Holy Matrimony~

[Denmo]

That would be an MMO designed sometime in the current "generation" of games instead of something, say, created in the mid 90's when MUDs were still popular and games like Nexus:TK and UO were pioneering a brave new world with a type of game that nobody had conceived before, and names like Richard Bartle and Richard Garriott were still prominent designers.

Ok. What does that even have to do with an in-game marriage system? If people want it enough, it will happen.

[Lerend]

Ok. What does that even have to do with an in-game marriage system? If people want it enough, it will happen.

I explained that in my original post. The player demographic is entirely different than it was 17 years ago. Back then, games had one, *maybe* two servers, and having 200 players online at once was a groundbreaking milestone. Content was not easy, and accomplishments were not handed out like candy, rerolling a new character was a huge issue you avoided unless it was absolutely necessary, most players never even hit the level cap in many of these games and that was totally ok. You were constantly surrounded by the same people, and as such your social interactions and reputation held considerably more weight than they do in modern MMOs. There was no deleting your character and recovering your progress in a weeks worth of dungeon runs, nor could you spend $15 to server transfer to one of 400 other servers. People also roleplayed and engaged each other outside of the base number crunch of the game.

As such, two characters getting married had important social connotations, kind of like how it does in real life. You were much more invested in your character, so what happened to it, and how people though of you was considerably more important. It was a different time, and it worked under the context, but that same level of intimate attachment with your character and the players around you just aren't the same today with how the genre has changed.

[Denmo]

I explained that in my original post. The player demographic is entirely different than it was 17 years ago. Back then, games had one, *maybe* two servers, and having 200 players online at once was a groundbreaking milestone. Content was not easy, and accomplishments were not handed out like candy, rerolling a new character was a huge issue you avoided unless it was absolutely necessary, most players never even hit the level cap in many of these games and that was totally ok. You were constantly surrounded by the same people, and as such your social interactions and reputation held considerably more weight than they do in modern MMOs. There was no deleting your character and recovering your progress in a weeks worth of dungeon runs, nor could you spend $15 to server transfer to one of 400 other servers. People also roleplayed and engaged each other outside of the base number crunch of the game.

As such, two characters getting married had important social connotations, kind of like how it does in real life. You were much more invested in your character, so what happened to it, and how people though of you was considerably more important. It was a different time, and it worked under the context, but that same level of intimate attachment with your character and the players around you just aren't the same today with how the genre has changed.

I look at it this way. Those same 200 players/server are still playing some MMO out there, like this one, and they're still trying their hardest to enjoy the game the same way they did back then. These kinds of players will role-play, invest time with friends in game doing whatever, and make the game something more than the designers intended.

For these gamers, they'll be doing weddings whether or not the Devs invest the time to design a marriage event. This has no effect on whether a marriage event would be made or not. What will in XIV's case is whether or not the majority of players want it. Not because XIV is a "Modern MMO".

[Lerend]

I look at it this way. Those same 200 players/server are still playing some MMO out there, like this one, and they're still trying their hardest to enjoy the game the same way they did back then. These kinds of players will role-play, invest time with friends in game doing whatever, and make the game something more than the designers intended.

For these gamers, they'll be doing weddings whether or not the Devs invest the time to design a marriage event. This has no effect on whether a marriage event would be made or not. What will in XIV's case is whether or not the majority of players want it. Not because XIV is a "Modern MMO".

You're absolutely right, those 200 players are still doing their own thing to this day.

The point is that those 200 players are maybe 1% of a modern MMOs playerbase. The developers see that those 200 people think this would be really cool, and the other 20,000 only care about it if it gives a stat bonus or something. You're right that if enough people want it, maybe it will happen, but the bottom line is that development costs time and money, and these days not enough people *do* care about that sort of game content for developers to be willing to put resources towards developing it.