Originally posted by vistakah

I've been playing MMO's for years and have had numerous discussions from friends from other MMO's and we've all decided that the social element of gaming today is not what i was 10 years ago. I think the most extreme example of it  was when WAR was first released.  Nobody spoke, nobody grouped, yada yada. Eventually a small bit of conversation entered the fray.  

Theres no general channel in WAR. The game is defaulted to talk in LOCAL, and this is what most people will do. Even some hardcore players will talk (tons) in guild or local, never in regiion, because is almost hidden in the interface.

  The  logical answer to the op's question is "people". Yes People,give them a chance and they will find a way to fubar things everytime,it seems to be the nature of the beasts,lol.

 All joking aside,for those of us who do enjoy the social aspect  of our  various mmo's,it  is still there alive and well,just have to look a little harder  ;)

                                                                                                                                                          Lothlore

Marketing,

They took the MMORPG you knew, changed the gameplay and still sold the new games as MMORPG's. They are RPG/FPS hybrids which cater to nothing else than solo gaming, pvp and graphics druggies.

Originally posted by sigamon

Originally posted by Ninebaii

i dont think any mmo feature killed the social element.

i'm a gamer always have been played ever dnd, balders gate, icewind dale, first person shooter, rts, xboxlive game u can possibly think of and i just recently started playing some mmos. I play to win i get a game i beat the game i kick my friends asses in halo/gears of war :P

i jump in wow i think rpers are loosers i get in my guild i do my shit i make sure i'm number 1 dps i dont really talk to people dont really care all to much about knowing random people across the country or farther... ask um to fill in in dungeons go over raid tacts. boot people from my groups if they dont know what their doing.

and i think ur getting more of me into mmos people who dont come for a community who come to play the game and beat it. People who are actualy gamers ones who arent looking for an escape from their life who just want to beat the game. 

^ and heres a main example of who is killing it ^

I don't think he's an example of who's killing the social element at all.  He's could've done a better job of expressing himself but he does make a few good points.

I'm not a talkative person in real life nor am I in a MMORPG.  The people who feel the need to continually fill the channels with whatever random thoughts come into their heads annoy me to no end, usually resulting in me leaving the channel.  I talk when it's needed, to ask/answer questions or to discuss strategy.  I'm not interested in what one guy in my group is having for dinner or what some other kid did in science class or why some other guy had a fight with his wife.  You have to respect the fact that a lot of people are simply there to play a game, not to make friends.  Making friends may happen as a side effect of playing the game, but it's not why a lot of people come in the first place. 

I also agree with Nineball in that video games are simply a form of entertainment, not an escape from reality.

The only point he made that is wrong is that you don't "beat" a RPG.

The lack of socializing in the chat channels, I think, is mainly due to a lot of people using voice communication.  People wanted the speed of RPG combat to increase to resemble FPS's.  Now that they have it , they can't fight and type at the same time.

The lack of any depth or complexity to a lot of recent MMO's means there is nothing to talk about beside bullshit.  

You REALLY want to know why people thought the community was better back when UO and EQ first started?   Look at the stereotype of the only people who played MMOs back then and look at the vast difference we have now.  Of course the community was "better" when you stuck a bunch of nerds and geeks in a room together.  Everyone had lots in common.  Of course some were evil pricks, but everyone was a PC gamer freak, since that was the only type of person who could get a MMO to run back then.  You were ALL geeks and nerds besides a select few.  Now, your typical MMO player doesn't fit into the sterotype.  You have casual normal people who just play for fun and aren't all that social nor care to make deep lasting virtual friendships.  You have your old timers who "know everything" and want you to role play or get into deep RPG discussions.  You have your annoying kids.  You have people who are too cool to be playing yet are on every night.  Its a big ol melting pot now.  Its not the math club anymore.  Its highschool, clicks and all.

Go ask yourself why people in the math club or drama club or ski club think their little group is better than the overall community in highschool.  Its not too difficult to understand=)

The OP seems to be saying that if games had not become so simple that you weren't required to group, then the social aspect of MMOs would be more or less intact. I disagree, however. Even if, for example, WoW forced players to group as much as EQ did, I believe that the PACE of WoW would have kept communication very limited.

WoW has virtually no downtime. You have to spam abilities non-stop to accomplish anything. Etc. In EQ you had abilities with 3+ second cast times. Some classes only needed to use one or two abilities per pull to contribute their share. Downtime after a series of pulls lasted for 5 or more minutes. Etc.

And anyways, it's not like EQ or other earlier MMOs actually forced you to group, anyways. There was more incentive for more classes to get into groups (EQ for example, the only STRONG solo classes were necro, druid, wizard... maybe mage), but you could still solo a whole lot if you wanted to, and you could still have played a class that didn't need to group.

In actuality, I think more of EQ's content was soloable than WoW's is. How many dungeon environments can you work your way through solo in WoW right now if your character is appropriately leveled for the place? That's right. None. How many dungeons could a necromancer or a mage or an enchanter solo his way through in EQ? Virtually all of them... if not ALL of them.

Community and social aspects continue to be strong in MMOs, they've just changed shape. There isn't the same kind of bonding among random players who get together to go crawl their way though lower guk and then camp the archmage for a few hours at a time... but there are very strong social ties within guilds. They tend to talk on vent or TS instead of in game, but that's still being social. PUGs know each other less now, but I feel that guildies know each other more.

Who killed the social element in modern MMO's?

Majority of people playing this genre......unaware that socializing is more then making or joining a group/guild.

Originally posted by thorwood

I disagree that instancing reduced the social element

When instancing was introduced in the LDoN expansion for Everquest, I grouped with more people than at any other time in the game.  Players that previously never socialised outside of their raiding guilds were all of a sudden mixing with other players.

When I played City of Heroes/City of Villains there was heaps of grouping for the  instanced missions, and very little grouping outside of the instanced missions.  Grouping is more common in in CoH/CoV than for most games I have played.

Instancing is a tool that can work support the social element. It all depends on how it is implemented.

      Yeah instancing alone was not the reason why the social aspect suffered alot....I also played EQ when LDoN was around and I made more friends in that expansion than all others combined.......EQ though promoted teamwork/group play back then though.....In LDoN you had to work well together and pretty much have a full group to succeed....You still had some downtime though as the cleric and other casters needed quick rests to get enough mana to go on..........

          WHen I played WOW I did alot of instances also but hte pace was so frenetic and my screen was just constantly filled with loot rolls, and other messages that it made chatting very difficult......Also it became frustrating to group in WoW because you constantly had to deal with jerks and people that wore cloth but would roll on that plate helm that your warrior really needed.......I lost tons of items because people just rolled on everything, even if they couldnt use it.......EQ didnt even have as good of a looting system as WoW but the players monitored it much better and it was much more fair as to who got what items.

Originally posted by vistakah

I've been playing MMO's for years and have had numerous discussions from friends from other MMO's and we've all decided that the social element of gaming today is not what i was 10 years ago. I think the most extreme example of it  was when WAR was first released.  Nobody spoke, nobody grouped, yada yada. Eventually a small bit of conversation entered the fray.  I can say it started post WoW release thats for sure but from a chatty kathy perspected WOW has some busy general spam, mostly young kids. That type of chatter doesn't interest most mature gamers.  So we turn general off.

Wow presented the world with the first EASY MODE mmo. Never have to group if you choose not to. No benefit whatsoever to grouping.  I think when you look back , yes games had some grind factor but you needed people to achieve goals. This is not to say you couldn't solo because we could but it wasn't very efficient if you were looking for high yield expereince gains. DAOC as an example paid a bonus to group experiencing.

With no reason to group there is no reason to talk or start up new conversations/friendships. I think thats as much to blame as well as game formats being uninteresting and stale. We keep playing the same game over and over but it takes little to no effort these days. So i ask where is the future in MMO's.  It's the social element that keeps subs being paid up much more then game content so why do devs continually focus on easy non group orientated . I and many game friends have went back to play older MMO's and even those seem to be the dead social scene games just like today's games. I see the MMO industry today pretty much the same as the movie industry. They keep remaking old successful movies which generally suck in comparison to the originals without creating new imaginative concepts/storylines.

The next great MMO will put the social element ahead of storyline. I know for a fact that i probably played certain games for a year or two longer then i would have had it not had the social element. Your thoughts?

 

I feel with ya, OP. I guess this turn to boredom has many fathers, but one of the most influental impacts just was WOW. Sure, it sounds like the usual WOW bashing, and I dont think WOW is a terrible game altogether. But some aspects just drained the social aspect. For instance, how easy you are led from entertainment point A or B asf. There is little need for exploration, and the soloable part was greatly expanded, something which I saw copied as result in many other MMOs. While I still played EQ2, for instance, more and more quests and mobs were overhauled and remade as soloable. That was a direct impact from WOW, and definitely killed a lot of social dynamic.

Another thing is the lack of inserting social things, like SWG used to have: player cities, housing, player based crafting & itemizations, non combat elements to do, all things which the old SWG community made so strong, and which drained other MMOs socially. I never felt at home in a MMO without housing, and often, in games like LOTRO, housing was just added as a figleaf, which did not really inspire me. The LOTRO housing cities are all far away from the common ongoings, and thus they are all ghost cities. Such places of housing must be central, even if its like "inn rooms" like in EQ2.

Generally I think the soloism catering is one big reason, though I am not sure it can be turned back now, when people are... well shall we say spoilt but the ability to do everything alone.

But I agree with the OP: WAR really was a new low in the trend to kill the social aspect in MMO - or more frankly, to kill MMOs itself.

It's bit of an oxymoron. Social by text is pretty lame as you miss so many factors. You got vent which helps fills these gaps in but it's sort of anti-immersion to the game.

Secondly, I think maybe it can be a bother to type things sometimes- so much so that people join a group and maybe people just don't acknowledge/respond to that, and even worse is that people can be locked in guild chat- forgetting the existence of their group.

Originally posted by dave6660

Originally posted by sigamon

Originally posted by Ninebaii

i dont think any mmo feature killed the social element.

i'm a gamer always have been played ever dnd, balders gate, icewind dale, first person shooter, rts, xboxlive game u can possibly think of and i just recently started playing some mmos. I play to win i get a game i beat the game i kick my friends asses in halo/gears of war :P

i jump in wow i think rpers are loosers i get in my guild i do my shit i make sure i'm number 1 dps i dont really talk to people dont really care all to much about knowing random people across the country or farther... ask um to fill in in dungeons go over raid tacts. boot people from my groups if they dont know what their doing.

and i think ur getting more of me into mmos people who dont come for a community who come to play the game and beat it. People who are actualy gamers ones who arent looking for an escape from their life who just want to beat the game. 

^ and heres a main example of who is killing it ^

I don't think he's an example of who's killing the social element at all.  He's could've done a better job of expressing himself but he does make a few good points.

I'm not a talkative person in real life nor am I in a MMORPG.  The people who feel the need to continually fill the channels with whatever random thoughts come into their heads annoy me to no end, usually resulting in me leaving the channel.  I talk when it's needed, to ask/answer questions or to discuss strategy.  I'm not interested in what one guy in my group is having for dinner or what some other kid did in science class or why some other guy had a fight with his wife.  You have to respect the fact that a lot of people are simply there to play a game, not to make friends.  Making friends may happen as a side effect of playing the game, but it's not why a lot of people come in the first place. 

I also agree with Nineball in that video games are simply a form of entertainment, not an escape from reality.

The only point he made that is wrong is that you don't "beat" a RPG.

The lack of socializing in the chat channels, I think, is mainly due to a lot of people using voice communication.  People wanted the speed of RPG combat to increase to resemble FPS's.  Now that they have it , they can't fight and type at the same time.

The lack of any depth or complexity to a lot of recent MMO's means there is nothing to talk about beside bullshit.  

Socializing is not and has never been a REQUIREMENT  of gaming. The context of the original question is not actually answered by your points though. The OP did not ask if or how you socialize. The question was "who killed the social element". It has changed and changed dramatically for those who DO enjoy socializing in MMOs.
 

People who share your approach to gaming online in ANY genre' have always been there. And "No" they are not the kind of people who killed the social aspects of the game as we used to know them. Not by their presence in game and out of community at any rate. They are, however, the people who did most of the asking for the changes in the games that removed the gaming elements that fostered socializing because those elements were nothing more than boring and pointless timesinks if you didn't participate actively in socializing. What was the point for them in standing and waiting 9 minutes for a train in SWG when all they wanted to do was get to the next part of their GAME?

And so it was that the game devs agreed to their points of view time and time again until the same formulaic solo games that exist in consoles now dominate the MMO market and socializing is now not a built-in facet of the games actual design.

I think the only way to bring back the old social elements that we enjoyed so much would be to make, once again, games with those elements and rename the genre' from MMORPGs to MMOSRPG ("S" for Social) and never let the devs remove or tweak that content out of them like they did to AO. But, the majority of players who do not care about socializing will definitely show up and beat the game back into the same old mold where people don't matter and what game company would even attempt a release of an MMOSRPG when they've already been there and done that and had to change the games to what they are now to satisfy the soloists whether they are anti-social or not?

Just like hardcore, full loot, FFA, sandbox PVPers, it would seem the "social butterfly" is now a niche' market.

I still play WAR on occasion, for casual fun (still dont have a 40, not sure i want one).  However when I play scenarios, I turn off chat.  All anyone does in scenario chat is bitch and moan, never anything constructive, its sad.  If youre on the losing team, the know-it-all experts come out of the woodwork and start pointing fingers and smashing people down.  Its really not enjoyable.  Its not a surprise the WAR population has been dropping so steadily, who wants to play a MMO where the most common social interaction is in scenarios where its just complain, complain, complain...  Certainly not casual players looking for some "fun"

Originally posted by vistakah

I've been playing MMO's for years and have had numerous discussions from friends from other MMO's and we've all decided that the social element of gaming today is not what i was 10 years ago. I think the most extreme example of it  was when WAR was first released.  Nobody spoke, nobody grouped, yada yada. Eventually a small bit of conversation entered the fray.  I can say it started post WoW release thats for sure but from a chatty kathy perspected WOW has some busy general spam, mostly young kids. That type of chatter doesn't interest most mature gamers.  So we turn general off.

Wow presented the world with the first EASY MODE mmo. Never have to group if you choose not to. No benefit whatsoever to grouping.  I think when you look back , yes games had some grind factor but you needed people to achieve goals. This is not to say you couldn't solo because we could but it wasn't very efficient if you were looking for high yield expereince gains. DAOC as an example paid a bonus to group experiencing.

With no reason to group there is no reason to talk or start up new conversations/friendships. I think thats as much to blame as well as game formats being uninteresting and stale. We keep playing the same game over and over but it takes little to no effort these days. So i ask where is the future in MMO's.  It's the social element that keeps subs being paid up much more then game content so why do devs continually focus on easy non group orientated . I and many game friends have went back to play older MMO's and even those seem to be the dead social scene games just like today's games. I see the MMO industry today pretty much the same as the movie industry. They keep remaking old successful movies which generally suck in comparison to the originals without creating new imaginative concepts/storylines.

The next great MMO will put the social element ahead of storyline. I know for a fact that i probably played certain games for a year or two longer then i would have had it not had the social element. Your thoughts?

 

I don't think your perception about WOW is true. First, at the end game, you have to group for a lot of the content. Second, it is not true that there is no chatting in WOW.

In fact, i chat with guild mate every time I log on. I sometimes chat with people whom I group with. Most common topic is about gear and wat to do but there is also a lot of general chit chat including chatting about jobs, family & even some flirting.

I have a bunch of casual friends in WOW and none of them are under 18 and most are professionals. I mean, given 11.5M players, there are 12 yrs old, but there are also a lot of older people.

Lots of great replies guys and gals. One word that stuck in my head was *QUESTS*. As i think back many times i grouped with people in dungeons or on camps and we ground mobs for both group and camp bonues ala DAOC. We logged on and we ground mobs for exp for hours on end and talked as much.

Most times with the objective of leveling  it was much better to grind then waste the time on pointless quest lines where the reward didnt warrant the time sink of travel. As a duo we could fight a mob neither of us could solo with ease. More exp. Of course some downtime between pulls allowed us to converse.

Another reason was a more aged player base. When i first started playing DAOC i would say the average player age was 25+. It was much an adults game while many of the adults allowed there children to play occasionally. Like the gaming community most of the kids were well behaved.

But back onto the gazillian quests list. In Wow i could follow a pre written quest list with no regards to story at all. I could level extremely quickly and if getting to max level was the goal, i could get there faster by myself because there was no exp bonus for grouping really and a partner didnt increase my kill speed per say. It did take away from my exp points though and yes grouping hurt my leveling speed.

Difficulty did of course promote grouping, grinding was less boring with a friend to talk to when you were medding as we like to call it recovering health and mana. So now the next question is why don't you play a proven game instead of the so called latest and greatest. DAOC is undeniably the BEST PVP game online yet its population is what hurts it. If that game had 80k regular players it would just destroy games like WAR or WOW for that matter from a  PVPer perspective. One of the sole reason i personally dont subscribe is lack of players.  So why don't we play the best games of their genre anymore as they are still there to be had for our playing pleasure.

Oh the flashbacks of one death equalling 2+ hours of exp grinding or one bulb of exp after grinding elite mobs for over and hour lol..

Is it possible the increased use of microphones is reducing the social aspect? People tend to say less if they using a mic, than if they are typing I've noticed.

Also I have tended to split into a little group chat using a mic and end up not paying attention to what people are typing in the chat around me.

One more thing, just forcing people to group is one way of getting people to talk, but they talk far more if there is actual tactics needed to beat and enemy rather than just force of numbers.

Originally posted by Waterlily

I think it's the complete opposite to be honest. EQ has a general chat you autojoin. It's where I have the most fun and where we all get together and chat. The auction chat is the same.

It's where communities start and where guilds get made. If anything I blame the lack of a general chat on a lot of the lack of social elements in MMO.

I guess opinions differ, but chat channels are for me essential to create a good community.

If a game didn't even have region chat, I don't think I would even play it to be honest, it's very important for me to be able to interact with people.

EQ was different. Its general chat was local chat - for that zone only.  EQ had a lot of zones.

I remember having some fun chat (conversations) in zones where there were only 2 or 3 of us.

I do not recall people having chats in open channels in the crowded zones where there might be 70 people like Plane of Knowledge.

In modern seemless games, the chat channels often have huge numbers of member and people having private chats in these channels is just plain annoying.  For example, LoTRO players created a global looking for group channel, at peak it has 400 members.  Private off topic chat has killed this channel.  Off topic chat in channels with a specific purpose or topic is just plain rude.  Unfortunately, the rude people shout you down when you object.  And yes, there is an off topic global channel created by players which often has about 200 members but apparently this is too small for the rude spammers.

WoW killed hte social element of the modern MMORPG. It's success as a Anti-Social RPG made evey other game studio envious, so now they're all trying to reproduce its success. Secondly, now our genre is choking to death woth gamers who's first mmorpg was WoW, so to them, this is normal.

Originally posted by vistakah

Lots of great replies guys and gals. One word that stuck in my head was *QUESTS*. As i think back many times i grouped with people in dungeons or on camps and we ground mobs for both group and camp bonues ala DAOC. We logged on and we ground mobs for exp for hours on end and talked as much.

 

Most times with the objective of leveling  it was much better to grind then waste the time on pointless quest lines where the reward didnt warrant the time sink of travel. As a duo we could fight a mob neither of us could solo with ease. More exp. Of course some downtime between pulls allowed us to converse.

 

Another reason was a more aged player base. When i first started playing DAOC i would say the average player age was 25+. It was much an adults game while many of the adults allowed there children to play occasionally. Like the gaming community most of the kids were well behaved.

 

But back onto the gazillian quests list. In Wow i could follow a pre written quest list with no regards to story at all. I could level extremely quickly and if getting to max level was the goal, i could get there faster by myself because there was no exp bonus for grouping really and a partner didnt increase my kill speed per say. It did take away from my exp points though and yes grouping hurt my leveling speed.

 

Difficulty did of course promote grouping, grinding was less boring with a friend to talk to when you were medding as we like to call it recovering health and mana. So now the next question is why don't you play a proven game instead of the so called latest and greatest. DAOC is undeniably the BEST PVP game online yet its population is what hurts it. If that game had 80k regular players it would just destroy games like WAR or WOW for that matter from a  PVPer perspective. One of the sole reason i personally dont subscribe is lack of players.  So why don't we play the best games of their genre anymore as they are still there to be had for our playing pleasure.

 

Oh the flashbacks of one death equalling 2+ hours of exp grinding or one bulb of exp after grinding elite mobs for over and hour lol..

I thought on this.

You know I was a quester  and trophy hunter in DAoC. DAoC has a ton of quests and trophy mobs some of those quests and trophies were just so involved that most would not even try them. I mean I went 5 months trying to finish one(zirtzirt) level 40? quest badger, 3 years for  (Spat the cat) and I had a couple in my quest journal I never did complete after 6 years. They just never popped when I was on.

Some of my friends also had those insane quests and they also never got them complete LOL. BUT! we would camp a spot of days waiting for that one rare occasion the quest mob would pop. Think about that a minute. Six to ten people needing a solo quest mob camping a spot chatting and killing for days on end in a battle group. And you know how I met these people? Going to look for that solo insanely rare spawn mob. Players looking for that trophy all together and then rolling on it . Spat was level 12 mob it took me 3 years to get him I was level 50 with RR4 yet I was in a BG with 11 people. Quest done and I lost the roll on him but it was fun as hell.

The quests did not kill the social aspect in so much as maybe the speed and easiness of the quests killed the social aspect.