Just wanted to make this observation about my return to WoW for the MoP expansion. Additionally, I encourage rebuttal as long as it remains progressive (trying to avoid hate although its basically hypocritical).

To my main argument, there are a few things I found incredibly anti-social as I was leveling up my character, and couldn't be overlooked.

 Barely any socialization through LFG 5 mans. It's honestly a struggle to get a response to a group "hello" message. I wouldn't even consider this an issue but as soon as you wipe or anyone dies, people instantaneously bitch about someone not performing correctly. This isn't just 1 or 2 instances, this is a status quo as far as random dungeons are concerned.

Additionally, joining a largley populated guild (as far as I have noticed from my 5-6 guilds ive joined, sorry to generalize) and chat is Barren (see what I did there), with people becoming members primarily for the benifits.

I understand that a guild will help to correct this problem, but even then, youre still randoming at some point and dealing with stagnant chat as always.

ive noticed this myself recently. Returned after a year absense, rolled a monk tank and , as i always do in wow these days, ive leveled him solely using dungeon finder. and no one talks... at all!! its never ben that sociable but it used to be maybe one in 3 runs there might be a bit of conversation going on but that seems to have completely stopped now. even stuff like telling ppl your going afk or you need a mana break seems to much effort these days.

last saturday i did 30+ dungeon runs and i have a seperate tab for my grp chat. at the end of the day i checked the tab and in 30 runs there had been a combimned amount of 4 lines of dialogue!

Originally posted by plescure

ive noticed this myself recently. Returned after a year absense, rolled a monk tank and , as i always do in wow these days, ive leveled him solely using dungeon finder. and no one talks... at all!! its never ben that sociable but it used to be maybe one in 3 runs there might be a bit of conversation going on but that seems to have completely stopped now. even stuff like telling ppl your going afk or you need a mana break seems to much effort these days.

last saturday i did 30+ dungeon runs and i have a seperate tab for my grp chat. at the end of the day i checked the tab and in 30 runs there had been a combimned amount of 4 lines of dialogue!

How many of those were your own? if it was 0 then you don't really have any right to complain.

Originally posted by dlld

Originally posted by plescure

ive noticed this myself recently. Returned after a year absense, rolled a monk tank and , as i always do in wow these days, ive leveled him solely using dungeon finder. and no one talks... at all!! its never ben that sociable but it used to be maybe one in 3 runs there might be a bit of conversation going on but that seems to have completely stopped now. even stuff like telling ppl your going afk or you need a mana break seems to much effort these days.

last saturday i did 30+ dungeon runs and i have a seperate tab for my grp chat. at the end of the day i checked the tab and in 30 runs there had been a combimned amount of 4 lines of dialogue!

How many of those were your own? if it was 0 then you don't really have any right to complain.

haha well said i was thinking the same exact thing.

honestly hive collective internet folk from beyond the grave... what do you expect??question mark?

you play a game that is completely built from the ground up on playing ALONE until you get to the last level and then are required to do either raid/expert/master/ultra arm flexing dungeons for and or loot?

and then you are surprised when the majority of the community hates talking to anyone at any given time?  It is what you are being herded to dooooooooo just sayyyy moooooooooo.

stop being a sheep and following your breadcrumb poka dot path from 1 to 9194994 in version 1,2,3.... etc of these games.

make a friend, talk to a noob, pinch a npc's ass.

LIVE IN YOUR WORLD MAN!!! in a dungeon say hey! whoever doesnt say hi is a chinese inmate! and see what happens. LIVE MAN LIVE

Was it ever sold as a social game?

Originally posted by dscar23

Just wanted to make this observation about my return to WoW for the MoP expansion. Additionally, I encourage rebuttal as long as it remains progressive (trying to avoid hate although its basically hypocritical).

To my main argument, there are a few things I found incredibly anti-social as I was leveling up my character, and couldn't be overlooked.

 Barely any socialization through LFG 5 mans. It's honestly a struggle to get a response to a group "hello" message. I wouldn't even consider this an issue but as soon as you wipe or anyone dies, people instantaneously bitch about someone not performing correctly. This isn't just 1 or 2 instances, this is a status quo as far as random dungeons are concerned.

Additionally, joining a largley populated guild (as far as I have noticed from my 5-6 guilds ive joined, sorry to generalize) and chat is Barren (see what I did there), with people becoming members primarily for the benifits.

I understand that a guild will help to correct this problem, but even then, youre still randoming at some point and dealing with stagnant chat as always.

 

It's not just WoW, it's across the board really.

Even in games where grouping is accessible and fun most people solo if possible and don't even bother saying hello or goodbye to their guildies when they come and go, even ignoring those that DO, and just bark out questions when they get stuck or whatever. God forbid if they were ever forced to actually have a friendly conversation or engage with others beyond immediate needs... Most don't even seem to be capable of it in most games I have played. It's crazy tbh, but it's just how the modern MMO culture has been trained to be by years of games designed to focus on solo independent play I guess.

I guess what I am saying is that it isn't fair to single WoW out for this. It's all over.

Just focus on the good people you find is my advice and accept that 90% of folks that you ecounter have no desire or intention of ever becoming your buddy...

I guess one of the weird things in these games is that they are at their best when social experiences, but they tend to attract a lot of folks that are pretty socially inept.... it leads to a strange contradiction in the playerbase.

Originally posted by dscar23

Just wanted to make this observation about my return to WoW for the MoP expansion. Additionally, I encourage rebuttal as long as it remains progressive (trying to avoid hate although its basically hypocritical).

To my main argument, there are a few things I found incredibly anti-social as I was leveling up my character, and couldn't be overlooked.

 Barely any socialization through LFG 5 mans. It's honestly a struggle to get a response to a group "hello" message. I wouldn't even consider this an issue but as soon as you wipe or anyone dies, people instantaneously bitch about someone not performing correctly. This isn't just 1 or 2 instances, this is a status quo as far as random dungeons are concerned.

Additionally, joining a largley populated guild (as far as I have noticed from my 5-6 guilds ive joined, sorry to generalize) and chat is Barren (see what I did there), with people becoming members primarily for the benifits.

I understand that a guild will help to correct this problem, but even then, youre still randoming at some point and dealing with stagnant chat as always.

 

it is society problem overall . people are more mean . the living conditions are deteroating .people are getting unemployed , families are falling apart . so it is not a game problem ,it is society problem . 

Well what is it you want to talk about? Politics? Weather? Sports? Gaming?

Maybe you just want people to say" hello", which results in what? If it makes you feel better, when someone gives a greeting I always respond.

At the end of the day, you're choosing the wrong medium for holding a discussion. I don't see people complaining on forums that all people do is talk but no one ever wants to play a game with them.

As for the guild issue, that has never changed. Big nameless guilds have always existed and have always been terrible. Find a better guild sometimes looking for a "family style" guild will get you better results. Unfortunately, finding good people can be tough, but it's doable.

But the last thing I want to add is that WoW has one of the best features that other games don't have . . . people don't talk about WoW in WoW. Chat in every other game is filled with people talking/bitching about WoW (kind of like nearly every thread on the mmorpg site). If you don't want to hear people talking about WoW, you just play WoW.

Originally posted by dscar23

I understand that a guild will help to correct this problem, but even then, youre still randoming at some point and dealing with stagnant chat as always.

 

even Guilds are anti-social, this game has always been like that when they look at your gear first, personality later.

WoW (or, let's be honest here now, come on, ANY online game) comunity is shit.

That's why I've made it my endgame, for years now, to kill them all. Ganking ftw.

The WoW community was never a great one.  Even when I played years ago when BC launched...it was just bad.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Was it ever sold as a social game?

 

I would say yes, since using the "MMO" acronym means well....massively multiplayer online....which SEEMS, at least, to imply it should be social in some way.  Maybe it's wrong to have ever assumed that, but it used to be true anyway.

    We are in the I want it now generation. Talking just slows things down, even in real life. Just text me so I can look at it later.

How dare you expect me to actually put any effort into something or slow down to help someone.

there are a lot of people these days that will push those that don't know what to do aside because they don't feel like teaching them a dungeon, then turn around and complain that there is no one to group with.

Originally posted by dscar23

Just wanted to make this observation about my return to WoW for the MoP expansion. Additionally, I encourage rebuttal as long as it remains progressive (trying to avoid hate although its basically hypocritical).

To my main argument, there are a few things I found incredibly anti-social as I was leveling up my character, and couldn't be overlooked.

 Barely any socialization through LFG 5 mans. It's honestly a struggle to get a response to a group "hello" message. I wouldn't even consider this an issue but as soon as you wipe or anyone dies, people instantaneously bitch about someone not performing correctly. This isn't just 1 or 2 instances, this is a status quo as far as random dungeons are concerned.

Additionally, joining a largley populated guild (as far as I have noticed from my 5-6 guilds ive joined, sorry to generalize) and chat is Barren (see what I did there), with people becoming members primarily for the benifits.

I understand that a guild will help to correct this problem, but even then, youre still randoming at some point and dealing with stagnant chat as always.

 

Wow has some great points.  But the ease of grouping (i.e., Dungeon Finder and instanced PvP) made it pointless for anyone to give a care.  Why talk to Bob the Mage if he's on another server?  Point is, best you can do in a game like WoW is try to get on a social server, i.e, Moonguard, and get into an old school RP'ish guild.  Try to group with them when able - that's one way around it. 

Hope this helps.

As so many others have already pointed out, this isn't a problem peculiar to WoW.  As themepark games have increasingly made a conscious effort to make their play solo and casual friendly, the need to be social in what should be a social game has been reduced to almost zero.

Why do developers waste so much time and money creating persistent worlds with massive concurrent player populations, when they do very little to capitalize on this fact?  Follow the money.  The solo and casual players make up the bulk of most game's players, so developers seek to cater to them.

WoW, RIFT, GW2 - all games that are designed to be anti-social with the overwhelming majority of their gameplay and game systems.

Originally posted by lotaparty

Originally posted by dscar23

Just wanted to make this observation about my return to WoW for the MoP expansion. Additionally, I encourage rebuttal as long as it remains progressive (trying to avoid hate although its basically hypocritical).

To my main argument, there are a few things I found incredibly anti-social as I was leveling up my character, and couldn't be overlooked.

 Barely any socialization through LFG 5 mans. It's honestly a struggle to get a response to a group "hello" message. I wouldn't even consider this an issue but as soon as you wipe or anyone dies, people instantaneously bitch about someone not performing correctly. This isn't just 1 or 2 instances, this is a status quo as far as random dungeons are concerned.

Additionally, joining a largley populated guild (as far as I have noticed from my 5-6 guilds ive joined, sorry to generalize) and chat is Barren (see what I did there), with people becoming members primarily for the benifits.

I understand that a guild will help to correct this problem, but even then, youre still randoming at some point and dealing with stagnant chat as always.

 

it is society problem overall . people are more mean . the living conditions are deteroating .people are getting unemployed , families are falling apart . so it is not a game problem ,it is society problem . 

This made me laugh, has to be a troll.

To comment on a couple thigns people have said: first, sorry I want social interaction in my MMO, i guess thats an odd request? Secondly Vanilla WoW was FARRR from anti-social. You grouped with ppl on your server, people knew other people, blacklists etc. They chose to make it anti-social, which imo kills a big part of the game for me. WoW FUCKED the whole MMO sphere up by making everything instantly attainable, so now if you dont bring that to the table no one wants to play. WoW was never marketed as a singple player experience and frankly never was until LFG finder. Now I can play the game, obtain raid loot and LITERALLY never say 2 fucking words. Its sad.