For more information on The Book Club, please click this link.
Let me get this said straight away. I love the idea of Book Clubs. And I love MMOs. When I saw this email, kindly forwarded by my boss, I read it, and it made me feel warm, it made me feel good! Yesterday was an incredibly bad day for me, full of technical mishaps and issues. But this was a genuine piece of good news, about people that just want to do some good, and bring fellowship back to the MMO Community at large. So, what’s the “MMO Book Club“? It was started by a person on Reddit by the name of “Laezur”, who noticed what a lot of us do: It can be lonely playing MMOs sometimes. We don’t always have friends that share our passions, and there are a pile, a literal pile, of quality games that we have strayed away from. Whether it’s because we couldn’t do the content alone, or had friends come and then immediately go. . . It can be disappointing sometimes. He wanted what I want, what we all do, “I just want to play some great games with some great people, and I have a lot of faith that this community will continue to grow because I think everyone involved wants the same thing. We simply want to play MMOs!” Their first target: Lord of the Rings Online! I never did get into it, but now I’m kind of glad, because now I have an excuse. I do wonder if they’re going to focus on F2P MMOs though.
So he created “The MMO Book Club” on Reddit, and they voted as a community to figure out what game to go play first. Their goal is to get this group of people playing as a community and to hopefully breathe some life into games that have been forgotten. So far they have about 750 people in their Discord and over 1,100 people in the Reddit group. Hell, I’m one of them, and I never even go to Reddit! Guess I have a reason now. They’ve scheduled group events, and have a set schedule where they’re going to play the game, and when the next vote shall begin! I absolutely love this idea. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t hardcore though. You don’t have to be there every night, playing with the group. You aren’t going to get kicked out if you don’t have time to play but once or twice a week! What matters is unity, friendship, community. This is a concept that we’re starting to lose sight of in the MMO community at large. As gamers, really. As people.
Where will this go, and how long will it last? I’m sure it will go on quite a long while. What if you don’t like the game the community decided on? You aren’t going to be punished, or banned for that; just for being a jackass. I like that they are going to do planned/impromptu discussions/events throughout the course of their play [3 months] where they talk about the pros/cons about the game itself and their experiences. However, when a game has concluded, and they move on, perhaps a post in their subreddit where people share their fond memories in such a short period of time or the pros/cons of the game. Then they could have a few people in their community break it down, and share their own thoughts [Hell, I’d love to do something like this on Bottom Tier with Colton]. Treat it like an actual Book Club. And I know they just got started and might have considered it already, but Hell. I’d love to have Laezur and maybe someone else on Bottom Tier with us to discuss this very cool idea. Perhaps people will start joining this group, inviting their friends, and new, permanent friendships will be formed! I frankly think this is a lovely idea, and a new way to look at Book Clubs.
