I will give you one BIG reason why the mmorpg community is so anti social, and then I will follow it up with some other reasons.

DIFFICULTY

This is the main reason why so many are anti social. The mmorpg is created or developed towards providing easy content that solo players could do because they are anti social. So what has happened over the years? Well this is what happened, the developers have made every mmorpg solo player, the games are too easy. Look at what happened to EQ2, a game the first two years you needed to be in groups, then they went the route of making it super easy because of what WOW offered. Now look at it, the mmorpg that is completely solo, your chances to find someone to group with are very slim in EQ2 or spark conversations.

SOCIAL MEDIA

This is the next reason. Social media sites have took a heavy toll on the players, making them into these social media zombies where they talk about everything to everyone on these sites but when they get in a game it is not the same format to them. Cell phones are another example, all I see when I go to a MALL now is teens and kids everywhere on cell phones and not paying attention to anyone around them, it is the same in their friend groups, I seen 4 kids together all on cells doing other things instead of interacting with one another, I bet the little bastards were texting each other even though they were right next to each other.

RUBBING OFF ON VETERANS

This is the biggest issue I see with this all, is that it in fact is rubbing off on older veteran players who did not start online gaming with social media sites or cell phones. The examples I can give are that of the older online games which veteran players would still play, such as in Everquest. EQ has became an anti social game pretty much, all because of SONY making it solo play reward, you have mercenaries for hire that hurted that and then years of exposure to anti social players who came into the game late and with the veterans just being saturated with all this, they themselves became mostly solo players anti social.

It is going to get worse, Idiocracy the movie has been recreating itself in real life for the past like 5 years now, you will see how far it takes us till mmorpg become ORPG.

Lots of generalizations being thrown around. I think that 10years ago all the circumstances were different in the MMO space. And if the average gamer statistic is true, it's pretty much the same people playing MMO's now that were playing 10 years ago.

Out of all the newer younger MMO gamers i've met I would say at least half of them were cool. If I had to guess at the older MMO crowd I'd say half of them were cool too, well... they're alright, cool could be a stretch. So the world according to Trionicus is that half the peeps in 2002 were ok by me and half the peeps in 2012 are still ok by me.

Actually the only person who I know that has no patience and I have a hard time getting along with is my mother, and she's a bit crazy so if there is a generalization to be had, maybe it's that old folk get crazy eventually.

I would agree with someone who says that games haven't evolved as much as they should have, or as much as we generally would like them to and, it's pretty well known that companies like Blizzard hire psychologists to help create addictive timesinking activities to embed into games. I'm not really sure how much different that is from older games though, some of those oldies required players to grind for endless hours. Maybe the difference is that one style seems more tolerable to some.

I guess I'm saying, this is a good thread for discussion and I would be curious to see a factual answer based on statistics but who knows how to measure a past populations behavioural habbits accurately?

Originally posted by bezado

I will give you one BIG reason why the mmorpg community is so anti social, and then I will follow it up with some other reasons.

DIFFICULTY

This is the main reason why so many are anti social. The mmorpg is created or developed towards providing easy content that solo players could do because they are anti social. So what has happened over the years? Well this is what happened, the developers have made every mmorpg solo player, the games are too easy. Look at what happened to EQ2, a game the first two years you needed to be in groups, then they went the route of making it super easy because of what WOW offered. Now look at it, the mmorpg that is completely solo, your chances to find someone to group with are very slim in EQ2 or spark conversations.

SOCIAL MEDIA

This is the next reason. Social media sites have took a heavy toll on the players, making them into these social media zombies where they talk about everything to everyone on these sites but when they get in a game it is not the same format to them. Cell phones are another example, all I see when I go to a MALL now is teens and kids everywhere on cell phones and not paying attention to anyone around them, it is the same in their friend groups, I seen 4 kids together all on cells doing other things instead of interacting with one another, I bet the little bastards were texting each other even though they were right next to each other.

RUBBING OFF ON VETERANS

This is the biggest issue I see with this all, is that it in fact is rubbing off on older veteran players who did not start online gaming with social media sites or cell phones. The examples I can give are that of the older online games which veteran players would still play, such as in Everquest. EQ has became an anti social game pretty much, all because of SONY making it solo play reward, you have mercenaries for hire that hurted that and then years of exposure to anti social players who came into the game late and with the veterans just being saturated with all this, they themselves became mostly solo players anti social.

It is going to get worse, Idiocracy the movie has been recreating itself in real life for the past like 5 years now, you will see how far it takes us till mmorpg become ORPG.

Anti social?

Around 04/05, long before the mercs were in, I would of liked to seen you get a chanter/cleric for a group at 1Am EST. Off hr game play was severely affected by lack of role classes. Hell you were lucky if you could simply get a KEI. They put the mercs in after I left, but there was a reason for the addition that didnt include anti social. It was more along the lines of "we lost a shit ton to WoW", and folks need to be able to play.

SOE gave one of the best advantages there was to fill the group up in the form of exp bonuses. I wish all games did the same so as to encourage grouping.

I blame Ventrilo or other online microphones chat for this. I also may blame high keyboard usage games(For example, pressing 1-2-3-1-2-3, move out of the way to dodge, etc).

The problem with microphone chat is that it removes the need to type text onto the screen. The problem with high keyboard usage games is that I have to move out of the way and if I type to other players then my dps will go down or I'll get aggroed and die.

I also blame high amount of content. The problem with high amount of content is that it gives players something to do and players today don't have time to do anything much less socialize, they all have a life.

Are the things I listed are bad things? Not really. I would rather have them than not have them, but someone needs to find out a better way. 

Those who say that nothing are changed are in denial, no matter what their age is.

10-15 years ago, Internet was mostly only accessible by tech savvy people. Who says tech savvy says people with above average knowledge, logic and intelligence. The average commoner wouldn't even know how to configure an Internet access, and even less use it. This has drastically changed between approx. 2000 and 2005, with the simplification of the computers and notably the Operating Systems, and also with the generalization of Internet broadband access. Nowadays, even a total idiot can connect a computer to the net and install a game on it, including MMORPGs.

The democratization of the net and it's opening to the masses is of course generally a good thing, everybody should have access to that source of information and culture, but it also has its drawbacks.

It's a fact, it's not the same kind of people on the net (including online games) today than 10+ years ago. The signal/noise ratio has exponentially augmented, and the percentage of people lacking culture, knowledge, good behavior has similarly augmented.

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

Originally posted by Terronte

MMOs have broadened the demographic they appeal to. It has nothing to do with generation. You are just exposed to more people and therefore get a more varied mix of responses.

To make shorter, the more potential for immaturity, the more immaturity. That's undeniable.

It remains that the design of nowadays's "theme park" item grinders promotes "asshat behavior", unlike games like UO or AC1. When you are forced to play against your own team, don't expect most to behave nicely.

I think that the FFA PvP setting of UO promoted enough asshat behavior in its own way, heard enough horror stories about that mechanic, FFA PvP (even worse, with item looting) will attract and encourage griefers and gankers to go batshit crazy

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

Those who say that nothing are changed are in denial, no matter what their age is.

10-15 years ago, Internet was mostly only accessible by tech savvy people. Who says tech savvy says people with above average knowledge, logic and intelligence. The average commoner wouldn't even know how to configure an Internet access, and even less use it. This has drastically changed between approx. 2000 and 2005, with the simplification of the computers and notably the Operating Systems, and also with the generalization of Internet broadband access. Nowadays, even a total idiot can connect a computer to the net and install a game on it, including MMORPGs.

The democratization of the net and it's opening to the masses is of course generally a good thing, everybody should have access to that source of information and culture, but it also has its drawbacks.

It's a fact, it's not the same kind of people on the net (including online games) today than 10+ years ago. The signal/noise ratio has exponentially augmented, and the percentage of people lacking culture, knowledge, good behavior has similarly augmented.

Fully agree with this one. It really is a different crowd, in MMO's but also on the internet and forums, than it was 10-15 years ago. Back then it was the early adopters, now we're in full mainstream mode. And like with early adopters according to the product lifecycle model, there was more an air of openmindedness, also I feel that average IQ of the internet/forum surfer has dropped a 10-20 points and become a lot more smallminded, but admittedly that's just a gut feeling.

Originally posted by cutthecrap

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

Originally posted by Terronte

MMOs have broadened the demographic they appeal to. It has nothing to do with generation. You are just exposed to more people and therefore get a more varied mix of responses.

To make shorter, the more potential for immaturity, the more immaturity. That's undeniable.

It remains that the design of nowadays's "theme park" item grinders promotes "asshat behavior", unlike games like UO or AC1. When you are forced to play against your own team, don't expect most to behave nicely.

I think that the FFA PvP setting of UO promoted enough asshat behavior in its own way, heard enough horror stories about that mechanic, FFA PvP (even worse, with item looting) will attract and encourage griefers and gankers to go batshit crazy

Played UO for 4 yars and i can't even begin to explain the asshatery i witnessed in that game. 

Originally posted by cutthecrap

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

Originally posted by Terronte

MMOs have broadened the demographic they appeal to. It has nothing to do with generation. You are just exposed to more people and therefore get a more varied mix of responses.

To make shorter, the more potential for immaturity, the more immaturity. That's undeniable.

It remains that the design of nowadays's "theme park" item grinders promotes "asshat behavior", unlike games like UO or AC1. When you are forced to play against your own team, don't expect most to behave nicely.

I think that the FFA PvP setting of UO promoted enough asshat behavior in its own way, heard enough horror stories about that mechanic, FFA PvP (even worse, with item looting) will attract and encourage griefers and gankers to go batshit crazy

That's only because devs never implement hard penalties for them. The danger of being attacked anywhere is awesoem IMO, but when there's almost nothing to make the ganker think twice before doing it, no wonder they run rampant.

I am of the older mmo gamers.  I have been playing mmo's since roughly 1998.  I am not social or patient.  My social skills always have depended on my mood at the time.  As a teenager I was probably more social then I am today, probably because the community was A LOT smaller and we were all experiencing the same thing for the first time.  It was like learning to walk.

These days there are millions of people displaced over hundreds of games and the players are of all ages and experience.  So the general consensus of players social abilities or wants is so chaotic that the most violent, abusive, and loud are seen as the majority.

And for patience, mmo's were very very difficult back then compared to now so patience wasn't a virtue but a neccessity.  Because if you didn't learn to cope with the rage of dying and losing a level(s) or breaking/losing gear you would explode into a cloud of blood and guts from the stress. 

Patience these days seems to be more of a virtue rather than a neccessity.  MMO's have become so watered down and hand holding to its player base that patience isn't needed.  It is a never ending hamster wheel of reward for doing nothing but following blinking lights and symbols.  Especially since death in these games now hold no consequence. 

But it is to late now to go backwards to standards of old.  There are to many people of different mind sets playing mmo's.  Companies are to scared to attempt to make a game for any goal besides capturing millions of dollars and players.

A lot of the games that have been made that are from smaller teams or budgets have tried to use these features and have been ridiculed for it by those who either weren't in the scene when those features were part of the experience or have been numbed by the ease of current mmo's for so long that anything harder then pressing PLAY makes them annoyed.

Originally posted by terrant

Groups happened naturally?

 

Hmm...lessee....I remember my EQ days...we totally didn't have to sit in EC spamming for hours begging for an invite to a dervish camp to level.That never happened.

 

Also, this thread makes me want to hike my pants up to my nipples and start saying things like "You whippersnappers!". 

Didnt you know?  chat spamming IS the natural way!  I remember having to naturally find groups all day for paludal caverns.

anyway....

Look, in the old days, when these kinds of games were new, there wasnt a huge player base, they were clunky, and the sub fee was something forign and met with distain by alot of people, and there wasnt a whole lot of choice.  All these things helped drive people away from the games, of course the people left who played would be the more dedicated to the community.

Now there is a new MMO coming out every few months, F2P games of all types as far as the eyes can see, sub fees are accepted, and mechanics are refined and made more player friendly. 

The above has led to a diluting of the pool so those seriously dedicated community folks are harder to find.  Its not an easy problem to fix, people expect better and better games, inflating the average budget needed for these games to 60 mil as a starting point.  Devs/publishers just arent going to recoup their costs any time soon with a small 100k community, think about it, while they are trying to recoup the dev cost, they are also incuring further cost for maintaining, patching, and developing new content for the games too.  Yes, you can always find an indy company trying to break this cycle, you have your Darkfall, Mortal, Xylon, perpetuum, ect, but how many people actually play or are willing to accept all the flaws?   Would it be worth it as an investor?

Entire thread built around an inherently faulty premise.  Many attempts at justification of said faulty premise (both teams), but none of them terribly convincing, because they all are built around the same types of converse accidents, straw men, or both.

Ageism is the same prejudicial thought process as racism.  Making an assumption, assume you know what "they're" like without ever meeting them.

WoW General is world-famous for its lack of moderation, the game itself is said (by many) to be a "cesspit" for certain kinds of behavior because the in-game moderation is even more lax.  If you're in the game for five minutes, you'll hear both sides insulting each other over global chat.  Which tends to indicate no shortage of hostile and/or immature people on either "team", yes?

The UO/EQ players in that game have been asserting their inherent superiority for as long as WoW has existed.  So have the WoW players.  So have the players of Any Other Game. 

Same old song and dance. We'll see this thread's twin every week, until the end of time.

Originally posted by cutthecrap

I think that the FFA PvP setting of UO promoted enough asshat behavior in its own way, heard enough horror stories about that mechanic, FFA PvP (even worse, with item looting) will attract and encourage griefers and gankers to go batshit crazy

You're rigth of course, but that's also why UO had to urgently patch in Trammel to get back the majority of their player base, people who fled the game because they wanted a sandbox to be more than PvP ganking.

That doesn't negate the fact that the vast majority of the UO players, and AC1 too, were way more "social and patient" than today's players. Actually, modern day games who have tried a similar model than UO pre-Trammel have failed before they were even released and have a lower player base than the 17+ years old game with dated graphics that is UO.

The people have changed, and the "end game loot grind with rewards for random people" model didn't help either. With the EQ/WOW clone model, people began to be asshats towards their own team because it often is the only way to make your character progress. DKP and all that crap made playing a spreadsheet competition against your own team instead of a group of friends having fun together.

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

That doesn't negate the fact that the vast majority of the UO players, and AC1 too, were way more "social and patient" than today's players. Actually, modern day games who have tried a similar model than UO pre-Trammel have failed before they were even released and have a lower player base than the 17+ years old game with dated graphics that is UO.

The people have changed, and the "end game loot grind with rewards for random people" model didn't help either. With the EQ/WOW clone model, people began to be asshats towards their own team because it often is the only way to make your character progress. DKP and all that crap made playing a spreadsheet competition against your own team instead of a group of friends having fun together.

In another post of yours you said that the general population, on internet but also in MMO's, has changed and I agree with that. I really think that they're different crowds overall, from how it was in the beginning and nowadays.

That said, the currently popular MMO design doesn't encourage community minded behaviour like the very first ones did so that even people who were more social and extravert towards other gamers and engaged more into community building and interaction, because of the change in ingame atmosphere and those changed mechanics have grown more indifferent to community and other gamers as well. In EQ you depended on groups, so you couldn't be a complete and total jerk but had to play nice sometimes if you wanted to get accepted in groups. Other old MMO's had similar social mechanics.

However, even then I've been part of great communities and servers in LotrO, AoC, EQ2, even GW and other MMO's. You just need to look harder these days.

Every person as he grows apart his own character specialities he is also defined and influenced by his very personal expiriences. Same goes with gaming.

On one hand we have people that growed up playing games like heroquest,eye of the beholder series,blackcrypt,Elvira,pirates,settlers,heroes of might n magic,baldur's gate etc etc .. If u look up to these games they all had some fundamentals basics principles. They were huge games,loads of gameplay hours content, they had hard puzzles,exercizing player's mind,hell i didnt had internet back then to check for solutions for various puzzles i found on my way had to bust my ash exercise observing everything aaround in the game to my find my way through,all those games were harder,innovation and immersion was in way up lvls compared to the games today, the role play element was tons deeper and present than today, all of these games were focussing in deep and addictive gameplay ,they were creative in one way or another.

On the other hand we have people tha growed up playing games today like arcania gothic 4 ,wow(the mmo),some oversimplified console style rpg's(oversimplified with focus on action instead of roleplay element),and in general games that have easy difficulty lvls ,that dont challenge player's mind,but instead they challenge player's reflexes by hitting buttons faster and faster. And ofc all games today have the tendecy to have small dungeons ,nothing compared to really huge mazes of the past. As for innovation and immersion? Forget it they r gone and stayed in the past.Everything in nowdays gaming seems to be packed up for fast action,mindless in many occasions, fast and easy lets go,finish game,next game.

What's the outcome of those 2 different players breeds? u see it all around. You have players with mature thinking ,patient ,trying to think how to work things out,whether they are in single or mmo rpg's, they enjoy challenges,they hunt from sport.

On the other hand Join an mmorpg nowdays and u can see whats the community like. Terms like nerdraging ,frustration,imo, are new things on the blog.As one friend of mine keeps yelling The lol generation. I cant agree with that 100% ofc but those things are things i expirienced in mmo's i played last years .Exceptions are to be found ofc.

Some of these things may sound harsh and as i said it doesnt go for all ppl,after all not everyone is affected that much from his expiriences, but ni many,many cases sadly it does.

I suspect the only problem is MMO's (since EQ) have not changed dramatically the Social interfaction much in the game.

In Everquest we had defined groups, where players are added/dropped.  If you helped a group kill a monster, and you were not in that group, you gained nothing from it. I dont think have we have strayed too from this social model in the last 12 years.

Facebook and other social sites allow adding(friending), and rarely drop, plus we see what all our friends are doing(voyeurism?).   Its much more inclusive then EQ's design.   If someone on the far side of the world does something fun, you get to share in the experience, and sometimes when they come back, the loot.

Hopefully with the reduction of costs to make online games, we will see a larger variety of courageous social designs that involve slaying monsters.

-Blitz

Originally posted by Melieza

Originally posted by killion81

Get this man his Spotlight Poster title! ;)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed he was just following everything that was written in the "how to post on mmorpg.com" thread.

It's sad that it's working...

Seriously?  12 pages?  Wow...

And on the left you will see the hordes of sheeple.

Anti social?

 

Around 04/05, long before the mercs were in, I would of liked to seen you get a chanter/cleric for a group at 1Am EST. Off hr game play was severely affected by lack of role classes. Hell you were lucky if you could simply get a KEI. They put the mercs in after I left, but there was a reason for the addition that didnt include anti social. It was more along the lines of "we lost a shit ton to WoW", and folks need to be able to play.

 

SOE gave one of the best advantages there was to fill the group up in the form of exp bonuses. I wish all games did the same so as to encourage grouping.

I agree. In SWG those grind groups on Dantooine were awesome. I met a lot of people that way. Made some great connections. That whole thing stopped when the NGE hit I believe.

Originally posted by GreenHell

Anti social?

 

Around 04/05, long before the mercs were in, I would of liked to seen you get a chanter/cleric for a group at 1Am EST. Off hr game play was severely affected by lack of role classes. Hell you were lucky if you could simply get a KEI. They put the mercs in after I left, but there was a reason for the addition that didnt include anti social. It was more along the lines of "we lost a shit ton to WoW", and folks need to be able to play.

 

SOE gave one of the best advantages there was to fill the group up in the form of exp bonuses. I wish all games did the same so as to encourage grouping.

I agree. In SWG those grind groups on Dantooine were awesome. I met a lot of people that way. Made some great connections. That whole thing stopped when the NGE hit I believe.

Ahh, the group bonus XP bonus was good stuff , nowadays if you do something like that it's called force grouping to get the benefit (and many new players dont even like that term anymore).

example: You man I have to group to get better xp? Ahh man this game isn't solo friendly, it to hard and I hate force grouping mmo's. This game sucks.

" The older generation of gamers was much more social and patient"

- The initial "old" generation didn't have to wade through over a decade of copy & paste bad design decision, poor execution while just coping features and ignorant people claiming they shouldn't be so impatent and wait another 10 years.

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

That doesn't negate the fact that the vast majority of the UO players, and AC1 too, were way more "social and patient" than today's players. Actually, modern day games who have tried a similar model than UO pre-Trammel have failed before they were even released and have a lower player base than the 17+ years old game with dated graphics that is UO.

The people have changed, and the "end game loot grind with rewards for random people" model didn't help either. With the EQ/WOW clone model, people began to be asshats towards their own team because it often is the only way to make your character progress. DKP and all that crap made playing a spreadsheet competition against your own team instead of a group of friends having fun together.

In the case of UO and AC and EQ, you had a largely homogenous group of players.  The games were made by and for nerds.  Those were the only people who had access to the computers and Internet connections necessary to play the games at the time.  Because they all had the same basic views and the same basic goals, it seemed that they were more social because they all had something to talk about.  You had people who lived in the game because their RL was so pathetic.

However, once WoW opened the world of MMOs to the mainstream, you no longer had a homogenous playerbase, you had lots of different subcultures playing the games that had little or nothing in common outside of the game.  They didn't talk to each other because they had nothing to talk about.

It's not that the game has changed or the people have changed, it's that the genre has changed.  It's no longer the nerdfest it was when it started and that's a good thing.