Originally posted by NeverLand7

I guess everyone is busy with their guild or too engaged in grinding mobs to ever speak or give advice when a question is asked. I notice that especially more recently , out of the majority of the mmorpgs I've played in the past couple years the community is almost dead silent for the most part. This also takes some of the fun out of the game in my opinion because it's one of the unique aspects that mmorpgs have over single player games.

It really seems like alot of players are living out their single player gamer fantasy in an mmorpg which in my opinion is the opposite of what mmorpgs are about and should be about. A live community is what breathes life into the game and makes this genre special. It's sad to see some of that fading away.

I remember playing UO/EQ back in the day and you couldn't ask for more of a lively community. Where have the times gone? heh..

It certainly has changed although I don't miss the old days.  Even then I was always more prone to just watching chat or mainly using guild chat to talk before I started using vent on a regualr basis.  As much as I'm not a fan of the new wave "Barrens chat" that seemed to flood games for a while I remember back in the old days there was always some reject flipping out if they felt someone used the chat channels in any way they deemed unnecessary or ill used or the hourly war of words sparking over who trained who or who took someone's camp spot.  Was just as annoying to me as those that flood the channels with the latest Chuck Norris, religious war, or political round table diatribe.

About the only time I used general chat was to provide assistance if i could to a player's question or looking for a group.  Heh...and of course in EQ to rlh to wherever a KEI or SOW was being given.

I do miss how more helpful the gaming community seemed to be back then.

Warhammer was eerie though.  Sometimes you wanted to say something just to see if anybody else was out there...heh...

I partly blame vent for this, although arguably the games themselves require less communication, I think vent is the main reason why a good amount of chat is now gone.

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

 Voice chat has done more harm towards community building than any theme park game design could and reduced social interaction by creating pockets of isolation amongst the playerbase.

Agree, but I will continue to ignore voice chat as a way to communicate. Not only because it ruins immersion for me but because I draw a line between my private life and the game and the two should not mingle. I usually raid with music and vent is not dependable enough or a good tool for communication. I refuse to raid with vent and our guild upholds that wish for all members, everything will always be explained in-game and never in vent.

I truly believe that  vent has caused a lot of harm to the social aspect of mmo's.

There are three reasons why this is happening in some of the modern MMOs. They are Solo Content Orientation, Auction Houses and Voice Communications. These three things have almost totally negated the need for anyone to chat with anyone else.

Bren

Just you.

I have had no problem with chatting and talking. I have played: WoW (OH NOES HE DIDNT! 11one), LOTRO, WAR (beta) and EvE Online.

Especially EvE should get a honorable mention. I really suggest that one if you got community on your number 1 spot as most important MMO 'feature'

I did it, and I never regretted :)

Originally posted by Waterlily

Originally posted by RedwoodSap

 Voice chat has done more harm towards community building than any theme park game design could and reduced social interaction by creating pockets of isolation amongst the playerbase.

 

Agree, but I will continue to ignore voice chat as a way to communicate. Not only because it ruins immersion for me but because I draw a line between my private life and the game and the two should not mingle. I usually raid with music and vent is not dependable enough or a good tool for communication. I refuse to raid with vent and our guild upholds that wish for all members, everything will always be explained in-game and never in vent.

I truly believe that  vent has caused a lot of harm to the social aspect of mmo's.

 

, so true about immersion, and i prefer to keep online private as well. 

Eh...from my experience it actually tends to make those that use vent more cohesive and close knitted.  I wasn't a fan of vent myself at first becuase it does effect the immersion factor for me but I've found the benefits of it far outweigh what I lost immersion wise.  Of course, I've probably been fortunate to find mature people when using vent least as of late and I've never been in a guild that forced people to use vent.  I certainly don't think it should be a requirement but it does make things easier from my experience.

I will admit though that at times I think some that aren't using vent or xfire feel left out of things.

For me Vent is a big issue. I am deaf so if those that use vent do not communicate with the keyboard, I can not communicate with them. I play games and use forums to communicate with the outside world and email and text to communicate with my family. Not everyone can use vent to chat but everyone can use a keyboard.

Although  I do like the occasional discussion during mmorpg...I will never use vent or any other voice software. Hopefully there will always be an option and tolerance for the "type" only chat boxes. Another reason is I talk on a phone all day for work...so I neither wish to talk while gaming..nor listen to the chattering cacophony of  scores of voices...while I am trying to relax.

Originally posted by demc

For me Vent is a big issue. I am deaf so if those that use vent do not communicate with the keyboard, I can not communicate with them. I play games and use forums to communicate with the outside world and email and text to communicate with my family. Not everyone can use vent to chat but everyone can use a keyboard.

I would have no problem communicatiing in textual chat formats at all.  I prefer for one, and gain pleasure out of answering any question I can go any noobies in any game i'm in.  I would definately chat with you in-game.  But I have noticed if you don't vent it's like you're considered a social pariah.  One time in RF I asked  a "shout" to the server about certain boss, one guy replied back, "do you vent?".  I said "no."  He then replied, "ignored".

That was shocking to me.  Long time ago, but a true story :/

Personally I never did chat or listen to chat much. I play these games to play the game, not to listen and chat. There's other ways to chat with people online without spending $15 a month. I don't use vent or teamspeak either, that is unless I choose to group up and take orders from someone who isn't able to type quickly.

I hate world chat since it's nearly always filled with gold selling spam or the babble of people who think they need a soapbox to voice their opinion. I normally turn all of that off, first thing in every game I play. I rather like the silence for the most part. I don't mind needing to go and actually look for someone to help me with something if I need it. I don't mind alt+tabbing out of a game in order to find an answer to something, instead of spamming questions in game.

I do miss the good old days of having skills that were definately needed by others. EQ was really great with that. Necro's having summon corpse, or buffs like dead man floating. Enchanters being able to summon temp equipment. In fact, I think each class had some useful skill that others could benefit from. On the other hand, you could solo all the way to whatever level you wanted. I didn't mind the death penalty or loss of equipment, that made the game that much more challenging and really gave you a reason to avoid death. Also gave my character a good job, corpse summoner. Wizards were great since they could teleport you, normally for a small fee, to anywhere else in the world. Without them, you had to run everywhere, which could take you a half hour or more on foot without the help of J-boots or a mount.

Personally I feel these online games are becoming easier and easier and my interest in them is waning and waning because of it. I do like to solo, but I like a challenge. I do like to group up and fight, but not be forced into it to get to end game. I do like to chat, but not listen to world mundane babble and gold spam. I like it when the game doesn't hand everything to you when you make a toon. No map, no mini-map, no world chat, just my skills and possibly if I'm in the mood, a group. I play for the persistant world. I don't want to be babied through my experience.

Just my personal take. 

Originally posted by NeverLand7

I guess everyone is busy with their guild or too engaged in grinding mobs to ever speak or give advice when a question is asked. I notice that especially more recently , out of the majority of the mmorpgs I've played in the past couple years the community is almost dead silent for the most part. This also takes some of the fun out of the game in my opinion because it's one of the unique aspects that mmorpgs have over single player games.

It really seems like alot of players are living out their single player gamer fantasy in an mmorpg which in my opinion is the opposite of what mmorpgs are about and should be about. A live community is what breathes life into the game and makes this genre special. It's sad to see some of that fading away.

I remember playing UO/EQ back in the day and you couldn't ask for more of a lively community. Where have the times gone? heh..

If a game gives players a reason and an incentive to talk to each other then they will do so. If it doesnt then most people wont bother. Its as simple as that.

I am currently playing Chronicles of Spellborn on and off. I see people talking in the chat channel and I sometimes do so myself if the fancy takes me. If I see something amusing scroll by in the chat channel then I might type something. However none of its really neccesary. Chatting is just an extra form of entertainment while I play the massively shared single player game with everyone else. If there is a boss I need to scatch off my shopping list then I will ask if any other players need to kill it as well to make it easier but once thats done there isnt anything else that needs to be said as everyone just goes back to whatever quests they are doing.......and I cant be bothered with having the same old boring "what quest are you doing?" conversation over and over again.....especially when its simpler and less annoying to just get on with it on my own. Everyone is at a different stage in the story most of the time anyway. Its either "I've already done that quest" or "I dont have that quest yet". Thats what happens when devs insist on plonking single player games with a linear story on the internet (shrug).

If these mmos were actually designed to require communication amongst players to progress through the game then I'm sure people would talk more. However none of them are. Communication is just optional. I agree with you OP that it does kind of defeat the point of playing a game online but I gave up on taking them seriously a long time ago. I just treat them now exactly for what they are - shared single player games with an optional chat channel. However the reason I play these massively shared single player games is because its nice to see other people roaming around. I trade with them if I want to. I can also group up with a few of them if the fancy takes me and the chat channels can be an extra source of entertainment..........even if a large portion of the people in these games are idiots (which actually is part of the fun!). Thats the good side of these mmos being designed like single player games - you dont have to chat to or play with the annoying players if you dont want to as it wont make any difference to the game

When mmos start taking better advantage of the online aspect then I'm sure we will see people communicating more (eg to construct bridges, build cities, organise defences, plan attacks on areas etc). Until then though people will just continue to play mmos the way they have been designed. Blame the devs. Dont blame the players.

Yeah...Spellborn makes it really hard to find people to group with unless you just happen to be around the same level and just happen to be at the same chains in the quest lines.  More often than not even if you do it's usually someone foregoing what they're currently working on to help you or you doing the same to help them rather than being able to mutually help each other a lot of times.

On one hand the game is great because it has quests to no end it seems at times but there are so many chained parts to a lot of them it really makes it hard to find people on the same parts as yourself - even among guildies.  Granted a large portion of the quests can be soloed but that gets old and can leave you sol if it's a chain and you come upon a part you just can't pull off by yourself.

I have often thought the same thing nowadays. People do chat alot less it SEEMS but bring up a hot topic and people will chat. Not sure what has changed but it does feel like less talking in MMOs.

Originally posted by NeverLand7

I guess everyone is busy with their guild or too engaged in grinding mobs to ever speak or give advice when a question is asked. I notice that especially more recently , out of the majority of the mmorpgs I've played in the past couple years the community is almost dead silent for the most part. This also takes some of the fun out of the game in my opinion because it's one of the unique aspects that mmorpgs have over single player games.

It really seems like alot of players are living out their single player gamer fantasy in an mmorpg which in my opinion is the opposite of what mmorpgs are about and should be about. A live community is what breathes life into the game and makes this genre special. It's sad to see some of that fading away.

I remember playing UO/EQ back in the day and you couldn't ask for more of a lively community. Where have the times gone? heh..

Just you.

When i play WOW, the guild chat channel is going nonstop.

Why type when you can talk?

I used to think the EverQuest raiding guild I was a part of was a fairly quiet bunch, until I joined the TS sever. My opinion on that changed quickly.

Originally posted by ianubisi

Why type when you can talk?

I used to think the EverQuest raiding guild I was a part of was a fairly quiet bunch, until I joined the TS sever. My opinion on that changed quickly.

Some of us (myself included) are deaf. Voice chat doesn't help us in the least. :)

I miss standing outside of the Brit bank after raising my lumberjack skill, choppig trees in a forest for an hour alone, and talking to people, or even just making myself lunch and watching people talk.  People actually talked too, not just begged and traded.

As some already said, this varies per game. And in WoW it varies per server too. Some are really chatty, others are very silent.

One reason people chat less is that there are so many other social channels they can use, while playing. Voice chat is one, but Facebook, MSN and Twitter count in too. That one can so easily alt/tab from the games makes it less needed to communicate in the game itself.

Another reason is that we don't really need to ask people about stuff anymore. Either the game (or an interface addon) provides pretty much all information you'll ever need to complete the quests and craft without getting stuck, or some easily available web site will do it. The good old "Where's Mankrik's wife?" question/joke from the Barrens in WoW never went into the expansions because everyone playing those know to use Wowhead or similar sites.

And what chatter is then left, happens in guild chat.

I spoke recently with old guidies that went back and tried older games we once played together and like we all know already they just aren't the same game as when we stopped playing years ago. Someone mentioned Vent? That's not the problem we had vent back in the early MMO days and chat was always active be it by giving pertinent information, flirting or jousting and what not.

Modern day game releases are anti-social for the fact that you can pretty much accomplish anything without anybody else's help. Your basically walked through quests with map makers. WTH why dont they just auto port you to your quest NPC? I remember searching for hours trying to find a random  time spawn NPC in some games.  I remember if you wanted to gain meaninful experience in PVE it required a group to be efficient at it. This is not to say you couldn't solo it was just a huge benifit to grouping.

Eventually we all had to rest so it gave us time to chatter. I remember being PL'd and sitting there talkiing with a friend barely paying attention to the guy that was leveling us both.  I would also like to point out that early MMO players were more adults and less kids. Now its kids and more kids. I can log into any modern MMO and not need anybody's help. It didn't used to be. Most of the people i met in games i met leveling. We helped each other level. Healers couldn't solo so we helped them and they lessened our downtimes so it was beneficial for us both to work together.

Regretfully now we are in the era of instant gratification games. Must have it all, must have it now and must have it as of yesterday. The number one lack of communication ie chat in games is because games are designed so that we don't need anybody and we definately don't need anybody thats out of a guild. I prefer to play games unguilded.

Games also used to pose a challenge intellectually sometimes. They used to require thought but no longer. So we don't ask about things we already have handed to us. Again modern game design is the reason people do not talk in MMO's much anymore.