Is this a singleplayer game?

[T-34]

I know it's the playerbase and it's making me sad. It's just not how it used to be. I remember playing on a private server a year before classic launched and it was totally different. The chat was full people invited you causually into a group to do quests and later you would add them to your friendslist. There was always someone to play with.
I haven't bought Shadowlands yet but this leaves a sour taste in my mounth and I don't feel it will get any better.

Player A who has played for many years just wants to level quickly. The majority of the players on retail are player A-types.
For the vast majority of the player base levelling isn't a "journey" it is a necessary step on the way to the endgame.

Your solution: Find a guild. Queue up in the dungeon finder and talk to people. There a million different discord and in-game communities.
There is plenty of social interaction around the game of WoW. You just have to put in a minimum of effort yourself.

[Toybox]

People seem to forget this game never stopped being social, but guarantee most who claim it isn't any more, are PUG Superstars who refuse to find a decent guild. It's trial and error, but they're out there.

Harsh but true. In some ways, WoW is perhaps the most social its ever been thanks to platforms like Discord. Sure we had guild forums back in the day, but even as a diehard forum lover, it's just not the same as what we have now.

[WowIsDead64]

I'm currently leveling a new character after I quit mid Legion and just reached level 40 the other day. In these 40 levels I had zero interactions with other players and saw maybe one other player in the zone I was in. The world chat is dead and all you see in trade chat is people spaming their boost adverts. This can hardly be called an MMO anymore. Now you could say: "Just play Classic then". And I tried that and it's even worse. Good luck finding people that are willing to do quests or run a dungeon normally. What has happend that the game became so asocial?

Leveling is no longer considered content. Players can now pick any xpack to level in. And this means splitting players between this xpacks. So may be you've picked wrong xpack, that isn't popular? Draenor is the best for leveling, as it still has the best design ever made. There is literally no quest, I would want to skip there. Only Legion is also good, but not all locations - Azsuna and Val'sharah only. Only Cata's leveling is also that good, but problem is - Cata is obsoleted and Blizzard have merged Classic and Cata's locations into one time line and that's bad.

But overall players don't like to play together in Wow. Because multiplayer aspect is badly designed in this game. Blizzard push competition (i.e. pseudo-PVP) mentality too much. I.e. existence of other players around punish you instead of rewarding. They make quality of your game worse. Mostly because they make it much slower due to exceeding competition. Up to getting completely stuck. And grouping with other players usually makes things way too trivial. Even for players, who like easy game. Because players like to play game themselves - not when it's auto-played for them by itself. And when Blizzard try to provide some challenge for groups, like putting elites here and there, they punish solo-players too much.

For me group content is bad, because I need to rely on other players, i.e. I can't play game when and how I want. If I want to play early in a morning and group is required for it, then I can't, because activity of other players is too low. So, I just can't play this game and therefore have to find something else to do. And content dies too fast due to it. Activity of other players drops with time and if I want to replay content on my alt, but group is required for it - then I just can't do it. Waiting for 20 minutes in queue isn't valid option, because I don't want to play World of Waitcraft or World of Queuecraft. I want to play game.

[deenman]

They don't design the game to be social and don't care.

most things in the game require social interaction,having some parts where its not needed is not a bad thing,choices and options are good,the only difference today from in the past is that leveling doesnt need it(well some quests still cant be soloed but they are rare),and that doesnt even matter because lvling is fast anyways

and the addition of activities like pet battles or transmog and similar stuff

[seriousquestion]

I'm currently leveling a new character after I quit mid Legion and just reached level 40 the other day. In these 40 levels I had zero interactions with other players and saw maybe one other player in the zone I was in. The world chat is dead and all you see in trade chat is people spaming their boost adverts. This can hardly be called an MMO anymore. Now you could say: "Just play Classic then". And I tried that and it's even worse. Good luck finding people that are willing to do quests or run a dungeon normally. What has happend that the game became so asocial?

The game is dieing due to blizzard simplifying everything for the socials that play with there friends, think about it, it has a knock on effect, all the people that arent in there own little bubble have left because the game is catered for those in a bubble, so those in a bubble love the game, everyone else hates it.

There is no reason to play the game anymore other than to play with friends, being good is no longer fashionable, quite the opposite if you try hard you get labeled a tryhard, like since when was it a bad thing to actually try? everyone in this game is literally just waiting for there weekly spoonfeed vault that they grinded for with friends and thats it. thats what this game is now.

[Lochton]

Well, the answer it simple, the game is not a singleplayer game.

[Otimus]

The game fully accommodates playing entirely by yourself (and even most of the quest design ENCOURAGES you, as multiple people tend to slow down leveling, instead of making it faster like in other MMORPGs, because they're just absolutely terrified of people feeling obligated to level with other people even a little), but then you get to the end of the leveling experience and you hit a fucking brick wall, where there's so little you can do by yourself.

It's extremely poor design. People want to blame things like LFR, LFD, lack of people in the world and shit, but designing a game where it works one way for almost the entire many hours effectively "introduction" to throw it into being something entirely different is just poor design on Blizzard's part. They should either slowly ease you into grouping as you level, or they should just let you queue for some sort of end game. Not have two entirely different spectrums fundamentally at odds with each other.

Hell, giving a stacking bonus to XP as you add more people to your party as you level alone would do wonders (I'm pretty sure other MMOs do do this, though.), but they're never going to do that, considering their answer to have a stacking XP DEBUFF instead. (I'm pretty sure other MMOs do do this, though.) Considering how pointless leveling is now, I don't see why they don't at least do that, other than it may mean they'd sell maybe a tiny bit less amount of level boosts.

[Lolites]

I'm currently leveling a new character after I quit mid Legion and just reached level 40 the other day. In these 40 levels I had zero interactions with other players and saw maybe one other player in the zone I was in. The world chat is dead and all you see in trade chat is people spaming their boost adverts. This can hardly be called an MMO anymore. Now you could say: "Just play Classic then". And I tried that and it's even worse. Good luck finding people that are willing to do quests or run a dungeon normally. What has happend that the game became so asocial?

i guess it depends on realm and WHEN you play, i leveled quite few alts recently and i doubt there was a zone where i didnt meet at least 5 other people leveling

[Kumorii]

The amount of single player content I do is very minimal. So can't agree... Its definitely multiplayer.

[Makabreska]

Weird, I see plenty of chatter in the Newcomer and Castle Nathria chats. Loads of people in Oribos and in SL zones. When I level up, it takes me literal minutes to get a dungeon group as DPS or to find people for a group quest. I constantly meet other players in Darkshore, ST Vale etc. This doesn't sound like a single player game. Did YOU try to reach out, because in most cases all that's needed is "hello" in the chat to activate others.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

You need to brute force it yourself because the community today is like this.
I know.

Is not necessarily a "you problem" like im pretty sure many will say here

But...brute force it and you will see many people interacting with you.

Yes, if anybody constantly believes they are victimized by any and all aspects, it's never a "them problem"

[VoidSeeker199X]

I forgot to mention that I'm leveling in Chromie Time (MoP). Since Chromie Time is phased could this be another impact why I don't see any players in the world? Would I had a better experience without Chromie Time enabled?

[Gimlix]

I'm currently leveling a new character after I quit mid Legion and just reached level 40 the other day. In these 40 levels I had zero interactions with other players and saw maybe one other player in the zone I was in. The world chat is dead and all you see in trade chat is people spaming their boost adverts. This can hardly be called an MMO anymore. Now you could say: "Just play Classic then". And I tried that and it's even worse. Good luck finding people that are willing to do quests or run a dungeon normally. What has happend that the game became so asocial?

I have yet ever felt playing WoW as a singleplayer game, been around here for over 10 years. This is a you problem. not a WoW problem.

[Gaebryel Quintyne]

wow imagine being surprised that by the 9th expansion and with the leveling being sped up that you notice less people in those zones

you may not know this but,people leveling now have the option of leveling in almost any zone made in the past 8 expansions,and those levels go by pretty fast

and how the hek is classic WORSE?how??are people not lvling at all these days or what?

I feel like people (and the OP) are missing this point... This can't be said enough. I have been playing WoW since Vanilla beta and I have almost never quit and I have seen the WoW population go up and down throughout these years. I used to see some people in leveling zones before SL pre-patch released, like maybe a few ppl in chat would say something and start having a conversation or help someone asking a question in that zone. But since the pre-patch, the whole leveling up system got overhauled. Now, as Deenman said earlier, everyone has the choice of leveling through EIGHT expansions-worth of content/zones... so you can imagine how much LESS people you would see in the leveling zones now.

Another thing that I didn't see yet mentioned in this thread is that majority of people are in SL now and are in the new central hub, Oribos. Also, the Trade chat is server-wide so anyone anywhere in the server that has Trade chat access can talk in it so that is mostly where most of the social interaction can take place.

[dwarven]

Yes, unless you're in a raiding guild. The social aspect for casual play died a long time ago.

[BigToast]

no, it is an mmo-rpg. troll harder

[OMGTwitchTV]

It can be... but it's not. Star Wars: the Old Republic on the other hand... that is a great single player.

[Azerate]

Not this shit again...

Just because it's a MMORPG doesn't mean you have to constantly be playing with other people at every minute of your gameplay. It also doesn't mean you have to play with others. It just means you are playing in a world where such interactions are possible, if one wishes to engage.

It's not a split screen fps multiplayer, where the narrowness of gameplay forces you to play with others all the time. It's supposed to give you choices how you want to experience parts of it. Also, literally no one cares about making leveling a social experience. People want to experience the world and quests in their own pace, and then group up for end-game activities usually.

[BrintoSFJ]

There's a non-insignificant portion of the playerbase on this forum who think that dungeons should have NPCs instead of players so they can continue living out their single player MMORPG fantasy. That said, there's plenty of human interaction in modern WoW if you seek it. I've made a number of friends just PuGing M+. Sometimes I'll go on twitch and find people with low viewcounts and offer to join their groups.

I am not in the favor of replacing players with npc. However, I am in favor of a complete story mode in each dungeon and raid. Let's face it, all of these dungeons are raids are tied to story and we need to complete these dungeons and raids if we want to experience the full story. Therefore, we should have story mode dungeon and raids where npc related to the story would accompany us into the dungeon or raid and help us complete the story. These story mode dungeons and raids don't need to be easy, they can easily have mechanics and they can also fail if player dies or any of the npc die and players would have to start the instance all over again.

[Tzunami]

Sounds like you are on a dead server.
Always best to check population status before rolling a new toon on a server.

You can always find leveling or dung groups though.