In MMO games, people exhibit some interesting behaviors when you get enough people doing the same general thing as individuals. Contrasted to Clan/Guild/Group gameplay (where a group of players is in close communication and actively works together) a group of individuals are all acting to their own benefit/wants. This can seem incredibly inefficient but with enough people acting this way (and the right type of gameplay/balance) you see some really interesting things happen.
A “zerg” is generally thought to be a large group, using overwhelming force to crush an objective. Its named after the starcraft alien race that uses similar tactics. When people are playing in a zerg, they are acting individually, but they are aware that by flocking together they have a collective advantage. Zergs in games have a couple peculiar traits:
Flocking: The most obvious, is that zergs will tend to coalesce into a clump/blob/horde of players. People will often be reluctant to leave this ‘flock’ because to be separated from the rest of the herd makes you much more visible and vulnerable. So people will flock together, even in situations where it would be wiser to disperse (such as getting hit by area-of-effect attacks).
Direct Assault: A zerg will typically attack an objective that is closest, to the neglect of more strategic movements like flanking or splitting an assault. Victories will give the zerg momentum and feed it, almost like a hurricane built out of players, as more people continue to join in on what looks like a ‘winning’ strategy at that moment.
Dispersal: Zergs often disperse when they meet significant resistance. They may hammer an objective for some time unsuccessfully, but eventually players start to get bored. Zergs rely on a ‘critical mass’ of individual players doing the same thing, and once those players get bored there’s less incentive for every other individual to keep attacking/moving/etc. Just like a mob of people in a riot, zergs can be dispersed by denying them cohesion. This can be pretty funny to watch in a game where a huge army/fleet/armada suddenly breaks into disarray, with each panicked player meandering off.
Hesitation: Even though they are often like a marauding mass of army ants, Zergs can demonstrate some surprisingly cowardly traits. In games where there are ‘safe’ areas (spawn rooms inaccessable to enemies, protected positions, etc) you will often see people accumulate there and STAY, even when pushing out would be the wiser course of action. This hesitation often allows the zerg to get surrounded and ground down. If you spawn in a pillbox and everybody inside the pillbox is staying in there and shooting at enemies, you are going to instinctively feel ‘safer’ by staying inside. But if everybody inside charges forward, the weight of the zerg will once again show its strength.
The parameters of the MMO can also vary. For the most part, I was basing these observations from Planetside 1 and 2, because they are some of the few massive-scale FPS games. You can see equivalent behavior in other MMOs, though- In World of Warcraft, playing some of the larger battlegrounds involves a pack of mounted players all running around in a knot of bodies, staying just BARELY out of enemy range, unless they’re confident they can swamp the other side.
Time To Kill (TTK) is a term often used for how quickly a player can be killed by another player in a game. If the game has ‘headshots’ and many high-damaging weapons/attacks (like Counterstrike), they say the game has a ‘low TTK’. However, if the game gives players many defensive options, allowing an individual to ‘tank’ damage (like Eve) they say the game has ‘high TTK’. Low TTK games are faster-paced and the outcome decided much sooner. Each of your actions carries comparatively more risk because one wrong move and you are dead. Low TTK games also put much more burden on system performance, latency, and reflexes in determining the outcome. Conversely, high TTK games favor players ‘ganging up’ on enemies, because in a 1v1 duel your opponent has too much time to try to turn the tables on you or escape. These also factor zerg behavior. In Eve a swarm of players in relatively newbie ships can overwhelm a larger, more valueable ship and bring elite players to their knees. As one photoshop picture put it, “My ship cost less than your ammunition”. In this case, zerging has a strong benefit because there’s less risk associated with dying but more reward in blowing up a far stronger enemy. In Planetside 2 zerging draws a lot of criticism because it often ties up a large number of friendly players of one faction on some wild goose chase (Indar Continent, The Crown, nuff said) rather than actively trying to conquer the planet intelligently. It also kind of forces players to fight in an area they may not care to fight in (again, Indar :mad: ) because even if you don’t wanna be part of the zerg and get in some futuristic version of the battle of Gettysburg, nobody else is fighting elsewhere and its a ghost town on the rest of the planet.
). As for inexperience, it could be a factor for some players but not for others:
