Is WoW really social anymore?

[Deleted]

Forced interaction is not social.
Social is because you WANT to interact.
There are more tools than ever to communicate and interact with large parts of the community, but people don't use them.

I could go into the street and start yelling all sorts of rude names at people, and so am interacting and communicating with them.
Would not make me a social individual, in fact just the opposite. Very anti-social.

Communication or interaction alone is not making someone, or a game social.

It is how you go about those interactions or communications as a player that determines that.

Players killed the social aspect, not blizzard.

You need to take your blinkers off. People aren't social in the game anymore because Blizzard removed alot of the need to be social. You should not keep blaming the community for issues caused by Blizzard in game decisions.

[Sidious78]

I started playing vanilla a month or two before BC. Did group quests, and tried to be friendly, like most people were. I asked newbie questions in the chat and got nice answers. This continued through BC and way into WOTLK. At the end of that x-pac people were not unfriendly, but started to be cold in their behavior. Enter cata, and after a few weeks of pugging (and failing) most people become assholes. From there on I kind of lost interest, and after a month of MoP I left.

Bli$$ard removed group quests, and come with Cata made single-player a roller-coaster-win-loot-every-quest ordeal. No wonder the social aspect is FUBAR.

[CataclismicSunrise]

No, but only because I've become less social myself in game. My play time is so sporadic, I don't usually bother with making friends or finding guilds anymore, so I end up treating it as a single player game. Sometimes I try, but then I have trouble relating to the U.S.Americans that dominate my realm population. And because of my time zone, I'm always playing at off-peak hours so the population is reduced anyway.

But honestly, I believe any decline in socialisation is not a direct result of changes made in the game, but rather a result of the way people tend to interact with one another over the internet. If someone isn't hurling insults at someone, someone's reporting someone or adding them to their ignore list or just plain talking shit. Certainly this negativity has contributed to my want of a solo experience.

[nekobaka]

It can be, just get ready to be called an elitist jerk for being sociable from some asocial individuals. There is definitely less need to be social let alone respectful of others in this game if that is what you are asking.

[Mormolyce]

No, no there is not. Raiding is done by most players through LFR where there is no need to say anything at all. RBGs you join some vent you listen to the leaders orders, you dont talk, you just do what they tell you and that does not qualify sorry, though admittedly this is the best of the bunch. Arena, no, the most popular bracket is 2v2 for points with a friend or spouse.

"I play as an unsocial casual in queued and pug games therefore everyone else does too".

Also ignoring the fact that the majority of the base didn't do organised raiding back before LFR either.

Only thing that really changed is that non-raiders now have SOMETHING to do outside running heroics over and over and over.

- - - Updated - - -

You need to take your blinkers off. People aren't social in the game anymore because Blizzard removed alot of the need to be social.

Before LFR 90-something percent of players simply didn't raid. When the need for social was much stronger, people still weren't social. Nothing Blizzard does will force someone who doesn't want to be social to be social. They'll just avoid the social content.

Take YOUR blinkers off.

[sarym13]

This game is Social. I raid with a set group of people in the same guild that I talk to everyday, I meet new people everyday and talk to new people everyday, I got no idea why you guys are playing the Anti Social part of this game, should join a guild, talk to people, the game is quite social.

[Mormolyce]

Bli$$ard removed group quests, and come with Cata made single-player a roller-coaster-win-loot-every-quest ordeal. No wonder the social aspect is FUBAR.

Yeah because so many people did group quests rather than just avoiding them lol.

I should know, I tried to do all of them and nobody EVER replied.

[silvercentric]

Yeah because so many people did group quests rather than just avoiding them lol.

I should know, I tried to do all of them and nobody EVER replied.

You obviously never played when the content is fresh. Questing in the Deadmines (not the instance but the cave in which it resides), Redridge, Duskwood, STV Elites (Tiger, Panther, Raptor, etc.) was extremely common. You had to group up with others for your Onyxia attunment quests. Just about everything in Silithus was a group quest, especially during the opening of the gates.

There were a whole bunch of elite quests in Hellfire Peninsula (Arazzius the Cruel), elites in Zangramarsh (the two Naga elites, the big boglasher thing), Nagrand had another beast hunt (the Rhino, the Bird, I forget the rest), Shadowmoon Valley had very large sections devoted to just elites that required grouping.

I have a hard time remembering Wrath but I remember there were elite quests in both Storm Peaks and Icecrown that I did. Especially at the tail end of Icecrown, on the western Coastline/mountains where you fought a bunch of elite Vyrkul and some goons underneath the Citadel.

So maybe I'm just making all that up or maybe I have Alzeimers... or maybe just maybe you're wrong and there were plenty of instances of people actually doing group/elite quests.

[Deleted]

Wow used to be the most social MMO ever but through time people kept complaining about how tedious and boring all the social mechanis were.
Meeting stones, group quests, walking to the instance, making groups, joining guilds, world pvp, leveling, traveling.
The result of this feedback was LFR, remove group quests, remove meeting stones, end any kind of world pvp and LFG-leveling.

So basically "we" are the responsibles for this changes...

Only now the developers realized how bad this changes impacted the world and what we have today is what i like to call "Timeless Isle content".
I absolutelly love it because everything is there from exploration to world pvp and world bosses. It feels like "leveling" at max level but with awesome rewards.

What i hate the most of this situation is the fact that A LOT of people still hate the social aspects of WoW (Timeless Isle haters), so basically this means that convenience cannot simply be removed because a lot of people just love to "solo WoW" and dont give a crap about other players.
Which is fine as long as they at least keep making more TI content for us.

Anyway World of Draenor is coming and is going to be the most social expansion ever since end-Wrath of the Lich King.
Is going to be great

[Luko]

Wow, like anything else, is exactly as social as you make it.

[Buu]

Been trying to bring back the social atmosphere into WoW. Bring back the kind of guild that was around in Lich.

Do you think that WoW has lost its community?

Yes, but not because of the developers. They can only do so much with the behavior people bring from their outside lives.
Most of the loss is the player's own fault, on thinking that the community is a bunch of faceless half-humans, dropped in the world to boost their experience, expecting nothing back.

[Peyj]

I spent a long time thinking and claiming the social aspect is gone.

Lately, though, I've been making a little extra effort myself. Engaging in chat in battlegrounds and LFR/Flex and so on. Sometimes initiating the conversation. There are certainly times when I get completely ignored, but I've been adding more people to my friends list in the past month or so than I have probably since end of BC/early Wrath?

Even better, I've actually continued talking to and doing in-game stuff with those new friends.

The community is a hell of a lot harder to find now, but there are still people around who want to chat and play together. I highly doubt we will ever see the likes of pre-BC community in any game, ever again, but I remain hopeful.

[Jashin]

"social"

lol

[Tucci]

It can be very social, like other people have said, if you want it to be social, you can make it social. But a long time ago we were forced to be social, had no other choice, if we wanted the phat loot . With the group finders, it's less intimate and personal. When you find a 5 man on your server, you're nice to each other usually because you're probably going to see them again and they're not really "strangers" as much as LFG people are, lol. And you don't want a bad rep on your server.

I do miss the experience back when people were genuinely nice to each other. I remember being complimented ALL THE TIME. I'm about 100x better now than I was and I very rarely get compliments. Usually only in more personal settings like Challenge Modes which by the way, are amazing. It brings back the old feel. No raging, no insults. Just fun and good times, at least in my experience.

[Doomchicken]

It's as social as you want it to be really. If you're a person that likes to chat in guild chat and make horrible lame puns that everyone wishes you didn't (like myself ) there will be a guild out there for you. Unless you're on a really dead server that hasn't been connected yet you should be able to find others with similar interests and tastes. One of the good things about most MMO's imo.

[tangers58]

Nope, Looking For Everything has ruined that. And Blizz just keeps making it worse by removing any activity that requires other people, group quests etc. Cross Realm is making it even worse. No need to worry about being nice to the people around you since you were randomly thrown together and will never see each other again.

[MoanaLisa]

My play time is so sporadic, I don't usually bother with making friends or finding guilds anymore, so I end up treating it as a single player game.

I think you're on to something here. For many people, especially people who don't raid which outside of Raid Finder, is the majority of people, they don't necessarily play every night or even on a regular schedule. By default this creates a less social game from the player's perspective. Combine that with the depopulation of many realms due to people transferring or simply leaving and the opportunities to make friends are fewer. It can still be done but it's more up to the player to take the initiative. A lot of players won't bother because it's no secret how terrible a lot of people are to one another in the game. Stack a lot of stuff up like that and it's probably a much greater problem for social gaming than Raid Finder or LFD ever was really. The "LFR/LFD ruined the game" cliche is just that, a cliche. Partly true but the real reasons are much more complicated than this and have to do with populations that come and go more rapidly than in the past.

[Mormolyce]

You obviously never played when the content is fresh. Questing in the Deadmines (not the instance but the cave in which it resides), Redridge, Duskwood, STV Elites (Tiger, Panther, Raptor, etc.) was extremely common. You had to group up with others for your Onyxia attunment quests. Just about everything in Silithus was a group quest, especially during the opening of the gates.

There were a whole bunch of elite quests in Hellfire Peninsula (Arazzius the Cruel), elites in Zangramarsh (the two Naga elites, the big boglasher thing), Nagrand had another beast hunt (the Rhino, the Bird, I forget the rest), Shadowmoon Valley had very large sections devoted to just elites that required grouping.

I have a hard time remembering Wrath but I remember there were elite quests in both Storm Peaks and Icecrown that I did. Especially at the tail end of Icecrown, on the western Coastline/mountains where you fought a bunch of elite Vyrkul and some goons underneath the Citadel.

So maybe I'm just making all that up or maybe I have Alzeimers... or maybe just maybe you're wrong and there were plenty of instances of people actually doing group/elite quests.

Maybe on patch day? But 95% of group quests in the game were damn near impossible to find people for. There were heaps in TBC zones that you just couldn't do, there was literally nobody there.

Even in Cata the group content was damn hard to get people for, except maybe CoC. And even then that could be a pain in the ass.

People don't hang around in questing zones any longer than they absolutely have to.

- - - Updated - - -

Nope, Looking For Everything has ruined that. And Blizz just keeps making it worse by removing any activity that requires other people, group quests etc. Cross Realm is making it even worse. No need to worry about being nice to the people around you since you were randomly thrown together and will never see each other again.

They removed group quests because nobody did them and you could never find people to do them.

[MoanaLisa]

People don't hang around in questing zones any longer than they absolutely have to.

Or anything in old content really. Not just questing zones.

OK, those of you out there who believe that removing LFD will bring back realm social behavior again: LFD is removed. It's gone. Your realm is one isolated family that will be your only resource for forming groups for content. You're leveling, up to 72 now, sitting in Dalaran and want to run a proper five-man dungeon. How much luck do you think you would have forming a group out of your currently online realm population? Proper mix of roles and all at the appropriate level?

Let me know how you think that would work in the real world.

[Mormolyce]

Or anything in old content really. Not just questing zones.

OK, those of you out there who believe that removing LFD will bring back realm social behavior again: LFD is removed. It's gone. Your realm is one isolated family that will be your only resource for forming groups for content. You're leveling, up to 72 now, sitting in Dalaran and want to run a proper five-man dungeon. How much luck do you think you would have forming a group out of your currently online realm population? Proper mix of roles and all at the appropriate level?

Let me know how you think that would work in the real world.

When I was leveling I locked myself to 60 and 70 until I'd finished all dungeons at the appropriate level, just for the experience.

I managed to eventually (read: with excruciating pain) find groups for all the 60 dungeons, think I was 60 for a month or so all told. I got most of the leveling TBC ones done in a month, but in the two subsequent months I couldn't find a single group for Mech, Bot or Arch. Had to give up in the end. And my realm was fairly high pop at the time.

So yeah, finding leveling groups was agony before LFD.