The biggest problem with other players becoming just quickly replaceable members of your party is when kicking started being abused to get a slightly more performing player rather than removing someone abusing or annoying
Im sure you heard this before. You can make your own groups. Make your own friends. Make your own insert current members group name here. Make your own fun, that's what the kick em group is doing they enjoy kicking
@@fayvampire That's more a problem with the community being garbage than the kick function itself. That's why I loved to tank during vanilla and wow classic, I knew just how much power I had in the group decision making as a warrior tank and if the group decided to kick a player for stupid reasons, I could leave the group, form a new one and sometimes finish the dungeon before the other group.
People tend to be removed more for being nasty than for being useless. Good enough at the role tends to be good enough. If the main people are good enough, then woohoo, the group can have more fun. Being top damage isn't an excuse to be nasty. However, I am aware that I might just be playing with more decent people (as in being lucky).
I might be an introvert, but not even close to a hermit. While i enjoy the solitude of playing games by myself, it is also fun to cooperate with others. It is good to have the social aspect in the game, but not a constant requirement for clearing it.
I'm one of those weirdo solo players in MMOs who is sometimes told I should go play a single player game. And I do play those too. But what people forget is that there are systems and experiences you can only really find in a multiplayer game. A big thing for me is the marketplace economy of a game. I absolutely love crafting and lifeskilling or even just grinding mobs to get drops to trade and sell. Sure, some solo games allow the players to sell to NPC shops but it isn't the same as the supply and demand of a fluctuating marketplace. I also enjoy seeing the world alive with other players even if I'm not chatting. It simply feels good and helps with immersion.
Same here, I really enjoy the resource, crafting and economy sides of MMOs. I tried out Albion online last year or so. I didn't play it for long, but my favorite thing to do was to buy goods low at one marketplace and sell high at the other. I didn't make a lot of money, I'd have been better off just gathering raw materials, but the sense of discovering my own way of contributing my small part to the larger living adventurer economy was really cool. Knowing that the resources I brought over would get sold and used, while managing to make a profit at the same time by paying attention to the fluctuating prices, made me feel like I had accomplished something in the world. And it wasn't completely trivial, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of prices and profits, noting which wares were currently worth trading. Nobody told me this was a thing you could do, I just discovered it to be possible. To this day, Runescape is my favorite MMO for very similar reasons. I enjoy gathering resources and selling them, or buying raw materials and making a profit refining them. Finding friends in a game always makes it better of course, but in an MMO, playing solo doesn't necessarily mean playing alone. Even when I play solo, the presence of other people is very important for my enjoyment of the game.
It’s such a weird criticism. You aren’t going to attack someone for going out to dinner alone, or walking on their own in the park when everyone else is there with a group. Why are you going to do the same in a game? I don’t always like to play WITH people, but I like playing AROUND people. I’d argue that MMOs are the only genre that lets you play around other players without needing to team up, interact, or fight each other.
As someone who played a lot of the original Everquest, another big factor was downtime. You'd kill a monster then have to sit to meditate mana/health back for bloody ages. This is when everyone would start chatting in group or guild just to alleviate the boredom. Dark Age of Camelot had a bit less downtime and WoW much less, so you'd constantly be fighting and less chatting.
I can agree with that. The most social I've been on MMOs was when I was building my garrison in WoW or using an auto clicker in Runescape, when I would have several minutes of basically no interaction and yet despite knowing that I would prefer something with more interaction.
Yep. During downtime there was nothing to do but talk. Even with buffs like KEI and Flowing Thought items, there was tons of downtime, and that was right in line with The Vision.
Which I am so glad there isn't 10-30 mins of downtime between fights in MMOS anymore, games like that feel like they don't value the time you are giving to it. When I was a child in the early 2000's with nothing to do these features felt like they built a community but as I got older I realized they were just time sinks to keep you on game and keep their numbers up for investors.
I think this is a similar problem to "too many MMORPGs are ruining MMORPGs": too many people, too many possible options to socialize with -> don't know what to choose -> don't choose any. And as someone else said in another comment, you need repeated exposure to people to even want them as potential friends/play-buddies. Having so many people all over the place means you will never have a reason to bond: lose one, find another, and move on. That's also where elitism can come into play, since wanting someone highly skilled becomes a reason to want someone specific, as opposed to any average player, so there is a reason to form a bond in that case. With randoms, though...why even bother? Why invest in a relationship just to find out they won't be playing as intensly as you (could be more, could be less), or at the same hours as you? Waste of time, really. In short: play the way I want, when I want, or I'll find someone else who will. Ergo, I don't need you -> I'll go by myself.
It's also definitely a matter of time. As in, how much time people have to play. "Back in the day" people would easily play mmos for 6+ hours a day, maybe 10+ hours in the weekend. Nowadays a lot of those same people are adults, and at most might have around 4 hours to play. Often even 2 or less. With so much less time people don't want to deal with time wasters. Be that taking ages to find a group, or dealing with people that make mistakes and cause a party wipe. Hence why in WoW these days, for PUG raids, the gear they require you to have is often equal or higher than what you'd get from the raid you're going to do.
I for one am glad that mmos cater towards the solo player more, because I always end up playing them solo since I live in Australia and very few mmos have servers centered here in Oceania. So its much easier to get through content and join international friends in end-game content when I don't have to waste time looking for the few other players playing at the same time as me xD
When I started playing MMOs, I was a kid/teen and had tons of free time. When you can be present in the game for 6-8 hours every day, coordinating with other people isn't a problem. But now when I find time to play, I just can't afford to waste most of it by trying to find people to play with, so the evolution of MMO towards more solo play is what allows me (and many other players who have gotten more real life responsibilities over time) to continue playing the genre I enjoy.
My brother talks about missing the old MMO days and I tell him I don’t and remind him that he has two kids now does he really want to get 4-5 people together and spam chat LF1 tank for 40 minutes and then having to just suddenly drop because you gotta handle the kids? Not only is the only fun you got to chat to people but you screwed those people over because now they need to find a tank and healer and the tank is gonna go with the other group that just needs a tank. Life and the world has changed. Do I have great memories of playing social MMOs definitely. Do I lie to myself thinking I want that back like my brother? Definitely not. I have an hour maybe 2 if it is a game night I want to get on and have fun. Hell I don’t even do many traditional MMOs any more because if I want to play DPS I’m in queue for 20 minutes. Now I play Destiny 2 that just finds any other player and lets me kill some baddies. On the weekends when I have time I do a raid with my clan but without tank/healer getting a group is fast and painless.
@@Pixiwish ...what you're describing just sounds like it's time to pass the torch to the next generation, so they can have fun and create the same memories you have. But they can't, because games have changed. Teens and people without full irl lives have nothing now. There are casual mmos out there like guild wars 2 that adults with responsibilities and lives could play, but I guess that's just not good enough.
Another good thing about being able to actually play solo is the fact that people can level up solo, and prepare for a specific day when a whole group will be able to team up, take Warframe for example, everyone is able to upgrade it's own Warframe and its own weapons alone, this allows people to prepare for a bigger, for a boss battle, for a session through a more challenging map,
Saying the socialization moved is a massive difference though. If MMOs used to be a good place to find people to socialize with, but now you need to find those people elsewhere and can then play MMOs together and socialize elsewhere, MMOs are now no different from any other multiplayer game. And in general that's like, a massive difference with very far-reaching consequences, not a simple difference
You have a point. But, how do MMOs evolve past just being social? Bc like you said, I can socialize with people while playing the Witcher and it be just as much interaction as an MMO. I think they would have to focus on a reliance to your team or group. But even then, how does that differ from an mmo-lite like destiny.
@@ortiznikko I think the industry should take a look at survival games... They are much like MMOs, dedicated server maintaining that world alive, you can certainly solo play a survival game with no problem but it is really much better and easier with a group. That's why coop survival games are making a huge success, even more than the old pvp ones. I'm not saying it should be a gather resources and maintaining base kind of game (I don't want to be worried of losing something while offline) but look at how they work and how it allows people to solo and socialize in the same environment without compromising each type of player. It doesn't force social interactions and at the same time it doesn't isolate players.
Most MMOs just don't have the chat features on par with something like Discord. I'm a pretty slow typer, and it's simply faster and more efficient for me to talk to my guild in Discord or a party chat.
@@raulzilla I do like how survival games work like that. But, i think, you would have to keep the server size really small to make it have that same feel.
I think that nowadays there is a information and communication overflow in so many aspects of life. Social media kinda became a mandatory part of everyones life, but managing social media accounts, posting this picture or that picture and contacting 20-30 different people every day is exhausting. Why don't play a game and grind for an hour to shut your brain off. Wait, I need to look for people again? That random guy wants me to join a discord? There is so much social social interaction from 9-5 every day, why does it need to continue when I just want to relieve some stress?
I'm so glad to have been a teenager during the early days of online games. The "world" was much smaller and everyone knew each other back then. I remember spending hours just chatting and laughing with my guildmates, learning about their lives, where they lived in the world, and thinking those days would never end. I still remember the names of many of my guildmates from 15-20 years ago, but don't really remember any of my guildmates from BDO, Destiny 2 or any recent games I've played :\
@John Philip When you're a kid/teen, you're just more receptive to making new friends in general. Your brain is basically empty of relationships, and you have a lot more free time to fill. Older you get, you have less cognitive space & leisure time. So if someone - or some activity - is going to gain a precious spot, then they have to earn it, essentially.
Agreed. Tho recently I've moved all my gaming time to VR and it feels very reminiscent of how it was back in the days, communities are small, everyone is exploring the newness of it all and the games are far more about the social aspect of the game than amazing graphics/min maxing. The gaming landscape is just changing and while I think it's in a bit of a slump at the moment, with VR video games will likely get much more social in the coming years.
True!!! OMG I remember back when I played Lunia and I was in that awesome guild with our own forum. And there were hard hitting real life posts there. Those friendships were deep! Actual conversations. It was so awesome. I get it. These days it can be just like that, yes. But back then you were FORCED to group up and that made it easy for the awkward, shy, introverted players. These days I feel so lost inmost MMOs.
There is one design shift I noticed that does hurt social interaction. Combat has gotten much faster and more involved while time between combat has shrunk. I really noticed this when I started playing FFXI. In XIV and WoW, the longest you go without pressing a button in normal combat is 2.5 seconds. There’s no time to chat in a fight, and there’s no reason to stop between pulls beyond rezes and mana. Eureka in XIV felt particularly bad because of this (the chain system meant you were punished for stopping). Compare that to XI where combat is so much slower. There’s no filler button or combo to spam, auto attacks are the filler. You’re weapon skills take time to build up and your abilities all have cooldowns. You don’t need to reposition anywhere near as much. And after some combat, if you don’t have an MP regen effect, you’ll need to take a bit of a break to restore it. It also helps that not everything has sight aggro when reaching the first expansion (seriously, the amount of aggro enemies in XIV and WoW expansions is ridiculous). In XIV and WoW, I talk in between doing stuff. In XI, I talked while doing stuff.
I noticed the same thing, we used to chat furiously didn't matter if it was grinding mobs for XP or raiding back in 99-'02 during EQ's heyday, everyone would plant themselves in a spot and you wouldn't have to budge your character for the half hour it'd take to burn a boss down or several hours of mob grinding, just occasionally hit a cooldown or heal and chat like it was an AOL chatroom. These days when I hear someone complain about the lack of chatting during a dungeon run I'm like, "When do you have time to type anything?", these days there's no down time, it's run from point to point at full speed, using a array of abilities with quick cds to burn the trash along the way, kill the boss, loot the chest, rinse and repeat. The only real chance at chat is after killing the final boss before everyone hits the exit button.
@@MrNhlam123 That's great for when you are already part of a guild or some sort of group that does activities together. But, for the vast majority of any given playerbase, simple text chat will be the main source of communication with your fellow players.
@@khankhomrad8855 So, what you're saying in essence is: People: "Communication is made difficult". Also people: "I don't want to use the facilitating tools to communicate".
I really dislike using voice chat options. I fundamentally disliked/still dislike using Skype, TeamSpeak, Discord, etc. Its very hard for me as an mmo player who primarily uses in-game chat to truly engage in the social aspect of these games, as less and less people are using in-game chat now days. You join a guild? Sometimes they even REQUIRE you to have discord. I hate it.
Wouldn't it be more beneficial to use voice chat at times that require it? People use voice chat because it's easier to communicate than the in-game chat. not that there's anything wrong with using the in-game chat, but it takes time to type, that's why people prefer voice communication: the ease of just saying words and not having to type is already a blessing within itself. I still communicate with people using the in-game chat and have fun, but I prefer to use voice communication because it's easier to communicate with people. I love to roleplay and people prefer to use in the in-game chat for roleplaying because that's just how it is. Another thing is that it is easier to organize events and times on these external programs. Discord is exceptional at using its chatroom functions for organizing raids, dungeons, etc; It helps keep people online outside of the game. (of course there are downsides to this, but there are other downsides to solely using in-game chat.) Sure, a game might have a pin board for organizing times, but not everyone goes to check it. sometimes people miss the announcement that there's a new guild raid on Sunday, whereas using discord, you can easily ping everyone and the ping is there for the rest of time until checked, or they turned off pings for everything, which is quite unreasonable since they'll need at least the pings for guild announcements. Again, I am not saying it's wrong to solely use the in-game chat, but wouldn't it be more beneficial to use discord?
@@luckneh5330 because in-game chat is more immersive. with in-game chat, you can imagine any voice when talking to someone while reading a text chat. while hearing other people's voice ruin the immersion. imagine this, you are talking with a female elf character but you hear their voice they are middle age neckbeard.
@@luckneh5330 Some people don't like talking too much or might be afraid their spoken English is bad. Reading English as a 2nd language is pretty simple, but speaking and listening is another thing entirely. Especially if you couple it with a person who just doesn't like talking in the first place.
Discord is not _fundamentally_ a voice chat platform. In fact I haven't used voice chat in almost any of the rooms I've joined, and even if a clan wants you to use it, it's enough for you to be there and listen in as long as it's not your job to shotcall. Mostly it's just a chatroom with a lot of knobs and levers for the server controllers.
@@Hotshot2k4 If you are not using the voice portion of it, what advantage it has over in-game guild chat? Maybe the ability to ping people? Or read backlogs if necessary? For just chatting in-game chat would actually be better then imo because you don't need to either use your phone or constantly alt+tab between the game and the discord chat.
Exactly, I rather just chill with my "guild" in FF than trying to gather strangers in a group, it's a very enjoyable experiance just chatting with the people you want to while waiting on the groupfinder do its job, and should it take too long for it to find strangers, there's allways someone ready to help in my guild. After work I may not want to talk to anyone, so forcing me to do so to enjoy a game I play to relax is pretty bad imo.
@@ItsBoyRed im sort of on the fence tbh, im a massive fan of Classic WoW so I like that the older games do promote a sort of comradery amongst your server mates that MMO's are lacking now days, it was nice redoing raids with people and names I recognised, seeing the new gear they got since the last time I saw them, I think it definitely adds to the experience.
There's also the event of playing with randoms who might suck ass. So, would you rather be just stuck there with terrible players or with friends you know are at least competent? I don't even play mmos so I mean this for online games in general
@@ItsBoyRed yeah true, but usually that person would have garnered a reputation for being a useless fucker on the server, from people grouping up with them before.. thats the good thing about a constant server is people actually build a reputation and arent protected by the "Dungeon Finder" systems we see today 😂 if someone sucks, or has sucked in the past then there's probably someone there that will warn you about that guy haha.
@@Sabersquirl While I see your point... I've grown up making friends IN MMO's and now joining a discord server to make friends, to THEN play the game is so foreign and scary to me that I just can't do it... I guess when you play and chat there's a lot less emphasis on chat and you can get to know someone through the shared experience which works well for me, while sole chatting does not
@@knightmer3645 exactly.. my social anxiety doesn’t allow me to just “join a discord server and join a call” before this happened much more naturally in mmos you’d find someone and you’d just have a nice chat and have fun.. now it’s so “you gotta work for it yourself on purpose” kind of thing.. wich frankly as an introvert doesn’t work.. especially when you tend to not like actually introducing yourself.. in an mmo you can be anyone or anything where as in that discord server that’s just not the case..
@@SiisKolkytEuroo True, but it's definitely not like it used to be. I remember people standing near the fountain in Varrock to show off their fashion scape and chat or how house parties weren't about the portals or the gilded altars, but the whole purpose of it was to socialise.
@@biikuajet Disagree with that heavily. It's the same situation, where people are just as social and possibly even MORE social, but it's in different places. Online, it's much easier to talk to others, but if you're a solo gamer you might forego lengthy conversations in an MMO for the sake of making more personal progress, and then go to places like Twitter later to have that socialization in whatever dose you feel you need.
I complain about MMOs being less social these days but none of this "I want to sit around and chat with people all day" stuff. I'm talking about the fact that older MMOs required more strategy and communication to progress in. I find myself enjoying games like CSGO and League of Legends more than most MMOs now and not because I like the gameplay but because it actually feels like a team effort with ongoing collaboration and strategy. Anytime I run WoW dungeons now it's a purely mechanical process. You just execute the mechanics and leave without saying a word. Anyone who actually says like "hey, should we try this?" is immediately flamed for "not knowing the fights", etc.
That's information era issue more often than not. There's no sense of discovery anymore. Infact if you "dare" to discover the mechanics yourself, prepare the lube because you are going to get flamed for not following "the guide". Now there's only the META chase. It happened to old MMOs as well. I recently downloaded Lineage 2, quite an old game. I downloaded a private server of it for an older expansion, the one I used to play back in the day. Well ... the game plays differently now. Apparently with higher rates people have figured out a meta that just makes the game disgusting. You either meta slave or you lose 9/10 times.
@@xtremescript I play off meta in LoL these days because it is fun. I get frequently flamed. I get what you mean. I'm from the old school era of mmo players as well.
This. Collaboration means nothing if there isn't something to overcome by its merit. If the teamplay isn't fun because the odds are stacked against us, then why am I even online?
The reason I stopped socializing in MMO's is because the chat was 99% toxic. If every time you log in and try to chat with random players, and just get called horrible things, you just stop talking. When you play a game, and you watch chat fill up with toxic nonsense, you stop reading chat. So, ultimately, MMO's social interactions died because people stopped having fun talking/reading in chat. When this happens, people stop finding new people to play with and either leave the game, or try to solo the game. It's what happened to me. I became a solo player, I didnt start out as one. Trying to be a non-solo player now, is incredibly uncomfortable. There is a lack of trust that has been built up over the years, and those walls are not coming down easily.
Same here. There's a lot of political, anti-American, vitriolic, hostile, uninformed nonsense. (Kind of like everything online now.) I miss when people just enjoyed the novelty of being able to talk to anyone, anywhere. For a short period of time, online was a nice little niche for the introverts among us. Just a tiny window where everything was great. Miss those days...
Same, especially in gw2. And there's no point in arguing with toxic players, because you're just wasting time and energy, which could be managed better. I laugh at those SJWs who get so fired up about someone being toxic, and fight fire with fire. Or the main reason why I don't get on discord for raids in WvW is because it's usually filled with sexist pigs and racist fucks who are horny over that one girl in the party or make so many toxic remarks about literally everything. It's not a fun environment and it's much better to just listen to music and do your thing. The fact is that the gaming community as a whole is very diverse and amongst us there are a lot of toxic players who don't wanna admit they're being toxic and pretend they're just having fun at the expense of others.
@@viscousgoo2021 My days in older mmorpgs like Perfect World, Lucent Heart, Terra and probably any other older mmorpg out there (since i played them all) were so much more peaceful and meaningful because there were MODs or Admins moderating chats sometimes and people weren't as toxic because they feared the ban. Nowadays in Gw2 i haven't seen a single GM in 5 years and Guild Leaders are usually toxic themselves as well.
"those walls are not coming down easily." OH BOY, do I understand that. I have various walls built up for... reasons. And most people I run into in games makes me glad I've built them. Especially back when I played Call of Duty, let me tell you most of my walls were built because of the Call of Duty community.
And it all fits in with what he said that players have become numbers and replacable. They treat you as toxic because they know that they don't need you or your help and most likely will never even see you with all the merged realms, sharding, instancing, and all that bullshit that are in modern MMOs
Might I make this suggestion as an additive statement? Modern MMO communities are garbage and that's driving people to avoid socializing internally. The number of times I have met absolutely horrific human beings in MMOs(and games in general) has exponentially increased over the years admittedly partially because of those no accountability solo player systems that were put in. People not only are mean and rude in increasing amounts but go out of their way to waste people's time and even hurt their progression in a variety of ways. I wont say that kind of behavior didn't exist before because it most certainly did and I experienced it in games like EverQuest even but the community was able to deal with it because of the social aspect. It appears to be far more common nowadays since you're essentially anonymous in dungeon finders and megaservers much like social media where you have the same kind of behavior occurring with troll accounts and the like and there is no punishment source for deterring that kind of malicious behavior because it's not outright hurtful like homophobic or racial slurs so you can't report it. The video I mostly agree with, I just think that bit is something else to note.
Were as making friends used to be somewhat necessary to really grow and gain certain achievements in most MMO games all you need now is your wallet or a lot of time spent in front of your PC so people are quicker to be assholes. Plus society itself is becoming darker and more mentally fucked year after year so it only makes sense that our virtual worlds would begin to reflect that darkness.
Honestly.... I've met shitty people since 2004. It hasn't gotten any better. Being able to anonymously speak whatever you want isn't something a human can handle mentally when taken advantage of. It's simple as that.
Interestingly enough I found WoW to be more "social" on retro servers than on Retail Idk why but retail mentality is just so devoid of social interaction in lieu of "go next raid fastfastfast"
have you played classic? like peps want full world buffs for this boss a couple of friends just duoed like lmao. The community is pretty much the same in both games.
I think having social "classes" and social skills would go a long way towards building a social scene. Star Wars Galaxies had a plethora of instruments, each of which provided different buffs to listeners. This created player bands, with dancers and pyrotechnics, but it also got people to cluster up and interact. The bars were packed, roleplayers and guilds bragged about their bands.
Doctors healin in the hospitals, Dancer and musicians in the Cantina's. Travelling to well-known player towns with well-known player vendors to buy your favourite composite armour. I miss Galaxies :(
@@ShadyLurker16 Yeah, my favourite MMO community (provided you stayed out of the BH/Jedi forums, anyway). Even the "well, Ahazi still isn't up, let's allt make a fat white wookiee band on some other server to pass the time". I did most of my lot trading with fat white wookiees.
@@ShadyLurker16 Honestly? That's what I think other MMO's needed to steal from Galaxies. I made a Doctor/Dancer so I could fix all the ill's of people and enjoyed that game the most in two situations. 1. When I would have someone come in to be healed and I would ask them how they got the damage while the healing went on. I'd end up with a cluster of people talking, most already fully healed, virtually every time. 2. The rare times I made a house call. A character with no combat capacity being hauled into a deadly place to fix damage that would otherwise strand someone out there. A REAL escort quest, complete with coordination by the people who hunted me down because one of them had chatted with me the week before. A once in a life time experience of a group tanking a de-facto raid boss while I fixed damage on the other group in the battle area itself despite not being a part of their group, guild or anything. When they raped that game to make a wow clone, I was done and sad to see it happen.
@@Sorain1 YES!!! I remember escorting someone to their mining equipment because they were pure crafters. It was one of the most memorable experiences ever, and it was so natural.
@@BoogerLeader Potentially Ashes of Creation will have a bit of that, though in that case your escort target will likely be a little less useless in combat then I was at the time. (I had decent armor just because I knew I might need to do a field medic call, but still.)
@@longleaf0 For some people, interacting with others actively makes an experience worse. The stress, observing of unwritten social rules, time and scheduling commitments that clash with their real lives, and more, make that side of MMOs a nightmare. Some people just like playing in a world populated with other people, perhaps interacting by putting their goods up for sale in the auction house, or contributing to their NPC kingdom's influence over an area by clearing out monsters, solo... and while these players might as well play single player games, single player games rarely get updated content, new classes, new monsters, new quests, etc, released on a monthly-quarterly rate... often just getting bug fixes past the release. MMOs let you build one character for years, and explore an expanding world... whether one wants to do this in a group or solo has entirely different motivations and impacts on the player. So, some people may love being around others, while others enjoy being on their own... (some may know these distinctions as extroversion vs introversion, and neither is good or bad, just different - however, most of this world is built around extroversion, such as getting jobs and junk... leaving introverts, who generally like gaming, also not finding fun when forced to group even in their recreational time.)
@@longleaf0 I would love playing with others but finding the right person to play with is the most difficult task on this planet and I never found anyone in the past 2 decades. Every time I tried to team up with someone was one hell of a stressful experience which I wont put myself through anymore.
Idk I think he meant that people don't use ingame chat as much since they can talk with their party through voice chat or groupchat which means quieter games
Why did you put "communities" in quotes? They are communities. You can join one and make friends. It's in many ways better than the simple chat boxes that exist in game.
A lot of us played in a guild back in the days. We raided so much. Eventually you have no more motivation to do that 3-4x a week. After so many years I play it only solo without a guild.
The most social i've ever felt in a mmo was in a small community mmo or ones without global chat/whispering. To talk to people you had to be be near them. It was great, you actually made friends, traveled together, visited etc.
Because they different Social interactions. The the old Social interaction on MMO's are interpersonal you got to know the people your with Talk Traded and played with them all the time. The social interactions of TH-cam, Twitch and Reddit are parasocial for the most part although the community gets a personality it personality bases of crowd involvement and that stuff is great it was makes sports events so fun. Discord can be a little interpersonal Discord is the closest to what MMO's use to be in that your just hanging out and talking but it is not running a shop and talking with friends or being out in the world and getting a friend call to meet up. Discord is similar but it just a chat box.
There isn't really any point to talking to other players even through discord because the content is single player and I can I always look up a guide rather than ask strangers. For group quests there is always group finder.
I've moved pretty much entirely to solo play in MMOs now. The thing is that the gameplay aspect of MMOs are fun. The provide a progression system, and combat mechanics that you don't really get anywhere else. So it's fair to say why play an online game if you don't want to talk to anybody, but also remember that there isn't exactly an offline version of WoW you can play. I think there is a pretty easy balance to strike. Endgame hardcore content should require this type of communication, and the open world questing or crafting does not. I think your last video on guides is worth mentioning too since that plays a huge part. If you wanted to know where to get a certain item, how to beat an encounter, or the best way to build your character you had to go find someone who knew and ask them. Nowadays people get upset at you for wasting their time when you can google all the answers yourself. Even end game raids can be completed with no planning or talking because you already know your job and exactly what you need to do before you've ever even seen the fight. We don't need to talk about how we're going to manage aggro or how we can manipulate the fight to increase our damage. No, you're the tank, this is what all tanks everywhere will do just do it.
The reason meta is there is because players don't want to do the whole struggle against the boss every single time. Your build can be massively shitty and do like 0 dps. This waste everyone's time. If you want to do a dungeon without players that just want to do the dungeon smoothly, just make a everyone welcomed lfg.
@@iamwritingrightnow8217 I don't see what is wrong with that. If You are not pulling your weight, theb You shouldn't join a serious group. Imagine you are doing a project in school. One person does little work. That workload is placed on someone else. Luckily, if you want to play your shitty solo build, mmorpgs has a field for that. Open world lets you play without judgement.
I don´t know abput others but i when i say "MMO's have become less social i mean less that players don´t talk as much with one another but how they do it. Mostly it is just a cesspool of flaming and dickmeasuraing. A player isn´t a person anymore but rather just a number. That is the sad part about it.
I agree, I've personally moved to playing my mmos solo or with friends I know in real life because one misstep in a raid or instance and you just get trashed on. No helpful comments or coaching to help the raid be successful, just rage, flaming and kicks.
@@kyleorigliosso2276 This isn't nearly always the case. This is mostly in the hardcore raiding guilds imo. (at least in WoW) In the casual raiding guilds I've been in tons of mistakes were made time and time again, and the "offending" players would patiently be guided. Up to the point where even I started thinking "ugh, just remove this guy already! He never pays attention to tactics, never walks out of bad stuff on the ground, and just tunnel-visions on doing damage!" Now in hardcore raiding guilds. My younger brother has been in those. In those it's usually "You made this mistake twice now! You've been able to read the tactics and still make stupid mistakes! You're kicked from today's raid!"
"Oh look at my high-tier raid gear! If you would have grinded the same amount as me, you wouldn't have a hard time beating this boss!" - Yeah, sorry not sorry. I was busy having fun people from my guild, decorating someone's house, or helping other's with crafting the gear they requested.
When I first started playing MMOs, I was super social and had a blast. As I got older, I started being more personal and I made my social circle smaller. The same thing happens to a lot of people in games. It's more like the same reasons that "MMOs aren't the same as they used to be", when in actuality the social systems are still there. Most people have changed, and so have their lives. On the other hand, I refuse to ignore MMOs just because I'm not super social. I play for the mechanics, the content, and sure enough the players. I like the idea of others playing and the OPTION to play with them. I chat now and again but I like playing the game first and foremost.
Changing systems to attract solo players can also drive away the more social players. Game companies take that trade because there's more solo players these days. However, solo players will exhaust the game's content and then move on, because the game itself is the only thing keeping them there. Social players will exhaust the content, but in many cases stick around and continue to socialize. Focusing on solo players means keeping up a grueling pace of content release, or else you lose them. I feel that's why people sticking around in older games that haven't had any new content tend to be more social, because it was never about the content for them. Solo focused games look great for short term numbers, but social games have longevity and a loyal playerbase. It's a case of $1000 now or $2000 spread out over the next month. Execs choose the immediate reward every time.
Yeah even Wow has felt the bite of this... It's still riding the hype from it's heyday where it was more of a balanced experiance, but has been dying a slow death ever sense, a death that has only accelerated in recent years.
true I was playing on the shatar wow server. and it was fun because I was part in a RP guild that 2009 was invited to our server RP council (where the bigger active RP guilds meet to decide the servers cannon like what guild owned what how ingame big any guild was) we had guilds whit 1000 active players but lore wise it was 50 peaple and one shop in stormwind. another guild had 200 active member lore wise we had about 2500ish member and ran a mid sized military base somewhere. and it was fun because when the latest content was dried up by our servers PVE elite player guilds they left untill the next thing came up and that was a few weeks/month where none of there member would log in at all the same as on the PVE and PVP servers. RP player we whent into over drive maybe some of the RP guild also would finish up the content right as the next content would release didn´t really care RP was on the agenda whit PVP and PVE been secondary.
I can't talk for others, but i'm now 32 and i just want to play by myself or if i absolutely have to group with someone, i just do it because it's mandatory, and only do the polite stuff like saying hello and goodbye. I used to be social when i was playing WoW back in high school and University, but since i started working and have a lot less time for myself, i just want to spend it however i like, play at my own pace and not have to deal with others. I played WoW for about 2 months before and after Shadowlands launched, now i'm mostly playing RDR2 Online and ESO, and i do that almost entirely solo.
@@remondx8880 If you get ESO+ (the subscription) it's a blast, you can enjoy it for a few months for sure, that is if you like questing and professions and treasure hunting and stuff like that :D It has SO much content, it's a bit insane! It can take you 20+ hours to do all the quests, solo dungeons, rares and exploration stuff in any zone, and there are over 30 such zones :o
They've become less social as they've become more competitive, imo. When the objective takes priority, people don't interact unless they're required to in order to succeed and even then it becomes entirely about "what do you bring to the table?". It started with clearing content, allowing people to stand out but wielding gear no one else had. Then the race to world first became something to lord over people who DID wield the same gear as you. People who initially come together through impersonal systems like guild applications, parse logs and raid achievements become friends seemingly by accident over time. It's great when it works, but those friendships can also fall apart via the same systems when people find they're no longer accomplishing objectives in one group over another. Your "friends" become your online coworkers/ex-coworkers and little else.
Exactly. It‘be seen the same in Adventurer’s League DnD. Interchangeable objective-focused and resource motivated players are … well honestly, they’re pretty close to mercenaries. Ironically, that might be a more realistic take on fantasy adventurer as opposed to a tight-night party.
I actually like the way it is now. I dont like to be in the game at certain time and i dont like to force myself to be good. I mean this is a freaking game not a job. I already have many things to improve myself, i really need to relax. If game also become a job, when am i gonna relax?
I think there has to be a middle ground. I had friends who were big into WoW back in the day, and they would be playing at work or during club events, because that's when the guild said to show up. Meanwhile, my late husband played Star Trek Online, Old Republic, EVE, etc, but always strictly solo, mainly because he didn't want to be harassed about his progress/pacing. Best - only - MMO experience I ever had was Marvel: Avengers Alliance, basically a single-player game with server-wide chat and some asynchronous boss raids towards the end. You could play when/as you wanted, and that incentivized social behavior rather than requiring it. IMO that's the best approach - carrot, not stick.
Well thats the whole point of mmorpg especially the early mmorpgs like everquest and wow, you had lazy players which often ended on lvl 20, casual players which hit 60 but had average gear, and sickos which raided 4 times a week and had everything best (reffered as an best guild/clan on the server). You had all the classes of society and people were satisfied, just like in real life. Nowdays everyone wants max lvl and epic gear without investing 2hrs a day, during the early days of vanilla hiting max lvl was an achivment, you cannot drive a lambo or ferrari without working your ass out, and thats the whole point of mmorpg having living breeding world were everyone has their role.
@@denirebic5769 In that sense, I think there's been too much mirroring of real world stratification in online games. The players with lots of IRL money (or credit), and/or loads of free time, or who straight-up cheat, create an elite tier, and then pat themselves on the back for working hard. But the other players aren't less "dedicated" to the game, they likely just have other constraints. I play games to get away from all that socioeconomic class-strata BS in the real world. Which is why I mainly play Nintendo and avoid MMOs altogether, no matter how sweet-looking :sigh:
I mean solooing world/raid bosses feel amazing, even if it takes 15 min instead of 2mind (for example) with a group the fact that you alone with your dedication, skill and tactics was able to take down a boss dsigned for groups is a rewarding and fulfilling deed.
ive been playing mmos since runescape was released. And even games that were made purely for social such as furcadia, habbo hotel, etc.. but it turns out i'm just as shy online as i am in person. so 20 years later i still haven't made a friend lol.
The perfect game for me makes all content available to solo players but makes room for benefits if you team up with people. I hate having my experience depend on the chances of finding the right people at the right time
And hard enough that you only need three people at maximum. In TBC I could not do some group quests because despite being social it is hard to get 4 more people asking for help. But needing only half of them is doable.
MMORPG's didn't become less social, we did. I remember early-mid 2000's playing WoW and guild wars and LOTRO and those things, it was just how people were.
I think its both. As someone who was never social, when I first played wow It forced me into socializing for raiding, and dungeons. If I wanted to do that kind of content I had to talk to people or reach out in chats. If dungeons went bad. Most people would communicate with each other to figure out the problem cause dropping out and finding another group was usually too much more work no one really felt like doing right after just doing it. I didnt wanna keep tryna convince strangers to let me join groups repeatedly so i eventually joined guilds and had semi social relationships with people in them. Now a days you can queue for stuff so you dont even have to join guilds or look through chats. If a dungeon is running bad then you can just drop out and queue for another no problem. Its true that people are far more isolated then in the past due to not having to leave but, mmos have also become more isolated as well.
I think there's definitely a generational change. I play ESO and most of the (few) 30+ people I raid with have normal social skills, at the very least they say hello and goodbye if they don't feel like chatting. But when I'm grouping with someone with an anime pfp, there's a 50/50 they won't utter a single word during the entire raid. And when using the activity finder, a lot of people can't even be bothered to type hello or tyfg. To me it's creepy that after smoothly completing group content and people are exchanging tyfgs you just leave. And I'm the 'toxic' endgame player with top-5% parses in the world, so I'm not getting carried in any of this face roll content. I just add those people to my ignore list if they're going to behave like NPCs.
I remember being so social when I was a kid playing some mmorpg. Didn’t know about toxic people then. I stopped being social after the many toxic people I met running dungeons/instances.
IMO, MMORPGs were supposed to remain a niche genre. Something like PnP RPGs are today. You know how everybody says people were more neighborly back in the day? That's cause those people sometimes needed each other. Sometimes you needed a cup of sugar, a couple of eggs, help getting a couch up the stairs, whatever the case may be. Those little challenges helped build comradery. Something similar happened with old school MMOs. Having to work together builds bonds in people. Since the games have been made less social, those bonds don't form quite as naturally. Sure, you can seek them out, but it's not the same. Now what I'm talking about isn't something that appeals to all players, hence my earlier statement. This is a genre that simply wasn't made to be mass market without compromising what are, IMO, it's most appealing aspects.
I guess I am a gaming anti-social type of guy. Sometimes I have played on line things with friends or groups - but mostly I want to game when I have time, not adjust to link up with others, and not have a dozen or more other people doing the same quest or using the same crafting station I want to do. I don't really play any MMOs these days except rarely dropping into Fallout 76 - where I go out of my way to avoid other players. (Well, I do drop stuff I don't need anymore in front of newbies when I run across them - but I never stick around to take them under my wing or such. Kinda stinks because the final end game and some of the daily event things require a group and I don't do groups)
I never thought that "single player MMOs" would be a thing. Groups feel like you're playing with a bunch of bots or NPCs. Nobody say a thing. I'd rather play GTA than a mmo these days.
one thing that made mmos less social for me is phasing technology. the servers ability to pull in players from different servers at any time to make your current world seem more populated if it was on the downfall.
This, absolutely this. Phasing removed so much of the communication for me as anytime i met someone i thought was cool, they were on another server and we would rarely see one another. Or if we were on thr same server, theres the chance we wouldnt be in the same PHASE on the same server even if at the same place / time. You had to know they were on to join them to be in the same phase to see them.
I actually mentioned this in another one of these videos. The fact that you get phased out woth other people from other servers, or players are tossed around in to Shards/Sub-Servers makes it very hard to know when you'll encounter the same player consistently. It really doesn't do much good for the social aspects if you know that the players you meet are likely to be never seen again.
Aren't there such things as mega servers nowadays? Why can't developers make 1 massive server for 100k people or whatever the amount is in each region? Why not have variable server caps. I don't understand how this hasn't become a staple in mmo development. Server death/merges kills games.
@@alainsauve5903 Absolutely they could - they just don't prioritize it. I remember that has been asked for in WoW for nearly a decade now. Blizzard's best _excuse_ given is that then there'd be name conflicts and players might lose their desired name. Within seconds, people chimed back with the most obvious answer - give us surnames... like so many other MMOs do already... still waiting for them to care...
It is right. Game servers are now very poorly capable of hosting many players. For example, games like GTA SA could hit 100 players or more in a single server, while GTA V barely reaches 25 (and hopefully it doesn't disconnect for unknown reasons).
Today they are OPTIONALLY social. There is plenty of social interaction in today's MMOs. But, because they are optionally social, a wider scope of people have the chance to play... 🤷♀️
And very few of them are social. Which leaves the whole game to a bunch of edge lords in the back of a tavern who won’t talk to anyone. It ruins the entire purpose of the game.
Your description of a solo player who wants to be a part of the shared world without needing to interact with others fits me perfectly. Hell even in the real world I enjoy being around other people just as much as I enjoy being alone, but I just don’t have that need to be social with the people I’m with.
Melding the solo and group has been bad. It's been what's happening ever since the decline of the MMO. They are trying to appeal to the broad audience while pleasing nobody. The solo player can't play alone and the group player can't be social. We have a solo rpg followed by people sitting around in 1 town while 99% of the world is uninhabited doing content with strangers, there's something wrong with this picture. Liking it is the same as liking fast travel. Going from your town and preparing to set out from land sea and air to another zone, meeting people along the way, and forming a group to do content with was the soul of the MMO. And back then we did have solos too, there was the solo-classes who could lone-wolf out in the world at a slower pace, they got to be the badass they want to be. Now nobody is special.
While I understand and agree with your thesis, I think bringing fast travel into it was a bit of a wobble. Fast travel became a necessity because great level/zone designers (like John Capozzi) are few and far between and are often kept on short leashes. So many of the zones you get in MMOs are either copy-pasta BS or wildly out of sync with player behavior. In the old days, people clustered around the handful of great zones (The Kunark Express, Fungus Grove, etc) and cut the travel requirement out completely. Imagine not having fast travel and spending an entire play session just getting to a zone only to find the zone is poorly designed (or, in more common parlance, it sucks). You wouldn't feel very good about having to spend another play session to get back or to get to a zone you know is good. Fast travel isn't evil or if it is, it's a necessary one.
@@hanataba1291 So true. You either had to progress at a far slower rate or multibox (and thus, pay more). Hell, for better or worse, those "you must play together" games were what led to the multibox trend.
@@delunk5906 Really? Are we talking the nebulous "accounts created" or people playing every day religiously? I recall a time when the bigger games had 30+ servers, all full to bursting and games having to launch 2-5 new servers every year just to keep up with demand. I don't see that now. This is with people playing daily for hours. Today, I see people (myself included) playing multiple games a few hours a week. I don't see that as an improvement.
Guilds and Raiding are very exclusive by nature and quite anti-social for the majority of players on a server. It's also harder to socialize when adventuring when the pace is so fast, whether due to action combat or little to no downtime.
Thanks for the video, the is an interesting opinion. I think there is more to it though than just "Social aspects have moved off onto things like Discord". The thing is that you can take any single-player game and find a community/Discord online around that too. So what is the point of playing an MMORPG with people who feel like anyone is replaceable and therefore tend to be absolutely toxic jerks to each other because there is no reputation to keep? In my example, I've been a WoW fan for years but the most recent expansions were just missing something. I stopped playing BFA after a week and Shadowlands I got bored of it within 3 weeks due to a complete lack of real social interaction and just constant grouping with strangers. I thought it was just me but WoW Classic brought back everything I loved. The server Discord has taken over the forum posts but reputation still matters, I still get to see and fight the same people and just overall there is an awesome community experience. I got hooked again. External communication options don't really matter. I'd rather just play a single-player game and find a community for that than play a toxic MMO where people either don't talk or are nasty all the time. Especially if said MMO has a monthly sub.
Who wants to pay money & (precious) time to have abuse heaped on them? A lot of folks who are vulnerable to harassment also tend to shy away from group play in the newer communities - the lack of reputation allows toxic behavior to fester.
You always have a great perspective on these aspects. Ever since I found your videos I have been trying to remold my playstyle towards enjoyment of gaming rather than efficiency(to an extent). It's been very helpful and even improved my skill in a way. Still very hard to resist the temptation of optimal progression but definitely have a different outlook on it now.
As late as 2018, there was still pull to join a guild , so you could do content in game for groups. But most conversations in the guilds took place on sites like Discord, PS app, Facebook, ect. Fast forward to 2021, I'm seeing guilds that have x amount of players, but No interaction even on the Discord. So No point joining guilds anymore in most MMOs. Its saddens me to see this because the best of times for me was playing with people in my guilds.
I remember the day the dungeon finder came out in WoW. I had a big friends list full of people I often played with, people I had known for a long or short time, who I knew were reliable people to do dungeons with. Within the matter of days, that list became useless. Even if I contacted people on that list, nobody would be interested in grouping up, because the dungeon finder tool was just more convenient. It only took about a month until the only people I still talked to were the ones I already raided with. MMOs started dying to me on that day, I still played one more patch, but it couldn't keep me interested anymore and I basically dropped MMOs entirely after that.
I'm totally a solo player. But I love being in a world that is full of other players interacting together. About a month or so ago I was running through Bree on the Brandywine server in Lotro and came across The Whute Owl Band having a concert - a band of hobbits just out there having a blast putting on a show. It's awesome 👌
The only mmo I have played is eso as a long time elder scrolls fan. I pretty much ignore everyone and play it like a single player game but sometimes I goof around with others and had some fun interactions and also some fun dungeon runs. I like to be able to play solo and than if I want have some fun with others but I like how eso is balanced towards both sides
I actually loved the group finder in WOW. I HATED to spend time looking for a group (probably due to me playing DPS and that there where like 1 million of us compared to 1 healer/tank) So the group finder was a button i could press, do what ever until i could join the raid/dungeon what ever and have fun. But even back in Planetside 1 most of the communications between us players where on the forums. Either main server forums on the Sony site OR the guild/ fan made server forums that where made. I made loads of friends there that i play with to this day. When ever anyone complains about how MMO games are less social i figure that they probably are cherry coating it. And for what ever reason do not either use the tools official or not OR have this weird idea of how things where better back in the day. it was not better it was worse. TS, DISC, Forums. There are sites dedicated to finding players to you can join that fit not only your play style but what ever stage of life you are in. Or just press "enter" and start typing in a main hub. It still works.
"Everquest is often referred to as the worlds prettiest chat room." As an EQ player back when it released through to about 2006 and then an additional 5 years in the progression servers...I've never once heard this. I mean...I get it and don't necessarily disagree with it. But I've never once heard it.
Point is you spent a lot of time in EQ resting and waiting which gave time to chat between players. The game was slow yet still needed everyone to play together to make progress. Modern MMOs are all silent solo go go go, no time to chat except to troll the newb.
I really, REALLY wish you would put just a tiny white text in the corner of the screen, barely noticeable, on your rants, that said the name of the game being played, so I'd be able to look up the ones that seem interesting!
why does remaining hubs of socializing necessitate forcing solo players to fall into rank and and file? our current situation allows solo players to play a single player game in most mmos, and it doubles down on that alienation. Even if someone who comes into a game solo wants to reach out to others it's hard due to needing to learn whole cultures that are about other things. for instance your discord is a hub built around you as an idea, this is a parallel place to say, guildwars 2 but it's not a hub built around guildwars 2, so the culture will certainly have a large amount of cultural baggage that isn't strictly relevant. Your claim is i as the new person should either be forced into a situation where i either play solo eschewing your culture or assimilate to your culture (at least enough to have social interaction) either that or the games themselves should be built in a way that requires social iteration, ie something like putting discord into the game. all these options are terrible. Here is the /real/ problem i see it. MMO's are attempting to build adventure games, or social games AT ALL. They should set their goal at building a world. set up rules and understand the effects of those rule. socialization needing to occur in some other universe isn't very world like. or if the world is like that, what does that make players? unspeaking gods, or incomprehensible autonomous robots? if the mmo makes "being a world" the most important thing, and every decision is looked at with that lens social aspects of the game will be naturally solved. take sending mail to players. if that letter is taken by a bird or something what if it could be intercepted by someone killing that bird? people would probably want some way to make mail more reliable, and so a guild of mail carriers might form. There is a /real/ need in the game and the game allows for it, so this natural hub of players with common interest will come together without any need to prod anyone. The level of social interaction could range from "being a top tier mail carrier for the pony express" to "sometimes when going from city a to city b i take a stack of parcels for some extra silver" these aren't hard problems to solve unless you also want to solve the problem no gamer cares about "how to make this world profitable."
The only way this could work is if the game was somehow able to prevent players from using any kind of outside communication. Even if it were possible to stop a player from using Discord in the background or texting on their phone, that would be a huge breach in both privacy and a person's right to communicate freely with others. It simply isn't possible to isolate players to the point where they are forced to use in-game systems to communicate and if it were, that kind of restriction would very likely drive most players away.
@@jordonkautz1470 that's not true. i understand what you mean, but i see the rise of teamspeak then discord as a failing of the game infrastructure rather than some force unto itself. when you are in a game it's more natural to communicate in the game, it's just that ingame communication is frustratingly limited. for large general online communities sure discord will (or something like it) be around. but for communication about the game itself and for communities founded inside the game, the only reason to go out of the game to communicate is the game has poor infrastructure and doesn't take it's mechanics seriously. to kinda beat the dead horse - minecraft is actually the closest platform i can think of in the direction i imagine, it at least allows users to create books... but imagine if instead of gw2 having a clearnet wiki seperate from the game it had all the wiki information at the actual durmand priory, and the order of whispers let you send irl emails to outside game addresses.
So, fundamentally, I disagree with your conclusion. MMOs are social experiences. Full stop. While appealing to solo players is inevitable for means of profit, the systems in place not only disincentivize socialization, they outright dehumanize players. One of the things that bother me about a lot of MMOs is that you don't really work together as a team. You are a cog in the machine, to be thrown out if the party leader thinks you did a bad job. I can't be who I want to be. I can be the dps, the tank, or the support. I can't try gimmick or experimental builds, I can't try unconventional strategies, I can't play suboptimally because it fits a roleplay for the character I want to be. I have to be efficient. I have to play by the book. Or I get thrown away. It used to be you could go into an mmo and people would talk. They would listen. They would care and accomodate. That's not the case anymore. And I think all of the matchmaking tools, for as much as they help the gameplay, absolutely damage the social aspect of the game, and influence opinions in social media. I miss the days where I could go on Runescape and make new friends and forge bonds with those friends. Now I join people I'll never see again for a single mission, emote at them and leave. Because it was so hard to get help, it was in our best interest to be courteous, polite, kind, and make and strengthen friendships. Asking randoms for help is hard, so having a reliable group you can call on greatly helps the community. Now you just push a button and have to play perfectly to the tune of someone who's under no obligation to be nice to you or get called a racial slur. I'm more of an introvert, so I get it, talking to strangers is hard. It's scary. And they can and will abuse you for placing too much trust in them. But then you find reliable friends you can always go to. You can nurture a small friend group of people from around the world. And those friends will be some of the best friends you could ever ask for. I much prefer that experience to joining a discord and getting laughed out of the conversation because I haven't read all the tierlists and meta guides.
At least with me, I just like the idea that others are around and I can hang out when i'm comfortable. Not to mention I hate playing alone or the single player games don't have the MMO mechanics and systems.
I play Guild Wars 2 solo because I enjoy the gameplay and story and whatnot, but I wanna do my own thing, in my own time. Can't do that if I'm playing with others.
There's another one you missed: the control of community. Smaller servers, not allowing changing of name or server, and taking longer to level all made Everquest a very tight community. There were celebrities on servers, you knew and recognized people and remembered their names from grouping or events. You'd pass by someone and remember them. Making bigger, more flexible servers meant you'd not often remember names unless they were in your guild. You'd not recognize characters because they might not be the same race next time you saw them.
The problem that this video fails to understand is that the outside experience of MMORPGs has always existed, even when I was playing mmos in the late 90s. Forums always existed, guild websites always existed, mumble, skype, ventrilio always existed as well as chat rooms. The competition, reputation, and dependence of players has been stripped from the game, I have little to no reason to care about anyone outside of my guild and moving said guild to a discord doesn't change that. The mechanical degradation of these mechanics just creates smaller bubbles because there's no real reason beyond endgame dungeons to depend on players whatsoever. Leveling used to be a way of bringing people together but is now so efficient solo wise there's no reason to even bother talking to others in most games. Shifting from one forum to a message board does not account for it, watching a video and leaving comments in chat that form no relationships does not account for it.
You can lame the single playerification of mmo's due to greedy stock and share holders trying to force mmo's to diversify and change their gameplay style to suit that always ever elusive "Wider audience."
You cant blame them, its a business, its all about making money. If someone wants to make a non-profit mmo then maybe they can dispense with the solo stuff, though I dont know how long they would last if everyone needs a group to do everything in game.
Look what happened to the MMOs that stayed "group only, no content for solo players." They either died or shrank to obscurity. Is that what you wanted? Seems like a shitty alternative to me.
@@Lewtable true, the potential is wasted on so many mmos. In the example you gave, maybe at some point wow devs might have considered it a possibility. But the people ruined it imho. Even the basic guild advantages at the time were exploited by the players to maximize earnings or use other players to siphon free gold from the guild. Blizzard realized if they were to make some sort of system for guilds to specialize or gain some sort of bonus for certain activities, players would exploit it and ruin the game's balance. Thats Blizzard's problem, they worry so much about balance they cant bring themselves to introduce truly innovative systems.
@@Lewtable Agreed, in-game guild structures and tools have not kept up with the times at all. It's why every serious guild uses third-party tools like Discord to do most of their coordination, promotion, socializing etc.
I loved the social aspect of MMO's until some of these younger generations came about. it got so toxic so fast with these kids that it ruined most of it for me. now I only play MMO's that have strong single player gameplay.
younger people are no more toxic than older generations; you unconsciously disregard what older people do (because it doesn't _seem_ toxic to you,) or what younger people do simply stands out more (to you) - either way, passing the buck to "X group outside my control is to blame" is a convenient distraction from what game designers or yourself could do differently
@@Rhodair For real, this goes beyond MMO's and into games I more frequent, online shooters. in fact in many games I play the people you usually hear are people of all ages going out of their way being asshats for attention or just for their own laughs, it's gotten so disheartening that I've been trained not to really socialize on games online anymore. People suck. its not a good mindset to have, but it's what I've experienced. Luckily Ive made enough genuine friends that its not like im cut off from socializing as a whole.
Now I'm reminded why I quit Warframe, despite liking the gameplay. Hit a brick wall where everything needed me to be in a guild or clan and couldn't figure out how to progress further as a solo player.
@@boom-toby easy for you to say, not everyone has the same play schedule, thats one of the main problems solo players try to avoid by being solo players.
I only grouped up with people when I needed something leveled up quickly or wanted some Prime stuff, even then I just set my matchmaking to public and went to Helene, Hydron or did Sanctuary Onslaught or went to recruiting chat and found a group in a few minutes. Also the game doesn't really need you to be active in a clan, just to exist in it. Don't need to do anything
that's what I love about GW2, you do social events without beeing actually social active, you wandering around the map, participating in events without having the need to communicate to anyone.
its also due to the toxic community that has spawned since about the early 2010's. Its hard for new players and people who have been away from the game for a while. you make one little mistake in a dungeon or raid and you are berated to the point that it is no longer any fun. I remember being part of a guild that felt like family.I remember the thrill of making raid progression with my guild. I remember talking to guild mates until wee hours in the morning during the work week and going to work with 3 hours of sleep.. lo l. I am still friends with former guild members 12 years latter.
I dunno, there are all sorts of guilds out there. If you wanna raid mythic, the other people in the raid are clearly not there to waste time, they wanna get things done. I'm sure you can easily find less-progression-focused guilds where mistakes don't matter much.
@@Brekner homie you can still raid mythic and not be assholes, but it goes both ways. Not caring about setting goals and being lazy obviously isn't preferred in those min/max guilds and you're being an ass if you aren't willing to improve and rather hold others back. In saying that, being short tempered, rude and obnoxious to those trying to learn but aren't there yet is just as bad if not worse since it turns away new players that can liven up the guild and game. It's a two way street, I feel sorry for the people who don't get to experience raiding with your second fam at 4am going nuts off your 10th mountain dew with your homie nearby screamin his head off without a care in the world.
@@Brekner I can totally understand the perspective of being in a progression oriented guild. I would not even consider being in such a guild unless I was willing to put in the time and effort to pull my weight.But I run into toxic players just getting into non-heroic dungeon groups or looking for raid. you can read about boss fights and watch youtube videos until your eyes bleed but actually implementing strategies for the first time still is a learning experience. you misstep or have a bit of bad timing playing through something for the first time people now have a damn conniption fit .
I think the whole issue is simply marketing, like most game design issues. If you made the game unbeatable solo players would interact, but hard games don't get mass appeal so that can't happen. If you make the players socialize they might not like it and that won't give you mass appeal. It's about the numbers, that's why most mmos suck ass. They pander to every demographic possible and therefore end up bland and unfocused. Like in real life, trying to be liked by literally everyone just makes you lack identity and seem pathetic. That's the current state of mmos. So yeah it's the publisher's fault.
This might very well be part of the reason, but certainly not the whole reason. The communication certainly took a bad turn and the content became more solo oriented, but even wow started very group friendly only to later turn into a less social game. What I noticed as more relevant with wow is how bad most of the professions became after burning crusade. Crafting professions barely mattered past a certain point. In fact stuff like leatherworking/blacksmithing/tailoring became a chore and a money loss over the profession it was supposed to be. I always wanted to be that guy who makes weapons for the guild, but wow just puts you in the corner and only lets you make the worst of crap after the burning crusade. And this issue is prevalent in most current mmorpg-s. It's very unlikely that you can find a mmorpg where you can be the guy people want to purchase endgame or even decent gear from. The marketplace seems to be heavily discouraged.
One of the reasons the socialization has shifted to platforms like Discord, I think, is this: you can put those messaging platforms on your phone. You can't put the game there. So, you can communicate with your friends and social circles wherever you are. When your social sphere from the game is on a 3rd party platform, you can use it to chat and prepare for things hours before you log on. These chat platforms are more broadly available than MMOs so it is easier to reach people on short notice, or while they are out running errands, at work, or at school. In my WoW guild, for example, we have a discord that everyone uses. We go there to share funny pictures and pet photos, but we also use it to plan raids and dungeon runs long before the planned time for them. We can then use the voice channels while doing the activity and actually talk with each other. The game does have a voice chat service, but it's subpar.
It has moved to discord cause it's more convenient in almost every single way. Simple as that. And not to mention how So many MMOs don't even have a game chat. Ok now I'll read your comment lol.
Thing is we've always had ventrillo/teamspeak/mumble/raidcall and now discord, it's just games don't point you in that direction early and they have realized that to get to endgame faster the more solo you are the easier it is to manage. It's not a shift of where the social is, it's a shift of why the social is.
@@sciencethygod Non of those really took off like discord has though. Even people who aren't gamers use discord a ton. Like people who have discord tend to expect you to already have discord, heck even xbox lets you link your discord to your live account. It has more than thrived because it went well beyond the gaming stratosphere and every corner now uses it.
@@MasudaOfKorriban well ya discord became huge because it focused on the community part, and I think twitch and reddits growth helped with that. Like raid call had all the features discord has and it still didn't do as well. Take tcgs for instance, magic has had many digital games and is still one of the best, but then came along hearthstone that totally dominated the market, right time right place right tweaking of the genre and the marketing. Same deal different object. Still doesn't change that its the why that has changed, why we socialize in games has changed over the years.
@@sciencethygod Raidcall also ran worse, had worse advertising, and did actually not have the same features at the time that discord had. It also marketed itself as a gaming app. Which then began to hurt it's growth as well. Same goes for most of the similar apps as well. I think the main reasons why discord did so well was because it advertised itself to everyone, ran better than the other apps right off the bat and was making quick improvements the others couldn't keep up with.
Whilst I agree that the communication aspect is handled by other tools, I do believe that fact that a third party application is where the communications happen is a real problem. For me to be on discord and talk to people I first need to know them, if the game makes it so that I have no real reason to socialize at all in the first place then why would I care to join the other programs?
I like playing with friends, but I don't like playing with strangers. The things I dislike most from modern MMORPG's is being forced into group activities with strangers, and the competitive nature of games (trying to get the best items, trying to be the first ones to do something, trying to take down the hardest fights to prove your worth). What I like most about MMORPG's is the relaxed lifestyle in a second world where I can explore, craft, discover, grow my character and help friends do the same. I like challenging combat and dangerous locations, but being forced to fight a boss for 20 minutes with 20+ other players is extremely boring and unfulfilling. I've had more fun doing heroic dungeons in Burning Crusade with 4 friends than trying to go for server first boss kills in hardcore 25 man raiding in later years.
Why play a solo mmo with crappy gameplay when I can play a solo focus game with way better gameplay? Today's "mmo" the people might as well be window dressing , I rarely in need of them outside of the occasional 4 man dungeon runs. Talk about being lonely geez. There's a reason people are getting tired of the solo mode theme park mmo and want a return to the truly good ole days. There's a reason why I keep playing Warhammer Online Return of reckoning more than FF14 (yes I play both).
Solo players as a whole are getting tired of themparks because they still try to force grouping or interactions to progress to max gear/pinnacle ability, Most solo players want either the walls torn down or given our own path to endgame gear/story progression.
@@undraxis So you want the best gear in the game through solo mode ? Wow , talk about selfish. Again if you don't want to interact with people play a solo game. jesus.
@@dukeofnylon Why not, as long as the challenge is there and the time commitment, but allows a solo player to do it. And if you say thats not possible look at the visions in BFA. They just need to make the path available. Does it really matter if another player you will probably never interact with has some hope of progression in a game? Raiders can get an upgrade as often as every week if not more depending on the game or RNG, why not let a solo player get a pc of gear of max ilevel in a month or two? Again is that unreasonable? Why not have a currency system that allows all players to earn endgame gear at some point even at the end of an expansions lifespan? Solo/casual player money is just as good as anyone's and we prolly spend more time on the game, we just tend to be unseen since we solo. And for the record i do play solo rpgs too, not my fault mmo companies want my money too and their games do have interesting things that solo players want to experience aside from the social aspects. And if they ever release solo versions of an MMO, with the exact same amount of content, I would drop the mmos at the drop of a hat. But i dont see Blizzard making a solo WoW anywhere, nor an srpg of star trek or most of the other popular IPs because IP holders want to make monthly income.
I joined wow in about august 2006 and it had a fantastic world chat and one of the most social interactions was the crossroads, alliance would attack and you'd call for help and people would come. Epic battles would happen and great to watch and some on the opposing factions would log on the other faction account and have a chat on how good was that fight, they didn't carry malice as both sides had set hardcore pvp areas and thats where you went. People knew my name as an aussie on a US server it's a good cultural learning and debunking the misconceptions, then about a couple of weeks away from TBC release they did a pre update and removed the global chat and bam...the social interaction was gone, People learn quickly that if you act like a dickhead in chat you won't get far in the game and thus you be nice and people will go out of their way to help you get started. With no global interactions the learned etiquette was gone and the rise of the arrogance became into chat, people would just look out for themselves and not the group and when too many number 1's soon the enjoyment would be gone.
I would also add the possibility of overly negative online interactions to the mix, when i was younger and playing online games literally all i would hear from other people online where slurs and insults so i just started turning off chat functions, and that just kind of become one of the default things i do in online games.
I think this is linked to lack of accountability. In the early days you chose a server and play on it, encountering people playing on the same server. As such, if you started to act like a jerk, it would be quickly known and you get a bad reputation on the server, making it difficult to get groups or find a guild. Today, with systems that let you freely switch between server, cross-server group finders and so on, there is no more accountability. Act like an idiot, and it doesn't matter, because you will certainly never encounter the same person twice.
That's how I felt as the years went on in WoW. When I started back in Wrath, it seemed plenty of people were plenty friendly and kind, sometimes even going out of their way to help new players and it was super cool to be a part of that. Then that slowly stopped being a thing. LFG along with a new younger generation of players coming in to replace older ones leaving the game, changed the culture into something like you describe.
@@RED_Theory038 I started playing MMOs with the old Everquest. My first encounter with a player in this game was right at the start, players would hangout at the spawn point and welcome newcomers, handing out some basic spells. Going a bit farther away, you would find other players buffing everybody to help them with their first fights (yeah it was a thing, some classes would have access to some pretty neat buffs, and it was not uncommon to have people asking for a buff in chat) and answering questions (In-game tutorials were still a foreign concept). Grouping and cooperation was essential, as there was basically no solo content. When you wanted to grind, you'd pop into the appropriate zone, and immediately look for a group camping at one of the spawn points. As there were also a lot of down times between pulls, you would get a lot of time to chat with your teammates and make friends. There were also regular guild meetings, where everybody would assemble and share equipement, giving away whatever they didn't need anymore to whoever needed it. The MMO landscape as mutated so much since then... it's hard to imagine such things taking place today.
@@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065 Indeed, it was an amazing experience. But it was at a time when internet wasn't yet available in every home, and so the playerbase was small and entirely made of dedicated players and RPG lovers. MMOs were in their infancy and still experimenting, it was a very new thing, and we didn't have the same expectations as we have these days. If EQ released today in the same state it was then, it would fail spectaculary.
Because the things that require social interaction take time, and mmo's try to optimize time and therefore remove the social requirements of the games. Shouting in cities trying to form a group for a dungeon has turned into a automatic que that transports you instantly to said dungeon. You no longer have to talk to find party members, the game does that for you.
Personally, I feel there is a demand for more social pushing game mechanics. I know personally its what I look for in games now, its part of why I have recently moved to RP realms, as I enjoy the mix of gameplay with social interactions in the world. when I play an MMO i want the immersion of a living world, and having gameplay elements that nudge players to interact helps make that world feel more real, it can be something simple like having a reason to trade in person rather than on the Auction house While I think it IS true players socialize outside of games more, it's not what I look for in an MMO. you can socialize about any type of game outside of it, and there are great communities that form around single-player games. I think striking a balance is key, you don't always want to have to socialize I understand that, but having a game gently nudge you out of your comfort zone and come out glad that you did is a GOOD thing, it's what is beautiful about MMO's and it's something only that type of game can bring, to abandon it almost completely alienates players that are looking to have that immersive social experience.
I am a Solo player but a Social Gamer. I often use Mabinogi as my Example as its The Longest MMO I played. I Was Primarily a Solo Player. But the Overworld had meaning. So People were often shuffling around dungeons and crossing paths. Usually you the most anyone would do is do a fine how do ya do and move on. Sometimes you and another person would Arrive at the same dungeon and you would Just Without partying up. Do the dungeon together since Most overworld dungeons where not instanced But Kills and Loot were still shared. People would also Gather in the City Sq's. I Spent HOURS just sitting and chatting with strangers. Just talking shit or hanging out with players who put time into Social skills, Like cooking and the Instruments.
@@BlueBD I had never heard of Mabinogi until now, and I have to say it feels like it it's very forward looking, but unsure exactly what it wants to be based on the trailer.
GF for WoW wasn't released until WoTLK which was almost half a decade later. Also a ton of these points are moot when the question is has mmo become less social, meaning is there less social interaction in mmos now then before. The answer is 100% yes there is no doubt the mmos of 1999-2010 have been less social. What ever other reasons is not relevant but to hit a few points about why people care about this. WoW vanilla and BC which had amazing numbers and did not cater anything to solo play. You couldn't do dungeons solo (at the time and level they were needed to be done at) crafting was limited to 2 slots so if you wanted a crafted high level item and you didn't choose it you had to drop one of yours and level it or socialize. Tons of quests required more then 1 person to do it. Once you were at the end game most gear was either dungeon locked or raid lock. Also information wasnt freely available for tons of people It wasn't until WOTLK you could use GF and now today we can just press a button get into a group then hope everyone does their jobs at like 50% and you can get gear and see the stories being told. Then it got dumb down even more with easy modes. I feel like the social aspect moving out the game makes the game feel less mmo and more like single player game that has others running around.
The earliest version of LFG wasn't bad tbh, no auto grouping, you still had to go to the dungeon so easily 30 mins of being grouped before you even started the dungeon and no cross server grouping. Imo it was the cross server and teleporting to the dungeon that killed the social aspect
Talking over a discord is much different then talking in the game. The communication should be foremost within the game experience and thats why wow is dying
@@alihorda Maybe there wouldnt be as many braindead idiots if you still had a reputation to worry about and a group had any form of value because you spent time finding one.
Depends on the game, coming to a impassive and being unable to progress with your character is a bad thing, having specific quests with big rewards reserved for group play is a good thing. A big part of why people tended to level in a group in the olden days was downtime between fights. Getting a heal in your group so you don't have to sit around waiting for regen after every pull was huge, these days well designed MMO's give all of their classes the means to sustain combat without downtime. Biggest turn offs for me is mixing different languages inside a single server and cross realm play. While a lot of people are willing to type in English less are willing to hang out in voice chat, even less are comfortable chatting , making jokes etc. But this is an overarching issue with human mentality and in-groups in WoW a lot of the social aspects of open world play fell apart with cross-realm play and queuing for dungeons, not only is everyone sitting in a capital city spamming dungeons while leveling. With cross realm play there is little chance of meeting the same person twice, it gives people license to be as horrific and abrasive as possible within the bounds of what is considered allowed. Even if people where trying to be nice to each other it doesn't matter because all they will ever be are strangers you won't ever see again. This in-group behavior often also applies to players speaking different languages, be it subconscious or not, and it gets worse in games with megaservers. The mass market appeal found by some MMORPG's also added in people that are either harder to judge or socially incompatible in the real world, way back when it was mostly nerdy people and even if we came from different age or gender groups there was overarching culture connecting us. Guess this is the logical reason why games that cater extremely to one specific subculture are always better for social interaction. I stopped playing WoW in MOP for the first time because this is when my guild fell apart and I realized there is no-one worth playing with anymore. In vanilla and TBC people had real reputations, I always knew that some players where no fun to play with because they took progress to serious, strangers came asking for help because someone told them I had certain crafting recipes or would maybe be willing to tank for a group of beginners and explain things. People where more willing to engage in interaction: one time we had a standoff with an Alliance guild in front of a raid entrance because someone somewhere decided it was a good idea to hit a flagged guy that went of for four hours and people kept fighting because their reputation and honor(not the currency) was on the line. Can't have stuff like that with cross realm teleport everywhere, raise alts in a matter of days, crafting, trading and recipes don't matter retail.
The social media aspect is a really good point, but... I guess it's just not the same as your avatar and another player's avatar encountering each other in the game organically. There's something magical about stumbling into a friendship due to you bonding together to overcome life's inconveniences. Alas, games generally criticized for being inconvenient, eh? Such is the dilemma.
You completely miss the point of WHY ppl communicate and how game mechanics can promote communication, while still providing gameplay for solo player. Why would ppl communicate, if they have less content together (instances, phasing), less communal goals (overworld party areas are missing in most modern theme parks), usually no common enemy like pvp players, some weird orbitrary faction restrictions, etc. Look at games like Ragnarok Online and EVE. They are like player story generators, EVE is even good at promoting such stories. Ppl divide into big factions, and not only they communicate inside their guild, like in WoW or five meaningless ones like ESO, but they also communicate outside. Like for classic servers, the best server discords were the ones with constant hate and drama, ppl from alliance and horde knew and contended each other and it was GOOD, but honor system ruined it (before honor there were zerg vs zerg fights in open world, the type of fight you can only have in an mmo btw!). And classic had most of the things that at least were not designed to PREVENT talking. Like, that's the whole point. Devs should introduce mechanics to promote talking, not discourage/get rid of. That doesn't mean solo player can't play the game. They misunderstand the nature of solo player a lot. I am a solo player nowadays. Why am I solo? Oh, because I don't see ppl around me making any impact on the world at all, I don't see any politics, any castles taken, etc. There is a way you can make your server discords and your ingame communicate with each other, you just have to really think it through, which no one does nowadays, instead working mostly on stuff like ARPG - optimizing grind, loot, exp, numbers. Completely missing the point that even solo players play an MMO because its a damn MMO, where there are a lot of players. If the sensation of a huge living world is missing, what's the point?! There is no WAR in World of WARcraft!!
Im osrs player and still doing social stuff with my friends and my clan chat.. mainly get high, talk shits, doing raids, stream sniping steamers on wildy
I don't know if it's because I started playing MMOs in the late 90s and early 2000s or if it's just a part of my personality but I never saw the appeal of the social part of MMOs. To me, having to trade with people was a huge chore because I had to interact and that interaction was mandatory in order for me to get a certain item. I never cared about chatting or looking for guilds, I just wanted to do my very comfy repetitive grind and acquire my items. Sure at the time I started playing in net cafés and had irl friends to talk to about the game but god have I ever despised the idea of talking to strangers in-game. And now, 20 years later, MMOs are better than ever. You can go to a city hub and talk to randoms if you want or you can just play your own game. You don't need to trade with anyone because you have the marketboard that makes it fast and hasslefree. And if you still want to talk about the MMO or things in general who play the game you can just join a discord server or go to reddit or even an anonymous image board. No one wants to be forced to do just one thing. MMOs need the option to be social AND solo friendly. Just like how Final Fantasy XIV has some exclusively social activities, like Blue Mage achievement hunting.
I love it in ESO and SWTOR, where you can play solo for the story, quests, etc. and when I feel like it, just by click of the button I can join others on their missions, dungeons, pvp etc. Guilds on the other hand, I always look for social guilds with active chat where you can talk about anything
MMO has became an outlet for anger issues, a place where many angry kids blurt out their frustrations and boast how "good" they are in a game and belittle those who they feel are below them.
haven't watched the whole video but i think ti's the point I'm thinking about, the only reason i can't get into a mmo is simple; i don't see why it's multiplayer to begin with when it's just tons of people playing a singleplayer game on the same world, there's no real "social" element to it and that feels like a waste of how the game is built edit: watched the video and i see where he's coming from and in fact that's the exact reason why i don't like how mmos work lately, i wasn't around when mmos first existed but thats' pretty much what i wanted from an mmo the current state just sounds like any grindy single-player game, you can play the game by yourself and then go talk about it elsewhere, then what's the point in it being an mmo? the people around you might as well be npcs at that point I get that some people might enjoy it but man i wish those old-styled mmos were more prevalent too, where gameplay wasn't as important as the social aspect also i think the fun to being a solo player comes from the fact that you're the only one playing solo, most people prefer to group up because naturally it gives you a better chance but when the game itself is revolved around playing solo... i mean what's the point
I love that Guild Wars 2 is mostly soloable, as well as fun in a group. Now that we're older, it's hard to get my friends online at the same time. (kids, work, etc)
As a person from the most impolite country in the entirety of South East Asia which is Indonesia (according to a recent Microsoft survey), also known as wkwkLand, for me this has to do with the OVERWHELMING negativity displayed in INA server MMOs and to a certain extent SEA servers and i put the biggest emphasis on "overwhelming" here because even when i have a pleasant chat in MMO it's mostly covered in LFGs, WTB WTS, and of course slurs and insults as in "cupu lu anak yesus kontol!" type of chats. Yes there is trade chat, private chat, etc but in my elementary school days how am i supposed know other chat rooms except /say ? combined with toxic PVP communities i have instinctively began to ignore almost all chatrooms in MMO with the exception of Guild chat and Private chat AKA "whispers"
Working together and coordinating as a team created great bonds and felt incredibly fulfilling. Something that isn't really a thing with modern MMOs where everyone just does their own thing but in the same room, technically having the same goal but not really cooperating to fulfill it.
@@joshuakim5240 Yes it's a massive fundamental difference. I would even say the gameplay transcends itself as a group activity. It is no longer sitting alone at a screen punching monsters and clicking buttons in a dumb videogame, it's working together with fellow humans for a common goal towards greater things. All the random goofy socialising meeting the vastly different people from different cultures and personalities you meet along the way can broaden your mind and become great friendships with dramatic stories of their own.
@@cattysplat yeah, mmorpg's are just too easy now and they pander to the masses instead of focusing on social players. It's alright though, we have to adapt by finding friends online or irl which is hard but possible.
Strife, shame on you. You shout out Habitat, The Realm Online, and UO but completely ignore Meridian59? 😜 M59 was the first 3D graphical MMO and that graphical aspect made it quite the novelty amongst the culture conquerors (read: nerds) of the time. I was on a break from M59 when my friends finally managed to get me to try EverQuest in late '99. Also, I have to disagree with you on something. From the moment it launched, World of Warcraft had more concurrent players than EverQuest (the behemoth at the time). The gap only grew wider and wider from there. EQ team had no idea how to stop the bleeding, both from its own progeny (EQ2) or WoW.
![Can you Judge an MMO in just 1 hour? [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JpkGbVVLExw/mqdefault.jpg)
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![Have guides ruined MMO games? - [MMOPINION]](/img/n.gif)
Hi Asmongold, watching with everyone else live - 20th March
came here instantly to enjoy video because his chat is cancer.
Hey mate! Great vid!
@@DanSikelia thanks dan, loving watching the stream with everyone :)
Hi
Okay, dude.
The biggest problem with other players becoming just quickly replaceable members of your party is when kicking started being abused to get a slightly more performing player rather than removing someone abusing or annoying
Minmaxing zoomers
Im sure you heard this before.
You can make your own groups.
Make your own friends.
Make your own insert current members group name here.
Make your own fun, that's what the kick em group is doing they enjoy kicking
@@fayvampire That's more a problem with the community being garbage than the kick function itself.
That's why I loved to tank during vanilla and wow classic, I knew just how much power I had in the group decision making as a warrior tank and if the group decided to kick a player for stupid reasons, I could leave the group, form a new one and sometimes finish the dungeon before the other group.
@@mrillis9259 Even in your own group that start with randoms they can vote someone out without you in many mmos.
People tend to be removed more for being nasty than for being useless. Good enough at the role tends to be good enough. If the main people are good enough, then woohoo, the group can have more fun. Being top damage isn't an excuse to be nasty.
However, I am aware that I might just be playing with more decent people (as in being lucky).
I might be an introvert, but not even close to a hermit. While i enjoy the solitude of playing games by myself, it is also fun to cooperate with others. It is good to have the social aspect in the game, but not a constant requirement for clearing it.
Always giving more options in a game is a positive, specially if other can still play the game the way they want
@@SmokeAndChillAndromeda8 thats why mmos have a chatbox. use it.
I'm one of those weirdo solo players in MMOs who is sometimes told I should go play a single player game. And I do play those too. But what people forget is that there are systems and experiences you can only really find in a multiplayer game. A big thing for me is the marketplace economy of a game. I absolutely love crafting and lifeskilling or even just grinding mobs to get drops to trade and sell. Sure, some solo games allow the players to sell to NPC shops but it isn't the same as the supply and demand of a fluctuating marketplace. I also enjoy seeing the world alive with other players even if I'm not chatting. It simply feels good and helps with immersion.
Same here, I really enjoy the resource, crafting and economy sides of MMOs.
I tried out Albion online last year or so. I didn't play it for long, but my favorite thing to do was to buy goods low at one marketplace and sell high at the other. I didn't make a lot of money, I'd have been better off just gathering raw materials, but the sense of discovering my own way of contributing my small part to the larger living adventurer economy was really cool. Knowing that the resources I brought over would get sold and used, while managing to make a profit at the same time by paying attention to the fluctuating prices, made me feel like I had accomplished something in the world. And it wasn't completely trivial, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of prices and profits, noting which wares were currently worth trading. Nobody told me this was a thing you could do, I just discovered it to be possible.
To this day, Runescape is my favorite MMO for very similar reasons. I enjoy gathering resources and selling them, or buying raw materials and making a profit refining them.
Finding friends in a game always makes it better of course, but in an MMO, playing solo doesn't necessarily mean playing alone. Even when I play solo, the presence of other people is very important for my enjoyment of the game.
It’s such a weird criticism. You aren’t going to attack someone for going out to dinner alone, or walking on their own in the park when everyone else is there with a group. Why are you going to do the same in a game?
I don’t always like to play WITH people, but I like playing AROUND people. I’d argue that MMOs are the only genre that lets you play around other players without needing to team up, interact, or fight each other.
You should go play single player though. MMOs are designed to be social
As someone who played a lot of the original Everquest, another big factor was downtime. You'd kill a monster then have to sit to meditate mana/health back for bloody ages. This is when everyone would start chatting in group or guild just to alleviate the boredom. Dark Age of Camelot had a bit less downtime and WoW much less, so you'd constantly be fighting and less chatting.
I can agree with that. The most social I've been on MMOs was when I was building my garrison in WoW or using an auto clicker in Runescape, when I would have several minutes of basically no interaction and yet despite knowing that I would prefer something with more interaction.
I remember my wpm went through the roof in early WoW days because it took some skill to have a proper conversation while running a dungeon.
Yep. During downtime there was nothing to do but talk. Even with buffs like KEI and Flowing Thought items, there was tons of downtime, and that was right in line with The Vision.
@@randzopyr1038 Yea I think we mmo players all learned emergency onehanded not even lookin at the kb typing quite well huh ;p
Which I am so glad there isn't 10-30 mins of downtime between fights in MMOS anymore, games like that feel like they don't value the time you are giving to it.
When I was a child in the early 2000's with nothing to do these features felt like they built a community but as I got older I realized they were just time sinks to keep you on game and keep their numbers up for investors.
I think this is a similar problem to "too many MMORPGs are ruining MMORPGs": too many people, too many possible options to socialize with -> don't know what to choose -> don't choose any. And as someone else said in another comment, you need repeated exposure to people to even want them as potential friends/play-buddies. Having so many people all over the place means you will never have a reason to bond: lose one, find another, and move on. That's also where elitism can come into play, since wanting someone highly skilled becomes a reason to want someone specific, as opposed to any average player, so there is a reason to form a bond in that case. With randoms, though...why even bother? Why invest in a relationship just to find out they won't be playing as intensly as you (could be more, could be less), or at the same hours as you? Waste of time, really.
In short: play the way I want, when I want, or I'll find someone else who will. Ergo, I don't need you -> I'll go by myself.
It's also definitely a matter of time. As in, how much time people have to play. "Back in the day" people would easily play mmos for 6+ hours a day, maybe 10+ hours in the weekend. Nowadays a lot of those same people are adults, and at most might have around 4 hours to play. Often even 2 or less. With so much less time people don't want to deal with time wasters. Be that taking ages to find a group, or dealing with people that make mistakes and cause a party wipe. Hence why in WoW these days, for PUG raids, the gear they require you to have is often equal or higher than what you'd get from the raid you're going to do.
not enough quality ones tho imo & most are ageing ! but most are diff genres/styles which helps decide what 1 or 2 to stick to
@@Sanquinity sorry to comment on a 6 month old comment, but even the people who are on the game all day wind up thinking like this.
That doesn't make a lot of sense considering older mmos also had lots of people.
I for one am glad that mmos cater towards the solo player more, because I always end up playing them solo since I live in Australia and very few mmos have servers centered here in Oceania. So its much easier to get through content and join international friends in end-game content when I don't have to waste time looking for the few other players playing at the same time as me xD
Hey Stella.
Greetings from GR.
every time I watch one of your videos I just want to work on my indie MMO 😢
Hopefully you will make one then that successful if you watch videos like this.
@@FlamespeedyAMV That would be sweet!
What game is that?
Every MMO even indie ones on steam I try to follow.
Good luck to you my friend!
When I started playing MMOs, I was a kid/teen and had tons of free time. When you can be present in the game for 6-8 hours every day, coordinating with other people isn't a problem.
But now when I find time to play, I just can't afford to waste most of it by trying to find people to play with, so the evolution of MMO towards more solo play is what allows me (and many other players who have gotten more real life responsibilities over time) to continue playing the genre I enjoy.
Exactly this
My brother talks about missing the old MMO days and I tell him I don’t and remind him that he has two kids now does he really want to get 4-5 people together and spam chat LF1 tank for 40 minutes and then having to just suddenly drop because you gotta handle the kids? Not only is the only fun you got to chat to people but you screwed those people over because now they need to find a tank and healer and the tank is gonna go with the other group that just needs a tank.
Life and the world has changed. Do I have great memories of playing social MMOs definitely. Do I lie to myself thinking I want that back like my brother? Definitely not. I have an hour maybe 2 if it is a game night I want to get on and have fun. Hell I don’t even do many traditional MMOs any more because if I want to play DPS I’m in queue for 20 minutes. Now I play Destiny 2 that just finds any other player and lets me kill some baddies. On the weekends when I have time I do a raid with my clan but without tank/healer getting a group is fast and painless.
@@Pixiwish ...what you're describing just sounds like it's time to pass the torch to the next generation, so they can have fun and create the same memories you have. But they can't, because games have changed. Teens and people without full irl lives have nothing now. There are casual mmos out there like guild wars 2 that adults with responsibilities and lives could play, but I guess that's just not good enough.
Another good thing about being able to actually play solo is the fact that people can level up solo, and prepare for a specific day when a whole group will be able to team up, take Warframe for example, everyone is able to upgrade it's own Warframe and its own weapons alone, this allows people to prepare for a bigger, for a boss battle, for a session through a more challenging map,
Saying the socialization moved is a massive difference though. If MMOs used to be a good place to find people to socialize with, but now you need to find those people elsewhere and can then play MMOs together and socialize elsewhere, MMOs are now no different from any other multiplayer game. And in general that's like, a massive difference with very far-reaching consequences, not a simple difference
You have a point. But, how do MMOs evolve past just being social? Bc like you said, I can socialize with people while playing the Witcher and it be just as much interaction as an MMO. I think they would have to focus on a reliance to your team or group. But even then, how does that differ from an mmo-lite like destiny.
@@ortiznikko I think the industry should take a look at survival games... They are much like MMOs, dedicated server maintaining that world alive, you can certainly solo play a survival game with no problem but it is really much better and easier with a group. That's why coop survival games are making a huge success, even more than the old pvp ones.
I'm not saying it should be a gather resources and maintaining base kind of game (I don't want to be worried of losing something while offline) but look at how they work and how it allows people to solo and socialize in the same environment without compromising each type of player. It doesn't force social interactions and at the same time it doesn't isolate players.
Most MMOs just don't have the chat features on par with something like Discord.
I'm a pretty slow typer, and it's simply faster and more efficient for me to talk to my guild in Discord or a party chat.
I agree 100%
@@raulzilla I do like how survival games work like that. But, i think, you would have to keep the server size really small to make it have that same feel.
I think that nowadays there is a information and communication overflow in so many aspects of life. Social media kinda became a mandatory part of everyones life, but managing social media accounts, posting this picture or that picture and contacting 20-30 different people every day is exhausting. Why don't play a game and grind for an hour to shut your brain off. Wait, I need to look for people again? That random guy wants me to join a discord? There is so much social social interaction from 9-5 every day, why does it need to continue when I just want to relieve some stress?
play single player game then
I'm so glad to have been a teenager during the early days of online games. The "world" was much smaller and everyone knew each other back then. I remember spending hours just chatting and laughing with my guildmates, learning about their lives, where they lived in the world, and thinking those days would never end. I still remember the names of many of my guildmates from 15-20 years ago, but don't really remember any of my guildmates from BDO, Destiny 2 or any recent games I've played :\
The world felt more smaller, because gaming wasn't as mainstream as it is now. Way less people were playing MMOs back then.
@@allthatishere Gaming was very big then, but mostly off-line, because most *people* were off-line (or had strict caps on internet speed/bandwidth).
@John Philip When you're a kid/teen, you're just more receptive to making new friends in general. Your brain is basically empty of relationships, and you have a lot more free time to fill. Older you get, you have less cognitive space & leisure time. So if someone - or some activity - is going to gain a precious spot, then they have to earn it, essentially.
Agreed. Tho recently I've moved all my gaming time to VR and it feels very reminiscent of how it was back in the days, communities are small, everyone is exploring the newness of it all and the games are far more about the social aspect of the game than amazing graphics/min maxing. The gaming landscape is just changing and while I think it's in a bit of a slump at the moment, with VR video games will likely get much more social in the coming years.
True!!! OMG I remember back when I played Lunia and I was in that awesome guild with our own forum. And there were hard hitting real life posts there. Those friendships were deep! Actual conversations. It was so awesome. I get it. These days it can be just like that, yes. But back then you were FORCED to group up and that made it easy for the awkward, shy, introverted players. These days I feel so lost inmost MMOs.
There is one design shift I noticed that does hurt social interaction. Combat has gotten much faster and more involved while time between combat has shrunk. I really noticed this when I started playing FFXI. In XIV and WoW, the longest you go without pressing a button in normal combat is 2.5 seconds. There’s no time to chat in a fight, and there’s no reason to stop between pulls beyond rezes and mana. Eureka in XIV felt particularly bad because of this (the chain system meant you were punished for stopping).
Compare that to XI where combat is so much slower. There’s no filler button or combo to spam, auto attacks are the filler. You’re weapon skills take time to build up and your abilities all have cooldowns. You don’t need to reposition anywhere near as much. And after some combat, if you don’t have an MP regen effect, you’ll need to take a bit of a break to restore it. It also helps that not everything has sight aggro when reaching the first expansion (seriously, the amount of aggro enemies in XIV and WoW expansions is ridiculous). In XIV and WoW, I talk in between doing stuff. In XI, I talked while doing stuff.
I noticed the same thing, we used to chat furiously didn't matter if it was grinding mobs for XP or raiding back in 99-'02 during EQ's heyday, everyone would plant themselves in a spot and you wouldn't have to budge your character for the half hour it'd take to burn a boss down or several hours of mob grinding, just occasionally hit a cooldown or heal and chat like it was an AOL chatroom. These days when I hear someone complain about the lack of chatting during a dungeon run I'm like, "When do you have time to type anything?", these days there's no down time, it's run from point to point at full speed, using a array of abilities with quick cds to burn the trash along the way, kill the boss, loot the chest, rinse and repeat. The only real chance at chat is after killing the final boss before everyone hits the exit button.
lol imagine wanting combat to be even slower than it already is.
Well, voice chat will have solved that easy and i think ppls do voice chat since 2000s
@@MrNhlam123 That's great for when you are already part of a guild or some sort of group that does activities together. But, for the vast majority of any given playerbase, simple text chat will be the main source of communication with your fellow players.
@@khankhomrad8855 So, what you're saying in essence is:
People: "Communication is made difficult".
Also people: "I don't want to use the facilitating tools to communicate".
I really dislike using voice chat options. I fundamentally disliked/still dislike using Skype, TeamSpeak, Discord, etc. Its very hard for me as an mmo player who primarily uses in-game chat to truly engage in the social aspect of these games, as less and less people are using in-game chat now days. You join a guild? Sometimes they even REQUIRE you to have discord. I hate it.
Wouldn't it be more beneficial to use voice chat at times that require it? People use voice chat because it's easier to communicate than the in-game chat. not that there's anything wrong with using the in-game chat, but it takes time to type, that's why people prefer voice communication: the ease of just saying words and not having to type is already a blessing within itself.
I still communicate with people using the in-game chat and have fun, but I prefer to use voice communication because it's easier to communicate with people. I love to roleplay and people prefer to use in the in-game chat for roleplaying because that's just how it is.
Another thing is that it is easier to organize events and times on these external programs. Discord is exceptional at using its chatroom functions for organizing raids, dungeons, etc; It helps keep people online outside of the game. (of course there are downsides to this, but there are other downsides to solely using in-game chat.)
Sure, a game might have a pin board for organizing times, but not everyone goes to check it. sometimes people miss the announcement that there's a new guild raid on Sunday, whereas using discord, you can easily ping everyone and the ping is there for the rest of time until checked, or they turned off pings for everything, which is quite unreasonable since they'll need at least the pings for guild announcements.
Again, I am not saying it's wrong to solely use the in-game chat, but wouldn't it be more beneficial to use discord?
@@luckneh5330 because in-game chat is more immersive. with in-game chat, you can imagine any voice when talking to someone while reading a text chat. while hearing other people's voice ruin the immersion. imagine this, you are talking with a female elf character but you hear their voice they are middle age neckbeard.
@@luckneh5330 Some people don't like talking too much or might be afraid their spoken English is bad. Reading English as a 2nd language is pretty simple, but speaking and listening is another thing entirely. Especially if you couple it with a person who just doesn't like talking in the first place.
Discord is not _fundamentally_ a voice chat platform. In fact I haven't used voice chat in almost any of the rooms I've joined, and even if a clan wants you to use it, it's enough for you to be there and listen in as long as it's not your job to shotcall. Mostly it's just a chatroom with a lot of knobs and levers for the server controllers.
@@Hotshot2k4 If you are not using the voice portion of it, what advantage it has over in-game guild chat? Maybe the ability to ping people? Or read backlogs if necessary? For just chatting in-game chat would actually be better then imo because you don't need to either use your phone or constantly alt+tab between the game and the discord chat.
I think people just got sick of talking to strangers, its like the honey moon period of Internet interaction has faded 😂
Exactly, I rather just chill with my "guild" in FF than trying to gather strangers in a group, it's a very enjoyable experiance just chatting with the people you want to while waiting on the groupfinder do its job, and should it take too long for it to find strangers, there's allways someone ready to help in my guild.
After work I may not want to talk to anyone, so forcing me to do so to enjoy a game I play to relax is pretty bad imo.
@@ItsBoyRed im sort of on the fence tbh, im a massive fan of Classic WoW so I like that the older games do promote a sort of comradery amongst your server mates that MMO's are lacking now days, it was nice redoing raids with people and names I recognised, seeing the new gear they got since the last time I saw them, I think it definitely adds to the experience.
There's also the event of playing with randoms who might suck ass. So, would you rather be just stuck there with terrible players or with friends you know are at least competent? I don't even play mmos so I mean this for online games in general
@@Walamonga1313 the random people you gather in the city's are random too, and they could be just as bad.
The best way is to be part of a guild lol
@@ItsBoyRed yeah true, but usually that person would have garnered a reputation for being a useless fucker on the server, from people grouping up with them before.. thats the good thing about a constant server is people actually build a reputation and arent protected by the "Dungeon Finder" systems we see today 😂 if someone sucks, or has sucked in the past then there's probably someone there that will warn you about that guy haha.
I would have never thought to think about social media having to do with the decline of MMOs, but now it makes sense.
Exactly, now you can talk and play with your friends in any game, not just games built around that experience.
I think social media has a lot to do with the decline of everything really.
@@Sabersquirl While I see your point... I've grown up making friends IN MMO's and now joining a discord server to make friends, to THEN play the game is so foreign and scary to me that I just can't do it...
I guess when you play and chat there's a lot less emphasis on chat and you can get to know someone through the shared experience which works well for me, while sole chatting does not
@@socklips7655 It does also narcisstic behavour
@@knightmer3645 exactly.. my social anxiety doesn’t allow me to just “join a discord server and join a call” before this happened much more naturally in mmos you’d find someone and you’d just have a nice chat and have fun.. now it’s so “you gotta work for it yourself on purpose” kind of thing.. wich frankly as an introvert doesn’t work.. especially when you tend to not like actually introducing yourself.. in an mmo you can be anyone or anything where as in that discord server that’s just not the case..
It’s not just MMOs, it’s life. People in general now are less social than ever regardless of social media.
Or maybe even BECAUSE of social media. ;)
Last week I logged in to runescape after a long break. People are still social and approachable at least on the f2p side
@@SiisKolkytEuroo True, but it's definitely not like it used to be. I remember people standing near the fountain in Varrock to show off their fashion scape and chat or how house parties weren't about the portals or the gilded altars, but the whole purpose of it was to socialise.
@@biikuajet Disagree with that heavily. It's the same situation, where people are just as social and possibly even MORE social, but it's in different places. Online, it's much easier to talk to others, but if you're a solo gamer you might forego lengthy conversations in an MMO for the sake of making more personal progress, and then go to places like Twitter later to have that socialization in whatever dose you feel you need.
@@BlueSparxLPsIn my experience most people spend more time on reddit talking about games like POE or Warframe than actually playing the game.
I complain about MMOs being less social these days but none of this "I want to sit around and chat with people all day" stuff. I'm talking about the fact that older MMOs required more strategy and communication to progress in. I find myself enjoying games like CSGO and League of Legends more than most MMOs now and not because I like the gameplay but because it actually feels like a team effort with ongoing collaboration and strategy. Anytime I run WoW dungeons now it's a purely mechanical process. You just execute the mechanics and leave without saying a word. Anyone who actually says like "hey, should we try this?" is immediately flamed for "not knowing the fights", etc.
That's information era issue more often than not. There's no sense of discovery anymore. Infact if you "dare" to discover the mechanics yourself, prepare the lube because you are going to get flamed for not following "the guide". Now there's only the META chase. It happened to old MMOs as well. I recently downloaded Lineage 2, quite an old game. I downloaded a private server of it for an older expansion, the one I used to play back in the day. Well ... the game plays differently now. Apparently with higher rates people have figured out a meta that just makes the game disgusting. You either meta slave or you lose 9/10 times.
@@xtremescript I play off meta in LoL these days because it is fun. I get frequently flamed. I get what you mean. I'm from the old school era of mmo players as well.
@@Voidwatcher Since when LoL became a mmo?
@@Zhay_ never said it was.
This. Collaboration means nothing if there isn't something to overcome by its merit. If the teamplay isn't fun because the odds are stacked against us, then why am I even online?
The reason I stopped socializing in MMO's is because the chat was 99% toxic. If every time you log in and try to chat with random players, and just get called horrible things, you just stop talking. When you play a game, and you watch chat fill up with toxic nonsense, you stop reading chat. So, ultimately, MMO's social interactions died because people stopped having fun talking/reading in chat. When this happens, people stop finding new people to play with and either leave the game, or try to solo the game. It's what happened to me. I became a solo player, I didnt start out as one. Trying to be a non-solo player now, is incredibly uncomfortable. There is a lack of trust that has been built up over the years, and those walls are not coming down easily.
Same here. There's a lot of political, anti-American, vitriolic, hostile, uninformed nonsense. (Kind of like everything online now.) I miss when people just enjoyed the novelty of being able to talk to anyone, anywhere. For a short period of time, online was a nice little niche for the introverts among us. Just a tiny window where everything was great. Miss those days...
Same, especially in gw2. And there's no point in arguing with toxic players, because you're just wasting time and energy, which could be managed better. I laugh at those SJWs who get so fired up about someone being toxic, and fight fire with fire. Or the main reason why I don't get on discord for raids in WvW is because it's usually filled with sexist pigs and racist fucks who are horny over that one girl in the party or make so many toxic remarks about literally everything. It's not a fun environment and it's much better to just listen to music and do your thing. The fact is that the gaming community as a whole is very diverse and amongst us there are a lot of toxic players who don't wanna admit they're being toxic and pretend they're just having fun at the expense of others.
@@viscousgoo2021 My days in older mmorpgs like Perfect World, Lucent Heart, Terra and probably any other older mmorpg out there (since i played them all) were so much more peaceful and meaningful because there were MODs or Admins moderating chats sometimes and people weren't as toxic because they feared the ban. Nowadays in Gw2 i haven't seen a single GM in 5 years and Guild Leaders are usually toxic themselves as well.
"those walls are not coming down easily." OH BOY, do I understand that. I have various walls built up for... reasons. And most people I run into in games makes me glad I've built them. Especially back when I played Call of Duty, let me tell you most of my walls were built because of the Call of Duty community.
And it all fits in with what he said that players have become numbers and replacable. They treat you as toxic because they know that they don't need you or your help and most likely will never even see you with all the merged realms, sharding, instancing, and all that bullshit that are in modern MMOs
Might I make this suggestion as an additive statement?
Modern MMO communities are garbage and that's driving people to avoid socializing internally.
The number of times I have met absolutely horrific human beings in MMOs(and games in general) has exponentially increased over the years admittedly partially because of those no accountability solo player systems that were put in. People not only are mean and rude in increasing amounts but go out of their way to waste people's time and even hurt their progression in a variety of ways. I wont say that kind of behavior didn't exist before because it most certainly did and I experienced it in games like EverQuest even but the community was able to deal with it because of the social aspect. It appears to be far more common nowadays since you're essentially anonymous in dungeon finders and megaservers much like social media where you have the same kind of behavior occurring with troll accounts and the like and there is no punishment source for deterring that kind of malicious behavior because it's not outright hurtful like homophobic or racial slurs so you can't report it.
The video I mostly agree with, I just think that bit is something else to note.
Were as making friends used to be somewhat necessary to really grow and gain certain achievements in most MMO games all you need now is your wallet or a lot of time spent in front of your PC so people are quicker to be assholes. Plus society itself is becoming darker and more mentally fucked year after year so it only makes sense that our virtual worlds would begin to reflect that darkness.
Honestly.... I've met shitty people since 2004. It hasn't gotten any better. Being able to anonymously speak whatever you want isn't something a human can handle mentally when taken advantage of. It's simple as that.
Sounds like you are just toxic.
Interestingly enough I found WoW to be more "social" on retro servers than on Retail
Idk why but retail mentality is just so devoid of social interaction in lieu of "go next raid fastfastfast"
have you played classic? like peps want full world buffs for this boss a couple of friends just duoed like lmao. The community is pretty much the same in both games.
@@SH4D0WBattousai Ye, that's why I stated retro servers not classic (which I also consider part of retail)
When u Design your game like a treadmill people will behave like that.
Hello Christian Acquasanta, may I ask if by "retro" servers you meant "private servers"?
I think having social "classes" and social skills would go a long way towards building a social scene. Star Wars Galaxies had a plethora of instruments, each of which provided different buffs to listeners.
This created player bands, with dancers and pyrotechnics, but it also got people to cluster up and interact. The bars were packed, roleplayers and guilds bragged about their bands.
Doctors healin in the hospitals, Dancer and musicians in the Cantina's. Travelling to well-known player towns with well-known player vendors to buy your favourite composite armour. I miss Galaxies :(
@@ShadyLurker16 Yeah, my favourite MMO community (provided you stayed out of the BH/Jedi forums, anyway). Even the "well, Ahazi still isn't up, let's allt make a fat white wookiee band on some other server to pass the time".
I did most of my lot trading with fat white wookiees.
@@ShadyLurker16 Honestly? That's what I think other MMO's needed to steal from Galaxies. I made a Doctor/Dancer so I could fix all the ill's of people and enjoyed that game the most in two situations.
1. When I would have someone come in to be healed and I would ask them how they got the damage while the healing went on. I'd end up with a cluster of people talking, most already fully healed, virtually every time.
2. The rare times I made a house call. A character with no combat capacity being hauled into a deadly place to fix damage that would otherwise strand someone out there. A REAL escort quest, complete with coordination by the people who hunted me down because one of them had chatted with me the week before. A once in a life time experience of a group tanking a de-facto raid boss while I fixed damage on the other group in the battle area itself despite not being a part of their group, guild or anything. When they raped that game to make a wow clone, I was done and sad to see it happen.
@@Sorain1 YES!!! I remember escorting someone to their mining equipment because they were pure crafters. It was one of the most memorable experiences ever, and it was so natural.
@@BoogerLeader Potentially Ashes of Creation will have a bit of that, though in that case your escort target will likely be a little less useless in combat then I was at the time. (I had decent armor just because I knew I might need to do a field medic call, but still.)
after 12 years of playing mmos , ive always been alone. SOLO STYLE!!
That's sad, you can have great fun playing a game, but you can have even more fun sharing that with others.
@@longleaf0 For some people, interacting with others actively makes an experience worse. The stress, observing of unwritten social rules, time and scheduling commitments that clash with their real lives, and more, make that side of MMOs a nightmare.
Some people just like playing in a world populated with other people, perhaps interacting by putting their goods up for sale in the auction house, or contributing to their NPC kingdom's influence over an area by clearing out monsters, solo... and while these players might as well play single player games, single player games rarely get updated content, new classes, new monsters, new quests, etc, released on a monthly-quarterly rate... often just getting bug fixes past the release. MMOs let you build one character for years, and explore an expanding world... whether one wants to do this in a group or solo has entirely different motivations and impacts on the player.
So, some people may love being around others, while others enjoy being on their own... (some may know these distinctions as extroversion vs introversion, and neither is good or bad, just different - however, most of this world is built around extroversion, such as getting jobs and junk... leaving introverts, who generally like gaming, also not finding fun when forced to group even in their recreational time.)
@@longleaf0 I would love playing with others but finding the right person to play with is the most difficult task on this planet and I never found anyone in the past 2 decades. Every time I tried to team up with someone was one hell of a stressful experience which I wont put myself through anymore.
@@longleaf0 Different tastes.
Discord “communities” Kill a lot of social interactions In the game. People don’t even know how to express themselves through chat bars anymore.
So? How is this a "bad" thing
Idk I think he meant that people don't use ingame chat as much since they can talk with their party through voice chat or groupchat which means quieter games
@@ruefysh9576 i get that, but its still does not change anything :P
Why did you put "communities" in quotes? They are communities. You can join one and make friends. It's in many ways better than the simple chat boxes that exist in game.
@@ItsBoyRed He said why it's bad. It kills social interactivity.
A lot of us played in a guild back in the days. We raided so much. Eventually you have no more motivation to do that 3-4x a week. After so many years I play it only solo without a guild.
The most social i've ever felt in a mmo was in a small community mmo or ones without global chat/whispering. To talk to people you had to be be near them. It was great, you actually made friends, traveled together, visited etc.
Because they different Social interactions. The the old Social interaction on MMO's are interpersonal you got to know the people your with Talk Traded and played with them all the time. The social interactions of TH-cam, Twitch and Reddit are parasocial for the most part although the community gets a personality it personality bases of crowd involvement and that stuff is great it was makes sports events so fun. Discord can be a little interpersonal Discord is the closest to what MMO's use to be in that your just hanging out and talking but it is not running a shop and talking with friends or being out in the world and getting a friend call to meet up. Discord is similar but it just a chat box.
There isn't really any point to talking to other players even through discord because the content is single player and I can I always look up a guide rather than ask strangers. For group quests there is always group finder.
I've moved pretty much entirely to solo play in MMOs now. The thing is that the gameplay aspect of MMOs are fun. The provide a progression system, and combat mechanics that you don't really get anywhere else. So it's fair to say why play an online game if you don't want to talk to anybody, but also remember that there isn't exactly an offline version of WoW you can play. I think there is a pretty easy balance to strike. Endgame hardcore content should require this type of communication, and the open world questing or crafting does not.
I think your last video on guides is worth mentioning too since that plays a huge part. If you wanted to know where to get a certain item, how to beat an encounter, or the best way to build your character you had to go find someone who knew and ask them. Nowadays people get upset at you for wasting their time when you can google all the answers yourself. Even end game raids can be completed with no planning or talking because you already know your job and exactly what you need to do before you've ever even seen the fight. We don't need to talk about how we're going to manage aggro or how we can manipulate the fight to increase our damage. No, you're the tank, this is what all tanks everywhere will do just do it.
The only problems are Elitist and "Meta" you can't even load to a dungeon without some SHIT-head questioning your class and race choice for the role
/ignore
The reason meta is there is because players don't want to do the whole struggle against the boss every single time. Your build can be massively shitty and do like 0 dps. This waste everyone's time.
If you want to do a dungeon without players that just want to do the dungeon smoothly, just make a everyone welcomed lfg.
@@goruu and that is exactly the problem. If I‘m running around solo with a shitty build then nobody is gonna bother me.
@@iamwritingrightnow8217 I don't see what is wrong with that.
If You are not pulling your weight, theb You shouldn't join a serious group.
Imagine you are doing a project in school. One person does little work. That workload is placed on someone else.
Luckily, if you want to play your shitty solo build, mmorpgs has a field for that. Open world lets you play without judgement.
I don´t know abput others but i when i say "MMO's have become less social i mean less that players don´t talk as much with one another but how they do it. Mostly it is just a cesspool of flaming and dickmeasuraing. A player isn´t a person anymore but rather just a number. That is the sad part about it.
I agree, I've personally moved to playing my mmos solo or with friends I know in real life because one misstep in a raid or instance and you just get trashed on. No helpful comments or coaching to help the raid be successful, just rage, flaming and kicks.
@@kyleorigliosso2276 This isn't nearly always the case. This is mostly in the hardcore raiding guilds imo. (at least in WoW) In the casual raiding guilds I've been in tons of mistakes were made time and time again, and the "offending" players would patiently be guided. Up to the point where even I started thinking "ugh, just remove this guy already! He never pays attention to tactics, never walks out of bad stuff on the ground, and just tunnel-visions on doing damage!"
Now in hardcore raiding guilds. My younger brother has been in those. In those it's usually "You made this mistake twice now! You've been able to read the tactics and still make stupid mistakes! You're kicked from today's raid!"
"Oh look at my high-tier raid gear! If you would have grinded the same amount as me, you wouldn't have a hard time beating this boss!" - Yeah, sorry not sorry. I was busy having fun people from my guild, decorating someone's house, or helping other's with crafting the gear they requested.
Everquest isn't like that.
@@Sanquinity Personally, I'd punch that raid-leader in the face and walk away from the guild permanently.
When I first started playing MMOs, I was super social and had a blast. As I got older, I started being more personal and I made my social circle smaller. The same thing happens to a lot of people in games. It's more like the same reasons that "MMOs aren't the same as they used to be", when in actuality the social systems are still there. Most people have changed, and so have their lives.
On the other hand, I refuse to ignore MMOs just because I'm not super social. I play for the mechanics, the content, and sure enough the players. I like the idea of others playing and the OPTION to play with them. I chat now and again but I like playing the game first and foremost.
Changing systems to attract solo players can also drive away the more social players. Game companies take that trade because there's more solo players these days. However, solo players will exhaust the game's content and then move on, because the game itself is the only thing keeping them there. Social players will exhaust the content, but in many cases stick around and continue to socialize. Focusing on solo players means keeping up a grueling pace of content release, or else you lose them. I feel that's why people sticking around in older games that haven't had any new content tend to be more social, because it was never about the content for them. Solo focused games look great for short term numbers, but social games have longevity and a loyal playerbase. It's a case of $1000 now or $2000 spread out over the next month. Execs choose the immediate reward every time.
Yeah even Wow has felt the bite of this... It's still riding the hype from it's heyday where it was more of a balanced experiance, but has been dying a slow death ever sense, a death that has only accelerated in recent years.
Yes the instant gratification is powerful in all aspect of life.
true I was playing on the shatar wow server.
and it was fun because I was part in a RP guild that 2009 was invited to our server RP council (where the bigger active RP guilds meet to decide the servers cannon like what guild owned what how ingame big any guild was) we had guilds whit 1000 active players but lore wise it was 50 peaple and one shop in stormwind.
another guild had 200 active member lore wise we had about 2500ish member and ran a mid sized military base somewhere.
and it was fun because when the latest content was dried up by our servers PVE elite player guilds they left untill the next thing came up and that was a few weeks/month where none of there member would log in at all the same as on the PVE and PVP servers.
RP player we whent into over drive maybe some of the RP guild also would finish up the content right as the next content would release didn´t really care RP was on the agenda whit PVP and PVE been secondary.
Someone finally said it
I can't talk for others, but i'm now 32 and i just want to play by myself or if i absolutely have to group with someone, i just do it because it's mandatory, and only do the polite stuff like saying hello and goodbye. I used to be social when i was playing WoW back in high school and University, but since i started working and have a lot less time for myself, i just want to spend it however i like, play at my own pace and not have to deal with others. I played WoW for about 2 months before and after Shadowlands launched, now i'm mostly playing RDR2 Online and ESO, and i do that almost entirely solo.
Hey I am also a solo player, looking for a new mmo to enjoy. How's the ESO solo experience in your opinion?
@@remondx8880 If you get ESO+ (the subscription) it's a blast, you can enjoy it for a few months for sure, that is if you like questing and professions and treasure hunting and stuff like that :D It has SO much content, it's a bit insane! It can take you 20+ hours to do all the quests, solo dungeons, rares and exploration stuff in any zone, and there are over 30 such zones :o
They've become less social as they've become more competitive, imo. When the objective takes priority, people don't interact unless they're required to in order to succeed and even then it becomes entirely about "what do you bring to the table?". It started with clearing content, allowing people to stand out but wielding gear no one else had. Then the race to world first became something to lord over people who DID wield the same gear as you. People who initially come together through impersonal systems like guild applications, parse logs and raid achievements become friends seemingly by accident over time. It's great when it works, but those friendships can also fall apart via the same systems when people find they're no longer accomplishing objectives in one group over another. Your "friends" become your online coworkers/ex-coworkers and little else.
Exactly. It‘be seen the same in Adventurer’s League DnD. Interchangeable objective-focused and resource motivated players are … well honestly, they’re pretty close to mercenaries.
Ironically, that might be a more realistic take on fantasy adventurer as opposed to a tight-night party.
I actually like the way it is now. I dont like to be in the game at certain time and i dont like to force myself to be good. I mean this is a freaking game not a job. I already have many things to improve myself, i really need to relax. If game also become a job, when am i gonna relax?
literally how classic wow feels right now im so sick of it
I think there has to be a middle ground. I had friends who were big into WoW back in the day, and they would be playing at work or during club events, because that's when the guild said to show up. Meanwhile, my late husband played Star Trek Online, Old Republic, EVE, etc, but always strictly solo, mainly because he didn't want to be harassed about his progress/pacing.
Best - only - MMO experience I ever had was Marvel: Avengers Alliance, basically a single-player game with server-wide chat and some asynchronous boss raids towards the end. You could play when/as you wanted, and that incentivized social behavior rather than requiring it. IMO that's the best approach - carrot, not stick.
Well thats the whole point of mmorpg especially the early mmorpgs like everquest and wow, you had lazy players which often ended on lvl 20, casual players which hit 60 but had average gear, and sickos which raided 4 times a week and had everything best (reffered as an best guild/clan on the server). You had all the classes of society and people were satisfied, just like in real life. Nowdays everyone wants max lvl and epic gear without investing 2hrs a day, during the early days of vanilla hiting max lvl was an achivment, you cannot drive a lambo or ferrari without working your ass out, and thats the whole point of mmorpg having living breeding world were everyone has their role.
@@denirebic5769 In that sense, I think there's been too much mirroring of real world stratification in online games. The players with lots of IRL money (or credit), and/or loads of free time, or who straight-up cheat, create an elite tier, and then pat themselves on the back for working hard. But the other players aren't less "dedicated" to the game, they likely just have other constraints.
I play games to get away from all that socioeconomic class-strata BS in the real world. Which is why I mainly play Nintendo and avoid MMOs altogether, no matter how sweet-looking :sigh:
I mean solooing world/raid bosses feel amazing, even if it takes 15 min instead of 2mind (for example) with a group the fact that you alone with your dedication, skill and tactics was able to take down a boss dsigned for groups is a rewarding and fulfilling deed.
ive been playing mmos since runescape was released. And even games that were made purely for social such as furcadia, habbo hotel, etc.. but it turns out i'm just as shy online as i am in person. so 20 years later i still haven't made a friend lol.
Same 😭
Damn, that's rough. I'm a very insecure person, also not very good at making friends....
The perfect game for me makes all content available to solo players but makes room for benefits if you team up with people. I hate having my experience depend on the chances of finding the right people at the right time
And hard enough that you only need three people at maximum. In TBC I could not do some group quests because despite being social it is hard to get 4 more people asking for help. But needing only half of them is doable.
MMORPG's didn't become less social, we did. I remember early-mid 2000's playing WoW and guild wars and LOTRO and those things, it was just how people were.
Exactly!
I think its both. As someone who was never social, when I first played wow It forced me into socializing for raiding, and dungeons. If I wanted to do that kind of content I had to talk to people or reach out in chats. If dungeons went bad. Most people would communicate with each other to figure out the problem cause dropping out and finding another group was usually too much more work no one really felt like doing right after just doing it.
I didnt wanna keep tryna convince strangers to let me join groups repeatedly so i eventually joined guilds and had semi social relationships with people in them. Now a days you can queue for stuff so you dont even have to join guilds or look through chats. If a dungeon is running bad then you can just drop out and queue for another no problem.
Its true that people are far more isolated then in the past due to not having to leave but, mmos have also become more isolated as well.
I think there's definitely a generational change. I play ESO and most of the (few) 30+ people I raid with have normal social skills, at the very least they say hello and goodbye if they don't feel like chatting. But when I'm grouping with someone with an anime pfp, there's a 50/50 they won't utter a single word during the entire raid. And when using the activity finder, a lot of people can't even be bothered to type hello or tyfg. To me it's creepy that after smoothly completing group content and people are exchanging tyfgs you just leave. And I'm the 'toxic' endgame player with top-5% parses in the world, so I'm not getting carried in any of this face roll content. I just add those people to my ignore list if they're going to behave like NPCs.
I remember being so social when I was a kid playing some mmorpg. Didn’t know about toxic people then. I stopped being social after the many toxic people I met running dungeons/instances.
IMO, MMORPGs were supposed to remain a niche genre. Something like PnP RPGs are today.
You know how everybody says people were more neighborly back in the day? That's cause those people sometimes needed each other. Sometimes you needed a cup of sugar, a couple of eggs, help getting a couch up the stairs, whatever the case may be. Those little challenges helped build comradery. Something similar happened with old school MMOs. Having to work together builds bonds in people. Since the games have been made less social, those bonds don't form quite as naturally. Sure, you can seek them out, but it's not the same. Now what I'm talking about isn't something that appeals to all players, hence my earlier statement. This is a genre that simply wasn't made to be mass market without compromising what are, IMO, it's most appealing aspects.
"MMORPGs were supposed to remain a niche genre" Those normies ruining everything again.
I guess I am a gaming anti-social type of guy. Sometimes I have played on line things with friends or groups - but mostly I want to game when I have time, not adjust to link up with others, and not have a dozen or more other people doing the same quest or using the same crafting station I want to do. I don't really play any MMOs these days except rarely dropping into Fallout 76 - where I go out of my way to avoid other players. (Well, I do drop stuff I don't need anymore in front of newbies when I run across them - but I never stick around to take them under my wing or such. Kinda stinks because the final end game and some of the daily event things require a group and I don't do groups)
I never thought that "single player MMOs" would be a thing. Groups feel like you're playing with a bunch of bots or NPCs. Nobody say a thing. I'd rather play GTA than a mmo these days.
one thing that made mmos less social for me is phasing technology. the servers ability to pull in players from different servers at any time to make your current world seem more populated if it was on the downfall.
This, absolutely this. Phasing removed so much of the communication for me as anytime i met someone i thought was cool, they were on another server and we would rarely see one another. Or if we were on thr same server, theres the chance we wouldnt be in the same PHASE on the same server even if at the same place / time. You had to know they were on to join them to be in the same phase to see them.
I actually mentioned this in another one of these videos.
The fact that you get phased out woth other people from other servers, or players are tossed around in to Shards/Sub-Servers makes it very hard to know when you'll encounter the same player consistently.
It really doesn't do much good for the social aspects if you know that the players you meet are likely to be never seen again.
Aren't there such things as mega servers nowadays? Why can't developers make 1 massive server for 100k people or whatever the amount is in each region? Why not have variable server caps. I don't understand how this hasn't become a staple in mmo development. Server death/merges kills games.
@@alainsauve5903 Absolutely they could - they just don't prioritize it. I remember that has been asked for in WoW for nearly a decade now. Blizzard's best _excuse_ given is that then there'd be name conflicts and players might lose their desired name. Within seconds, people chimed back with the most obvious answer - give us surnames... like so many other MMOs do already... still waiting for them to care...
It is right. Game servers are now very poorly capable of hosting many players. For example, games like GTA SA could hit 100 players or more in a single server, while GTA V barely reaches 25 (and hopefully it doesn't disconnect for unknown reasons).
Today they are OPTIONALLY social. There is plenty of social interaction in today's MMOs.
But, because they are optionally social, a wider scope of people have the chance to play... 🤷♀️
And very few of them are social. Which leaves the whole game to a bunch of edge lords in the back of a tavern who won’t talk to anyone. It ruins the entire purpose of the game.
Sorry, but if its not in the game it doesn't count to the game's credit. Dev's don't get bonus points for what fans do outside the game.
Their complacency doesn't help either..
unless they're Bethesda.
Your description of a solo player who wants to be a part of the shared world without needing to interact with others fits me perfectly. Hell even in the real world I enjoy being around other people just as much as I enjoy being alone, but I just don’t have that need to be social with the people I’m with.
Melding the solo and group has been bad. It's been what's happening ever since the decline of the MMO. They are trying to appeal to the broad audience while pleasing nobody. The solo player can't play alone and the group player can't be social. We have a solo rpg followed by people sitting around in 1 town while 99% of the world is uninhabited doing content with strangers, there's something wrong with this picture. Liking it is the same as liking fast travel. Going from your town and preparing to set out from land sea and air to another zone, meeting people along the way, and forming a group to do content with was the soul of the MMO. And back then we did have solos too, there was the solo-classes who could lone-wolf out in the world at a slower pace, they got to be the badass they want to be. Now nobody is special.
Man, that what you said its just so true. Back then, if you want to become a solo player you need to work harder for it, be a true badass.
While I understand and agree with your thesis, I think bringing fast travel into it was a bit of a wobble. Fast travel became a necessity because great level/zone designers (like John Capozzi) are few and far between and are often kept on short leashes. So many of the zones you get in MMOs are either copy-pasta BS or wildly out of sync with player behavior. In the old days, people clustered around the handful of great zones (The Kunark Express, Fungus Grove, etc) and cut the travel requirement out completely. Imagine not having fast travel and spending an entire play session just getting to a zone only to find the zone is poorly designed (or, in more common parlance, it sucks). You wouldn't feel very good about having to spend another play session to get back or to get to a zone you know is good. Fast travel isn't evil or if it is, it's a necessary one.
Decline of MMO? Have you seen player numbers lately? Between Wow, FF14, ESO, Guild Wars 2 there are more players than ever.
@@hanataba1291 So true. You either had to progress at a far slower rate or multibox (and thus, pay more). Hell, for better or worse, those "you must play together" games were what led to the multibox trend.
@@delunk5906 Really? Are we talking the nebulous "accounts created" or people playing every day religiously? I recall a time when the bigger games had 30+ servers, all full to bursting and games having to launch 2-5 new servers every year just to keep up with demand. I don't see that now. This is with people playing daily for hours. Today, I see people (myself included) playing multiple games a few hours a week. I don't see that as an improvement.
Guilds and Raiding are very exclusive by nature and quite anti-social for the majority of players on a server. It's also harder to socialize when adventuring when the pace is so fast, whether due to action combat or little to no downtime.
Thanks for the video, the is an interesting opinion. I think there is more to it though than just "Social aspects have moved off onto things like Discord". The thing is that you can take any single-player game and find a community/Discord online around that too. So what is the point of playing an MMORPG with people who feel like anyone is replaceable and therefore tend to be absolutely toxic jerks to each other because there is no reputation to keep? In my example, I've been a WoW fan for years but the most recent expansions were just missing something. I stopped playing BFA after a week and Shadowlands I got bored of it within 3 weeks due to a complete lack of real social interaction and just constant grouping with strangers. I thought it was just me but WoW Classic brought back everything I loved. The server Discord has taken over the forum posts but reputation still matters, I still get to see and fight the same people and just overall there is an awesome community experience. I got hooked again. External communication options don't really matter. I'd rather just play a single-player game and find a community for that than play a toxic MMO where people either don't talk or are nasty all the time. Especially if said MMO has a monthly sub.
Who wants to pay money & (precious) time to have abuse heaped on them? A lot of folks who are vulnerable to harassment also tend to shy away from group play in the newer communities - the lack of reputation allows toxic behavior to fester.
You always have a great perspective on these aspects. Ever since I found your videos I have been trying to remold my playstyle towards enjoyment of gaming rather than efficiency(to an extent). It's been very helpful and even improved my skill in a way. Still very hard to resist the temptation of optimal progression but definitely have a different outlook on it now.
As late as 2018, there was still pull to join a guild , so you could do content in game for groups. But most conversations in the guilds took place on sites like Discord, PS app, Facebook, ect. Fast forward to 2021, I'm seeing guilds that have x amount of players, but No interaction even on the Discord. So No point joining guilds anymore in most MMOs. Its saddens me to see this because the best of times for me was playing with people in my guilds.
I remember the day the dungeon finder came out in WoW. I had a big friends list full of people I often played with, people I had known for a long or short time, who I knew were reliable people to do dungeons with. Within the matter of days, that list became useless. Even if I contacted people on that list, nobody would be interested in grouping up, because the dungeon finder tool was just more convenient. It only took about a month until the only people I still talked to were the ones I already raided with. MMOs started dying to me on that day, I still played one more patch, but it couldn't keep me interested anymore and I basically dropped MMOs entirely after that.
I'm totally a solo player. But I love being in a world that is full of other players interacting together. About a month or so ago I was running through Bree on the Brandywine server in Lotro and came across The Whute Owl Band having a concert - a band of hobbits just out there having a blast putting on a show. It's awesome 👌
The only mmo I have played is eso as a long time elder scrolls fan. I pretty much ignore everyone and play it like a single player game but sometimes I goof around with others and had some fun interactions and also some fun dungeon runs. I like to be able to play solo and than if I want have some fun with others but I like how eso is balanced towards both sides
I actually loved the group finder in WOW.
I HATED to spend time looking for a group (probably due to me playing DPS and that there where like 1 million of us compared to 1 healer/tank)
So the group finder was a button i could press, do what ever until i could join the raid/dungeon what ever and have fun.
But even back in Planetside 1 most of the communications between us players where on the forums.
Either main server forums on the Sony site OR the guild/ fan made server forums that where made.
I made loads of friends there that i play with to this day.
When ever anyone complains about how MMO games are less social i figure that they probably are cherry coating it.
And for what ever reason do not either use the tools official or not OR have this weird idea of how things where better back in the day.
it was not better it was worse.
TS, DISC, Forums.
There are sites dedicated to finding players to you can join that fit not only your play style but what ever stage of life you are in.
Or just press "enter" and start typing in a main hub. It still works.
"Everquest is often referred to as the worlds prettiest chat room." As an EQ player back when it released through to about 2006 and then an additional 5 years in the progression servers...I've never once heard this. I mean...I get it and don't necessarily disagree with it. But I've never once heard it.
Point is you spent a lot of time in EQ resting and waiting which gave time to chat between players. The game was slow yet still needed everyone to play together to make progress. Modern MMOs are all silent solo go go go, no time to chat except to troll the newb.
I really, REALLY wish you would put just a tiny white text in the corner of the screen, barely noticeable, on your rants, that said the name of the game being played, so I'd be able to look up the ones that seem interesting!
Runes of magic
Guild wars 2
Elder scrolls online
Runescape
They should be in order :)
why does remaining hubs of socializing necessitate forcing solo players to fall into rank and and file?
our current situation allows solo players to play a single player game in most mmos, and it doubles down on that alienation.
Even if someone who comes into a game solo wants to reach out to others it's hard due to needing to learn whole cultures that are about other things.
for instance your discord is a hub built around you as an idea, this is a parallel place to say, guildwars 2 but it's not a hub built around guildwars 2, so the culture will certainly have a large amount of cultural baggage that isn't strictly relevant. Your claim is i as the new person should either be forced into a situation where i either play solo eschewing your culture or assimilate to your culture (at least enough to have social interaction) either that or the games themselves should be built in a way that requires social iteration, ie something like putting discord into the game.
all these options are terrible.
Here is the /real/ problem i see it. MMO's are attempting to build adventure games, or social games AT ALL.
They should set their goal at building a world. set up rules and understand the effects of those rule. socialization needing to occur in some other universe
isn't very world like. or if the world is like that, what does that make players? unspeaking gods, or incomprehensible autonomous robots?
if the mmo makes "being a world" the most important thing, and every decision is looked at with that lens social aspects of the game will be naturally solved.
take sending mail to players. if that letter is taken by a bird or something what if it could be intercepted by someone killing that bird?
people would probably want some way to make mail more reliable, and so a guild of mail carriers might form. There is a /real/ need in the game
and the game allows for it, so this natural hub of players with common interest will come together without any need to prod anyone.
The level of social interaction could range from "being a top tier mail carrier for the pony express" to "sometimes when going from city a to city b i take a stack of parcels for some extra silver"
these aren't hard problems to solve unless you also want to solve the problem no gamer cares about "how to make this world profitable."
The only way this could work is if the game was somehow able to prevent players from using any kind of outside communication. Even if it were possible to stop a player from using Discord in the background or texting on their phone, that would be a huge breach in both privacy and a person's right to communicate freely with others. It simply isn't possible to isolate players to the point where they are forced to use in-game systems to communicate and if it were, that kind of restriction would very likely drive most players away.
@@jordonkautz1470 that's not true.
i understand what you mean, but i see the rise of teamspeak then discord as a failing of the game infrastructure rather than some force unto itself. when you are in a game it's more natural to communicate in the game, it's just that ingame communication is frustratingly limited.
for large general online communities sure discord will (or something like it) be around. but for communication about the game itself and for communities founded inside the game, the only reason to go out of the game to communicate is the game has poor infrastructure and doesn't take it's mechanics seriously.
to kinda beat the dead horse - minecraft is actually the closest platform i can think of in the direction i imagine, it at least allows users to create books... but imagine if instead of gw2 having a clearnet wiki seperate from the game it had all the wiki information at the actual durmand priory, and the order of whispers let you send irl emails to outside game addresses.
There can be no satisfying social interactions with a bunch of misfits.
Every good thing will go down when it tries to cater to everyone
So, fundamentally, I disagree with your conclusion. MMOs are social experiences. Full stop. While appealing to solo players is inevitable for means of profit, the systems in place not only disincentivize socialization, they outright dehumanize players. One of the things that bother me about a lot of MMOs is that you don't really work together as a team. You are a cog in the machine, to be thrown out if the party leader thinks you did a bad job. I can't be who I want to be. I can be the dps, the tank, or the support. I can't try gimmick or experimental builds, I can't try unconventional strategies, I can't play suboptimally because it fits a roleplay for the character I want to be. I have to be efficient. I have to play by the book. Or I get thrown away. It used to be you could go into an mmo and people would talk. They would listen. They would care and accomodate. That's not the case anymore. And I think all of the matchmaking tools, for as much as they help the gameplay, absolutely damage the social aspect of the game, and influence opinions in social media. I miss the days where I could go on Runescape and make new friends and forge bonds with those friends. Now I join people I'll never see again for a single mission, emote at them and leave. Because it was so hard to get help, it was in our best interest to be courteous, polite, kind, and make and strengthen friendships. Asking randoms for help is hard, so having a reliable group you can call on greatly helps the community. Now you just push a button and have to play perfectly to the tune of someone who's under no obligation to be nice to you or get called a racial slur. I'm more of an introvert, so I get it, talking to strangers is hard. It's scary. And they can and will abuse you for placing too much trust in them. But then you find reliable friends you can always go to. You can nurture a small friend group of people from around the world. And those friends will be some of the best friends you could ever ask for. I much prefer that experience to joining a discord and getting laughed out of the conversation because I haven't read all the tierlists and meta guides.
I was never very sociable to begin with. I usually play mmo's solo.
If that's the case, what attracts you to MMOs? Why not play Skyrim or something similar to that?
@@Blitzkrieg1605 I only play Guild War 2. I enjoy the game play and the world is fun to explore. I do play skyrim and the like as well.
At least with me, I just like the idea that others are around and I can hang out when i'm comfortable. Not to mention I hate playing alone or the single player games don't have the MMO mechanics and systems.
I play Guild Wars 2 solo because I enjoy the gameplay and story and whatnot, but I wanna do my own thing, in my own time. Can't do that if I'm playing with others.
There's another one you missed: the control of community. Smaller servers, not allowing changing of name or server, and taking longer to level all made Everquest a very tight community. There were celebrities on servers, you knew and recognized people and remembered their names from grouping or events. You'd pass by someone and remember them. Making bigger, more flexible servers meant you'd not often remember names unless they were in your guild. You'd not recognize characters because they might not be the same race next time you saw them.
The problem that this video fails to understand is that the outside experience of MMORPGs has always existed, even when I was playing mmos in the late 90s. Forums always existed, guild websites always existed, mumble, skype, ventrilio always existed as well as chat rooms. The competition, reputation, and dependence of players has been stripped from the game, I have little to no reason to care about anyone outside of my guild and moving said guild to a discord doesn't change that. The mechanical degradation of these mechanics just creates smaller bubbles because there's no real reason beyond endgame dungeons to depend on players whatsoever. Leveling used to be a way of bringing people together but is now so efficient solo wise there's no reason to even bother talking to others in most games. Shifting from one forum to a message board does not account for it, watching a video and leaving comments in chat that form no relationships does not account for it.
You can lame the single playerification of mmo's due to greedy stock and share holders trying to force mmo's to diversify and change their gameplay style to suit that always ever elusive "Wider audience."
You cant blame them, its a business, its all about making money. If someone wants to make a non-profit mmo then maybe they can dispense with the solo stuff, though I dont know how long they would last if everyone needs a group to do everything in game.
Look what happened to the MMOs that stayed "group only, no content for solo players." They either died or shrank to obscurity. Is that what you wanted? Seems like a shitty alternative to me.
bingo
@@Lewtable true, the potential is wasted on so many mmos. In the example you gave, maybe at some point wow devs might have considered it a possibility. But the people ruined it imho. Even the basic guild advantages at the time were exploited by the players to maximize earnings or use other players to siphon free gold from the guild. Blizzard realized if they were to make some sort of system for guilds to specialize or gain some sort of bonus for certain activities, players would exploit it and ruin the game's balance. Thats Blizzard's problem, they worry so much about balance they cant bring themselves to introduce truly innovative systems.
@@Lewtable Agreed, in-game guild structures and tools have not kept up with the times at all. It's why every serious guild uses third-party tools like Discord to do most of their coordination, promotion, socializing etc.
I loved the social aspect of MMO's until some of these younger generations came about. it got so toxic so fast with these kids that it ruined most of it for me. now I only play MMO's that have strong single player gameplay.
younger people are no more toxic than older generations; you unconsciously disregard what older people do (because it doesn't _seem_ toxic to you,) or what younger people do simply stands out more (to you) - either way, passing the buck to "X group outside my control is to blame" is a convenient distraction from what game designers or yourself could do differently
@@Rhodair For real, this goes beyond MMO's and into games I more frequent, online shooters. in fact in many games I play the people you usually hear are people of all ages going out of their way being asshats for attention or just for their own laughs, it's gotten so disheartening that I've been trained not to really socialize on games online anymore.
People suck. its not a good mindset to have, but it's what I've experienced.
Luckily Ive made enough genuine friends that its not like im cut off from socializing as a whole.
I like this way. When grouping is optional and not forced.
Now I'm reminded why I quit Warframe, despite liking the gameplay. Hit a brick wall where everything needed me to be in a guild or clan and couldn't figure out how to progress further as a solo player.
Exactly why I quit too, glad it isn't just me then... It's not the only game that I played like that either.
You guys should team up! :D
@@boom-toby easy for you to say, not everyone has the same play schedule, thats one of the main problems solo players try to avoid by being solo players.
I only grouped up with people when I needed something leveled up quickly or wanted some Prime stuff, even then I just set my matchmaking to public and went to Helene, Hydron or did Sanctuary Onslaught or went to recruiting chat and found a group in a few minutes. Also the game doesn't really need you to be active in a clan, just to exist in it. Don't need to do anything
that's what I love about GW2, you do social events without beeing actually social active, you wandering around the map, participating in events without having the need to communicate to anyone.
its also due to the toxic community that has spawned since about the early 2010's. Its hard for new players and people who have been away from the game for a while. you make one little mistake in a dungeon or raid and you are berated to the point that it is no longer any fun. I remember being part of a guild that felt like family.I remember the thrill of making raid progression with my guild. I remember talking to guild mates until wee hours in the morning during the work week and going to work with 3 hours of sleep.. lo l. I am still friends with former guild members 12 years latter.
I dunno, there are all sorts of guilds out there. If you wanna raid mythic, the other people in the raid are clearly not there to waste time, they wanna get things done. I'm sure you can easily find less-progression-focused guilds where mistakes don't matter much.
Especially the newest FOTM MMOs that were coming out and when they'd go F2P - holy moly...
@@Brekner homie you can still raid mythic and not be assholes, but it goes both ways. Not caring about setting goals and being lazy obviously isn't preferred in those min/max guilds and you're being an ass if you aren't willing to improve and rather hold others back. In saying that, being short tempered, rude and obnoxious to those trying to learn but aren't there yet is just as bad if not worse since it turns away new players that can liven up the guild and game. It's a two way street, I feel sorry for the people who don't get to experience raiding with your second fam at 4am going nuts off your 10th mountain dew with your homie nearby screamin his head off without a care in the world.
@@Brekner I can totally understand the perspective of being in a progression oriented guild. I would not even consider being in such a guild unless I was willing to put in the time and effort to pull my weight.But I run into toxic players just getting into non-heroic dungeon groups or looking for raid. you can read about boss fights and watch youtube videos until your eyes bleed but actually implementing strategies for the first time still is a learning experience. you misstep or have a bit of bad timing playing through something for the first time people now have a damn conniption fit .
@@xanthiafantom Eh usually as long as the boss dies, nobody has any issues. They only get mad on wipes.
Yea, but I don't want to socialise on twitter or discord, I want to socialise IN the game.
I think the whole issue is simply marketing, like most game design issues.
If you made the game unbeatable solo players would interact, but hard games don't get mass appeal so that can't happen.
If you make the players socialize they might not like it and that won't give you mass appeal.
It's about the numbers, that's why most mmos suck ass. They pander to every demographic possible and therefore end up bland and unfocused.
Like in real life, trying to be liked by literally everyone just makes you lack identity and seem pathetic. That's the current state of mmos.
So yeah it's the publisher's fault.
Dam... my soul was offended by your last paragraph 😅😂
@@nashi._.7563 I mean, doing that isn't good for you :/
I see it diffrently it no pendering to everbody but being nice and open with all
@@anteprs7908 being for Everybody and being for Anybody are very different things.
@@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz true but mmo without casual/solo players would not survive it did in a diffrent time
This might very well be part of the reason, but certainly not the whole reason.
The communication certainly took a bad turn and the content became more solo oriented, but even wow started very group friendly only to later turn into a less social game.
What I noticed as more relevant with wow is how bad most of the professions became after burning crusade. Crafting professions barely mattered past a certain point. In fact stuff like leatherworking/blacksmithing/tailoring became a chore and a money loss over the profession it was supposed to be.
I always wanted to be that guy who makes weapons for the guild, but wow just puts you in the corner and only lets you make the worst of crap after the burning crusade. And this issue is prevalent in most current mmorpg-s.
It's very unlikely that you can find a mmorpg where you can be the guy people want to purchase endgame or even decent gear from. The marketplace seems to be heavily discouraged.
Crafting still mastered in the best WoW expansion... That happened after TBC.
Also, games changing isn't as much of a cause as it is a reaction.
One of the reasons the socialization has shifted to platforms like Discord, I think, is this: you can put those messaging platforms on your phone. You can't put the game there. So, you can communicate with your friends and social circles wherever you are. When your social sphere from the game is on a 3rd party platform, you can use it to chat and prepare for things hours before you log on. These chat platforms are more broadly available than MMOs so it is easier to reach people on short notice, or while they are out running errands, at work, or at school. In my WoW guild, for example, we have a discord that everyone uses. We go there to share funny pictures and pet photos, but we also use it to plan raids and dungeon runs long before the planned time for them. We can then use the voice channels while doing the activity and actually talk with each other. The game does have a voice chat service, but it's subpar.
It has moved to discord cause it's more convenient in almost every single way.
Simple as that.
And not to mention how So many MMOs don't even have a game chat.
Ok now I'll read your comment lol.
Thing is we've always had ventrillo/teamspeak/mumble/raidcall and now discord, it's just games don't point you in that direction early and they have realized that to get to endgame faster the more solo you are the easier it is to manage. It's not a shift of where the social is, it's a shift of why the social is.
@@sciencethygod Non of those really took off like discord has though. Even people who aren't gamers use discord a ton.
Like people who have discord tend to expect you to already have discord, heck even xbox lets you link your discord to your live account. It has more than thrived because it went well beyond the gaming stratosphere and every corner now uses it.
@@MasudaOfKorriban well ya discord became huge because it focused on the community part, and I think twitch and reddits growth helped with that. Like raid call had all the features discord has and it still didn't do as well. Take tcgs for instance, magic has had many digital games and is still one of the best, but then came along hearthstone that totally dominated the market, right time right place right tweaking of the genre and the marketing. Same deal different object.
Still doesn't change that its the why that has changed, why we socialize in games has changed over the years.
@@sciencethygod Raidcall also ran worse, had worse advertising, and did actually not have the same features at the time that discord had.
It also marketed itself as a gaming app. Which then began to hurt it's growth as well.
Same goes for most of the similar apps as well.
I think the main reasons why discord did so well was because it advertised itself to everyone, ran better than the other apps right off the bat and was making quick improvements the others couldn't keep up with.
Whilst I agree that the communication aspect is handled by other tools, I do believe that fact that a third party application is where the communications happen is a real problem. For me to be on discord and talk to people I first need to know them, if the game makes it so that I have no real reason to socialize at all in the first place then why would I care to join the other programs?
^^^
I like playing with friends, but I don't like playing with strangers. The things I dislike most from modern MMORPG's is being forced into group activities with strangers, and the competitive nature of games (trying to get the best items, trying to be the first ones to do something, trying to take down the hardest fights to prove your worth). What I like most about MMORPG's is the relaxed lifestyle in a second world where I can explore, craft, discover, grow my character and help friends do the same. I like challenging combat and dangerous locations, but being forced to fight a boss for 20 minutes with 20+ other players is extremely boring and unfulfilling. I've had more fun doing heroic dungeons in Burning Crusade with 4 friends than trying to go for server first boss kills in hardcore 25 man raiding in later years.
And who forced you to do server boss kills in hardcore 25 man raiding?
But can we all agree that sharding ruins a lot of MMO's?
Why play a solo mmo with crappy gameplay when I can play a solo focus game with way better gameplay? Today's "mmo" the people might as well be window dressing , I rarely in need of them outside of the occasional 4 man dungeon runs. Talk about being lonely geez. There's a reason people are getting tired of the solo mode theme park mmo and want a return to the truly good ole days. There's a reason why I keep playing Warhammer Online Return of reckoning more than FF14 (yes I play both).
Solo players as a whole are getting tired of themparks because they still try to force grouping or interactions to progress to max gear/pinnacle ability, Most solo players want either the walls torn down or given our own path to endgame gear/story progression.
@@undraxis So you want the best gear in the game through solo mode ? Wow , talk about selfish. Again if you don't want to interact with people play a solo game. jesus.
@@dukeofnylon Why not, as long as the challenge is there and the time commitment, but allows a solo player to do it. And if you say thats not possible look at the visions in BFA. They just need to make the path available. Does it really matter if another player you will probably never interact with has some hope of progression in a game? Raiders can get an upgrade as often as every week if not more depending on the game or RNG, why not let a solo player get a pc of gear of max ilevel in a month or two? Again is that unreasonable? Why not have a currency system that allows all players to earn endgame gear at some point even at the end of an expansions lifespan? Solo/casual player money is just as good as anyone's and we prolly spend more time on the game, we just tend to be unseen since we solo. And for the record i do play solo rpgs too, not my fault mmo companies want my money too and their games do have interesting things that solo players want to experience aside from the social aspects. And if they ever release solo versions of an MMO, with the exact same amount of content, I would drop the mmos at the drop of a hat. But i dont see Blizzard making a solo WoW anywhere, nor an srpg of star trek or most of the other popular IPs because IP holders want to make monthly income.
I joined wow in about august 2006 and it had a fantastic world chat and one of the most social interactions was the crossroads, alliance would attack and you'd call for help and people would come. Epic battles would happen and great to watch and some on the opposing factions would log on the other faction account and have a chat on how good was that fight, they didn't carry malice as both sides had set hardcore pvp areas and thats where you went. People knew my name as an aussie on a US server it's a good cultural learning and debunking the misconceptions, then about a couple of weeks away from TBC release they did a pre update and removed the global chat and bam...the social interaction was gone, People learn quickly that if you act like a dickhead in chat you won't get far in the game and thus you be nice and people will go out of their way to help you get started. With no global interactions the learned etiquette was gone and the rise of the arrogance became into chat, people would just look out for themselves and not the group and when too many number 1's soon the enjoyment would be gone.
If you're happy with facebook level connections being what pass as socialization then yeah, we got lots of socialization
I would also add the possibility of overly negative online interactions to the mix, when i was younger and playing online games literally all i would hear from other people online where slurs and insults so i just started turning off chat functions, and that just kind of become one of the default things i do in online games.
I think this is linked to lack of accountability.
In the early days you chose a server and play on it, encountering people playing on the same server. As such, if you started to act like a jerk, it would be quickly known and you get a bad reputation on the server, making it difficult to get groups or find a guild.
Today, with systems that let you freely switch between server, cross-server group finders and so on, there is no more accountability. Act like an idiot, and it doesn't matter, because you will certainly never encounter the same person twice.
That's how I felt as the years went on in WoW. When I started back in Wrath, it seemed plenty of people were plenty friendly and kind, sometimes even going out of their way to help new players and it was super cool to be a part of that. Then that slowly stopped being a thing. LFG along with a new younger generation of players coming in to replace older ones leaving the game, changed the culture into something like you describe.
@@RED_Theory038 I started playing MMOs with the old Everquest. My first encounter with a player in this game was right at the start, players would hangout at the spawn point and welcome newcomers, handing out some basic spells. Going a bit farther away, you would find other players buffing everybody to help them with their first fights (yeah it was a thing, some classes would have access to some pretty neat buffs, and it was not uncommon to have people asking for a buff in chat) and answering questions (In-game tutorials were still a foreign concept).
Grouping and cooperation was essential, as there was basically no solo content. When you wanted to grind, you'd pop into the appropriate zone, and immediately look for a group camping at one of the spawn points. As there were also a lot of down times between pulls, you would get a lot of time to chat with your teammates and make friends.
There were also regular guild meetings, where everybody would assemble and share equipement, giving away whatever they didn't need anymore to whoever needed it.
The MMO landscape as mutated so much since then... it's hard to imagine such things taking place today.
@@theslay66 what you described seems amazing
@@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065 Indeed, it was an amazing experience. But it was at a time when internet wasn't yet available in every home, and so the playerbase was small and entirely made of dedicated players and RPG lovers. MMOs were in their infancy and still experimenting, it was a very new thing, and we didn't have the same expectations as we have these days.
If EQ released today in the same state it was then, it would fail spectaculary.
"i can only use quickchat"
Because the things that require social interaction take time, and mmo's try to optimize time and therefore remove the social requirements of the games. Shouting in cities trying to form a group for a dungeon has turned into a automatic que that transports you instantly to said dungeon. You no longer have to talk to find party members, the game does that for you.
Personally, I feel there is a demand for more social pushing game mechanics. I know personally its what I look for in games now, its part of why I have recently moved to RP realms, as I enjoy the mix of gameplay with social interactions in the world. when I play an MMO i want the immersion of a living world, and having gameplay elements that nudge players to interact helps make that world feel more real, it can be something simple like having a reason to trade in person rather than on the Auction house
While I think it IS true players socialize outside of games more, it's not what I look for in an MMO. you can socialize about any type of game outside of it, and there are great communities that form around single-player games.
I think striking a balance is key, you don't always want to have to socialize I understand that, but having a game gently nudge you out of your comfort zone and come out glad that you did is a GOOD thing, it's what is beautiful about MMO's and it's something only that type of game can bring, to abandon it almost completely alienates players that are looking to have that immersive social experience.
I am a Solo player but a Social Gamer.
I often use Mabinogi as my Example as its The Longest MMO I played.
I Was Primarily a Solo Player. But the Overworld had meaning. So People were often shuffling around dungeons and crossing paths. Usually you the most anyone would do is do a fine how do ya do and move on. Sometimes you and another person would Arrive at the same dungeon and you would Just Without partying up. Do the dungeon together since Most overworld dungeons where not instanced But Kills and Loot were still shared.
People would also Gather in the City Sq's. I Spent HOURS just sitting and chatting with strangers. Just talking shit or hanging out with players who put time into Social skills, Like cooking and the Instruments.
@@BlueBD I had never heard of Mabinogi until now, and I have to say it feels like it it's very forward looking, but unsure exactly what it wants to be based on the trailer.
GF for WoW wasn't released until WoTLK which was almost half a decade later. Also a ton of these points are moot when the question is has mmo become less social, meaning is there less social interaction in mmos now then before. The answer is 100% yes there is no doubt the mmos of 1999-2010 have been less social. What ever other reasons is not relevant but to hit a few points about why people care about this. WoW vanilla and BC which had amazing numbers and did not cater anything to solo play. You couldn't do dungeons solo (at the time and level they were needed to be done at) crafting was limited to 2 slots so if you wanted a crafted high level item and you didn't choose it you had to drop one of yours and level it or socialize. Tons of quests required more then 1 person to do it. Once you were at the end game most gear was either dungeon locked or raid lock. Also information wasnt freely available for tons of people It wasn't until WOTLK you could use GF and now today we can just press a button get into a group then hope everyone does their jobs at like 50% and you can get gear and see the stories being told. Then it got dumb down even more with easy modes. I feel like the social aspect moving out the game makes the game feel less mmo and more like single player game that has others running around.
The earliest version of LFG wasn't bad tbh, no auto grouping, you still had to go to the dungeon so easily 30 mins of being grouped before you even started the dungeon and no cross server grouping. Imo it was the cross server and teleporting to the dungeon that killed the social aspect
Talking over a discord is much different then talking in the game. The communication should be foremost within the game experience and thats why wow is dying
tbh, people said it was dying since MoP and yet it still is pretty active...
but you know wow has voice chat, whereas for example ffxiv does not? It hss nothing to do with that
to be fair I don't want to talk to braindead idiots who ruin my dungeon experience. I only talk in guild, it has nothing to do with 'wow dying'
@@alihorda Maybe there wouldnt be as many braindead idiots if you still had a reputation to worry about and a group had any form of value because you spent time finding one.
Depends on the game, coming to a impassive and being unable to progress with your character is a bad thing, having specific quests with big rewards reserved for group play is a good thing.
A big part of why people tended to level in a group in the olden days was downtime between fights.
Getting a heal in your group so you don't have to sit around waiting for regen after every pull was huge, these days well designed MMO's give all of their classes the means to sustain combat without downtime.
Biggest turn offs for me is mixing different languages inside a single server and cross realm play.
While a lot of people are willing to type in English less are willing to hang out in voice chat, even less are comfortable chatting , making jokes etc.
But this is an overarching issue with human mentality and in-groups in WoW a lot of the social aspects of open world play fell apart with cross-realm play and queuing for dungeons, not only is everyone sitting in a capital city spamming dungeons while leveling. With cross realm play there is little chance of meeting the same person twice, it gives people license to be as horrific and abrasive as possible within the bounds of what is considered allowed. Even if people where trying to be nice to each other it doesn't matter because all they will ever be are strangers you won't ever see again.
This in-group behavior often also applies to players speaking different languages, be it subconscious or not, and it gets worse in games with megaservers.
The mass market appeal found by some MMORPG's also added in people that are either harder to judge or socially incompatible in the real world, way back when it was mostly nerdy people and even if we came from different age or gender groups there was overarching culture connecting us.
Guess this is the logical reason why games that cater extremely to one specific subculture are always better for social interaction.
I stopped playing WoW in MOP for the first time because this is when my guild fell apart and I realized there is no-one worth playing with anymore. In vanilla and TBC people had real reputations, I always knew that some players where no fun to play with because they took progress to serious, strangers came asking for help because someone told them I had certain crafting recipes or would maybe be willing to tank for a group of beginners and explain things.
People where more willing to engage in interaction: one time we had a standoff with an Alliance guild in front of a raid entrance because someone somewhere decided it was a good idea to hit a flagged guy that went of for four hours and people kept fighting because their reputation and honor(not the currency) was on the line.
Can't have stuff like that with cross realm teleport everywhere, raise alts in a matter of days, crafting, trading and recipes don't matter retail.
The social media aspect is a really good point, but... I guess it's just not the same as your avatar and another player's avatar encountering each other in the game organically.
There's something magical about stumbling into a friendship due to you bonding together to overcome life's inconveniences.
Alas, games generally criticized for being inconvenient, eh? Such is the dilemma.
You completely miss the point of WHY ppl communicate and how game mechanics can promote communication, while still providing gameplay for solo player. Why would ppl communicate, if they have less content together (instances, phasing), less communal goals (overworld party areas are missing in most modern theme parks), usually no common enemy like pvp players, some weird orbitrary faction restrictions, etc. Look at games like Ragnarok Online and EVE. They are like player story generators, EVE is even good at promoting such stories. Ppl divide into big factions, and not only they communicate inside their guild, like in WoW or five meaningless ones like ESO, but they also communicate outside. Like for classic servers, the best server discords were the ones with constant hate and drama, ppl from alliance and horde knew and contended each other and it was GOOD, but honor system ruined it (before honor there were zerg vs zerg fights in open world, the type of fight you can only have in an mmo btw!). And classic had most of the things that at least were not designed to PREVENT talking. Like, that's the whole point. Devs should introduce mechanics to promote talking, not discourage/get rid of. That doesn't mean solo player can't play the game. They misunderstand the nature of solo player a lot. I am a solo player nowadays. Why am I solo? Oh, because I don't see ppl around me making any impact on the world at all, I don't see any politics, any castles taken, etc. There is a way you can make your server discords and your ingame communicate with each other, you just have to really think it through, which no one does nowadays, instead working mostly on stuff like ARPG - optimizing grind, loot, exp, numbers. Completely missing the point that even solo players play an MMO because its a damn MMO, where there are a lot of players. If the sensation of a huge living world is missing, what's the point?! There is no WAR in World of WARcraft!!
Im osrs player and still doing social stuff with my friends and my clan chat.. mainly get high, talk shits, doing raids, stream sniping steamers on wildy
OSRS has a rare thing with it's CC. We ride and die for our Clan Members
Same here. CC is honestly what keeps me playing the game sometimes.
I don't know if it's because I started playing MMOs in the late 90s and early 2000s or if it's just a part of my personality but I never saw the appeal of the social part of MMOs. To me, having to trade with people was a huge chore because I had to interact and that interaction was mandatory in order for me to get a certain item. I never cared about chatting or looking for guilds, I just wanted to do my very comfy repetitive grind and acquire my items. Sure at the time I started playing in net cafés and had irl friends to talk to about the game but god have I ever despised the idea of talking to strangers in-game.
And now, 20 years later, MMOs are better than ever. You can go to a city hub and talk to randoms if you want or you can just play your own game. You don't need to trade with anyone because you have the marketboard that makes it fast and hasslefree. And if you still want to talk about the MMO or things in general who play the game you can just join a discord server or go to reddit or even an anonymous image board. No one wants to be forced to do just one thing. MMOs need the option to be social AND solo friendly. Just like how Final Fantasy XIV has some exclusively social activities, like Blue Mage achievement hunting.
Thank you! I play solo 90% of the time 10% is what I can handle.
I love it in ESO and SWTOR, where you can play solo for the story, quests, etc. and when I feel like it, just by click of the button I can join others on their missions, dungeons, pvp etc.
Guilds on the other hand, I always look for social guilds with active chat where you can talk about anything
This has been my thinking for awhile. The newness of the internet has been conflated with the newness of the MMO.
MMO has became an outlet for anger issues, a place where many angry kids blurt out their frustrations and boast how "good" they are in a game and belittle those who they feel are below them.
People always blurted out their frustrations, but it was less noticable with all the other kinds of chat
just like every other place on the internet?
haven't watched the whole video but i think ti's the point I'm thinking about, the only reason i can't get into a mmo is simple; i don't see why it's multiplayer to begin with when it's just tons of people playing a singleplayer game on the same world, there's no real "social" element to it and that feels like a waste of how the game is built
edit: watched the video and i see where he's coming from and in fact that's the exact reason why i don't like how mmos work lately, i wasn't around when mmos first existed but thats' pretty much what i wanted from an mmo
the current state just sounds like any grindy single-player game, you can play the game by yourself and then go talk about it elsewhere, then what's the point in it being an mmo? the people around you might as well be npcs at that point
I get that some people might enjoy it but man i wish those old-styled mmos were more prevalent too, where gameplay wasn't as important as the social aspect
also i think the fun to being a solo player comes from the fact that you're the only one playing solo, most people prefer to group up because naturally it gives you a better chance but when the game itself is revolved around playing solo... i mean what's the point
I love that Guild Wars 2 is mostly soloable, as well as fun in a group. Now that we're older, it's hard to get my friends online at the same time. (kids, work, etc)
As a person from the most impolite country in the entirety of South East Asia which is Indonesia (according to a recent Microsoft survey), also known as wkwkLand, for me this has to do with the OVERWHELMING negativity displayed in INA server MMOs and to a certain extent SEA servers and i put the biggest emphasis on "overwhelming" here because even when i have a pleasant chat in MMO it's mostly covered in LFGs, WTB WTS, and of course slurs and insults as in "cupu lu anak yesus kontol!" type of chats.
Yes there is trade chat, private chat, etc but in my elementary school days how am i supposed know other chat rooms except /say ? combined with toxic PVP communities i have instinctively began to ignore almost all chatrooms in MMO with the exception of Guild chat and Private chat AKA "whispers"
social elements of MMORPGs weren't fun just because they were 'novel', they were fun because they fulfilled a core human need.
Working together and coordinating as a team created great bonds and felt incredibly fulfilling. Something that isn't really a thing with modern MMOs where everyone just does their own thing but in the same room, technically having the same goal but not really cooperating to fulfill it.
@@joshuakim5240 Yes it's a massive fundamental difference. I would even say the gameplay transcends itself as a group activity. It is no longer sitting alone at a screen punching monsters and clicking buttons in a dumb videogame, it's working together with fellow humans for a common goal towards greater things. All the random goofy socialising meeting the vastly different people from different cultures and personalities you meet along the way can broaden your mind and become great friendships with dramatic stories of their own.
@@cattysplat yeah, mmorpg's are just too easy now and they pander to the masses instead of focusing on social players. It's alright though, we have to adapt by finding friends online or irl which is hard but possible.
Strife, shame on you. You shout out Habitat, The Realm Online, and UO but completely ignore Meridian59? 😜 M59 was the first 3D graphical MMO and that graphical aspect made it quite the novelty amongst the culture conquerors (read: nerds) of the time. I was on a break from M59 when my friends finally managed to get me to try EverQuest in late '99. Also, I have to disagree with you on something. From the moment it launched, World of Warcraft had more concurrent players than EverQuest (the behemoth at the time). The gap only grew wider and wider from there. EQ team had no idea how to stop the bleeding, both from its own progeny (EQ2) or WoW.