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orcs vs trolls
in my opinion, wow provides players the tools to play in groups but does not necessarily encourage group play. The game is set to allow players of all classes and levels to interact. Also, the interface allows for the customization of looting in order to avoid conflicts between group members. Experience points are also divided evenly among group members in order to create a sense of "fairness" in the gameplay. Even though these things make it much easier to create groups and play in groups, there are still some things which (again, this is my opinion) somewhat overshadow the advantages and ease of playing in groups. For example, when playing with characters which are not in the same level as one's own, there is a point distribution problem. I had not been able to notice this problem until I got to about lvl 12 and played with characters in levels lower than mine (i ussually teamed up with higher level avatars). When playing with lower level characters, it was evident that, in certain quests, I did not recieve amounts of experience proportionate to the effort I had put into the mission. I was dealing the most damage (and spending the most to stay healthy (potions, jerky, etc) and was recieving amounts of experience points that were almost useless (getting say 15xp per monster when my level up is 8000 points away). In certain ways, it would be better to spend more time doing the quests on my own and getting say, 50 xps per kill than playing with 3 others and getting 15xp per kill. Granted, the quests are finished more quickly and its sometimes good to have buddies when creatures aggro in unexpected ways. However, the time saved in killing monsters, which, in theory should be used for gaining more xp, is wasted while traveling longer distances in order to find more quests because the quest you did with your group didnt give you the expected amount of xp. that was a run-on sentence. wasnt it? It mustve been really annoying for higher level guys to play with me, so i play with newbs in order to return the favor. I think that in a way, reciprocity is more of a group creator than the game interface is.

I don't completely disagree with Yee but think that, at least in wow, establishment of leaders (and therefore acquiring of leadership skills) is very dependent on character class. In my experience, players with ranged attacks or stealth ussually lead the groups. The beasts in the game react to certain proximity levels in relations to the players and the other beasts, so ranged attack characters are ussually used to bring "pull" creatures in one at a time. For example, in a field, the hunter will attract the beast toward the group by shooting at it. This reduces the risk of tripping another beast's proximity level during hand to hand combat. If a group of warriors charged at a humanoid before the hunter attracted it towards a "safe" area, chances are that their movement would trigger the attack of other other foes. So, the group waits for the ranged attacker to make the move into attack. This automatically puts the player with the ranged attack character in a position of leadership whether he wants to or not: He must decide which and enemy to attack and when to attack him. He must lead the group. Even if another character class wants to lead, it would probably take him/her too long to type every action that must be taken. One has to take into account that typing greatly hinders one's ability to control the character. This also hinders group cooperation. Even so, there are some people that dont use ranged avatars and are great leaders. I do believe that leadership skills learned in the game can be transferred to real life, especially in the way leaders say things.