Recently we ran into a rough patch with group cohesion in World of Warcraft. Several members of a party that had decided to play together decided to run instances while a guild member was playing other characters or taking care of dreaded “real life” matters. When she logged back into Azeroth, she found that her party mates had out-leveled her, and that there was only one instance the entire group could play in together. Though it was not a conscious decision to do so, they had created in-game tension simply by choosing to play the characters that they wanted to when they wanted to.

RPG veterans know that statistical traits are often what determines a character's strength and the ability to defeat enemies. Player skill only practically comes into affect when players are within a certain level bracket of their opponents. When party members have any real gap between their levels, the game experience is significantly different for each member. Trying to find enemies that fall between their levels rarely helps; lower level players feel like they're not contributing to the group while higher level players aren't finding an entertaining challenge.

Would you purchase a new game if I said “You must invest twenty hours doing menial labor before you gain access to the same fun content your friends are enjoying?” Probably not, but the idea of gaining strength through leveling is so ingrained in what our concepts of an RPG are that we simply accept it now. It would be great if I could tell a friend who just picked up Warcraft “We're all going to go explore a dungeon with our characters we've been playing for a while. Wanna come with?”

This situation is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to Guild Wars 2. Supposedly, it has a sidekick system like City of Heroes that allows a new player to play with veterans as soon as they buy the game. Eliminate the statistical and time investment needed to play with others? Sounds like what a real multiplayer experience should be.