The Weekly Raid: What Skills Have You Learned From MMOs?

Mastering any new hobby requires learning a variety of skills, and video games are no exception. While some genres focus mainly on a single skill like hand-eye coordination, MMOs require a far greater variety of skills. Time management, resource management, and most importantly social skills are rewarded handsomely in most MMORPGs.

Many of the skills we learn from MMOs can have more concrete benefits. Games like RuneScape and Neopets were where many people got their first taste of coding. Whether it was pimping out your storefront or learning how to run a bot, MMORPGs reward creative thinking in ways that most genres do not.

Perhaps I'm getting old but I fear the genre is changing in ways that reduce the need to learn many of these skills. Even simple things like mods that were so common in World of Warcraft are explicitly prohibited in many games today. Botting too is far more policed today than in the past. Social engineering in the form of scamming, market manipulation, and so forth is also discouraged these days.

While a closed garden, safe space can ward off the worst elements of humanity, it also restricted the possibility space of experiences for players. That's not a bad thing, but it does have its own consequences.

With that said, what skills have YOU learned from playing MMOs, and do you think players today have the same opportunities to learn social and real-life technical skills that were required 10-20 years ago?