Ah, Trove. How I love thee.
Your blocky goodness and whimsical island hats help me to be free once my daily toil is done. But what I love most about you is the great sense of community I’ve found within you.
Community, community, community – it’s the “location, location, location” of today’s gaming world , and undoubtedly, equally important to an online multiplayer game’s success.
Picture this: You park a brick and mortar game boutique in the middle of a nursing home.
You’ll be lucky to get even a single sale – although hey, by all means, seniors are most welcome to game with me anytime.
The same is true when positioning an MMO. Creating the right feel and drawing in the right type of players can foster a warm, friendly, silly, competitive environment. Conversely, attracting the wrong people? Disaster.
Case in point – gold spammers, griefers, campers, and the all-around “your-mom’ers”.
And I particularly dig the community at Trove for a number of wonderful reasons.
Shoutout to Trove’s Thresio for “Thresio’s Fire and Ice Dungeon”, pictured above. You’ll find it in the game if you dare traverse it.
1. It’s Easy To Find New Buddies
Whether you’re a complete newbie to Trove, or you’ve played throughout most of the Alpha itself, it’s always super easy to meet new players in the game. If you haven’t logged into the game in a while, you’ll start right off at Hub – which is nearly always surrounded by other players.
Except, apparently, for the exact moment that the above image was snapped for the Trove Wiki. I’m guessing it was a developer shot.
Hub has portals to Featured Worlds, a class changer, a community chest where you can share items, and a trading post. It’s also surrounded by cornerstones, so you have a better chance of being hit by lightning than not finding someone hanging about.
Note: By reading the above, you agree to absolve me of responsibility should you suddenly be hit by lightening. This does not constitute meteorological advice.
Once you venture into, er, Adventure Worlds, there are Outposts spread throughout the world that act the same as Hub, but without the usable items. Instead, these Outposts of Light just have several cornerstones. That means you can head out in a direction and still come upon several houses during your travel. This also makes a great place for people to group up or plan dungeon runs.
2. You Aren’t Forced to Be Social (Or Antisocial)
Confession time! Occasionally, I don’t want to talk while playing MMOs.
Imagine that. Shocking, I know.
The great Audrey Hepburn said it best:
Sometimes, it’s not so much that I want to be alone, it’s more that I want to be together but silent. It’s nice to have a quiet friend to farm or grind with after a long day.
Sure, the occasional, “Need to heal?” or “Hey, want me to grab this cornerstone so we can refill and stash stuff?” will be said, but for the most part, I like the peace it offers.
This can be difficult with games like World of Warcraft or Rift, because in many cases, a significant degree of cooperative planning is needed.
This is not always the case with Trove.
Trion has managed to make it so that if you’re farming or grinding near another player, you’ll both get the blocks or experience from each enemy. What this means is that you can venture out, find three or four players doing exactly what you want to do, and just tag along beside them.
Since you’re not competing for resources, it’s easy to share goals.
3. Lighthearted Fun Available Here
A significant chunk of Trove’s core personality is really lighthearted and whimsical. Alright – it’s more than that, it’s downright silly. There’s island hats, pinata mounts, a Sprinkles the Unicorn mount that leaves rainbow hoof prints everywhere… it’s generally very youthful and silly. And silly – at least, when silly is done right – is a brilliant way to keep things friendly and social.
Take this awesome set of Corgi guns for instance.
They’re pretty fabulous. Dreamed up by the ever-awesome TheHiveLeader, by the way.
Trove’s developers are more than happy to accept and review submissions for items that you think should be in the game. That’ll lead us to the next reason on my fantastic list…
4. The Developers Actually Take Your Advice
Wander over to Blizzard’s WoW forums and demand something be put into the game. If you’re brave enough. You’ll either get a standard, “we’ll consider your request” response (if you’re lucky), or the wrath of 1,000 hardcore players will come down on you like volcanic ash rained down on the Earth millions of years ago.
It’s not that Blizzard isn’t receptive; they are, to some degree. But not nearly at the same level that Trove is.
They actually invite you to create voxel art to be put into the game.
It can be silly, it can be dangerous, or it can be downright weird; they review it all.
Giant Dead Sandworm, anyone?
Dreamed up by Kungfuquickness here.
Community members have made some pretty incredible stuff. It’s where a lot of the really random armor and weapons have come from, including the Top Atoll island hat , the Scrolling Combat Text weapon, and the giant toothbrush sword I can’t currently remember the name of.
Feel like beating enemies with a really cute pug? You just might be able to do that, thanks to Chatez:
Or, maybe you want to be King of the Dragons, and wear a Dragon Crown. Stedms made up a submission for just that. (Danaerys, Mother of Dragons, not included.)
My point is that, hey, if you can dream it up, the developers over at /r/Trove will likely take a look at it. If they don’t like it or it can’t be implemented, you’ll get some helpful constructive criticism to get it there.
5. Share Dungeons by Choice (Without Losing Out)
Like I mentioned before, shared resources don’t create a loss for players in Trove. That means you don’t really need to struggle through a dungeon if you’re having trouble.
Which leads to plenty of people to run dungeons with without anyone losing out.
If you’re in a well-populated new area, it’s a given that you’ll find a few people with the same goal as you. And the vast majority of players are more than happy to have you tag along, although it’s nice to pop up a quick, “Mind if I tag along?” if you can.
Of course, if you’d rather spend some time grinding on your own, you can just keep heading out in any direction until you’ve got a biome all to yourself. It’s all about choice, and the choice is yours.
6. Friendly Players
I can prove to you that the player community in Trove is really friendly and even helpful. When I started writing this article, I got a bee in my bonnet.
Otherwise known as an idea.
What better way to illustrate how friendly everyone is than to take a community group shot?
Surprisingly, this took me all of five minutes to convince the community to do. All I had to do was post my odd request to global chat, and people were more than happy to help me. The majority of that five minutes was spent getting everyone together in the same spot, since there can be more than one Hub if the first gets overpopulated. Easy peasy, I just used the /joinme command.
Much as with any friendly or family group shot, there was a bit of jostling and chaos, and some laughter. But the willingness to make it happen in the first place is, without a doubt, what I love about Trove the most.
People in the game are happy to help, to chat, or to just say hi in passing.
If you ask me if it’s always perfect, well…no. No MMO can ever be an idyllic paradise free of spammers, the occasional jerk, and a bit of ooh-too-far-dude-ism.
But it’s rare. Rare enough that I never regret logging in. And that’s what I consider the most important aspect of a great MMO community.
Won’t you come hang with us?
Published: Sep 6, 2014 06:53 pm