The Quest for the Perfect Group Size | OGR

mmorpg.com:

Finding a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) that is vast, immersive, and ever-evolving can sometimes be a challenge within itself. When you factor in finding quality players to play with, especially with MMORPGs varying in the number of required players for specific content, finding the right game and adequate players can feel even more challenging. That’s why, this week, we’re going to take a look at an aspect of MMORPGs that often comes under scrutiny – What is the ideal group size? More aptly, the question that piqued my interest in this topic was «Is there a perfect group size?» and it turns out, that’s a more complicated question than I anticipated.

MMORPGs feature an array of group sizes, from smaller trios in games like the upcoming MMORPG-lite Wayfinder, to the more common five-member dungeon parties in games like New World. We even have cases of far larger group sizes like 10- 40 person raids in World of Warcraft. That doesn’t even broach the subject of multi-group organizations like Squads in Guild Wars 2 that can have 50 players following a commander. Each group size has its own set of advantages and challenges, which we'll discuss, but it’s clear that developers have often used group sizes to dictate the type of content they’re pushing players towards. Unfortunately, that also makes some sizes and types of groups just, unwieldly, and in my personal opinion, rarely fun.

Smaller group sizes, such as Wayfinder's upcoming three-member parties that we were able to test in the previous beta tests, have their own set of unique benefits. First and foremost, they make it easier to find and form groups, cutting down on wait times and getting players into the action faster. Smaller groups also lend