How does Retail fix the social issue?

[Osmeric]

Its not up to the game to fix your social ineptitude.

It's up to the game to appeal to him to keep playing it, though. That includes fixing any relevant ad hominem slur you want to sling at him.

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Blizzard had the right idea before with Guild Rewards.

This didn't work at all. Not only did it lead to the formation of massive faceless guilds that only served to provide these rewards (and often nothing else), that particular mechanic penalized anyone who wasn't in the right guild in Catalclysm when they were leveling up (as leveling quests gave guild rep, but that could not be repeated if you switched guilds at level cap.)

[khazmodan]

IMO the only way I could see blizzard fixing the lack or toxicity of the social state of current content would be to remove X-realm grouping… this is when I noticed the social aspect of the game die.

Once upon a time people would protect their standing and reputation on a server to get into groups and raids , by being courteous, helpful, and strive to be good at their toon.

Sure trolls and scrubs would appear from time to time but would be shunned by their servers and ostracised, eventually being blacklisted from joining or pugging into any group.

But once accountability for your behaviour and attitude was removed by just joining another random cross server group, the toxic trolls and terrible carry-me players were able to flourish and just hide behind the the fact they’d just spread their trash to another random group after random group.

This is absolutely correct and Blizzard continues to double down on lfd/lfr/cross realm phasing, thinking they will eventually make it work. Personal loot and easier reporting of players have been there solutions but these have just made the game even more of a social desert.

TBC may show Blizzard that something is wrong with retail but there solution will probably be to bring back Illidan again...

[Kokolums]

Weren't layers temporary?

I dunno I called BS on that. Once they stuck layers in, I was done with classic. It basically meant if anyone ever created some awesome social multiplayer content anywhere in the classic game world, Blizzard would call foul and go out of their way to destroy it by pushing the layers button. Fuck that game design. That's not vanilla at all. Its a HUGE, MASSIVE, and SHITTY change.

[cuafpr]

could they force a fix? sure.. social reward system, player commendation system all that gives currency to a social gear vendor.... would that be a good idea in wow hell no. WoW can be as social as you want with all the tools out there its up to the players to use them.

[arkanon]

Blizzard would call foul and go out of their way to destroy it by pushing the layers button.

You must have many examples of this occurring to have such strong feelings about it. Can you provide some examples of Blizzard "activating layering" to "destroy" a social multiplayer content?

[Razion]

IMO the only way I could see blizzard fixing the lack or toxicity of the social state of current content would be to remove X-realm grouping… this is when I noticed the social aspect of the game die.

Once upon a time people would protect their standing and reputation on a server to get into groups and raids , by being courteous, helpful, and strive to be good at their toon.

Sure trolls and scrubs would appear from time to time but would be shunned by their servers and ostracised, eventually being blacklisted from joining or pugging into any group.

But once accountability for your behaviour and attitude was removed by just joining another random cross server group, the toxic trolls and terrible carry-me players were able to flourish and just hide behind the the fact they’d just spread their trash to another random group after random group.

Doesn't solve anything. Leveling is so fast, people can race, name, and server hop for even gold now to avoid bad reps if they're skummy enough.

[Argorwal]

Thats weird cause ive run tbc dungeons without a word being said and run retail dungeons with thorough explanations on bosses and trash cc/mechanics before. So your evidence that retail has some social issue to fix is purely an anecdote. I also leveled all of classic with minimal whispers or communication in dungeons and i did most 5 mans on the leveling path.

Yeah this has been my experience so far in ramparts, blood furnace, slave pens, and underbog.

Minimal to no talking. Just kill packs 1 at a time and move through the dungeon.

Relaxed, fun, but not really social.

[Dartz1979]

My issue is this i dont mind grouping with people i just dont like losing on a dice roll if something is an upgrade for me..it's a game for fun yes but also you have to get gear to make/improve your character.

[Depakote]

It doesn't. It makes it worse.

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I don't know why some people have this strange, burning desire for the game to push them into being "social" with strangers.

Find some like-minded players, join a guild, a community, Discord, whatever. Be social with them. Ta-da, you got your "social" game, and not with randos you'll never see again.

Do you not know the concept of an mmo?

[gaymer77]

So I have spent the last week in TBC Classic and it's so evident that game is much much more social than Retail. People "have to" do dungeons while leveling for reputation, looking for groups in chat. People "have to" group up to do 4-5 group quests in every single leveling zone. People group up for certain quests naturally. People "have to" find a guild so they can start raiding Kara.

• People do dungeons while leveling (until they reach honored) because it saves them the grind at 70 so they can get the heroic key at revered with each of the factions locked behind the various heroics not because they need to form their own groups to run stuff for gear/quests.
• People use the LFG channel and general channel because there was no LFG tool that put them into groups & teleported them into a dungeon. The same is said about vanilla classic.
• People who do the group quests in zones ask for help because they want to speed up getting the quest done not because they have to. The only group quest I had to get help on with my semi-decently geared (no tier gear at all) disc priest was Cruel Intentions because of how much HP the boss had and the fact he spawns adds too.
• Needing a guild for Kara is only something that needs to be done right now as there are fewer lvl 70's to pug it out in a relatively easy way. Mag & Gruul have had pugs doing it because having the 25 lvl 70's to fill the raid is pretty much not a thing right now but once more and more 70's pop up on servers that too will be pugged easily.

[Lane]

I'm not nor have I ever been interested in group content in WoW, I certainly never got into the game to be social. I like playing in a world with other people, I don't like having to depend on those people to progress. The more Blizzard forces me to do it - which they really seem to be keen on since Legion as they've used it to gatekeep everything from class halls/covenants, to loremaster/flying, to unlocking allied races - the less inclined I am to play. I would much rather they go the opposite direction and start creating more 1-2 player content. People who want to socialize can join guilds or communities, unfortunately the rest of us have no choice but to engage in activities we don't enjoy so the game retains a false sense of socialization.

[Daevied]

Funny since i tried to tell ppl to use ccs on mana tombs today and ppl told to shut up and just pull XD

[Depakote]

Telling you to make friends and join communities if you want to socialize means I don't know what an MMO is?

k, bro

Point to where I said that. I'll wait.

[iinverse]

I have enough socialization in my guild, a couple of wow communities, newbie chat channel and even outside the game (Discord). So thanks, I do not need more "forced socialization".

[Mysterymask]

Blizzard had the right idea before with Guild Rewards.

Those Guild Perks and Rewards gave people a reason to join guilds, which gave people a more manageable amount of people to build relationships with.

Or a metric ton of people made auto invite addons to snatch up anyone who created a character in order to farm that sweet sweet gold while herding a bunch of lowbies like cattle not really causing any socialization and if anything making a disfunctional mess of personalities that gave no shits about eachother till the GM does a weekly purge of like half the roster who hasn't logged in in months since they you know quit.

Guild perks probably did more damage to the socialization and wow's rep to new players than ANYTHING yall blame the game on ever did.

[Kumorii]

I don't understand how people see it as an game issue. If something it's a player one. Then again I don't find it to be an issue anyway...

People claiming things like LFG tool made things less social is just blaming a boogieman tbh. Before LFG tool people were as social as they wanted to be. Spamming LFG channel for groups and invite people, do dungeon in silence and then leave is the same as LFG tool just more hassle due to manual labor of spamming.

People are as social as they want to be. I don't see much difference between vanilla and now and I personally has gotten more social these days but I know that's a personal shift on my own. At an expansion launch I saw a ton of socialization across all zones. People announcing rares, people waiting for others to get there so people can tag the rare spawn, cooperation with the slimes in maldraxxus. People joining up for the elite areas to farm WQ's etc etc... It's still there, same as it was in vanilla when it was a hard quest.
In fact tagging has made the game more social I would say.

So I don't know what people are on about.

[Ethas]

Stop playing alone (pugging) and find communities to play with and retail is as social as any other game

Well it’s not that easy. Most communities are closed or entitled nowadays.

[Wuusah]

A ton of the communication in Classic happens because of the downtime. When people sit down to drink after every second fight, then you start talking to not feel bored. Barrens chat didn't just happen because most of the leveling horde players were concentrated there. It happened because you have long running distances and nothing to do while you're auto running. So you chat.

Retail is fast-paced. Dungeons are pull after pull after pull. Quests aren't designed for you to travel across half the world to do something anymore. That casual interaction between players rarely happens anymore because there is no time for it. Can't be chatting if you are constantly in combat.

[Kokolums]

You must have many examples of this occurring to have such strong feelings about it. Can you provide some examples of Blizzard "activating layering" to "destroy" a social multiplayer content?

i remember reading that they outright threatened to do so, something about "they will monitor classic and if it is warranted, they will turn layering back on if there are too many people doing something somewhere". Eff that.

[Stanelis1]

I don't understand how people see it as an game issue. If something it's a player one. Then again I don't find it to be an issue anyway...

It is the game that make people behave in some ways or others. It s simply not true to assume the game doesn t have any impact on player behaviour.