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How would you devise an MMORPG to hypothetically maximize for the most rewarding and positive social interactions and bonding? Some thoughts:
You want to make untrustworthy, treacherous, "defect-opting" player behavior as easy as possible. This is paradoxical, but knowing that players always have the option to backstab you (and be greatly rewarded for it) means that players are encouraged to form deeper than surface bonds. It wouldn’t be enough that a player has the correct stat or checks the OK box, you need to know him personally to trust him and to cooperate. The calculus would be that cooperation is only the best option in the longterm, whereas defection is the best option in the short-term (and abundantly so) and with no legible reputation-meter to check a person’s prior defections (easy name / face changes).
Similar to the above, add select highly-scarce player rewards that can only be obtained through longterm social trust. Dungeons in games like WoW do not require this level of trust, because they lacks the heavy punitive cost of trusting the wrong person, as Ninja Looting isn’t as simple as the olden days.
Cooperative questing where verbal call-outs are essential. This is something FPS games do pretty well, because the encounters are always unique so verbal call-outs are the only way to defeat enemies. In modern WoW it’s mostly following a pre-determined sequence of buttons.
More team mechanisms which show on-screen that the characters are benefitting each other. An animation for giving another player where you see something handed, with a happy rewarding jingle and expressions of kindness, an ornate healing animation, an animation for repairing, animations for rescuing, animations for pulling wounded teammates… this is a trivial way for hack our primate brains to sense greater bonds.
A group singing animation for buffs. Again, very primal, and very trivial to implement (keystrokes for notes).
Un-googleable (un-AIable) quest items, where you must find a limited amount of real players with the item and bargain with them to receive it by helping them with something. An algorithm can determine which player would be most aided by your particular class / race / profession.
Quest plotlines which articulate & extol brotherhood and camaraderie. Just a clever way to make us feel stronger bonds with other players (eg while questing with them, the quest plotlines themselves are showing great cooperations etc).
This was a fun aspect of vanilla WoW which afaik has died out in modern games. It’s a fun thought experiment.
I think the first point is wrong, gamers respond to incentives, and you need to worry about attracting the right people in the first place. And a game with betrayal mechanics will attract gamers that want to betray.
I think what is needed is downtime. A time and place for people to just talk and shoot the shit. Hopefully while doing something fun or productive feeling. Humans are naturally social creatures, they just need a space for it to happen.
Star Wars Galaxies nailed this community aspect in a way no other MMO has before or since. There were entire entertainer and doctor and crafter classes that didn't participate in combat at all. And because it was an entirely player-driven economy where almost every weapon and piece of armor and stat buff had to be crafted or traded between players, specialization and cooperation were heavily encouraged. I probably spent more time hanging out with people in cantinas and engaging in productive, mutually beneficial commerce than I did exploring or fighting.
EVE online was somewhat similar. Lot of activities in it were time gated and required you to be paying attention but didn't require you to actively do anything. So socializing with a group of people that were all paying attention was perfect.
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