I laugh when people complain that the social aspect of the game is gone.

[ItachiZaku]

I'm one of those assholes that'll strike up conversation in LFR.

[voidillusion]

Long long time ago, if you wanted to eat you had to socialize with other folks in order to be a part of a hunting/gathering group, now you can just go to the supermarket, buy what you want, pay for it, and you're not even required to say a word to the cashier.

Evolution or not? Better or not? More or less human?

To the argument "you can still be social and talk to ppl if you want", sure, take my example, you can still team up with other folks and go hunting with spears and shit, why don't you do that?

The game, wich was supposed to be a MMO one, doesnt require you or incentivise you to socialize, and some people consider that to be bad, no need to be such a dick to ppl who think like that.

[Deleted]

To people that say that in vanilla only bad players were blacklisted im quite sure you guys didnt play on vanilla

In my server burning blade eu (later grim batol) toxic and ninja players would never join pugs or decent guilds

[Deleted]

Just because you're not FORCED to socialize anymore doesn't mean you can't.

True, but now socializing doesn't have an impact anymore, since you (probably) won't see those players ever again. You also can't trade to different realms so you have to find people on your server which is a pain.

Queueing systems and the group finder didn't destroy the social aspect of the game

It did actually, since there are no backdraws anymore since it was implemented, before you had social contacts and you had to maintain those in order to keep playing with them. There was also a limit to dungeons a day so you carefully had to choose a group that could actually finish the dungeon, now you can just leave and find a new one in a matter of seconds/minutes (depending on the roll/dungeon).

Before if you didn't socialize and/or were a shit player you couldn't get into groups, now you just sign and poof you are in a group. There is no way to know if someone is a good player or not, even armory doesn't say shit people scrubs get boosted all the time.

they just made it so that you don't have to anymore if you don't want to

Have you actually tried it without the tools? You won't find any party/raid members any time soon using LFG chat.
You are kinda forced to use the tools or waste a ton of time finding people in trade channels. I don't even have the chat channels active anymore, every time someone does talk in those channels it's either some vendetta against someone or just a person that wants to start the dumb "anal" train.

But I will never understand the whiners that cry about the social aspect of the game being dead.

People just come to express their feelings and thoughts about it and want to know what other people think. Aren't you the one whining now about how players whine about the social aspect of the game? It's no different.

The problem isn't the game. It's YOU.

Just by making this thread and shitting on people that have a different opinion compared to yours just means you are part of the problem as well.

What the hell is stopping you from being friendly and talking to people?

Well you can try, but chances are the guy/girl on the other side isn't going to be that nice. People can't accept criticism and always think they are right.

For example, I had a run a long while back where the tank didn't know what to do (said so at the beginning of the dungeon) and I gave him/her some advice for certain bosses/trash pulls (that you can avoid certain abilities by walking to the side) and you know what he/she did? Shit all over me, told me I was a cunt and I shouldn't give him/her any advice since he/she knows how to play the game even tho he/she still wiped us because they can't be bothered to follow some advice..

The game is exactly as social as you make it.

And that's why it's never going to happen, because there are no consequences and everyone can do whatever they want, including being a dick.

[Sencha]

What's the point making a MMORPG if you can play it without talking to people? Just play single player games.

I liked the 'forced' social aspect of vanilla where your reputation mattered as you couldn't easily change your name, server.

[Dug]

Most of you people are delusional with all your 'look at me, I talk to anybody, so there is no problem with the social aspect in this game. hahaha'. And frankly, you sound like douchebags. A wonder that any of you even has friends, but they could be douchebags, too. *shrug*

I know what douchebags being sociable....

[Atraxxa]

The thing that people overlook is that the thing that has changed is the player base, granted I guess you could say you were (forced) to social back in the day but you really weren't. The player base back in tbc was a diffent breed of player than the current generation. In my experience was more social, less toxic and wanted to socialize and make friends ect. New generation could give a damn about any of that. Personal opinion, but I think its pretty spot on.

[Deleted]

Back in "the day", we had server-centric communities. I started playing WoW on EU-Ghostlands just after it was created at the beginning of TBC. My friend's list back then extended way, way outside my guild, I had a network of people who I regularly chatted with. In part, getting to know these people was so I had a bunch of people I could tap into to get group content done, but mainly it was because I ran into these people all the time. We levelled together. We dicked about in Tarren Mill vs. Southshore just for the hell of it. We ganked alliance together. Even if I didn't talk to everyone, I knew their names - from running around, from trade chat spam, you name it. Because it was a new server, nobody had time for more than one or two alts, so the same toons were always around. Believe it or not, people used to use the official realm forums for more than just guild recruitment, too. Check them out now.

That's literally all gone. Everyone has fifty alts. A whole bunch of phasing multiple servers together means I almost never see anyone I recognise. LFG means I don’t “have” My old friends list has long been culled down to pretty much just guild members plus a couple of people.

Sure there was an element of being "forced" (why forced? why not encouraged?) to be nice to people, in the same way I was “forced” to make friends and build relationships in school, university, and various workplaces over the years – because I was “forced” to interact with the same people over, and over, and over.

These days, I will happily chat shit in a pug group but it amounts to nothing. I will never see any of these people again. And it doesn't matter from a utility point of view, because there's thousands out there that I'll randomly group with to get shit done in the future.

I don’t bitch and whine about the situation (much), but it’s not rose-tinted glasses that cause me to miss how things used to be.

[Demithio]

Just because you're not FORCED to socialize anymore doesn't mean you can't. I make new friends all the time by simply making a choice to be social and talk to people. Because I like making friends and socializing.

The difference is, back in vanilla and TBC, you had to socialize if you wanted to do anything at max level. Queueing systems and the group finder didn't destroy the social aspect of the game, they just made it so that you don't have to anymore if you don't want to, and that's fine if that's your prerogative.

But I will never understand the whiners that cry about the social aspect of the game being dead. What the hell is stopping you from being friendly and talking to people? The answer is nothing but yourself. The problem isn't the game. It's YOU. The game is exactly as social as you make it.

On paper your argument may seem reasonable; however, in real terms, it is not. Being a long time, first release player, I can tell you that the social interaction between players has been dwindling and missing for a number of years. I'm not sure if you can say the game ever 'forced' people to interact , however it certainly did strongly encourage it due to the world and game play structure. Unlike today, which is largely a task-based game play structure, early WoW was largely an adventure structure which stimulated the 'need' or strong desire for people to seek others. People sought to have a shared adventure / experience back then because the game surroundings promoted and encouraged it. It was simply more fun to do so. Today, the game structure is largely different, it does not stimulate group style, party adventure. Although, yes, you can try to be social, and party with people if you try and force it. However, that's just not realistic in today's player base and game structure. Its a very different game with a very different focus.

[Teri]

Just have to look at trade chat or general chat for 10 minutes, to know the internet as a whole drasticly changed.

Trade chat = 50% bot/website advertising 30% boost spam, 15% guild recruitment spam, and 5% actual trade.
General chat = 99% memes

That wasn't the case in vanilla, I was in guilds all the time, yet I did a ton of trading/grouping with other people too.

Main reason conversations got going and didn't go out of hand most of the time was because of player reputation, maybe because I was on an RP server it might have been a "nicer" community, I don't know, but the chat didn't feel like Twitch Chat 13 years ago.

I'm not talking about guild chat here, and people who "complain" about the social aspect are 99% talking about non-guild chat too I hope.

Guild recruitment tools are hopelessly outdated, and blizz hasn't updated anything since Cataclysm, a huge miss imo (yes I know there's like 20 different forums/website outside of game)

Being friendly is obviously prefered, and being toxic and a diminishing social structure isn't directly linked.

Even tho people can get away much easier with offensive chat these days, I do report stuff that doesn't belong in a game-chat all the time, I don't react to it cause I am not lowering myself to that.

[McNeil]

The social aspect might not be gone but it is dwindling. Every time you want to group up for something in the world, you just queue up, insta join and do your chore without interacting at all. The most interaction I usually get is when I do the Stelleris interrogation quest and my party complains that this is the worst quest ever. Even if I were to just interact with my group, there's like no real chance of them communicating back because they either AFK or speedrun the quest and then instantly leave the group. This doesn't make the game feel like a MMORPG, compared to vanilla where you met players from your realm, who might be struggling as much as you did, and then come out extremely satisfied when you were there helping you. I've made so many friends because of this, but the current game doesn't offer anything like this. The social aspect is mostly seen inside guilds these days, as there are no realm identities left and no one feels like talking to each other in the world. You would need to have experienced both vanilla and retail to even get to discuss this though, the best way to undertsand this topic is to experience it yourself.

[Flurryfang]

Just because you're not FORCED to socialize anymore doesn't mean you can't. I make new friends all the time by simply making a choice to be social and talk to people. Because I like making friends and socializing.

The difference is, back in vanilla and TBC, you had to socialize if you wanted to do anything at max level. Queueing systems and the group finder didn't destroy the social aspect of the game, they just made it so that you don't have to anymore if you don't want to, and that's fine if that's your prerogative.

But I will never understand the whiners that cry about the social aspect of the game being dead. What the hell is stopping you from being friendly and talking to people? The answer is nothing but yourself. The problem isn't the game. It's YOU. The game is exactly as social as you make it.

The social aspect is not dead at all, it is just deminished.

You said it yourself, before you were kind of forced to socialize and for a large group of people, that is actually a good thing, because if they are not forced, they will do their best to interact with as few people as before.

I would not really point the finger at the LFG/LFD system, since i think it also improved alot of the social aspects of the game and allowed for more gameplay. In my honest opnion, it is proberly LFR and Crossrealm servers who are at fault when it comes to the social decline.

Raiding was from the start a very social endevor for a large majority of the playerbase. It was content, which required active socializing from the player and often demanded increasing social interaction if a player wanted to engage in higher diffculties of raiding. With LFR, many of the players who would before be forced to interact to see some very exclusive content, could now see all the content without even talking to a single person. That made raiding go from a social activity to an activity with social opportunities.

Crossrealm servers also bring down the social aspects of the game. Having a server with a limited amount of people on it, made it so that some players would stand out and people would naturally get relationships with each other by meeting each other in multiple situations. It made it easier to interact and created more opportunities for people to interact.

Now, you can still be social WoW and in some areas, you can be more social in ever, but the game has declined when it comes to its overall aspects, mainly in the areas where you previously were forced to interact to get gameplay/content. Some might say, that this is an improvment, that people no longer has to do something they dislike, but as a very unsocial and shy guy myself, i am actually quite happy, that WoW forced me into these interactions. I have learned alot of people since i started playing and have made alot of good friends, all because the entry fee for raiding was talking to some people online. In the current version of WoW, i don't think i would feel that forced to interact and would proberly have kept playing the game as a very anonymous person even inside my own guild.

If Blizzard allows for people to play the game fully without actually interacting with other players, alot of people will do just that, no matter how many opportunities they get to have social interactions.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm one of those assholes that'll strike up conversation in LFR.

Ohh god i wish that more people were like you. Normally you just get a "Shut up!" or a " Fuck off" when you try to chat in LFR.

[ItachiZaku]

Ohh god i wish that more people were like you. Normally you just get a "Shut up!" or a " Fuck off" when you try to chat in LFR.

I'll look for cool guild names or character names, ask if anyone else is watching what I'm watching etc. I mean, why not?

[Flurryfang]

I'll look for cool guild names or character names, ask if anyone else is watching what I'm watching etc. I mean, why not?

Apperantly you are much better at icebreaking then i xD

[Jujudrood]

It amazes me how some people fail to grasp this concept.
Like OP said, there is literally nothing stopping you from attempting to socialize, except your own damn self.
Just because you *can* join a group from the finder and clear content without so much as a single word spoken doesn't mean the social aspect is dead; it means you put literally zero effort into being social.
There's nothing wrong with that approach, mind you, because if that is what works for you, keep on keeping on.
But because you chose option A (non-social) doesn't mean option B (be social) is non-existent.
Just because you don't *have* to talk to anyone doesn't mean you *cannot* do it.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who are in a guild, who chat with the members, who hang out in <insert chat app here> and shoot the shit while running circles around Dal's streets for minutes to hours on end (guilty).

Now, that being said, there is also something to say about the level of social interaction and the impact it has on the game.
Back in the days of yesteryear, you needed a decent rep on your server because being a shitbag got you blacklisted, ignored, and made it hard to do group content.
With the LFD tool, CRZ and shared multi-realm groups, things of this nature, you *can* be a shitbag to Joe Rando in a dungeon and have little to no consequence from said shitbaggery.
This part of the social aspect is dying and has been since the inception of the cross-oriented tools.

But it still doesn't mean the "social aspect", as a whole, is dead.

[Deleted]

I can tell you now that those that complain about it being a dead game or that the MMO in MMORPG is long gone are probably those who don't raid outside of LFR or only use the dungeon finder. They choose to not bother finding a guild to raid with and therefore ignore the fact that you still need to socialise and organise stuff with other players if you wanna get stuff done.

And why would they do that? When they have far easyer options? Players will always take path of least resistance thats why you have to force them.

[Jaylock]

If a game has to force you as a person to be social then there is either something wrong with the game or you.

I think there is a little blame on both sides of the coin for the game being less social.

1) you have the game itself. Putting more solo ways to play the game, in the game, naturally makes people less social who might otherwise be more social if they knew they had to in order to get stuff done.

2) internet culture (anonymity) breeds a-social children who don't care for being good to others online. Naturally people like this prefer the anonymity because it means they can do sour things and never be held responsible for their actions, hence, they prefer the "queue" culture in WoW so they can be total ass hats going afk, spewing toxic bile, etc etc, and nothing ever happens to them because they arent confined to their reputation on their server.

3) Game menus, and queues. Have you tried using /4 LFG channel, or even /2 trade channel to try to build a group from your server? It takes longer, if not impossible to form groups this way compared to TBC when you HAD to form groups this way. Because of these systems set in place, it completely destroyed server communities, thus there is little to no incentive to be social on ones server because "hey pug culture, i don't even have to talk in a random pug even if I used the group builder tool, i just have to flash my ilvl and an achievement and im in."

So I really do think the OP @Wvvtayy is being disingenuous when he says:

Queueing systems and the group finder didn't destroy the social aspect of the game, they just made it so that you don't have to anymore if you don't want to, and that's fine if that's your prerogative.

because the mere fact that you don't have to use /4 /2 to find groups, the mere fact that you don't have to group up with people on your server, the mere fact that you can push a button and "see content," the mere fact that these systems now exist is exactly what disincentives people to be social. You can't tell me the game is MORE social now than it was back in Vanilla, TBC, and parts of WotLK, because that is just factually untrue.

[Deleted]

Translation: I'm so socially inept I literally can't bring myself to talk to anyone unless there's something making my do it.

I am not socially inept and i still doesnt feel any need to social in WoW. Why would i do that? Most players in the game will be gone and i will propably never see them ever again anyway. Why should i join guild and social here when i can free join LFR and get my rewads and content done with far less effort and time?

[Demithio]

I am not socially inept and i still doesnt feel any need to social in WoW. Why would i do that? Most players in the game will be gone and i will propably never see them ever again anyway. Why should i join guild and social here when i can free join LFR and get my rewads and content done with far less effort and time?

Therein is the difference in player mindset between then and now. Whereas some players want the fastest, most efficient, least time consuming, and least troublesome way of accomplishing task X, original players of WoW (or other MMOs) with the, lets say, 'D&D mindset', were / are more concerned with the adventure / social experience and 'smelling the roses', and far less concerned on what is efficient. Two entirely different player types, two entirely different mindsets about how to approach and what an MMORPG experience should be. Obviously, who know what type eventually won this battle.

[MisterBigglez]

And why would they do that? When they have far easyer options? Players will always take path of least resistance thats why you have to force them.

It really depends on what your end goals are, but there are so many people on these formus that complain that the game is too difficult, or they can't get into a pug, or because they pay the same amount as everyone else to play that they should have everything there is to offer. From my first post on this topic, it seems like a lot of people assume that I mean everyone who just does LFR is part of the problem. Not even close to being true, but the people who do complain, its never someone who is raiding mythic, or pushing for high ratings in arena/RBG. Im sure there might be the odd person that does regardless, but I certainly have not seen them around.