World of Warcraft: Social interaction less than mediocre for an MMORPG

[Solarth]

To start this off what I don't want to see or hear about are any things that have no direct correlation to social interaction, i.e. class changes, transmog and etc.

There are about as many opinions on why WoW is declining as there are suns in the universe! For me though, the loss of social interaction is really making the game unplayable. When I look back at the old days before any LFG was installed, you had to be sociable to complete anything that you couldn't solo. Meaning you were in trade chat looking for some players to help or in the lfg channel. You had to interact with players before during and most of the time after the dungeon or raid or even quest was complete. With the ability to just que up and run through anything with players you don't know, probably wont talk to at all unless they are messing up, and mostly will never play with again, takes all the fun out of running anything to me.

I know most of you are going to say but you can join a guild and this and that, but even joining a guild doesn't mean that you wont be needing players to do a 5 man heroic or 10 man raid. The fact is that unless you have a certain ilvl with a certain achievement you aren't going to be doing anything at endgame except for the unsociable LFD and LFR and that is in a sad place regardless of what anyone thinks, item level will never out way skill, except it does now.

Anyway enough of me crying about not having any friends, I would love to hear from players who miss the social interactions and your opinions on the state of play.

[Deleted]

Social interaction ... the only Social interaction since some month i have *in this game* is talking to my girlfriend who sits next to me on the ...dont know it in english....

Social interaction not necessary in wow these days!

its not trolling! i am serious! and i love wow! :-)

[ComputerNerd]

Social interactions are by choice.
Therefore lack of a social community in a game is down to the players themselves.
LFR/LFD expose you to more of the community than closed guild runs do, so any lack of socialisation in those formats is down to player choice.
Forcing communication does not equal making community.

[Deleted]

I don't know, hard to judge after so many years. Weirdly enough there are less trolls for some reason?

[Herecius]

How about hearing from a player who has found literally all of his gaming buddies through WoW, and still plays with them, not only in WoW, but in other games as well, and because he put forth the effort to actually be social, enjoyed a 16-person meet-up at Blizzcon with said gaming buddies?

At the end of the day, Blizzard can do everything in the world to try and push social interaction, but it doesn't mean anything if players don't go for it themselves.

[Uoyredrum]

The social interaction in the game has become worse and worse as a result of LFG tools being implemented into the game, as you don't need to say anything or interact with anyone to find groups or be successful at what the groups are there for.

[Deleted]

The social interaction in the game has become worse and worse as a result of LFG tools being implemented into the game, as you don't need to say anything or interact with anyone to find groups or be successful at what the groups are there for.

Because:
Xxx: LFM healer DM
You: I can heal, have done dungeon before.
Xxx: I'll invite.

Amazing socializing!

[Nadiru]

To start this off what I don't want to see or hear about are any things that have no direct correlation to social interaction, i.e. class changes, transmog and etc.

There are about as many opinions on why WoW is declining as there are suns in the universe! For me though, the loss of social interaction is really making the game unplayable. When I look back at the old days before any LFG was installed, you had to be sociable to complete anything that you couldn't solo. Meaning you were in trade chat looking for some players to help or in the lfg channel. You had to interact with players before during and most of the time after the dungeon or raid or even quest was complete. With the ability to just que up and run through anything with players you don't know, probably wont talk to at all unless they are messing up, and mostly will never play with again, takes all the fun out of running anything to me.

I know most of you are going to say but you can join a guild and this and that, but even joining a guild doesn't mean that you wont be needing players to do a 5 man heroic or 10 man raid. The fact is that unless you have a certain ilvl with a certain achievement you aren't going to be doing anything at endgame except for the unsociable LFD and LFR and that is in a sad place regardless of what anyone thinks, item level will never out way skill, except it does now.

Anyway enough of me crying about not having any friends, I would love to hear from players who miss the social interactions and your opinions on the state of play.

Yeah, I really miss the good ol' days when you ran 40 man raids where 25 people were just perpetually afk for the entirety of the run. Hoo boy. PUGs have literally always been full of angsty angry players. So when you say something which equivocates "PUGs are bad!" my response runs along the lines of "don't be in PUGs then."

If you're so sociable, why do you have to interact with LFR at all? It provides inferior gear and an inferior experiencing of the content. You mean you're not in a guild? Huh, interesting. If you run into an asshole in the morning, he's the asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

I have just as much social interaction as I enjoy, no more than that. It is very present in the game, I just prefer to avoid most of it.

[mistahwilshire]

I play 4 MMOs and interact about the same in all of them.

Social interaction is on the user. Frankly it's never been particularly needed. LFM for xxxxxx vanilla dungeon/raid was the only real social interaction requirement back then to do that kind of content. That level of interaction is still entirely intact so that hasn't changed.

People seem to have this incredibly skewed and twisted memory of how things really were.

[Franzy]

There is plenty of social interaction possible in WoW, I think the issue is that people stopped trying to communicate each other which causes other people to not bother also.. because, yes, it's not necessary to play the game and a lot of people choose not to.

But just try talking, start anywhere, saying "I like your mount/transmog/toon name!" could start a conversation.

I find you see more people willing to join in talking if there is already other people being friendly to start with.

[Solarth]

Social interactions are by choice.
Therefore lack of a social community in a game is down to the players themselves.
LFR/LFD expose you to more of the community than closed guild runs do, so any lack of socialisation in those formats is down to player choice.
Forcing communication does not equal making community.

Social interactions with players not on the same realm you are on is mute as they can't join you in trying to beat end-game content unless its in the same fashion that you met them, LFR/LFD and Flex now but even then flex is just a watered down version of normal. So I can't really see how that is player choice. The fact that I can post in trade all day long lfm for a 5 man heroic and the only response I get is "dude use lfd" that is crazy, this is suppose to be an mmorpg.

[MoanaLisa]

I've been pretty critical of Blizzard dropping the ball on providing better tools to enable easier social interaction. But even if those tools were available today it's still a personal responsibility to use them--or in this case what you have--to make friends. Guilds, battle-tags, all of the cross-realm functionality that's available now and eventually small realms will be connected up with others to provide a larger population are going to make a difference but waiting for something to fall into your lap won't have a great chance of working out for you.

Community is what you make of it. At this point, I'm not enthusiastic at all about being forced to socialize with other people who are also being forced to do so to get anything done, which is what you seem to be suggesting. And frankly? If they are taking advantage of anonymity to act out their fantasy of being a tough guy asshole I'm not interested in being in a group with them either. So it works both ways.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The issue is, the community itself still has problems. Yeah there could be more incentives sure but it doesn't mean the community itself can't improve.

[Herecius]

Social interactions with players not on the same realm you are on is mute as they can't join you in trying to beat end-game content unless its in the same fashion that you met them, LFR/LFD and Flex now but even then flex is just a watered down version of normal. So I can't really see how that is player choice. The fact that I can post in trade all day long lfm for a 5 man heroic and the only response I get is "dude use lfd" that is crazy, this is suppose to be an mmorpg.

Without lfd, your social interaction would literally just be
'lf1m healer for hc'
'healer, i've done the dungeon before'
'*invite*'

That would be your entire interaction. Nobody has to talk after that. You're not talking about 'social interaction,' you're talking about inconvenience. Join a guild. Get to know those you play with on a regular basis. Form groups, do bgs with them, do raids with them, tool around Timeless Isle with them, get into voice and play something other than WoW with them... that's social interaction.

[Kindahuge]

To start this off what I don't want to see or hear about are any things that have no direct correlation to social interaction, i.e. class changes, transmog and etc.

There are about as many opinions on why WoW is declining as there are suns in the universe! For me though, the loss of social interaction is really making the game unplayable. When I look back at the old days before any LFG was installed, you had to be sociable to complete anything that you couldn't solo. Meaning you were in trade chat looking for some players to help or in the lfg channel. You had to interact with players before during and most of the time after the dungeon or raid or even quest was complete. With the ability to just que up and run through anything with players you don't know, probably wont talk to at all unless they are messing up, and mostly will never play with again, takes all the fun out of running anything to me.

I know most of you are going to say but you can join a guild and this and that, but even joining a guild doesn't mean that you wont be needing players to do a 5 man heroic or 10 man raid. The fact is that unless you have a certain ilvl with a certain achievement you aren't going to be doing anything at endgame except for the unsociable LFD and LFR and that is in a sad place regardless of what anyone thinks, item level will never out way skill, except it does now.

Anyway enough of me crying about not having any friends, I would love to hear from players who miss the social interactions and your opinions on the state of play.

You're generally right, over time the game has traded social interaction by necessity (still nice, but it was by necessity) for convenience, the "quality of life" stuff. It's a mixed bag. Part of it, to me, is the flip side of the coin. You had many early adopters of WoW who were skilled gamers itching to try something new and exciting, and they put a ton of time and effort into it, but over time the repetitive gameplay just wasn't enough to hold them there. There are still guilds you can find, of course, with great, smart and fun people, but you have to try hard or be lucky to find that perfect fit for you. In the old days, as you said, the interaction wasn't limited to guild content, you had reasons to talk to people in /say that you ran into in the open world, as opposed to pretending they weren't there or flat out ignoring them as the case often is today.

It's entirely possible (and common I'm sure) to level up, do dungeons/timeless isle/whatever to gear gear, then begin pugging, then do a couple of guild hops and as long as you're skilled, you barely have to interact socially. Heroic guilds now have many more antisocial or apathetic members who simply don't "see any point" in communicating with guildmates outside of strictly what is needed for gameplay, to coordinate on bosses.

Things just have their ways of changing over time for a plethora of reasons, but I do miss that feel that the old days had in certain respects. But I'm content with the current gameplay and my small, tightknit guild that's capable of slow and steady progression since I don't have as much free time to play and really notice the lack of social netting as I would've before.

- - - Updated - - -

Without lfd, your social interaction would literally just be
'lf1m healer for hc'
'healer, i've done the dungeon before'
'*invite*'

That would be your entire interaction. Nobody has to talk after that. You're not talking about 'social interaction,' you're talking about inconvenience. Join a guild. Get to know those you play with on a regular basis. Form groups, do bgs with them, do raids with them, tool around Timeless Isle with them, get into voice and play something other than WoW with them... that's social interaction.

Your post sounds like one of someone who started the game relatively late in its life cycle and doesn't get what "outside the guild content" used to be like. People talked more, both in the open world and during the activities they did when they pugged groups for dungeons, elite quests, or raids. It doesn't sound like your post is telling the OP anything he doesn't already understand about the current level of social requirements in the game, he just misses how it *was*

[Toiran]

At the end of the day, Blizzard can do everything in the world to try and push social interaction, but it doesn't mean anything if players don't go for it themselves.

Said it all right here.

[Solarth]

Without lfd, your social interaction would literally just be
'lf1m healer for hc'
'healer, i've done the dungeon before'
'*invite*'

That would be your entire interaction. Nobody has to talk after that. You're not talking about 'social interaction,' you're talking about inconvenience. Join a guild. Get to know those you play with on a regular basis. Form groups, do bgs with them, do raids with them, tool around Timeless Isle with them, get into voice and play something other than WoW with them... that's social interaction.

Ok so to clear some things up, I am in a guild, I do run things with my guild and there is no problem with that. I used to pug with different players all the time, and in doing so I would occasionally find some really good players that weren't in a guild that were killing raid bosses that they wanted too, so I would ask them to join my guild and they would put in an app and I could vouch for them, I can almost guarantee that never happens anymore.... And to be really frank to be sociable in a GAME does not mean that I want to be lifelong friends IRL with the other players.

[Herecius]

Your post sounds like one of someone who started the game relatively late in its life cycle and doesn't get what "outside the guild content" used to be like. People talked more, both in the open world and during the activities they did when they pugged groups for dungeons, elite quests, or raids. It doesn't sound like your post is telling the OP anything he doesn't already understand about the current level of social requirements in the game, he just misses how it *was*

I started in BC, but I too, like to make assumptions about others.

[MMKing]

Because:
Xxx: LFM healer DM
You: I can heal, have done dungeon before.
Xxx: I'll invite.

Amazing socializing!

You obviously didn't play in Classic or TBC. It goes as follows, you usually start of with one mate to start a group to go somewhere. You look for more players, it takes some time to do so. At worst at bad hours, it may take 30 mintues, sometimes it may take 5. You spend some time looking for people, you find some, then you complete the dungeon. What goes on as social in between is important, players don't want to spend up to 30 minutes, maybe more if at middle of the night or in the middle of raid hours to find players. So people befriend each other and add each other to their friend lists.

For me, this was the reality throughout the end of WOTLK as i was still socializing with people i met in TBC. But as the months went, i hardly got to know any more players. And the players i did get to know was through people i already knew, or by people joining the guild. Now there is barely any, not only can you do dungeons AND even the heroic version. But you can AFK your way through 10+ bosses in the last raid of the expansions and fucking beat it.

Earlier, being under geared was usually not a huge stop for most players. But for me now, it's extremely harmful to my experience. I cannot meet people in heroics, i barely meet people in trade as actually meeting a crafter serves no purpose anymore and there are nowhere i can show off my skills. Earlier i could go into heroics with 0-2 i knew and 1-3 i didn't know and show off my skills in heroics which required attention. The changes to trade is not that bad, but earlier some ingredients like nether essence where so rare that i had to meet with the crafter in order to get the items that i wanted. Sometimes, i even had to prove that i was trustworthy for the other player to craft for me.

Then Blizzard broke the fine balance in WOTLK. First they made the heroics extremely easy, any show of skill was removed altogether from the formula. Sometimes you could pull a particularly high dps number but because it required little attention it was rarely noticed. Then they allowed players from other realms to play with my groups, in the extremely easy grindy heroics. Not only removing any skill involvement, but the little bit that could ever be showed off was now shown to people whom i could never ever meet again.

Then they made raids increasingly easy, starting with the entirety of Naxx beaten by lvl 75-77. Albeit professional WOW players, the fact that such a thing should be possible with an instance dedicated to testing the abilities of a raid for 3-4 hours a night. I get that the first bosses of each tier should be taken out with relative ease, but recently we just lost that as well. Now entire raids are taken out with players possessing no gems, no enchants, no fucking nothing. Some people even queue as healers when they are not even going to heal, just to save time waiting for the goddamn thing to start.

Heroics you say!? WELL HOW CAN I GET TO KNOW THE RIGHT PEOPLE!?!?!? I cannot stand to run one more fucking LFR to gear up, so i can get into normal pugs. After i have spent tens of hours of grinding paying some guild to boost the through the fucking achievements necessary for a pug to let me in. So that i can go around with a bunch of fucking randoms, killing bosses that i have already killed in AFK difficulty so that i can get the gear i need to join a guild progressing through the newest guild in heroic. Then i have to repeat this process for weeks, before i can make a guild fitting of my skills to even consider letting me join. By making the game more accessible, Blizzard has completely shut down the players with mid level dedication off to players.

Don't have a guild? Well good luck socializing outside your extremely narrow circle of 1-3 players that you can get to chat with you at the middle of the night when they are hanging around in org. Not spamming through the same repetitive AFK difficulty raids, heroic dungeons and the occasional Normal raid pug so that they can one day advance to heroic difficulty.

Should Blizzard do more to support socialization? FUCK YES, this is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Socialization is implied in the genre this joke of a developer claims their game to be. Single player has no socialization and does not enforce it, regular Multiplayer games allows players to gain something by socialization. MMOs should lock players not knowing anyone out of the vast majority of aspects of the game.

Interacting with other people is all this game has going for it. It would be a pretty damn bad game had you been soloing all the content with current mechanics. Teamwork and socialization is the core of this game, without it all else falls apart. Which it is currently doing, and will be doing until Blizzard deems the game not profitable enough to hold off their Titan project any longer.

Endrant.