some only on occasion and lots of us lurk. It’s not about EQ anymore: Only a small number of people still play EQ and there have been many, many games since. It’s not even about gaming so much although it remains a common bond most of the people there share.

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I’m sure EQ wasn’t unique in providing the right environment for these types of communities to develop but I never experienced anything even remotely similar in any other online game I’ve played. I’m sure there are tons of other communities, either like this one or through guilds, that have been together for years and years. I’m not sure what the contributing factors were. Maybe it was sharing in a new experience - the new-in-1999 EverQuest virtual world - which was completely unlike anything else at the time. Perhaps all the planets in the Geek Universe were in alignment when we had chosen the same server to play on?

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I’d love to hear from anyone else who experienced being a part of a long-lasting gaming community, especially what you feel is behind the longevity.

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