When we were assigned our individual groups in class last Thursday, I was curious to see how the assignment would work. Our efforts as teams both expedited and hindered our individual characters' development. Because of our teamwork, we were able to complete several missions in a relatively short period of time; on the other hand, sharing experience (and loot) seems to dilute your character's development slightly. I would be curious to see how far an individual would progress through the same number of quests (not the same amount of time, for the party would have an obvious advantage). Our group worked well together, and was only hindered by my stupidity (in choosing the wrong character type on accident and having to restart my character after already leveling up once). Given the overriding motive of the exercise (greed) and the pressure to get as much done in as short a time as possible, we functioned well as a group, looking out for eachother and killing/healing where need be. At the beginner levels, it makes little difference as to what classes of characters people were. Warriors could actually hit their targets and warlocks/shamans could use magic spells to cause damage, and really it was only about getting as many people as possible attacking a target. If we had continued to progress our players, I think the class differences would have come more into play, but for only an hour's worth of work, my healer did not have a lot of work to do. Healing the occasional close call (often after the attacking creature had already been killed) did save us time and money (on the food items), but there is no real need to be healed when you're playing on a level where most creatures only attack if they are being attacked.

When its all said and done, the party function and interaction in World of Warcraft is similar to group interaction in the real world: it may not be essential, but it certainly helps. Blizzard was careful to design a game that would appeal to both the individual quester and the quester who enjoys forming a group and engaging in "social warfare" (a little fight, a little chat). While there is no wrong way to play WoW, many users find that joining in a party can help them accomplish their goals much faster. Each character class has its own strengths, but also its own weaknesses, and a crafty group of gamers can mix and match the different class skills to maximize the group's overall effect. I learned this firsthand by playing with my roommate; the importance of having a "tank" on your team (a melee fighter who's specialty is drawing attacks and taking damage) if you are a mage or a priest cannot be understated. My priest may be able to heal hundreds of hit points in a single instant, bring people back from the dead, or burn up the bad guys with a Holy Fire, but if a toddler with a fork were to sneak up on me I would be in for the fight for my life. On the other side of the coin, I have been invited to join parties (and in one case, handsomely paid to join a party) so that the other members could focus on killing while I constantly hit hot keys and cast healing spells. In these situations I am often anywhere from five to ten levels below the people I am grouped with, but because of my abilities as a healer (supply and demand), people do not mind playing with someone less advanced than they are. Being a member of a party has allowed me to survive in areas I probably shouldn't have survived in, and kill elites that I definetly shouldn't have been able to kill.

Getting a group to function well is sometimes a tricky business. If you randomly join a group to complete a mission, you sometimes run into people that are only working with you because they need the extra body; they tend to be impatient and inconsiderate of your needs (not waiting for you to catch up or leaving you in a hostile environment). Sometimes even working with friendlies can be difficult. Deciding how to divide the loot amongst party members can be a frustrating affair, especially when your team is questing for particular items and one player seems to be finding the item more often than the others. A disorganized attack, where players get split up or isolated and killed, can result in "low morale" and make team members reluctant to stick their necks out for eachother. How well you work within the group is often more important than the character you are playing. If you have good chemistry with the people you are playing with and you know the ways that they like to attack, then it doesn't matter what characters or spells you have.

I believe that Yee is correct in suggesting that World of Warcraft can teach leadership and team-building skills that apply in the real world. Granted, you have to be creative in your interpretation, but the fundamentals are there. If you had hired a group of young thinkers and you wanted a more creative way to bring them together than the usual teambuilding exercises, you could teach them to think and cooperate as a team by playing an MMORPG. One of the side-effects of the internet generation is that it is often easier to converse with someone online than it is in person... allowing someone time to think through what they are going to say (instead of just automatically inserting their foot in their mouth) gives people an opportunity to be at their best, and a team based video game with an instant-messenging chat system would allow people to converse and cooperate in the digital world before they begin to work together in the real world. Likewise, each of the members could take turns being the leader of the group, allowing the other players to check out their strengths and weaknesses as a leader. While this idea would be just a precursor to real-world collaborations (a virtual ice-breaker, if you will), it would give people a neutral environment to develop the working relationships they will need to suceed as a team. This would also be a way to get people to connect with eachother outside of the 9-5 work schedule... you cannot force people to spend time with eachother, but if you find something engaging that they will do of their own free will, you won't have to.