Each week, Community Manager Laura Genender takes a look at one of the MMORPG.com blogs. This week, she looks as a mock-ad about Restless Finger Syndrome.

While browsing the blogs this week, I came across Jesad’s entry in his popular blog “In My Understanding.”  While Jesad has often featured a great sense of humor, I felt that this week’s blog entry took it to a whole new level.  Hats off to you, Jesad.

This week’s entry was written in a serious tone – it’s an advertisement for the Zen of Standing Still, a cure to the Restless Fingers Syndrome.  “Do your fingers bother you?” The mock ad begins, “Do you find it hard to keep from pressing the movement keys?  Maybe you just can’t help yourself when that stray mob passes by while you are supposed to be waiting for the rest of your group to assemble to enter a dungeon.  If you have ever experienced any of these symptoms you may be suffering from Restless Finger Syndrome.”

Following the introduction is a mock player testimonial given by Newton and Hardcore, the two personas Jesad uses to express his points in his blog.

Read it all here.

Ohh please people need to stop trying to come up with syndromes and disorders. Before this 2003-2006 years we never heard of restless leg syndrome. Now it is a real thing and makes people think ohhh I think I got that so the stupid pharmaceutical companies can make more money feeding you PILLS you don't need.

This is a stupid joke and people just need to stop giving pharmaceutical companies ideas to new drugs so they can keep us all drugged up and take more money from our pockets.

get a life.

Haha, In DAOC I use to alt/tab two accounts. I had my druid healing 'finns groups and would alt tab to my crafter.

Standing there healing was sooo boring, and crafting was even worse..but when you alt/tabbed and tried to do them both at the same time..it suddenly got interesting.

Or during raids I'd run a lowby toon while my high level was in a raid. I'd grind out mobs on my lowby during downtime on the raid, heh.

Then there was that time I got banned for pk'ing myself in the frontier with my other toon.....but that's another story.

D.

My raid leader used to have to whisper me to stop moving in raids because I would harass people with random emotes and jump in there face while they were discussing strats. We would have rat races around the raid and play tag with each other. It's not hard to guess that when I say "we" it was the rogues in the raid. Finally my guild leader just started letting me call out strats to give me something to do. Also the Texas Hold em add-on was a godsend in MC.

The SYMPTOM is RFS.  The real problem is something else.  As with most syndromes these days, Standing Still might relive the RFS, but the underlying problem still exists.  In every MMO I've ever played it takes an inordinate amount of time to get a group together.  Even an event planned a week in advance, with date, time and place clearly stated in as many time zones as there are guild members, it STILL takes an hour just to assemble all the members.

There's the group that shows up on-time and in-place.  There's the group that shows up on-time but somewhere else.  There's the group that shows up in-place but late.  And there's the group that's on-line and playing the game, knows when and where we're meeting, but is "waiting to see who shows up" before deciding to stop what they're doing, get their gear, and travel to the assembly point.

In real life, the game starts at 1 PM.  If you're not in your seat, they don't hold up the kickoff  for you to arrive.  In real life, the concert starts at 9 PM and, barring technical difficulties, the first band isn't gonna wait for you to finish toking up before starting.  In real life, the test starts at 9 AM.  If you're not there, you'll not pass.  In real life, the meeting starts at 10 AM.  If you're not there...oh wait...that's a bad example.  Real Life RFS.  But, uh, excepting corporate meetings which DO seem to mimic LFG in MMOs, we expect that we need to take care of getting to an event on time by ourselves; that nobody's gonna hold things up for us.

I don't suffer from RFS.  In fact, many people have commented on how Xix can just stand there or sit there (depending on the game) waiting patiently for the group to arrive.  I blame it on old age.  At my age, I kinda like the peaceful times.  But we really do need to be a bit more considerate when assembling for a group.  Try arriving 10 minutes EARLY.  If everybody in the group tried that, you MIGHT get rolling before you have to go to bed.   

Maybe the answer lies in changing the game to suit the players rather than solely the other way around? Someone mentioned that one game (UO?) had a form of Texas Draw built in that players could do. I think that there is a lot to recommend having entertainment activities that a player can do while staying still in one spot. Something that keeps them there and busy but able to notice when they are being spoken to or they have to do something. IE a non-intrusive passtime. Perhaps adding activities that soldiers used in history when faced with waiting (which is a soldiers life).

Maybe players in a group can run dice games or card games like poker where joining and leaving are easy to do? Or perhaps, an activity like armour repair that takes ages (no one would do it unless they are waiting), requires little or no tools (pack slots=0) but can yield a small bonus for a while. Some other ongoing game complete with rankings etc?  Eg a joke telling contest rated by the other people in the group. Story telling contest, lying contest (ie someone makes a statement, everyone guesses if it is truth or a lie. The teller gets 1 point for every wrong guess).

Of course having a market that you can access remotely from any location and setting up buy/sell orders and managing your goods works in some games. Enabling a character to manage their stuff and their sell/buy contracts gives people quite a bit to do.

Just a thought.