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The elitism that grew up in the community is also a huge factor in what came to be wow. Nobody wanted to raid with you in cata if you didn't do anything. It was : you need experience to do the job and to do the job you need experience. This elitism killed wow.
Please, watch a review about "Guild Wars 2" and how the Progress in the game and the Achievements are tied to Helping the low level players. This game is not like WoW !
You should start putting the titles for the series formatted like "MMO Theory Ep 3: Why MMOs Are So Antisocial Now", it would help people tie them together better IMHO.
As someone who struggles to find excuses to play with others, its disheartening when you try and get ignored, or get called dumb because you asked a simple question
I always make an effort to be kind and patient, it's the new age of tryhard sweat zoomers that instantly exile anyone who isn't on their level, don't give up!
I think all mmos need that system from final fantasy, where players act as guides and itll pair up them with people needing help or questions rewarding the player with knowledge and the knowledge giver with something nice(maybe recruit a friend stuff)
I play FFXIV, and one day, when I was in the starter area in starter gear as a sprout, someone just opened a trade offer at lifter running up to me and waving, and I was curious so I accepted the offer to trade. They tried to give me 10 000 Gil and a 100 boiled eggs for exp grinding purposes right off the bat. I told them, “actually, I’m leveling an alt, not starting but thank you so much!” And they gave them to me any how to help me get my alt started on the new server. Apparently this was part of a community organized event to hang out in the starting cities and giving new players stuff like crafted gear, food, and Gil as part of help on-boarding people when the new Endwalker expansion came out.
The FFXIV community is pretty great from my experiences, I've had more positive encounters than negative. When I'd have a tiny brainfart as a new tank in WoW,I was bitched out and group kicked. When I had trouble paladin tanking in FFXIV, a player kindly reminded me to reactivate my iron will, and the run went smooth. MMOs have the potential to be great if the communities work together like a harmonious village rather than an overcompetitive gladitorial ring,lol. :3
@@WyntheRogue that happened to me too (the reactivating iron will part)! I really love the FFXIV community, I haven't had any bad experiences with other players so far while playing
@@woulfhoundI'm so sorry to hear that. I have never had any issue like that before. I'm not a hardcore mmorpg player, but I find gw2 is very friendly. I'm totally a noob and whenever I chat something in the channel, there's always someone reply to my chat. I even became friends with some of them. I hope that you can find a game where you can stick to and find a community that suits you. It's really sad for me to see your reply
I started playing MMOs when they were still social. They stopped being less social 10 years ago when they started to make MMOs catering to solo players. Even the guilds stopped being social. They had tens of players online, you greet them every time you logged in, yet the only time you got greeted back was when the few other social members were online. PWI may be a bad game, but it was my introduction to MMOs in 2008 and back then people were very social. I cared less about the game and more about the community. The guild I was in was very active with a lot of fun and friendly people. The cities were filled with people messing around. You needed help, there were people ready to help. Clerics would buff random people exiting the cities or farming, or heal random people that were low HP. The chat was filled with LFG and the groups formed fast. ESO is the last MMO I played. It's based on a single player series, and a lot of players were Skyrim players who never played an online game before. There were some people who participated in the social aspect, some were role-playing and messing around, occasionally some were doing ERP in public places, but compared to older MMOs, it was lacking a lot. Not to mention players complaining about non-consensual buffs and heals and other shenanigans, not even considering the fact that the skill used by the healers will randomly spread to others players in proximity. Or they were complaining about other players bumping into them like that was avoidable in crowded spaces. Not to mention, games that used to be harder to encourage grouping will get nerfed because people complained enough about the difficulty, but none of them will make an effort on finding some friends. At this point, why even bother playing online games when the single players games have better mechanics?
There's always an unemployed menace on some discord, reddit, of something that contributed to a wiki or UA-cam fighting with the 1000 person playerbase and calling other people dramatic. You see and experience an asshole that every new player wants to meet and you either become that ass or quit?
@@littleicky2852 Thank you, I very much appreciate that. This was the worst moment during my time in Azeroth, long story short: I was a human warlock, stupid choice but I didn't understand the concept of min/maxing. I'm in Booty Bay and I get a whisper message from some random guy asking if I want to do Scarlet Monastery. I agree even though I know I'm literally on the opposite side of the continent, took a long fucking time to get there. As I'm making my way north I voice my frustration to the rest of the group that I got invited to where I'm coming from and how long its taking. All I hear in response is "DON"T SWEAR, STOP SWEARING" Its WoW, all cuss words are hidden automatically by the algorithm. Nobody even tries to sympathize with me about how far I have to go out of my own way just to get to the dungeon. When I finally get to the Scarlet Monastery I see that none of my group members are there. I just flew all the way from Booty Bay and I'm the first one to arrive. Another red flag, thats 2 now... I'm a warlock and I have an ability that allows me to summon other players to my location, they ignore me, even when I message them. Third red flag. Final nail in the coffin... The rest of my group finally shows up and what do they do? They kick me out... and it gets worse.... They add me back and I rejoin, only to get kicked out again. I get another invite but I don't accept. I ask "what the actual fuck are you guys doing?" They all laugh and one guy literally says to me "its one of those nerve ending jokes" I'm fucking furious at this point, I can barely type on my keyboard. Then they all go into the Monetary. One guy who somehow missed everything asked my why "I decided not to participate". I explain what happened and I guess he went and asked his little kiddy buddies what happened. He messages me back saying how they kicked me out for a paladin. I guess he finally got the joke, because he literally had the gal to say "try not to take it too seriously" So yea... I just let my subscription run out...
I know the reason I am anti-social on MMOs now… and it’s that people have forgotten how to play the game to just enjoy themselves and have fun. I just want to mess around and play the game. Everyone else wants to look up the best builds on icyveins and power through things. The amount of times the entire group has sprinted through an instance ahead of me while I just try to catch up is insane to me. The entire culture of MMOs has shifted to favor the players that are there for end game content and only end game content. The rest of the journey is an obstacle. And because of that, since I’m just part of the journey, I’m an obstacle.
Yeah, I concur. I was there since 2004 and played up until MoP. I was a GM and an Officer in a guild that was pretty casual (casual meaning: we played for fun and not for world's firsts But we raided like two times a week with quite a good success rate). We wanted to enjoy the content and see every cutscene so to speak. And we allowed that. But life goes on and a different type of player entered the guild: speed runs for whatever reason, no morefun and games, all 'business'. That - for me - was the breaking point. Getting badmouthed because you made a mistake and wiped the party - we used to laugh about stuff like that. Anyway, it burned me out. I kept on playing solo through the different expansions - as Madseason said - out of curiosity. But over the years, time- and money sinks, dailies, weeklies, you name it became necessary to advance your character ... I just unsubbed. Will I take a look at the next expansion? Probably. Will it be able to retain me without a good social network? Highly unlikely. Boomers perspective 🙂
You do realize that different people have fun in different ways, right? And having a person that you have to carry because he's using wrong talents is not fun. You are in fact an obstacle to fun.
@@ForOne814 People like you are why people like me complain that MMOs have lost their magic. Go enjoy what you’ve turned MMOs into, because you’ve clearly won.
@@Norien711 the magic was that all people were bad at the game, because people were bad at gaming in general back in a day. And yes, I do enjoy playing WoW from time to time, and thankfully I have zero problems with people like you, because I can avoid them.
About a month ago in SoD, I was idling in Orgrimmar and noticed this low level player standing near the auction house, and was asking in /say "where can I get bigger bags, can anyone help me?" He asked a couple more times over the space of a few minutes, ran a few yards this way and that, looking a bit lost and lonely. Finally i'd finished whatever I was doing on my other monitor, and decided to answer his question, I even made a couple silk packs, opened the trade window and he was genuinly very happy and thanked me. I havn't logged into SoD for a while now, but I hope he is having fun. We forget that there are real people behind the characters, with real feelings. I miss the old days, but i'm glad I got to live through and experience them.
@@ryuno2097 We didn't forget, we're just not the teaching type. We have goals we want to accomplish, things we want to do. While some folks feel a sense of altruism and want to help, some just want to go about their day. We pass by people in real life all the time that we don't help out because we're busy with our lives. It's really no different in an MMO.
I’ve been noticing a looooot of newer players in dungeons, but more so players that have only played Dragonflight. When I do Chromie, there are a ton of people that don’t know the routes or how the boss fights work. It’s good to see, because I remember what that was like and I loved discovering everything. So, I’ll help with marking and stuff like that, but I don’t want to spoil anything for them either. It’s just cool to see fresh blood come into an almost 20 year old game that I’ve played every bit of
My first WoW experience was to create a Night Elf Druid, turn into a cat, walk backwards everywhere and pretend to be a talking elephant every time I was crossing paths with other players.
Theres too many requirements to do any group content in WoW SoD. People want a description of your whole life story, resume, and tax returns. The fun was sucked out by min maxers
there are still people that play for fun, you just have to accept people that will fail the easy stuff 100 times, if you want smooth experience, but without the crazy profiling, then you are searching for a unicorn.
My AoTC for Season 2 of Dragonflight we had a guy in my raid. He was, struggling a bit. But you know what he was doing his damndest to get it down. I saw him asking plenty of questions trying to learn, even gave him some videos to watch to help him. At some point one of the tanks got pissy, and booted him. He had assist for the raid, when me and my friend found out we immedietly called the dude out and kicked him out. He of course went on a rant, pulled boss, blah blah blah. What made me sad was the guy who was doing his best whispered my buddy and said, “Yeah I understand man. Good luck” then we made it our fucking goal to get this man AoTC. Sure enough new tank, next pull we fucking got it. Dude was crazy happy we suffered with him. I added him, unfortunately I don’t see him around due to life but I hope that guy is still playing and having fun. More people should do this. Just fucking ask questions and we as a community shouldn’t tell them to “stfu and use google.”
@@rattlehead999 and that's the problem. That kind of balanced, casual but competent, group seems to either not exist, or fall to either the tryhard or super casual side eventually.
I feel that the WoW community has killed a lot of the magic in the game. They expect you to know every mechanic and have the right spec and the right gear. Even though you just started playing the game. They gate keep themselves
agree, it is so rare to find a "veteran" who will guide newbies PROPERLY not just for fake formality, a lot of them are just PAIN IN THE ASS. so in result the new generations including the "veterans" who are nice and not a pain in the ass become "quiet" and refuse to interact with others, it is totally understandable response. one bad ingredient can ruin the whole soup
I /wave and /hello at the beginning of every dungeon. 9/10 times I'm the only one who does or says a single thing before they just dip. Makes me sad sometimes but I think it's also important to be the change you want to see.
@@anonimowelwiatko4455Yes! Saving someone's live in the open wild plays a big role in making the game more social. Even if it's someone from the other faction Tho it's always a pitty when they down acknowledge you afterwards
I really miss the days before youtube guides and data mining (two professions I vastly appreciate outside of their effect on MMO's). On my first Molten Core run, I had almost no idea what I was running into. I was getting on the Orgrimmar zeppelin with *40 players* and had little idea what I was getting into other than "we're going to Molten Core." It was magical and unrepeatable.
I'm kind of torn because guide content is one of my favorites to make. Lately I've taken a step back from it though, partly due to reasons you brought up
@madseasonshow I hear ya. I love the guide content on its own merits and everything we learn from data miners (amazing how much Fromsoft lore can be deciphered through the names of game files)... I don't think we can go back to that age of mystery before the age of information. Like I've mentioned before, recreating the initial magic of MMO's is a tall order solely for the shift in online culture.
The only thing I found which rekindled that exact feeling was starting a DnD group with a few friends. Everyone's exploring the setting together and especially on custom made campaigns, there is no guide or anything which could spoil the experience. Of course we only play every couple weeks and it's a lot more work for the DM (me) but other than that nothing else was able to recreate that feeling of early wow.
then you must miss the days before mmos because you could always find text based guides for games online after the mid 90s and youtube came out during the peak of classic wow and runescape but you don't need that anyway
@@belstar1128 I was 16 when wow came out and to say "there were guides" is such a blatantly distorted statement I can barely believe you brought it up. The difference in accessibility, speed and comprehensivness is orders of magnitudes apart. When wow came out half the written guides were full of mistakes and came out weeks if not months later and you had to actually search for them. Nowadays you can find 5 differrent guides for all different raid difficulties days before content goes live right here on youtube. And all with easy to digest video guides, not some clunky ass html site without piictures.
"Seeing other players as obstacles rather than assets" is a perfect way to put it. I have no idea how to solve this issue, but it's definitely true. Even as a more casual/midcore MMO player my #1 barrier to wanting to interact with other players, even for content that requires them, is my fear that I'll just be seen as an obstacle to their progression because I've never done X content before, which means I never do the content and it creates a self fulfilling loop. Being able to do the content solo would destroy the reason to group in the first place, and so I end up looking at guides and completely removing from myself the ability to have a blind fun run and all the enjoyment of figuring things out myself, replaced with a foreknowledge of everything I need to do and all my failures to do so.
A good place to start is sandbox, where the focus is player-made content. There has to be incentive and push for people to interact and build communities. Sandbox also has the advantage of being a much less explored sub-genre(ever since WoW, it's been primarily themepark), and therefore has more potential for innovation. It also counters guide culture and the rapid spread of knowledge and familiarity, since player made content is more malleable and unique to each server's communities. The problem though is that MMOs are so expensive, that deviating from what's proven to work(themepark) is a huge risk. In an already dangerous genre, it's much safer to try to emulate successful ones, with slightly different flairs. IMO the next big mmo, if there ever is one, is going to be sandbox
would it though? Like if SW galaxies came out today, i think it would still get swept up by guide culture, there's a guide for quite literally everything today, even for the most casual games like Stardew Valley @@madseasonshow
@@madseasonshowEve is the biggest example of sandbox, and it suffers from similar issues. Losing casual players and only retaining the chronically online. Minecraft servers were a distributed version of sandbox, but not really what you're talking about. The reality is MMOs were half social media. Since social media has taken that away, MMOs need to introduce social content that is unique to games as a medium or be relegated to essentially co-op solo content.
WoW's group finder at top end is so full of resume requirements and logs requirements. FF people just toss up the prog point and there's no gatekeeper to the group, people just join your party, no accepting/denying people based on logs or whatever. So refreshing.
I chalk it up to three main reasons. 1: Escapism. We play games a lot more now to escape stress and we don't want to have to deal people on our own time any more especially after working thankless menial jobs like most in our generation do. 2: Other venues. WoW came out before social media was really big, so it itself was a form of social media but now there are so many other options. Who needs guild chat when we have discord? Who needs trade chat when we have facebook and twitter? Simple fact is for social enrichment MMOs are obsolete in that regard, we don't need them to socialize anymore. 3: Parallel play. You ever just chill with someone else in the room in which you are both doing other things but enjoying each other's company? That is a valid way to play MMOs, even if you are doing your own thing it is sometimes preferable than a single player game due to just having the company while we do it.
I don't think these reasons carry much weight. We always wanted escapism - even as kids. In fact as kids, we were capable of greater escapism, because it was fundamentally easier to escape and our imaginations were given more processor time, so to speak, due to the fact that we had far less going on. As for other venues... totally agree, WoW at launch was the social media of its time; part of the reason it accumulated so many users so quickly. But the whole point was, you communicated because you had to - it was an integral part of the experience. Playing solo was much harder, and the zone progression/level progression being slower meant that after hours grinding away in a given zone, watching the chatter on general, the temptation to chime in grew. Meanwhile, modern social media has not made people particularly sociable; everyone is lonelier than ever before. What it did, however, was change what they expected from a social interaction - it became a transaction. I post a thing, you give me validation with a like. Presenting a modern social media user with a social outlet that involves no system of validation beyond the basic act of communication? They're not wired to find that appealing; saying something and not having anyone give you a "like"? That's... unsatisfying. That's probably one of the reasons people became quite hostile in their social interactions in MMOs - every time someone fails to gratify them, people perceive it as a slight. And while playing an MMO with someone else in the room is certainly a thing that happens, it's not a major motivator - a lot of couples play MMOs together, and they PLAY together, they don't just kinda idle together. In fact, more often than not, they're immersed heavily in the world together, because it's an extension of them as a couple; they want to be seen together, they want to interact with other people... together. I'd say the actual primary motivator for social interactions in MMOs? Was simply the game design. Looking at other games, and how social interaction plays out... the primary motivator is necessity. In Deep Rock Galactic for example, due to their use of the "cheer" button, and the other non-verbal communications you can use, people rarely use voice chat, and rarely type... but they work as a team, and are highly receptive to basic social stimuli (just point a mushroom and you'll have the entire team doing it together etc). Similarly, Left 4 Dead was very good for this fundamental sub-verbal level of social interaction; you work as a team, or you fail. In WoW, you interacted with people, or you struggled. There was no way to have a smooth dungeon run, for example, without communication, and most of the meaningful later-game achievements required either a high level of social interaction, or an even higher level of raw, lonely grinding. I'd say it was never about needing the MMO to socialize... it was always about needing to socialize, in the MMO. Looking at the general changes in WoW in particular, what did we see over time? A reduction in the necessity of other players. Levelling got faster. Quest content got easier - heirlooms became a thing etc. Used to be that working as a group made everything faster and easier - now, it generally slows you down, if anything. Meanwhile in other MMOs, they went even further - in Elder Scrolls Online for example, in addition to the game being so easy that at one point I literally discovered that I could not be killed while afk because the NPCs couldn't hit harder than my passive health regen, they implemented AI companions. And then, by that point, even when people went back to the older style of gameplay... they had been long-since conditioned to not socialise.
@@NicholasBrakespear I think you misunderstood the point about parallel play. It’s not literally about people being in the same room while they play MMOs. It’s about being surrounded by other players in-game while you do your own thing. It‘s part of the persistent world aspect of the genre that is appealing to people even if they’re primarily solo players.
@@parker-unfired Ah, well that's valid... but I don't see why would that would actually make them antisocial. The term antisocial refers to people actively not engaging with others, striving to not interact with others, not just casually being happy hanging around others without directly interacting.
Honestly, I would still play the mmo, if I had been having fun in it to begin with. For me, there is something magical about treading the ground someone else has before me and experiencing what they did. I get that magic mostly by playing mmo content blind. Learning as someone before me had to, to complete it. On top of that, there are some really great MMOs that would be great as single player games. If I literally am the only chosen one, then that aspect of the game becomes more compelling. And, honestly, I chase loot and achievements in single player games. It wouldn’t be different to me if the mmo was empty. The primary reason I mmo is because there is a chat box. If people aren’t talking in the chat and having actual conversations, then the mmo is single player anyway. But, I like exploring and engaging with story. MMOs have too much party content. I don’t enjoy dungeons. I don’t enjoy raids. For me, that content should be “one and done”. But, if MMOs had a true cooperative game element, like allowing players to team up for the whole story, or the whole crafting experience, or whatever… from start to finish? I would probably value the mmo experience more.
I paid a deluxe version of a very niche online game I just knew from the start would go End of Service in a 1 year. The Reason was that I loved it with all my heart even though the game mechanics are intellectually intense for me. (let's say i still cant understand how sudoku and chess works when they're just kindergarten childrens games already at my time) I played it with the last remaining people until could not anymore. I still keep it installed in my computer even though booting it up will always give me "Server Disconnected". The real tragedy here is I'm too retarded and afraid to talk about video games.
This video is so timely. I logged onto SOD yesterday. One random person I never met said "Hi, will you play this game with me?" A few minutes later I walked by a group doing an incursion. A random player asked to join them in general chat, and the party leader responded with "f off" or something to that effect.
That "f off" response I got 2 times in SOD P3 in the first 30 minutes as I wanted to find a grp for incursions. I wasnt sure anyway how I feel about this kind of leveling..so that was the last straw for me, I canceled my sub.
@@Schneider1939 I think it differs from people to people but it gets worse when most players quit once they hype of a new phased has died out.I played in P1 and P2 i had a guild for both and it was good and enjoyable. At the end of P2 i was already bored of Gnomer cause i got all the gear pretty early and took a break off like 2-3 weeks.I wasnt even bothered that people were 50 on the other day and had 1k gold before the Incursion nerfs. I just didnt feel like playing it and incursions werent that fun but i quickly found a friendly group and they were patient when i asked a couple questions cause i was lazy to google them myself and ran me through the quest route with them. Theres abit of both people Rude and Helpful in Classic if i have to say my experience as someone whos played WoW for alot of years and not a new player is more or less great in the Classic rereleases theres tons of people who help newbies and ive made new friends along the way. Ofcourse you ll beef along the way but i think recently more people help new and older players instead of putting them down but thats my experience atleast. If we have to be honest when i was a noob in WoW i learned through being called an idiot aswell either for Gameplay,Gameplay questions or Bad English i either learned when i was corrected or went off on the same guy and continued my way untill i found someone who was willing to show you without cussing at you but it wasnt a big problem back tbh i think many people learned about alot of things that way Online not just in WoW.
Playing mostly tanks, queued with my wife for a dungeon back in WoD. She had just finished levelling her first character a couple days ago. Three minutes in people started a vote to kick her because her DPS was not up to par. Needless to say she stopped playing after a couple weeks when she realized how toxic WoW's endgame was. I stopped playing shortly after and haven't looked back.
mmm, I hate that shit. People are just so damn impatient these days. It makes me wonder how many people quit the game, because they get kicked from dungeons without knowing why.
I remember when I had rightfully won a new sword via a roll in a WoW raid and instead of giving it to me, the raid leader gave it to someone else because and I quote "It's a weapon for Rogues, not Hunters". I could've used the blade as it was way better than what I had, but they were adamant that I didn't need it and made the decision for me despite my pleading.
Yeah the fact that guild chat and trade chat are now dead is really saddening to me. I don't really want to communicate through discord for everything.
Censorship and ridiculous bans lead to the non-communication and anti-social behavior. Bring back free speech and we'll have social behavior again. Player interaction (both negative and positive) are what made MMO's great. We don't need companies to tell us what we can see, say and hear. We have MUTE and BLOCK buttons for that.
Original WoW Classic had true role playing. There was that troll player who did nothing but collect flowers in the starting area and he became famous for basically playing an NPC as his character. In my original server there was a RP druid guild called "The Greenwardens" that you could only join if you were a druid. They even had friends on the Horde side and made a sister guild with them and enforced rules like you were never to attack an enemy druid player and stuff like that. The Alliance and Horde sides would meet in Moonglade on the solstices and have a party together. The guilds meeting place was where Rethiel is in the Wetlands and the guild owners would just RP there and hang out. They even ran a monopoly on all the dinosaur leather they needed to build their final tier armor and fixed the prices in the AH. When I rejoined to play classic it was like a completely different game. I played a druid and tried to restart the Greenwarden guild myself, but when I talked to people about anything other than min/maxing my stats they treated me like I was insane. Even just playing as a druid was enough for some to never invite me into their parties because it wasn't seen as an optimal class. It made me extremely sad, like meeting an old childhood friend who doesn't remember you. I realize now no MMO will ever be close to as good as it was back then because the player base has fundamentally changed. All these kids today just want cool skins and fast raid times, they don't care about participating in the actual world itself.
This 100% I remember rping in a clan similar to that on Runescape. We were deep in the wilderness in some array of houses that we set up as a camp. We got sent out to get supplies, to get food/hunt/fish, to set ip defenses from other clans. Eventually we got demolished by some other group but it was still such a fun time.
two words: private server. I have been playing on a private wotlk server for almost 13 years now and the community is still pretty much the same way it was back in the day.
They still kinda exist. Our server had the hug-bear, that just sits around in Sw most of the time, and hugs you back if you /hug them, and everyone does it to improve loot-luck. Still tho, I know what you mean.
I was playing SoD and WoW for the first time and had fun at first when I was going about it solo. It was one I joined a discord and looked up stuff online that I became disinterested in the game. People already knew what content was to come and what was the best gear/strats for the content that was available. Nobody really just wanted to play for fun and explore like I did because everything was already figured out or solved.
@@RaxoFilms I would expect, at a minimum, for those grown 30+ y/o adults to not require a calculator or the answer sheet to complete a first grade assignment.
Actually… it’s like taking the test, with the answer sheet right there, plus some red arrows telling you exactly where, and how to write your answer :) I don’t think classic vanilla was supposed to be experienced with the Addons that have developed over so and so many years since 2004. People want classic, but then die to make it retail or implement things in to the game that totally strips it if what made it what it was 🤷🏼♂️
-playerbase used to be much smaller -internet was overall a niche place, no social media -unknown and lack of knowledge about the game, few guides and database websites -younger audience with a lot of time vs -excessive focus on efficiency and getting to the endgame as fast as possible -much larger audience that is there just for the trend, ecelebs feed this -audience neither has the time or commitment they once had -overall internet is no longer niche and has become a cesspool of social media drama and trends I dont think its ever going to change back to the way it used to, things have changed for good, hence why I was reluctant to return to Classic, knowing it was just going be no different than most modern MMOs
Well said, I played wow back in the real vanilla in like 2006. There was a naievity where people were new to mmos so the learning aspect made it fun you needed to talk to get things done. Online guides existed, gear was tough to get so there was a sense of accomplishment getting it. No one knew the best path it was trial and error. Don't get me wrong I left as I saw It becoming increasingly "work like". I recently came back for nostalgia and noticed there was absolutely zero community. I tried an instance and no one talked I was having a conversation with myself they Just ran through like robots. It might aswell be a single player game. Not sure what lesson I can give. The naievity, difficulty and unfamiliarity makes things fun. Like being thrown on an island and you finally light a fire after 100 attempts when no one else could, that satisfaction. Giving into convenience and making everything known and automated turns people into robots. You won't get this new fresh feel again you will just have to wait for VR games. But it will just follow the same cycle over the decades. Watch some VR social games how people interact which with each other to get my point of things being new and fresh to people.
@@Gaia.S real, and this isnt just WoW, other MMOs like RO also give me a nostalgic feeling but its not the same if I go back. Closest thing is going through the honeymoon period, playing with friends, but thats it. Creating a party for "dead" content takes forever compared to the old days
Played vanilla and tbc. Got back for Pandaria. Everyone was so quiet! No banter, no LFG chat, it was like playing with bots. Even joining a party, it was just straight to killing mobs, no one wanted to engage socially. Totally different community compared to when I was playing. And the min-maxing! Oh god! Can we not just enjoy the game and stop sperging over stats? I couldn't care less what was more efficient, honestly. I moved on, it was a different crowd. I didn't fit in.
Felt the same when I joined in Legion and hadn't played seriously since TBC. I think you can get some of the same old experiences back by playing on the Hardcore servers, or going to certain private servers which attract like-minded people that want a specific experience.
Why would you talk if theres no necesity? You either are trying to upset the order or like to fuck with people. Either way its suboptimal unpredictable suspicious behavior.
@86Corvus because they're lonely you sh head. Some people may be disabled in various ways and can't communicate well enough to make friends irl. The net and games like mmorpgs were one of the few things they had. Playing the game was just an excuse to interact with people socially. Sure it's dishonest but not in a way anyone would mind or even notice. They got good at the game to make e-friends. The game was secondary or even an afterthought, but no one would have assumed it.
The worst offender is when the game decides to force anti social behaviour upon you. When it splits the world into layers or shards. It gives you two players who are desperate to find someone to play with and who goes trough the game feeling like the game is empty. In the end they quit without knowing that they have been next to eachother all the time, just in separate dimentions.
Also the "ironman mode" (idk the name) When I was playing sod in phase 1 I had just made a dwarf leveling up in dun morogh and invited a guy next to me doing the same quest. He declines and says that he can't join because he doesn't get credit for kills when other people do damage to it or something?? I don't remember it was a while ago. But I was just like wow that is so fuckin gay, it just kills the whole point of playing an mmo
I can only speak for myself but when I'm done with work and all other obligations I might have in the real world the very last thing I'm looking for is being scrutinized with regards to gear, performance etc when all I'm looking to do is chill out and try to feel young again!
Same. But when I have work, family, friends + sports... the last thing I want is to be social in a mmorpg. I don't mind groups, but I'm not going on discords voice to be social with others like 20 years ago when I was 16
Never understood this mindset. Jobs today are so mindless and tedious the only way I can get any actual challenge in my life is through artificially imposing it on myself with fitness and gaming.
I believe there's another reason on top of all this. Back in the early 2000s most of the people that played these games were computer nerds/geeks/enthusiasts. The internet in general was full of these types of people and they were looked down upon by many that thought the internet and computers were strictly for awkward people. Smart phones made the internet more popular and accessible and now it and these games are full of all different kinds of people. It's just not as common to find people that have things in common anymore.
"most of the people that played these games were computer nerds/geeks/enthusiasts" Not really true. WoW was such a huge hit because it scooped up vast numbers of people who had not previously been nerds/geeks/enthusiasts at all - it ran on a potato, and a potato connection (I first played it on dialup), and it was highly sociable. For many people, WoW was literally their first game. I'd say games are actually less accessible now - "gaming PC" back in the late 90s/very early 2000s could literally mean just an office PC with any graphics card. Games used to be designed with this in mind - they used to be built for the "average PC". "It's just not as common to find people that have things in common anymore" I mean, back in 2004/2005 when I played WoW at launch... I was playing with Swedes, Germans, at least one Greek, a couple of Belgians... and most of the time? We didn't even know we were all from different countries and different walks of life. It didn't matter. We didn't need to "find people that had things in common" - we had something in common, by definition; we were playing WoW. That's what we had in common; a hobby.
@@NicholasBrakespear I mean, it just seems like you're saying your experience was different from mine. WoW did bring in a more diverse crowd, but the games that came before it did not. I also played MMOs with people from other countries and some that just lived very far away from me. I recall there was still some stigma around playing online computer games where I lived in the southeast US, even in 2006. Admittedly, the south was always a few years behind with accepting the internet and other technologies back then.
@@NeverBurrito I don't think you can call it a different experience - when 12 million people subscribe to an MMO in 2004/2005... that's kinda inherent proof of how broad the demographic was. I would of course acknowledge - WoW was different, because it did bring in people who weren't gamers, or weren't that kind of gamer. Sure enough, Everquest Ultima Online? Proper nerd territory. WoW broke new ground in that regard. But your argument was - "It's just not as common to find people that have things in common anymore" That simply isn't true - as I said, the game WAS the thing we had in common. In fact, I remember the difference in general communication patterns back then, both in WoW and on Neverwinter Nights servers... and in Eve Online, actually - people didn't talk about the real world, unless it was to reference other entertainment they liked - films, books etc. People did not discuss politics, certainly not to the point of having massive feuds. The arguments I saw in Barrens chat for example... generally revolved around WoW issues, and nothing more. But when I returned to the game during Legion, to see how things were, not only did I see constant chatter about real-world politics and issues, I was even bullied out of a guild over such things. The point is, what changed was not that it used to be "just the nerds" who all had something in common - the change was far broader, and all the evidence points more strongly towards game design being a major culprit, leaving aside the degenerative state of the internet right now. As an example, playing Deep Rock Galactic... I have seen almost none of the issues I saw in modern WoW - people are sociable and socially receptive, even when they're not particularly vocal, because the game's built-in non-vocal communication methods are well designed, and the game emphasises teamwork. I think that's actually the root of what gives us common ground in these games - a common foe, a common challenge. In vanilla WoW, there was as strong common challenge due to the basic balance of the game, and there was a strong common foe due to the two factions and Blizzard's interesting choice to block direct communication between them. When you remove such challenges, the most primordial incentive behind socialising - safety in numbers - disappears. Modern MMOs have made it most often optimal to play alone and selfishly. In fact, now I think of it, you can see the importance of basic game mechanisms on player behaviour in a specific mechanism of Guild Wars 2 - it's not as social as old WoW was, but players get an XP reward for reviving other players. As a result, EVERYONE revives. During major meta events/boss fights, you will often be unable to revive someone because too many people are trying to revive them. That's all it really takes, I think - a little nudge, a minor necessity, so that the "line of least resistance" requires socialising.
@@NicholasBrakespear I have no arguments against any of your points about WoW, but the video is about MMOs. I played a few before WoW and I don't think anything I said was incorrect. Later
@@NeverBurrito "Back in the early 2000s most of the people that played these games were computer nerds/geeks/enthusiasts." I mean I can understand what you're getting at, and you're certainly right pre-WoW... but I would observe - when an MMO has 12 million subscribers, then that actually represents "most of the people that played these games" - because the combined sub/player count of literally every other MMO in existence... still didn't add up to WoW's count. More to the point, and directly relevant to the video - the state of all MMOs in existence was impacted by WoW. Things WoW did well, they tried to copy. Things WoW did badly, they tried to copy. Until the Wrath expansion, the social aspect of MMOs was intact. I would strongly suggest it was the Wrath of The Lich King expansion that actually set in motion all the major changes in MMO social life - the focus on singleplayer story content in an MMO, the attempt at making dungeon content more "accessible", the cross-realm queuing... the biggest MMO in history made changes that visibly damaged the game's social aspects (and actually ended its growth), and yet was considered a hugely successful expansion... so everyone copied it, so MMOs were forever changed.
I think the biggest relationship breaker is how many players each player has access to. If you keep bumping into the same ppl often you're bound to develop a bond, even if never spoken to each other but when you see a player once, never to see them again why would you care. On the other hand when you have so many ppl to chose from why would you pick a random without any logs when if you reject them there is another guy behind them that might have the logs giving them some creditability, while with smaller pool of players you'd pick first come first served to not wait for who knows how long. We've traded social elements for convenience.
I felt this so hard while playing monster hunter. It was that interaction that got me deep into that series, but it feels so empty now. You can have dozens of players in a pub but most are empty or have very few in them. I rely on strangers for the social interaction, so I constantly feel left out since most groups are friends and everyone else is a solo player. I miss the days when you would enter a pub and just see people chatting away, discussing which quest to take, giving advice, so on and so forth. Now it’s like “why don’t you know? You can just look it up”.
I think this is something that I remember most fondly from my time in FFXIV. The group I was part of there really enjoyed going in blind into savage raids and extremes trials, learning mechanics as we attempt them, everyone brainstorming ideas, it's such an organic and fun way to prog fights. It was a very jarring transition when I came back into WoW in early Dragonflight where people expect you to know mechanics before the raid is even out due to extensive tests on the PTR, Beta, etc. I, unfortunately, can't reminisce of a time when WoW wasn't like that because I started playing it in Legion, but I do wish end game content felt more organic in WoW.
WoW is so much more sweaty for the avg player. The PTR and the free labor that players do for devs to test their game for them is just wild in this day and age. Blizzard is just kinda off-kilter.
Why experience life, when you can simply find the information free online, and cheat your way to quick dopamine? This will become the downfall of mankind, it has begun.
A big part of the social experience was when WOW had dedicated servers. You knew all the big players, guilds, and people on your server. When they merged the servers and added meshing it ruined everything (especially world pvp).
People were min-maxing their server selection. Back in the day you picked a server and sticked to it, had no idea about "faction balance" and just played with whoever was also playing.
Is not that MMORPGs are antisocial MADSEASON... PEOPLE in general are antisocial nowadays. Most people are happy just chatting wth their clutches. Talking to random people? This aint the early 2000s. Things are just so diferent now. Social Media have created a huge division bettween people... like factions. Most people nowadays are used to argue with others online, so they expect that to be the norm, so when they trying to relax they try to avoid people, afraid of confrontation. I could elaborate longer, but doubt many will read or care anyway. I still try and talk to randm people in game from time to time, specialy when dong my timewalking dungeons, which are usualy chill and relaxed, and i get mostly positive answers in there, so you just gotta know when you can do it.. like you won't do that in M+, or pvp...
This is a really good comment, I myself behave this way. Mads also has a great point that fits well in what you said: There really isn’t any incentive to being social in mmos anymore because the game does everything for you so you don’t have to inconvenience yourself into interacting with other people. And the reason why they design games this way nowadays is exactly what you brought to light in my opinion.
Maybe people are more anti-social. But a part is because of social media. When wow released, 3d game worlds were the social media like wow and 2nd life etc. Now we have social media already so wow is just a game to many. On top the wow generation got older: having work, family, friends, sports. Most of us want to game to relax and that's the anti-social moment. I play classic vanilla and I have to team up with people to get through content. In retail I soloed till endgame because it was possible.
@@N3mdraz if you really think about it, a lot of the things that made MMOs unique 20 years ago are done by other games or services now. Social media being a prime example.
From what I've gathered from places like The Happiness Lab, actual data shows that people THINK they prefer to do things alone, but when they ACTUALLY do things with other people they end up having a significantly better time. Like there was one study done on transportation where they had the option to either take the quiet seats or the chatty seats. Everyone WANTED the quiets seats, but when they actually measured happiness the chatty seats won out. And you could say that the happier people would choose the chatty seats more often, but I want to say they accounted for that in the study (even if I forget exactly how :/). There were other studies though that showed that people constantly underestimate how much they'd enjoy doing things with a stranger so that point is moot anyway.
Something I really hate is we've gotten to a point where if you try to ask people for help they just say "look it up" now classic is even to a place where dps think they're supposed to do every pull like retail.
In WoW, I'm so used to most people being elitists, rage quitting the group after 1 wipe, telling you something you've never done should be easy, telling you the game is xx amount of years old and you should know everything, kicking people because they just want to blitz the run. Hardly anybody talks to each other in looking for group. Unless you're in a tight-knit guild or on discord with each other, I feel like chatting is out the window for most players. Today, I was running a remix Heroic Brewing Storm scenario with two other players. We wiped 3 times at the final Elite, and I was expecting someone to rage but no we actually chatted for a bit and eventually got the Lock to bring out his Void Tank Pet and we beat it 4th try rather quickly lol.
I believe the down fall was with the random dungeon groups finder, i remember during wrath before it was implemented I had to talk in chat, healer LFG daily heroic to get my badges and that's when people still talked and helped others out. I was tanking a nexus dungeon on my DK and there was a fresh lvl 80 paladin as the healer and the rest of the group was giving that person a hard time about their gear and I just said the healer is doing fine, we all start somewhere and there wasn't a bonus at that time to wear your required gear as long as it had the stats you need to perform your class functions, what does it matter. It has gotten so toxic that I actually don't mind the follower dungeon runs that was implemented in dragonflight.
Another thing not mentioned, is probably the idea of the "server". Being able to meet the same people again, having famous and infamous players on the server, having rivals in world PvP. It's just another aspect that was removed to appease some niche part of the playerbase, another "problem" they had to solve that inadvertently contributed to the destruction of the soul of the game. And of course, flying mounts. And constantly making the old world irrelevant with every new iteration.
Seems like all the old school players think the solution to the genres problems is basically to roll back to 2004 design. But that's not going to work. All that would do is push away the casual dads, and still not attract the younger players because they don't want to get spoon feed dopamine in an MMO instead of getting constant hits of it like in Fortnite.
@@seanwilliams7655 We're talking about how the MMO turned into an empty game, not whether or not zoomers would like an old school game. Obviously zoomers won't like an old school style game, but they also don't like retail. The video and my comment is just exploring why the game came to feel so empty.
@@seanwilliams7655 I don't think you're gonna solve it by trying to cater to zoomers, I think the problem with instant gratification type content and games has already made sure that zoomers will never like MMOs, it's a nuanced societal problem that require a lot of work to address. So, all we can really do is argue for our ideal version of the game and hope the developers care about their core audience more than catering to people who don't play the game.
@@maddyleaf I agree. Zoomers aren't the answer. But trying to keep the 35+ year old dad around is why the genre is where it is now, and I bet those guys make up a large chunk of players. So the main problem is: how do you make a game that, let's say, "strongly encourages" grouping and social interaction, but also attract a large enough player base that a developer is willing to spend multiple hundreds of millions of dollars making it?
Back in Vanilla and TBC there'd be a lot of times when you'd group together in the World to accomplish a quest. This was different than dungeons or raids because in the World, you were like fellow explorers spontaneously going on an adventure together. And at any moment, any number of you could easily leave the party, but instead people stuck around and stayed even after their quests were done just because it was more fun to quest with a friend than going solo. But nowadays you can just spam BGs/dungeons/heirlooms and grouping in the real world is just not as efficient for leveling.
I had a culture shock recently. I got back into Dragonflight to "finish" it, and decided to do all the raids since the whole new Awakened raids thing. I was able to pog heroic non-awakened raids. Now, sure, we have insane gear right now so it isn't a huge surprise, but it crashed my perception of group content in wow, I was never a huge raiding guy, and I always had this perception that anything above normal requires a guild, mythic dungeons requires a guild, etc. Now I know that anything below mythic raiding I can do without talking to a single person. And mythic raiding is hard, so if you want to find a guild specifically for that it isn't all that easy even if you try, so I found myself in a position where I don't need a guild for anything below mythic raiding, and I can't get a guild for mythic raiding. And it's need for something that makes people join guilds in the first place, I remember back when hardcore became a thing people were joining guilds to always be able to find people for dungeons. And those hardcore guilds were something else dude, guildchat was always active, we would talk about different topics, you would start to make friends with certain people because you guys communicate in the same space every day anyway. We would cheer when one of us would get to lvl 60, and collectively spam F in chat when someone failed. After experiencing this my opinion is that people are willing and able to be social in mmos, but you gotta make it a necessity. Want to run mythic dungeons? Sorry pal, need a guild for that. Anything above LFR? Guild. World Bosses? Believe it or not, guild. I mean, it would never happen in retail again, but one can dream.
Golden age MMO design philosophy was built on obscurity of information to necessitate player interactions. Now with modern internet that is no longer an option. That doesn't mean MMO's are hopelessly dead, it just means that someone has to make a new one that isn't just a reskin of WoW for the 1000th time. Imagine how out of date RPG's would be if they never progressed past NES era turn-based combat. That's MMO's in modern day. At some point in the future there will be a studio that makes an MMO from the ground up instead of trying to rehash "proven formulas" that haven't worked in 15 years, and that studio will rake in billions with a B.
> Imagine how out of date RPG's would be if they never progressed past NES era turn-based combat. A large number of Indie RPGs have turn based combat. Turns out people do enjoy it. Not to mention baldur's gate 3 is also turn based.
Studios know that the easiest way to make money now is to make an online game with sexy characters with cool skins locked behind gambling microtransactions so that players will spend $$$ on their video game waifu. There's hardly any online games developed today where this isn't the case and where the gameplay comes first.
I think people and communities respond to incentives, and WoW shaped the community into what it is by setting the incentives to solo play and actively against working with a guild. It's not impossible to change things, but it's a long-term project to reshape communities with shifting incentives.
As a former mythic raider and now a casual FFXIV club enjoyer. Raiding was toxic, it wasn't about killing the boss it was how much can I screw over my raid members. In FFXIV clubbing it's about enjoying the music looking at others glamor and just hanging out with people. TLDR: competitive gameplay brings toxicity.
The asset/obstacle sums it up pretty well. I used to group and do dungeons/PvP content quite a bit in vanilla. As the game went on, more and more you'd get people who were bitchy and self-centered. People now expect you to read guides and know the dungeon prior to ever setting foot in it, and this is true at the beginning, middle, and end of an expansion. If you fuck a mechanic up, you get kicked and/or ridiculed... and this is just in normal or heroic dungeons. I've never touched Mythics because it just seems too much like a headache... and this is all as DPS. I've wanted to try tanking for the longest time, but if you don't know the mechanics and best route from the rip, you get trashed more often than not. I don't think much has changed about the genre... I think it is the player base and maybe the "go go go" mentality instilled by things like Mythics (which seems to be more of an overall video game mentality). So now I just level alts, do interesting looking dailies, maybe try going after a collectible, and random BGs. There no longer is this sense of adventure and comradery. I remember BRD runs where it would be a struggle and slog, but no one complained and we all had fun overcoming obstacles and fights... and we were all just a bunch of randos who had grouped up through LFG chat. I think gamers as a whole have focused so much on the min/max portion and trying to do as much as they can to reduce the challenge that if things don't go as they had envisioned, they give up and move on to what they perceive as a more efficient group.
has the game changed? yes. but not as much as people try to make it seem. the truth is PEOPLE have changed. it used to be a realm of nerds playing with other nerds and we all felt a sense of comrade being the outcasts playing wow. its not that anymore. now no one gives a shit about anyone else, in game and in real life. it was just a different world back then and its NEVER coming back. people need to wake up to that reality. even classic era people do not play the same as they once did, its all min maxing BS. im trying to have fun, not play wow as a job.
In a way I agree but it's so weird how things changed , cause I can't figure out any one perspecific thing that happened , apart from social media and things like anime and marvel becoming more mainstream.
Players nowadays cant fathom casually joining other peoples teamspeak servers for raids, rounds or just casually chilling with each other. They´d rather just stay with their own discord group and bubble, which in itself is not a problem, but it is something that I always connect with MMORPGs (or games in general tbh) and what made them so special back then.
I'm part of the "problem". I loved being in teamspeak with randoms when I was 16, was fun & cherish those times. I'm 36 now and when I game it's my non social moment since I have work, family, sports etc (I like classic vanilla prefer to type)
@@0685ukoM I kinda broke off my Social Circle in Discord with SoD and was in Discord during raids with my guild but honestly it didnt feel any different it was just WoW chat and joking with each other but in voice. Youre right ive seen some guilds from UA-camrs and it sounded alot of fun when theyve been a guild for couple expansions and played with each other but i always liked just using ingame chat but id say Discord is kinda necessary for raiding if you dont know what happens during fights xD. Other than that if i want i dont find it hard to sociliaze even in retail but its harder cause the World theres is way more dead than Classic.Althou im happy i got to experience the Guild/Group thing again since i havent experienced that in lotta years maybe abit in Legion/BFA.
Even if you spend many hours of your playtime mostly solo, a game world feels lively and more meaningful if there are many other players also in the server with you. One of my fondest memories from 2004-2006 (I think 2005) in WoW was when my guild geared me out in Gianstalker and I got my leaf and sinew to then go on the epic quest to kill four demons hidden around the world for my bow, staff, and quiver. A guildy helped me scout the demons and work on tactics. Good times that only came from cooperation with 39+ other players.
I've booted up a localhost [redacted], which was fun, but really didn't have that "magic" of having other players. Useful for some testing or exploration, but an MMORPG without other players is not much of an RPG.
yeah i would play WoW still but i didn't grow up playing it so there's a lot i just don't know. it would take me years to catch up. but each time i would join a raid or run a dungeon, it was like... just mean people. soon i just didn't say anything anymore. I would just play and even then if i missed something, it was crazy in the chat. it's hard to feel welcome in a game where everyone around you seems like they know exactly what they're doing ALL the time because they've been playing that game for 14 years.
People are drowning in knowledge. We never stopped to think if we should allow everyone to know everything. The internet has made us smarter technically but it has stolen a lot of the soul of humanity and we aren't even fully aware of the great price we have paid.
There are no reasons to seek mentors among other players. The mentor role is now played by a wiki, the mentor is now an Indian guy on UA-cam whose knowledge is immortalised.
Played GW1 back in the day. Once Factions dropped, with its customizable heroes, I stopped interacting with other players alltogether. So besides web guides and social media's antisocial practices, it's also an issue of game design. The more you introduce solo play mechanics, the less inclined people are to play together.
game designers add these for the exact reason that more people would leave if their experience with an MMO was super dependent intereacting with other people, rather than being optional
@@Fabriciod_Crv yep. It's a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario for devs. And these games cost too much to make to drive casual players away like that.
honestly, i rather have it be optional than mandatory, one of the reasons i quit Albion in 2019 was because i was dependent on having friends online to have a good time with the game, which lead me to not logging in much at all.@@seanwilliams7655
@@Fabriciod_Crv That goes against the fact that Vanilla WoW grew in subs and after WoTLK, it dropped. Also goes against everything that EverQuest used to be. I never played it, but you could say the same for Rust. I've heard Rust is very non-soloable on official servers, at least when it came out.
Your points are valid, but there's also a deeper psychological reason as to why MMO's are so antisocial now. Humans are tribalistic and form tight communities. Both the internet and WoW used to be a much more niche and everyone who frequented these communities had a lot more in common - nerds who wanted an escape from real life to socialize and play with similar people. A group of people experiencing a brand new and exciting world together that no one else had access to. Everyone who played WoW saw each other as a part of the same tribe, and were much more social and friendly as a consequence. Now that everyone has the internet, it is no longer a "tight community". Players in video games are no longer similar - everyone plays them now. We no longer see other players as "us", we see other players as "them". This is just how humans are as tribalistic beings.
I think most of us are introverts, and this is ultimately what the majority of us wanted. MMORPGs have found a sweet spot between socializing when we want to, and still accomplishing things aoscially when we don't feel like it. Games like WoW and FFXIV have dominated, because they moved away from the forced socialization of open world bosses, non-solo leveling, and HNMs of the past. There's still people that pine for those days, but I think they overestimate their extroversion, and just how crucial your niche social circle of a dozen or so people was to the overwhelming social feeling of MMOs. Also, they probably just forgot or downplay how horrible the experience of forced socialization in older MMOs was. This is probably the biggest X factor in every discussion that doesn't get referenced enough. Nostalgia is a helluva drug.
A latest event, purely coincidental, that happened last night in GW2 was a world boss that appears on a starting area getting tagged by 20 people using mentor/commander tags inviting new players to join the fight. It was super quick but 5 new players witnessed pure chaos and learned how to use tags (it's just a simple command: /mentor) to stand out in the map so other people would join you without needing to form a group.
I always hated having to run for ages to dungeons in Vanilla (and to a lesser extend BC), with a non zero chance of being ganked, or the group dissolving before, or soon after the arrival at said dungeon. That's why I really, really loved the introduction of the Dungeon Finder in WOTLK... But as the expansion grew older you could basically see the random groups becoming more and more toxic, "insta quit at the slightest sight of problem" monstrosities week by week. What a sad developement for such a nice quality of life tool and the beginning of the downfall of social gameplay...
Mad season, I appreciate your new content. I’m glad you are trying new ways to create content more frequently. You have a wonderful way presenting your ideas and I always enjoy what you put out. Keep up the good work and thank you.
Omg YES!!! Thank you for addressing that issue! It’s insane in Cataclysm Classic right now… no one ever talks to each other if it’s not completely necessary. Feels like a weird single player game now that it’s all monofaction server and there isn’t even an opposing faction. Today’s playerbase is just weird af… cba to play anything if im not in group with my friends
When I stopped playing WotLK, because was drafted into the army, and returned in Pandaria a couple of years later, the first thing I did was ask on the forum who wants to leveling together? They answered me - "why do you need this? all the leveling done by solo, if you not completely noob". I stopped playing after just a week, despite the remaining time in subscription, because in the 28 levels that I done, I had never met a single player who would show any activity. Yes, I felt exactly like an obstacle on the way to their leveling, not a help or friend.
The release of classic or playing p99 for EverQuest has definitely shown how big of an impact outside information and communication hubs affect in game socialization.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress. There are a lot of secrets to uncover because a lot of end game info is gatekept by the bigger guilds and merchants.
Well there's two factors here: 1) the actual existance of outside communication hubs/info 2) the audience that has been slowly accustomed to them and now it's their "normal"
I tried playing P99 without outside information, as much as I could handle, it was an amazingly fun time! Immediately became my fav MMO in 2 weeks. Best community I've ever seen.
I don't play anymore but I miss it so much. I started in MoP and was very lucky that I met so many people willing to help me and I still have them on my friends list to this day. I remember playing a NORMAL dg in legion (it had been out a while) so most people just sped through them. One of the dps had obviously just capped and wasn't doing as much damage as the rest of us. (Most of us had mythic gear). The tank started singling out the dps and complaining that the dg was taking too long! (We were literally doing fine he just wasn't one shotting everything). I was the only person who stuck up for that poor new player and I quit shortly after that. I haven't played properly since the end of legion as that became a regular occurrence. I played a bit in dragonflight but mainly alone...
I feel like this video is more "Why World of Warcraft is so antisocial" because a lot of that applies specifically to WoW. I am thinking about this whole datamining culture with guides released in advance and so on and so forth. That's really WoW and just WoW, I play GW2 and FFXIV and that's just not a thing, especially in XIV where it's literally impossible to datamine.
This is why I play Turtle WoW. Everyone is super social, there is a sense of community and because it is a vanilla server people tend to help each other out. On top of that there is a lot of custom content like continued Blizzard story lines or completely new ones to begin with. They even have new zones to explore so though almost twenty years old it feels fresh.
this is complete BS, and lies, ive played that server, empty world and 30 people standing under some tent group finder ruins the game since people are just waiting for ques, standing in the city i just dont get why u promote that server. vanilla wow is much better in any way.
@@GriboedovAnton Tclans is right. When was the last time you played Twow, G? I just logged in on a Tuesday night (9PM Mountain Time, US) and there were nearly 2400 people on (often 3-4K during the day). Orgrimmar was crowded. There are many active raiding guilds (I'm in one) and a lot of people are friendly and helpful. I constantly ran into people and grouped up while leveling. People are always running dungeons and the dungeon finder works great. I think things may have changed since you played Twow last.
Gw2 brought me the best cooperative mmo experience in the last years. When I was just walking around, I saw large group of players gathering around. Apparently a big boss was about to spawn, so players organized themselves into 3 groups to fight 3 battles at once. Each group had an experienced leader who was willing to patiently explain what's about to happed and what players should do. It was both no pressure at all and very well thought out at the same time. Given how much Gw2 does already with its autoparties and loot and level scaling, it was amazing.
I don't get the "you need to work quickly to get a lifetime subscriber" mindset that they're going with. I played current WoW for the first time in a decade a few weeks ago and was totally put off by everything it has become. I will never play it again. Why do they want to appeal to the minmax crowd so badly? (I ask rhetorically. I won't get an answer that makes sense to me)
Just gotta say been watching you for awhile now and i may have missed it at some point but the Dave the Diver theme spun my head. Such a banger, thanks for the awesome content I really appreciate you.
How people can socialize if the game doesn't give you any opportunity to be social? Usually at the launch of every expansion you tend to meet random people through leveling, helping someone from getting ganked, or help them with the quest. That's usually the highest chance of you finding random people and maybe even finding friends. But that shit disappears after a month and you go back to your usual "click a queue" button. There's no longer the living world where you can met a random guy in the wild, all of that was traded for convenience. Also the fact what the only thing wow developers focused on are the end game raid content doesn't help the situation either.
Yeah, if you only focus on the 20% of the game it’s going to seem that way. There is crafting, they add world events, world quests etc. and people choose not to do any of it and then complain that raids are the only thing to do.
I remember back in Wrath my guild did an event for Karazhan for players who were at 70 and wanted to do BC content, or didn't have Wrath installed yet, could experience an endgame raid with the guild before the entire guild focused everything on Wrath. It was one of the most fun things in my life in WoW, seeing experienced and more geared players help me and others feel what it was like for endgame was awesome. I feel that having midgame raid content would be a nice addition WoW, where a raid unlocks at level X and it scales with you as you go higher so even if you are level Y, the raid is scaled to Y but is still X for level X players. Doesn't even need to make new raids, just stick with the runs from past expansions, MoP Remix started in the past week and it was fun running Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar again. Would love to Karazhan, Magister's Terrace, Icecrown Citadel, Blackwing Lair, Tomb of Sargeras, and more. Even just added raids for TW, I don't care.
They wanted to expand their player base by appealing to a more casual style gamer, and ruined the game for so many people in the process. Now they are forced to cater to a remaining demographic of antisocial/toxic players. And if you want to socialize, you're either gonna end up in a guild of smug elitists or some dudes who don't take the game seriously and rarely progress through challenging content, and do more LFG than guild groups. And in the middle is the vast majority of solo LFG players who won't say a single word unless they're angry or upset about someone else being a "noob" And now they've divided the player base up into multiple versions, further exacerbating the issue by isolating more and more players.
Excellent analysis. As an aging gamer, I often look for "social" guilds on the basis of whether they have a discord or not. If the guild has a discord, then all communication happens on that and never in-game. I feel like the only person that actually uses guild chat. I also feel that keeping communication behind a guild chat keeps things at a more impersonal level than discord, which I like.
Since the beginning, WoW and FF14 have always had many solo quests and not enough content to really push people to socialize. That has always been one of my criticisms. I play MMORPGs to socialize and play with friends, not solo lame quests as u do most the time.
After playing WoW and SWTOR for so long, you definitely meet your fair share of gatekeepers. it was a huge breath of fresh air going back to GW2 after a 10 year hiatus. The community is top tier from what I have experienced and always friendly and helpful. The players definitely play a huge role on the success or demise of the game. Its very strange to see people refusing to help new players with mechanics, when it directly impacts the health of the game
@@MikeyPaper meh 10-15M players is a decent enough size. Never had any issues finding players for any content and everyone is real chill and wants to play the game. New exp looks neat so we’ll see
Gear score and master looting getting turned on the second a woman got on voice chat was what got me to quit raiding. The hard shift and strict focus on Arena was what got me to quit pvp. The replacing on talent trees with the cookie cutter loadout system was what got me to never come back.
Agreed. Whether its the 30min long random convos while mining stars in OSRS, or hanging out in my FC house with some of my Static before raids in FFXIV, I’ve never felt that like of sociality in years. Being a CE raider in WoW just felt like a second job. Outside of raiding, it was only pushing keys. It just felt depressing and tiring over time. Some of my friends still play cata classic, but I dont think I could give up my current happiness in other MMOs for drug-like nostalgia
This is 100% true. Mortal online 2 has been my go to mmo for a while now because it has that social aspect and big guild communities that have lasted years.
@@Genjiiro How did you get over the bland, copy-pasted design in FFXIV? I wish I could enjoy it, but the leveling is so bad, its so solo, I can't take it every time I try.
@@poisonated7467 What I couldn't get over in FF14 was how raid healing played out; even when I had my priorities straight, from a medical standpoint, I had far too much on my plate because of non-medical stuff... (SWTOR might not be as mechanically intensive, but what mechanics you do have, in HM and NiM anyway, are still unforgiving, especially to non-DPS)
They've become too P2W and nerfed for non hardcore gamers that many hardcore gamers have left a lot of the major MMOs due to it. A huge part of the social aspects in games were from hardcore gamers that would talk while playing the games for hours a day. In some games such as Eve Online where alliances require members to be on comms at all times while online, a huge part of the time was just passing time talking with each other in comms while playing. The social aspects was even more prevalent in certain local BBSs running MUDs in the 90s where some would do a meet up each weekend and even camping trips a few times a year in helping the members bond even more. I personally did this a lot in the mid-late 90s.
I'm a bit sorry you only consider "WoW like MMOs". GW2 has much more social people playing. Partially the things you describe (automatic queues) are not everywhere, partially people have reasons to go to old zones and generally are willing to help and even if there is wiki, there is definitely less "social media" coverage of GW2. Also since there is not really a character progression (which I'm sure you hate), people play much more casually. To be honest, it actually creates environment, where strong ties are much less common, but weak ties are all over the place.
Just watched your series on MMO Theory, very interesting (liked and subscribed). Before the LFG tool you had to sit and ask for dungeon and quest groups and sometimes had good interactions. Because it took a while to level you levelled with basically the same group of people outside your guild. Before Battlegroups and crossrealm you often saw the same group of people in BGs, so you built some recognition. The attitudes were less selfish, we were young we had more free time, now your game time comes after work and family commitments. Ever noticed back in the day, in a random group we called people by their in game name, now we call them by their class. They aren't a person or another player now, we've dehumanized them, and turned them into a number. With crossrealm LFG and Battlegroups now you don't build those social groups levelling or even at max level. That low geared dps, tank or healer or someone that keeps screwing up is seen as a hindrance and replaceable easily, not a person that is trying to get levels, gear or experience in game same as you. The gear piece drops that you want, someone else wins the roll you're salty because now you have to requeue with another group of idiots. Why be social or courteous you aren't going to see this group again. Why lug a deadweight they are just wasting your time. These attitudes were a byproduct of what is a good system for streamlining content delivery, the price is social interaction and promotion of toxicity among players. Played from around TBC to Legion, since WOD the levelling experience had felt lonesome, promoting the anti-social, toxic feeling so I left.
In Runescape when the Grand Exchange was introduced it almost completely killed player interaction overnight. There used to be people in every city selling and buying goods, but then they became ghost towns. You used to have to seek out and barter with people. Sometimes you'd have to go on the forum to find a specific item for sale and meet people in weird spots to trade them. I think the Grand Exchange is overall a good addition to the game, but without anything to replace it, a huge social part of the game was cut out.
REAL story time now: i got hyped for cata classic, i figured i could install wow and jump in just to run around town on the trial mode to get the feels again. In 5 minutes of running around the town - and i remind you, as free to play account you cant talk to people or trade or interact - i received warning that i have been reported multiple times for misconduct and bad behavior and if it continues im getting banned. In 5 minutes. Being idle in town. While im unable to interact with other players. My hype for cata classic died instantly.
@@pandurlolgg5780 i stopped playing retail in middle of cata just before firelands release, because of people. I was looking forward to continue the experience, but instead got disgusted by people again even before it started
I dont talk to ppl too in wow classic era. And i get everyday warnings for no reason. Ppl hate me in this server maybe because im always first place with kills, and on AV weekend i go way over the honor hitcap. Last week 650k honor heading for r14 1 week left. I get so much hate. Its insane
There is one word you need to learn and it is "ASOCIAL". Meaning NON social. ANTISOCIAL means against social. People in wow are not doing terror attacks to break down society.
MMOs sucked in the past too. 😂 One of the reasons I gave up on WoW is because no one had time to help with anything that didn't have to do with raid progression, farming mats for raid food & potions, etc. My guildies weren't even interested in raid training for those of us who aren't hardcore players but wanted to try raiding. 👀 I will say that I had some memorable pugs though. One Druid, on a particularly dismal Fall of Deathwing run, gave me wisdom that I still use to this day: "Don't stand in the fire". 😂 Tbh I had never looked at the ground and was just swigging millions of potions bc I was standing in fire, toxic waste, general miasma, etc.
Besides burnout from 4 years as a GM and raid leader running 2 raid groups per week the main reason I bailed out for wotlk classic, handed over control and quit is because I knew wotlk was the beginning of no longer needing a guild for effectively clearing content. The game is great, the content and game loop is great but the community and social aspect is what I truly love and just like original wotlk pugging taking over started in a major way during that expac. Even towards the end of vanilla and BC classic GDKP and pugs were becoming more prominent than organized guilds to the point once content was well established as on farm alot of people wanted to do gdkp for easy gold instead of do a guild clear for one or two items we still kind of needed.
To be fair, group quests have always been a pain in the ass in wow. Even back in the day I rarely actually found anyone to do them with. Servers used to have a capcity of 2000 players. 1000 for each faction, but most servers never actually hit that cap, so if you were a random level 47 character, there were pretty good chances that you'd keep asking the local chat if someone wants to do a group quest while you do other quests, and before you know it, you found a Sunken Temple group before you actually did the quest.
Tinfoil moment? Reliance on Discord is just cause ppl don't want to bother having to login to talk to their guildmates and such. Plus even if you miss some message it's there to read later, unlike guildchat
@@MaakaSakuranbo Another unfortunate convenience that the players have attached to. Guild chat used to be vibrant and enjoyable. Now Discord is a requirement, so sad.
The antisocial nature in WoW is that people play not to make friends. They are there for the gameplay, and that's what makes all the difference. It's not like modern games/players dont crave social interaction. Modern games like VR chat or GTA online have thriving and very social communities. Heck, games like Rust, sea of thieves, roblox, minecraft, and even Amongus are very popular because of their social nature. However, you can't blame WoW's game design. FF14 has the same design in regards to streamline leveling and systems like LFGs or single-player stories, yet they became popular because of how sociable the game is.
In WoW I've noticed ever since the dungeon finder was added everyone has a speed runners mentality now and never wants to stop and talk anymore. Anyone who speaks gets vote kicked by the rest of the group because it's incredibly easy to replace people with the dungeon finder now.
Not just mmos, but any game, really. I remember talking tons when first starting out on wc3, lol, smite, etc. Now if you try to talk in a public game you'll get told to shut up about as often as not.
I hear you. Im a [[woman]] so this has been my experience with any and every game with in game comms ever since I started playing in 2008. Some things just never change
I want to say, I never ever comment on videos but since you've been putting out so much content lately I felt the need to let you know how much we all appreciate it! Don't burn yourself out if you can help it. Just know we all see the hard work man, the videos are great as well!
The amount of new players that quit sod because of getting called a toxic casual etc is amazing. All my friends quit cuz they couldnt get groups. Then they checked reddit and saw how everyone refers to new players as toxic casuals. Now those elitists are now complaining about a dead game and cant fill raids. Maybe they should've nurtured the player base... cuz u know.. thats the best way to ha e a long lasting game😊
Reminds me of when I started getting into Bloodborne last year. I had a question regarding a certain thing, and instead of looking it up on a wiki, I posted my question to reddit in hopes of a helpful response and some community interaction. That helpful response did come, but in turn I was asked a question, regarding why I didn't just search for my answer on the internet directly like through a wiki.
the only anti social mmo is wow. in FFXIV, SWTOR, GW2, DDO, even champions online, all of which has dungeon finders and raid finder I was still talking to ppl and just chilling with them. This is a WoW problem since everyone in WoW just speedruns and min/max. Even in classic. Plus the reason ppl chatted in wow, UO and EQ was because at the time those game were one of the few space at the time where you can talk to ppl online but now ppl do that with discord and twitch and even facebook still (yes i'm old).
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress. The tutorial island just got a big update.
Not so much a WoW problem as much as it is a Blizz problem, cultivating the player base into what it has become. I played WoW on Nostalrius. Since it was a private server, the competitive nature that permeated on retail wasn't really there. There little to none gdkp and boosting services. Min maxing seemed more like an option than a requirement. Once Blizz launched classic, I knew it would be different. As soon as phase 2 hit, you could see the retail mentality with how many sweaty try hards were rolling in huge 40 man death squads to farm honor like a fucking job. Completely different player base.
Ehh it's kinda rare people talk in Duty finder in FF14 really Past an "hey o/" or something And it would lead ot much more talking if you didn't have the DF imo That said, you can approach people in Limsa or such and they're usually happy to talk
@@MaakaSakuranbo I feel you don't do MSQ roulette often or alliance roulette because I constantly see jokes/conversations being thrown around in those. only in expert roulette & leveling it's silence usually beyond the initial greeting and GG at the end.
@@Raya.T Shocker, the game mode that offers downtime leads to talking Now tell that to all the "I don't want any downtime, I'll just tab out anyway" people
awesome vid and touched on all the points i was hoping it would (especially the use of MMORPGs as social media, which was a huge part of the appeal to me), but i just want to point out that the random inclusion of a slyfoxhound and immortalHD clip made me really happy. i just wasn't expecting it at all, i have a rlly big fondness for slyfox in particular. really love your vids & excited by all the new uploads!
Been loving the community in Guild Wars 2. I've actually been *meeting* people who consistently ask to hang out. It's been wild in comparison to WoW. You never need to really even talk to people in WoW unless you're doing content you can't que for.
To answer your question, yes I would still play OSRS if everyone else quit. Rev Caves would be MUCH LESS nerve racking. Trying to get my clan mates to anti PK is like pulling teeth, especially in multi combat areas.
I think it's a bunch of things. I can't and wouldn't dare say what other people's reasons are, but I can give my own experiences. I have played "retail" off and on for 15 years now, and frankly I am a different person than I was. I see my everyday world different than I used to. I have few friends outside the game, but wow is my game. Selfish as it may sound. I play for me and to keep alive the memory of a friend I lost about a year ago. When I play with people who are really good and I make a mistake, I feel judged even when I am not being judged. I enjoy playing with people who don't know the ins and outs because I feel like I have a voice. But that just happens by chance. Frankly the game is not to blame. I am now more antisocial. I would love to fix that but how can I fix something when I don't know what happened to cause it to be broken. I would love to be more out there but I have excuses in my mind that allow me to cop out a reason not to. Either I just want to relax after work or my guildies aren't on or my buddy isn't here to do something with. If I am going to fix the problem, I have to give up my excuses and do it. I'm scared but I guess I need to be brave and try. But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Dude I really appreciate the consistent content as of late. I love the philosophical dives into these things that really started with our generation and haven't been dissected quite yet.
Episode #3 of MMO Theory. Watch the rest of the series here: ua-cam.com/play/PL0hAOfdoZQkJHhrPzWFJ-nFUwbpFO15Ll.html
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Yeah, "if you don't have have these 27 achievements and you didn't do these dungeons we don't want you". Wow community is also to blame
The elitism that grew up in the community is also a huge factor in what came to be wow. Nobody wanted to raid with you in cata if you didn't do anything. It was : you need experience to do the job and to do the job you need experience. This elitism killed wow.
Please, watch a review about "Guild Wars 2" and how the Progress in the game and the Achievements are tied to Helping the low level players. This game is not like WoW !
You should start putting the titles for the series formatted like "MMO Theory Ep 3: Why MMOs Are So Antisocial Now", it would help people tie them together better IMHO.
Say what.. say why.
As someone who struggles to find excuses to play with others, its disheartening when you try and get ignored, or get called dumb because you asked a simple question
Same here
I don't have this issue at all in ff14 but I think that game is kinda the outlier when it comes to stuff like this
Same here and coming for top 15 cutting edge from mop to legion. People don’t take game as fun anymore
I always make an effort to be kind and patient, it's the new age of tryhard sweat zoomers that instantly exile anyone who isn't on their level, don't give up!
I think all mmos need that system from final fantasy, where players act as guides and itll pair up them with people needing help or questions rewarding the player with knowledge and the knowledge giver with something nice(maybe recruit a friend stuff)
I play FFXIV, and one day, when I was in the starter area in starter gear as a sprout, someone just opened a trade offer at lifter running up to me and waving, and I was curious so I accepted the offer to trade. They tried to give me 10 000 Gil and a 100 boiled eggs for exp grinding purposes right off the bat. I told them, “actually, I’m leveling an alt, not starting but thank you so much!” And they gave them to me any how to help me get my alt started on the new server. Apparently this was part of a community organized event to hang out in the starting cities and giving new players stuff like crafted gear, food, and Gil as part of help on-boarding people when the new Endwalker expansion came out.
I've had good experiences like that in FFXIV aswell, it's really refreshing
The FFXIV community is pretty great from my experiences, I've had more positive encounters than negative. When I'd have a tiny brainfart as a new tank in WoW,I was bitched out and group kicked. When I had trouble paladin tanking in FFXIV, a player kindly reminded me to reactivate my iron will, and the run went smooth. MMOs have the potential to be great if the communities work together like a harmonious village rather than an overcompetitive gladitorial ring,lol. :3
@@WyntheRogue that happened to me too (the reactivating iron will part)! I really love the FFXIV community, I haven't had any bad experiences with other players so far while playing
I would reject all that
Yea, yea you're not like other girls. We get it
It saddens be cause there are many people who would be social but end up getting ridiculed for one reason or another and just end up playing alone.
I was one of those people, eventually I just let my subscription run out because I was sick and tired of how toxic and immature most people were.
@@woulfhoundI'm so sorry to hear that. I have never had any issue like that before. I'm not a hardcore mmorpg player, but I find gw2 is very friendly. I'm totally a noob and whenever I chat something in the channel, there's always someone reply to my chat. I even became friends with some of them. I hope that you can find a game where you can stick to and find a community that suits you. It's really sad for me to see your reply
I started playing MMOs when they were still social. They stopped being less social 10 years ago when they started to make MMOs catering to solo players. Even the guilds stopped being social. They had tens of players online, you greet them every time you logged in, yet the only time you got greeted back was when the few other social members were online.
PWI may be a bad game, but it was my introduction to MMOs in 2008 and back then people were very social. I cared less about the game and more about the community. The guild I was in was very active with a lot of fun and friendly people. The cities were filled with people messing around. You needed help, there were people ready to help. Clerics would buff random people exiting the cities or farming, or heal random people that were low HP. The chat was filled with LFG and the groups formed fast.
ESO is the last MMO I played. It's based on a single player series, and a lot of players were Skyrim players who never played an online game before. There were some people who participated in the social aspect, some were role-playing and messing around, occasionally some were doing ERP in public places, but compared to older MMOs, it was lacking a lot. Not to mention players complaining about non-consensual buffs and heals and other shenanigans, not even considering the fact that the skill used by the healers will randomly spread to others players in proximity. Or they were complaining about other players bumping into them like that was avoidable in crowded spaces.
Not to mention, games that used to be harder to encourage grouping will get nerfed because people complained enough about the difficulty, but none of them will make an effort on finding some friends. At this point, why even bother playing online games when the single players games have better mechanics?
There's always an unemployed menace on some discord, reddit, of something that contributed to a wiki or UA-cam fighting with the 1000 person playerbase and calling other people dramatic.
You see and experience an asshole that every new player wants to meet and you either become that ass or quit?
@@littleicky2852 Thank you, I very much appreciate that.
This was the worst moment during my time in Azeroth, long story short:
I was a human warlock, stupid choice but I didn't understand the concept of min/maxing. I'm in Booty Bay and I get a whisper message from some random guy asking if I want to do Scarlet Monastery. I agree even though I know I'm literally on the opposite side of the continent, took a long fucking time to get there.
As I'm making my way north I voice my frustration to the rest of the group that I got invited to where I'm coming from and how long its taking. All I hear in response is "DON"T SWEAR, STOP SWEARING" Its WoW, all cuss words are hidden automatically by the algorithm. Nobody even tries to sympathize with me about how far I have to go out of my own way just to get to the dungeon.
When I finally get to the Scarlet Monastery I see that none of my group members are there. I just flew all the way from Booty Bay and I'm the first one to arrive. Another red flag, thats 2 now...
I'm a warlock and I have an ability that allows me to summon other players to my location, they ignore me, even when I message them. Third red flag.
Final nail in the coffin...
The rest of my group finally shows up and what do they do? They kick me out... and it gets worse....
They add me back and I rejoin, only to get kicked out again. I get another invite but I don't accept. I ask "what the actual fuck are you guys doing?" They all laugh and one guy literally says to me "its one of those nerve ending jokes" I'm fucking furious at this point, I can barely type on my keyboard. Then they all go into the Monetary.
One guy who somehow missed everything asked my why "I decided not to participate". I explain what happened and I guess he went and asked his little kiddy buddies what happened. He messages me back saying how they kicked me out for a paladin. I guess he finally got the joke, because he literally had the gal to say "try not to take it too seriously"
So yea... I just let my subscription run out...
I know the reason I am anti-social on MMOs now… and it’s that people have forgotten how to play the game to just enjoy themselves and have fun. I just want to mess around and play the game. Everyone else wants to look up the best builds on icyveins and power through things.
The amount of times the entire group has sprinted through an instance ahead of me while I just try to catch up is insane to me. The entire culture of MMOs has shifted to favor the players that are there for end game content and only end game content. The rest of the journey is an obstacle. And because of that, since I’m just part of the journey, I’m an obstacle.
Yeah, I concur. I was there since 2004 and played up until MoP. I was a GM and an Officer in a guild that was pretty casual (casual meaning: we played for fun and not for world's firsts But we raided like two times a week with quite a good success rate). We wanted to enjoy the content and see every cutscene so to speak. And we allowed that. But life goes on and a different type of player entered the guild: speed runs for whatever reason, no morefun and games, all 'business'. That - for me - was the breaking point. Getting badmouthed because you made a mistake and wiped the party - we used to laugh about stuff like that. Anyway, it burned me out. I kept on playing solo through the different expansions - as Madseason said - out of curiosity. But over the years, time- and money sinks, dailies, weeklies, you name it became necessary to advance your character ... I just unsubbed. Will I take a look at the next expansion? Probably. Will it be able to retain me without a good social network? Highly unlikely. Boomers perspective 🙂
You do realize that different people have fun in different ways, right? And having a person that you have to carry because he's using wrong talents is not fun. You are in fact an obstacle to fun.
@@ForOne814 People like you are why people like me complain that MMOs have lost their magic. Go enjoy what you’ve turned MMOs into, because you’ve clearly won.
@@Norien711 the magic was that all people were bad at the game, because people were bad at gaming in general back in a day. And yes, I do enjoy playing WoW from time to time, and thankfully I have zero problems with people like you, because I can avoid them.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
About a month ago in SoD, I was idling in Orgrimmar and noticed this low level player standing near the auction house, and was asking in /say "where can I get bigger bags, can anyone help me?" He asked a couple more times over the space of a few minutes, ran a few yards this way and that, looking a bit lost and lonely. Finally i'd finished whatever I was doing on my other monitor, and decided to answer his question, I even made a couple silk packs, opened the trade window and he was genuinly very happy and thanked me. I havn't logged into SoD for a while now, but I hope he is having fun. We forget that there are real people behind the characters, with real feelings. I miss the old days, but i'm glad I got to live through and experience them.
I always try to make bags/wands for low levels asking. I’m always happily surprised when I meet people new to wow
yeah. a lot of these veteran players forget there are new people coming into the genre so they don't bother helping these new guys out.
@@ryuno2097 We didn't forget, we're just not the teaching type. We have goals we want to accomplish, things we want to do. While some folks feel a sense of altruism and want to help, some just want to go about their day. We pass by people in real life all the time that we don't help out because we're busy with our lives. It's really no different in an MMO.
thats sweet from you, im help too always.
I’ve been noticing a looooot of newer players in dungeons, but more so players that have only played Dragonflight. When I do Chromie, there are a ton of people that don’t know the routes or how the boss fights work. It’s good to see, because I remember what that was like and I loved discovering everything. So, I’ll help with marking and stuff like that, but I don’t want to spoil anything for them either. It’s just cool to see fresh blood come into an almost 20 year old game that I’ve played every bit of
One of my first WoW experiences was a bunch of naked night elves sitting in a moonwell as if it were a hot tub.
My first WoW experience was to create a Night Elf Druid, turn into a cat, walk backwards everywhere and pretend to be a talking elephant every time I was crossing paths with other players.
Theres too many requirements to do any group content in WoW SoD. People want a description of your whole life story, resume, and tax returns. The fun was sucked out by min maxers
there are still people that play for fun, you just have to accept people that will fail the easy stuff 100 times, if you want smooth experience, but without the crazy profiling, then you are searching for a unicorn.
Search for a social, big guild then. PUGs are awful, that is right.
My AoTC for Season 2 of Dragonflight we had a guy in my raid. He was, struggling a bit. But you know what he was doing his damndest to get it down. I saw him asking plenty of questions trying to learn, even gave him some videos to watch to help him.
At some point one of the tanks got pissy, and booted him. He had assist for the raid, when me and my friend found out we immedietly called the dude out and kicked him out. He of course went on a rant, pulled boss, blah blah blah. What made me sad was the guy who was doing his best whispered my buddy and said, “Yeah I understand man. Good luck” then we made it our fucking goal to get this man AoTC.
Sure enough new tank, next pull we fucking got it. Dude was crazy happy we suffered with him. I added him, unfortunately I don’t see him around due to life but I hope that guy is still playing and having fun.
More people should do this. Just fucking ask questions and we as a community shouldn’t tell them to “stfu and use google.”
@@rattlehead999 and that's the problem. That kind of balanced, casual but competent, group seems to either not exist, or fall to either the tryhard or super casual side eventually.
I found that in classic as well. Turned me off it
I feel that the WoW community has killed a lot of the magic in the game. They expect you to know every mechanic and have the right spec and the right gear. Even though you just started playing the game. They gate keep themselves
agree,
it is so rare to find a "veteran" who will guide newbies PROPERLY not just for fake formality, a lot of them are just PAIN IN THE ASS.
so in result the new generations including the "veterans" who are nice and not a pain in the ass become "quiet" and refuse to interact with others, it is totally understandable response.
one bad ingredient can ruin the whole soup
I /wave and /hello at the beginning of every dungeon. 9/10 times I'm the only one who does or says a single thing before they just dip. Makes me sad sometimes but I think it's also important to be the change you want to see.
I will basically always /greet and tyfg
Same here. I always type at least „heya“ and „gl and bye“ 😅
I always /bow or /thank when someone buffs me or helps me out in the wild (Rogue here). I do the same when I help them escape death.
@@anonimowelwiatko4455Yes! Saving someone's live in the open wild plays a big role in making the game more social. Even if it's someone from the other faction
Tho it's always a pitty when they down acknowledge you afterwards
In a m+ you don't want to waste time taking
I really miss the days before youtube guides and data mining (two professions I vastly appreciate outside of their effect on MMO's). On my first Molten Core run, I had almost no idea what I was running into. I was getting on the Orgrimmar zeppelin with *40 players* and had little idea what I was getting into other than "we're going to Molten Core." It was magical and unrepeatable.
I'm kind of torn because guide content is one of my favorites to make. Lately I've taken a step back from it though, partly due to reasons you brought up
@madseasonshow I hear ya. I love the guide content on its own merits and everything we learn from data miners (amazing how much Fromsoft lore can be deciphered through the names of game files)... I don't think we can go back to that age of mystery before the age of information. Like I've mentioned before, recreating the initial magic of MMO's is a tall order solely for the shift in online culture.
The only thing I found which rekindled that exact feeling was starting a DnD group with a few friends.
Everyone's exploring the setting together and especially on custom made campaigns, there is no guide or anything which could spoil the experience.
Of course we only play every couple weeks and it's a lot more work for the DM (me) but other than that nothing else was able to recreate that feeling of early wow.
then you must miss the days before mmos because you could always find text based guides for games online after the mid 90s and youtube came out during the peak of classic wow and runescape but you don't need that anyway
@@belstar1128 I was 16 when wow came out and to say "there were guides" is such a blatantly distorted statement I can barely believe you brought it up.
The difference in accessibility, speed and comprehensivness is orders of magnitudes apart.
When wow came out half the written guides were full of mistakes and came out weeks if not months later and you had to actually search for them.
Nowadays you can find 5 differrent guides for all different raid difficulties days before content goes live right here on youtube.
And all with easy to digest video guides, not some clunky ass html site without piictures.
"Seeing other players as obstacles rather than assets" is a perfect way to put it. I have no idea how to solve this issue, but it's definitely true. Even as a more casual/midcore MMO player my #1 barrier to wanting to interact with other players, even for content that requires them, is my fear that I'll just be seen as an obstacle to their progression because I've never done X content before, which means I never do the content and it creates a self fulfilling loop. Being able to do the content solo would destroy the reason to group in the first place, and so I end up looking at guides and completely removing from myself the ability to have a blind fun run and all the enjoyment of figuring things out myself, replaced with a foreknowledge of everything I need to do and all my failures to do so.
A good place to start is sandbox, where the focus is player-made content. There has to be incentive and push for people to interact and build communities. Sandbox also has the advantage of being a much less explored sub-genre(ever since WoW, it's been primarily themepark), and therefore has more potential for innovation. It also counters guide culture and the rapid spread of knowledge and familiarity, since player made content is more malleable and unique to each server's communities.
The problem though is that MMOs are so expensive, that deviating from what's proven to work(themepark) is a huge risk. In an already dangerous genre, it's much safer to try to emulate successful ones, with slightly different flairs.
IMO the next big mmo, if there ever is one, is going to be sandbox
100% feel that as well
would it though? Like if SW galaxies came out today, i think it would still get swept up by guide culture, there's a guide for quite literally everything today, even for the most casual games like Stardew Valley @@madseasonshow
@@madseasonshowEve is the biggest example of sandbox, and it suffers from similar issues. Losing casual players and only retaining the chronically online. Minecraft servers were a distributed version of sandbox, but not really what you're talking about. The reality is MMOs were half social media. Since social media has taken that away, MMOs need to introduce social content that is unique to games as a medium or be relegated to essentially co-op solo content.
WoW's group finder at top end is so full of resume requirements and logs requirements.
FF people just toss up the prog point and there's no gatekeeper to the group, people just join your party, no accepting/denying people based on logs or whatever. So refreshing.
Mmorpgs are a perfect example of suffering together alone.
You’ve managed to articulate what I’ve always felt about MMOs but could never unlock mentally:
MMOs veer too close to being real life.
@@synapse913Literally even when I play PokeMMO and I am “grinding” the game I just feel like who honestly gives a fuck about this.
I chalk it up to three main reasons.
1: Escapism. We play games a lot more now to escape stress and we don't want to have to deal people on our own time any more especially after working thankless menial jobs like most in our generation do.
2: Other venues. WoW came out before social media was really big, so it itself was a form of social media but now there are so many other options. Who needs guild chat when we have discord? Who needs trade chat when we have facebook and twitter? Simple fact is for social enrichment MMOs are obsolete in that regard, we don't need them to socialize anymore.
3: Parallel play. You ever just chill with someone else in the room in which you are both doing other things but enjoying each other's company? That is a valid way to play MMOs, even if you are doing your own thing it is sometimes preferable than a single player game due to just having the company while we do it.
i agree so much with this, i love being independent and sometimes love to be on my own, so your "parallel play" idea makes so much sense to me
It might be a "valid" way, but for the people who want more actual social interaction it just ends up meaning MMOs get designed around that
I don't think these reasons carry much weight. We always wanted escapism - even as kids. In fact as kids, we were capable of greater escapism, because it was fundamentally easier to escape and our imaginations were given more processor time, so to speak, due to the fact that we had far less going on.
As for other venues... totally agree, WoW at launch was the social media of its time; part of the reason it accumulated so many users so quickly. But the whole point was, you communicated because you had to - it was an integral part of the experience. Playing solo was much harder, and the zone progression/level progression being slower meant that after hours grinding away in a given zone, watching the chatter on general, the temptation to chime in grew.
Meanwhile, modern social media has not made people particularly sociable; everyone is lonelier than ever before. What it did, however, was change what they expected from a social interaction - it became a transaction. I post a thing, you give me validation with a like. Presenting a modern social media user with a social outlet that involves no system of validation beyond the basic act of communication? They're not wired to find that appealing; saying something and not having anyone give you a "like"? That's... unsatisfying. That's probably one of the reasons people became quite hostile in their social interactions in MMOs - every time someone fails to gratify them, people perceive it as a slight.
And while playing an MMO with someone else in the room is certainly a thing that happens, it's not a major motivator - a lot of couples play MMOs together, and they PLAY together, they don't just kinda idle together. In fact, more often than not, they're immersed heavily in the world together, because it's an extension of them as a couple; they want to be seen together, they want to interact with other people... together.
I'd say the actual primary motivator for social interactions in MMOs? Was simply the game design. Looking at other games, and how social interaction plays out... the primary motivator is necessity. In Deep Rock Galactic for example, due to their use of the "cheer" button, and the other non-verbal communications you can use, people rarely use voice chat, and rarely type... but they work as a team, and are highly receptive to basic social stimuli (just point a mushroom and you'll have the entire team doing it together etc). Similarly, Left 4 Dead was very good for this fundamental sub-verbal level of social interaction; you work as a team, or you fail.
In WoW, you interacted with people, or you struggled. There was no way to have a smooth dungeon run, for example, without communication, and most of the meaningful later-game achievements required either a high level of social interaction, or an even higher level of raw, lonely grinding.
I'd say it was never about needing the MMO to socialize... it was always about needing to socialize, in the MMO. Looking at the general changes in WoW in particular, what did we see over time? A reduction in the necessity of other players. Levelling got faster. Quest content got easier - heirlooms became a thing etc. Used to be that working as a group made everything faster and easier - now, it generally slows you down, if anything.
Meanwhile in other MMOs, they went even further - in Elder Scrolls Online for example, in addition to the game being so easy that at one point I literally discovered that I could not be killed while afk because the NPCs couldn't hit harder than my passive health regen, they implemented AI companions.
And then, by that point, even when people went back to the older style of gameplay... they had been long-since conditioned to not socialise.
@@NicholasBrakespear I think you misunderstood the point about parallel play. It’s not literally about people being in the same room while they play MMOs. It’s about being surrounded by other players in-game while you do your own thing. It‘s part of the persistent world aspect of the genre that is appealing to people even if they’re primarily solo players.
@@parker-unfired Ah, well that's valid... but I don't see why would that would actually make them antisocial. The term antisocial refers to people actively not engaging with others, striving to not interact with others, not just casually being happy hanging around others without directly interacting.
Would you play an MMO if everyone else quit?
Everyone : we'd quit
One UA-cam Guy : Welcome, I'm Josh Strife Hayes and this is Worst MMO ever.
We are incredibly fascinated by dead worlds and bad games.
Honestly, I would still play the mmo, if I had been having fun in it to begin with. For me, there is something magical about treading the ground someone else has before me and experiencing what they did. I get that magic mostly by playing mmo content blind. Learning as someone before me had to, to complete it. On top of that, there are some really great MMOs that would be great as single player games. If I literally am the only chosen one, then that aspect of the game becomes more compelling.
And, honestly, I chase loot and achievements in single player games. It wouldn’t be different to me if the mmo was empty. The primary reason I mmo is because there is a chat box. If people aren’t talking in the chat and having actual conversations, then the mmo is single player anyway.
But, I like exploring and engaging with story. MMOs have too much party content. I don’t enjoy dungeons. I don’t enjoy raids. For me, that content should be “one and done”. But, if MMOs had a true cooperative game element, like allowing players to team up for the whole story, or the whole crafting experience, or whatever… from start to finish? I would probably value the mmo experience more.
I would continue to play if I was enjoying it.
I paid a deluxe version of a very niche online game I just knew from the start would go End of Service in a 1 year.
The Reason was that I loved it with all my heart even though the game mechanics are intellectually intense for me. (let's say i still cant understand how sudoku and chess works when they're just kindergarten childrens games already at my time) I played it with the last remaining people until could not anymore. I still keep it installed in my computer even though booting it up will always give me "Server Disconnected".
The real tragedy here is I'm too retarded and afraid to talk about video games.
@@miscielrossvillegas6307
God, I miss Firefall
This video is so timely. I logged onto SOD yesterday. One random person I never met said "Hi, will you play this game with me?" A few minutes later I walked by a group doing an incursion. A random player asked to join them in general chat, and the party leader responded with "f off" or something to that effect.
How rude, did you play with the first guy?
That "f off" response I got 2 times in SOD P3 in the first 30 minutes as I wanted to find a grp for incursions. I wasnt sure anyway how I feel about this kind of leveling..so that was the last straw for me, I canceled my sub.
@@k-ondoomer ASKING THE REAL QUESTIONS!
@@Schneider1939 I think it differs from people to people but it gets worse when most players quit once they hype of a new phased has died out.I played in P1 and P2 i had a guild for both and it was good and enjoyable.
At the end of P2 i was already bored of Gnomer cause i got all the gear pretty early and took a break off like 2-3 weeks.I wasnt even bothered that people were 50 on the other day and had 1k gold before the Incursion nerfs.
I just didnt feel like playing it and incursions werent that fun but i quickly found a friendly group and they were patient when i asked a couple questions cause i was lazy to google them myself and ran me through the quest route with them.
Theres abit of both people Rude and Helpful in Classic if i have to say my experience as someone whos played WoW for alot of years and not a new player is more or less great in the Classic rereleases theres tons of people who help newbies and ive made new friends along the way.
Ofcourse you ll beef along the way but i think recently more people help new and older players instead of putting them down but thats my experience atleast.
If we have to be honest when i was a noob in WoW i learned through being called an idiot aswell either for Gameplay,Gameplay questions or Bad English i either learned when i was corrected or went off on the same guy and continued my way untill i found someone who was willing to show you without cussing at you but it wasnt a big problem back tbh i think many people learned about alot of things that way Online not just in WoW.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
Playing mostly tanks, queued with my wife for a dungeon back in WoD. She had just finished levelling her first character a couple days ago. Three minutes in people started a vote to kick her because her DPS was not up to par. Needless to say she stopped playing after a couple weeks when she realized how toxic WoW's endgame was. I stopped playing shortly after and haven't looked back.
mmm, I hate that shit. People are just so damn impatient these days.
It makes me wonder how many people quit the game, because they get kicked from dungeons without knowing why.
People are not like that as much in DF I’ve noticed, most of the toxic people found each other or left in Shadowlands. Thank god 😂
Mention "wife": get gamer card revoked
I remember when I had rightfully won a new sword via a roll in a WoW raid and instead of giving it to me, the raid leader gave it to someone else because and I quote "It's a weapon for Rogues, not Hunters". I could've used the blade as it was way better than what I had, but they were adamant that I didn't need it and made the decision for me despite my pleading.
Good riddance, you brought your noob girl along and she was dragging the whole party down, you sound like you were enabling it.
Yeah the fact that guild chat and trade chat are now dead is really saddening to me. I don't really want to communicate through discord for everything.
yea its sad. Its all about money, total greedy ugly ppl
Censorship and ridiculous bans lead to the non-communication and anti-social behavior. Bring back free speech and we'll have social behavior again. Player interaction (both negative and positive) are what made MMO's great. We don't need companies to tell us what we can see, say and hear. We have MUTE and BLOCK buttons for that.
@@wiliestrogue2924 finally someone who tell this
I remember just sitting in cities reading trade chat or whenever you flew through the barrens someone yelling chuck Norris
@@Jabbers419 Yep. Censorship ruined MMO's. Chat used to be fun and engaging.
Original WoW Classic had true role playing. There was that troll player who did nothing but collect flowers in the starting area and he became famous for basically playing an NPC as his character. In my original server there was a RP druid guild called "The Greenwardens" that you could only join if you were a druid. They even had friends on the Horde side and made a sister guild with them and enforced rules like you were never to attack an enemy druid player and stuff like that. The Alliance and Horde sides would meet in Moonglade on the solstices and have a party together. The guilds meeting place was where Rethiel is in the Wetlands and the guild owners would just RP there and hang out. They even ran a monopoly on all the dinosaur leather they needed to build their final tier armor and fixed the prices in the AH. When I rejoined to play classic it was like a completely different game. I played a druid and tried to restart the Greenwarden guild myself, but when I talked to people about anything other than min/maxing my stats they treated me like I was insane. Even just playing as a druid was enough for some to never invite me into their parties because it wasn't seen as an optimal class. It made me extremely sad, like meeting an old childhood friend who doesn't remember you. I realize now no MMO will ever be close to as good as it was back then because the player base has fundamentally changed. All these kids today just want cool skins and fast raid times, they don't care about participating in the actual world itself.
This 100% I remember rping in a clan similar to that on Runescape. We were deep in the wilderness in some array of houses that we set up as a camp. We got sent out to get supplies, to get food/hunt/fish, to set ip defenses from other clans. Eventually we got demolished by some other group but it was still such a fun time.
two words: private server.
I have been playing on a private wotlk server for almost 13 years now and the community is still pretty much the same way it was back in the day.
Turtle WoW - you wont be disappointed
They still kinda exist. Our server had the hug-bear, that just sits around in Sw most of the time, and hugs you back if you /hug them, and everyone does it to improve loot-luck.
Still tho, I know what you mean.
Classic in 2004 - taking a test
Classic in 2024 - taking a test, with the answer sheets right there
Yeah, just doesnt feel the same anymore.
I was playing SoD and WoW for the first time and had fun at first when I was going about it solo. It was one I joined a discord and looked up stuff online that I became disinterested in the game. People already knew what content was to come and what was the best gear/strats for the content that was available. Nobody really just wanted to play for fun and explore like I did because everything was already figured out or solved.
What were you expecting?
going back to first grade and pretending to not know the answers even though ur 30 now?
@@RaxoFilms I would expect, at a minimum, for those grown 30+ y/o adults to not require a calculator or the answer sheet to complete a first grade assignment.
Actually… it’s like taking the test, with the answer sheet right there, plus some red arrows telling you exactly where, and how to write your answer :)
I don’t think classic vanilla was supposed to be experienced with the Addons that have developed over so and so many years since 2004. People want classic, but then die to make it retail or implement things in to the game that totally strips it if what made it what it was 🤷🏼♂️
-playerbase used to be much smaller
-internet was overall a niche place, no social media
-unknown and lack of knowledge about the game, few guides and database websites
-younger audience with a lot of time
vs
-excessive focus on efficiency and getting to the endgame as fast as possible
-much larger audience that is there just for the trend, ecelebs feed this
-audience neither has the time or commitment they once had
-overall internet is no longer niche and has become a cesspool of social media drama and trends
I dont think its ever going to change back to the way it used to, things have changed for good, hence why I was reluctant to return to Classic, knowing it was just going be no different than most modern MMOs
Well said, I played wow back in the real vanilla in like 2006. There was a naievity where people were new to mmos so the learning aspect made it fun you needed to talk to get things done. Online guides existed, gear was tough to get so there was a sense of accomplishment getting it. No one knew the best path it was trial and error.
Don't get me wrong I left as I saw It becoming increasingly "work like".
I recently came back for nostalgia and noticed there was absolutely zero community. I tried an instance and no one talked I was having a conversation with myself they Just ran through like robots. It might aswell be a single player game.
Not sure what lesson I can give. The naievity, difficulty and unfamiliarity makes things fun. Like being thrown on an island and you finally light a fire after 100 attempts when no one else could, that satisfaction.
Giving into convenience and making everything known and automated turns people into robots.
You won't get this new fresh feel again you will just have to wait for VR games. But it will just follow the same cycle over the decades.
Watch some VR social games how people interact which with each other to get my point of things being new and fresh to people.
@@Gaia.S real, and this isnt just WoW, other MMOs like RO also give me a nostalgic feeling but its not the same if I go back. Closest thing is going through the honeymoon period, playing with friends, but thats it. Creating a party for "dead" content takes forever compared to the old days
Played vanilla and tbc. Got back for Pandaria.
Everyone was so quiet! No banter, no LFG chat, it was like playing with bots.
Even joining a party, it was just straight to killing mobs, no one wanted to engage socially.
Totally different community compared to when I was playing. And the min-maxing! Oh god! Can we not just enjoy the game and stop sperging over stats? I couldn't care less what was more efficient, honestly.
I moved on, it was a different crowd. I didn't fit in.
same here ...
Felt the same when I joined in Legion and hadn't played seriously since TBC. I think you can get some of the same old experiences back by playing on the Hardcore servers, or going to certain private servers which attract like-minded people that want a specific experience.
Nah, i had the most insane meme chats in pandaria lfr, lots of fun memories there.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
You skipped wrath? That was the best.
I miss having friends in WoW :( people nowadays are either rude, creepy, or rude and creepy
Why would you talk if theres no necesity? You either are trying to upset the order or like to fuck with people. Either way its suboptimal unpredictable suspicious behavior.
@@86Corvus idiot bait
@@86Corvus 🤡
@86Corvus because they're lonely you sh head. Some people may be disabled in various ways and can't communicate well enough to make friends irl. The net and games like mmorpgs were one of the few things they had. Playing the game was just an excuse to interact with people socially. Sure it's dishonest but not in a way anyone would mind or even notice. They got good at the game to make e-friends. The game was secondary or even an afterthought, but no one would have assumed it.
Just play a different MMO.
Elder Scrolls Online has nice players and tons of group PvE. I make new friends almost daily.
It’s crazy the amount of content you’ve been putting out lately! Loving every bit of it. Keep it coming!
Glad you're liking it, thx for watching
@@madseasonshow this new era of ChadSeason vidjas is fun
The worst offender is when the game decides to force anti social behaviour upon you. When it splits the world into layers or shards. It gives you two players who are desperate to find someone to play with and who goes trough the game feeling like the game is empty. In the end they quit without knowing that they have been next to eachother all the time, just in separate dimentions.
Also the "ironman mode" (idk the name) When I was playing sod in phase 1 I had just made a dwarf leveling up in dun morogh and invited a guy next to me doing the same quest. He declines and says that he can't join because he doesn't get credit for kills when other people do damage to it or something?? I don't remember it was a while ago. But I was just like wow that is so fuckin gay, it just kills the whole point of playing an mmo
I can only speak for myself but when I'm done with work and all other obligations I might have in the real world the very last thing I'm looking for is being scrutinized with regards to gear, performance etc when all I'm looking to do is chill out and try to feel young again!
Same. But when I have work, family, friends + sports... the last thing I want is to be social in a mmorpg. I don't mind groups, but I'm not going on discords voice to be social with others like 20 years ago when I was 16
Never understood this mindset. Jobs today are so mindless and tedious the only way I can get any actual challenge in my life is through artificially imposing it on myself with fitness and gaming.
Not everyone is pulling a lever at the Amazon warehouse for minimum wage bro. Impose a challenge on yourself and get a real job
@@cooperward-rc1sx Run an APAC marketing team from Japan but thanks for your concern.
you will never feel young again.
I believe there's another reason on top of all this. Back in the early 2000s most of the people that played these games were computer nerds/geeks/enthusiasts. The internet in general was full of these types of people and they were looked down upon by many that thought the internet and computers were strictly for awkward people. Smart phones made the internet more popular and accessible and now it and these games are full of all different kinds of people. It's just not as common to find people that have things in common anymore.
"most of the people that played these games were computer nerds/geeks/enthusiasts"
Not really true. WoW was such a huge hit because it scooped up vast numbers of people who had not previously been nerds/geeks/enthusiasts at all - it ran on a potato, and a potato connection (I first played it on dialup), and it was highly sociable. For many people, WoW was literally their first game.
I'd say games are actually less accessible now - "gaming PC" back in the late 90s/very early 2000s could literally mean just an office PC with any graphics card. Games used to be designed with this in mind - they used to be built for the "average PC".
"It's just not as common to find people that have things in common anymore"
I mean, back in 2004/2005 when I played WoW at launch... I was playing with Swedes, Germans, at least one Greek, a couple of Belgians... and most of the time? We didn't even know we were all from different countries and different walks of life. It didn't matter. We didn't need to "find people that had things in common" - we had something in common, by definition; we were playing WoW. That's what we had in common; a hobby.
@@NicholasBrakespear I mean, it just seems like you're saying your experience was different from mine. WoW did bring in a more diverse crowd, but the games that came before it did not. I also played MMOs with people from other countries and some that just lived very far away from me. I recall there was still some stigma around playing online computer games where I lived in the southeast US, even in 2006. Admittedly, the south was always a few years behind with accepting the internet and other technologies back then.
@@NeverBurrito I don't think you can call it a different experience - when 12 million people subscribe to an MMO in 2004/2005... that's kinda inherent proof of how broad the demographic was.
I would of course acknowledge - WoW was different, because it did bring in people who weren't gamers, or weren't that kind of gamer. Sure enough, Everquest Ultima Online? Proper nerd territory. WoW broke new ground in that regard.
But your argument was - "It's just not as common to find people that have things in common anymore"
That simply isn't true - as I said, the game WAS the thing we had in common. In fact, I remember the difference in general communication patterns back then, both in WoW and on Neverwinter Nights servers... and in Eve Online, actually - people didn't talk about the real world, unless it was to reference other entertainment they liked - films, books etc.
People did not discuss politics, certainly not to the point of having massive feuds. The arguments I saw in Barrens chat for example... generally revolved around WoW issues, and nothing more.
But when I returned to the game during Legion, to see how things were, not only did I see constant chatter about real-world politics and issues, I was even bullied out of a guild over such things.
The point is, what changed was not that it used to be "just the nerds" who all had something in common - the change was far broader, and all the evidence points more strongly towards game design being a major culprit, leaving aside the degenerative state of the internet right now.
As an example, playing Deep Rock Galactic... I have seen almost none of the issues I saw in modern WoW - people are sociable and socially receptive, even when they're not particularly vocal, because the game's built-in non-vocal communication methods are well designed, and the game emphasises teamwork.
I think that's actually the root of what gives us common ground in these games - a common foe, a common challenge. In vanilla WoW, there was as strong common challenge due to the basic balance of the game, and there was a strong common foe due to the two factions and Blizzard's interesting choice to block direct communication between them.
When you remove such challenges, the most primordial incentive behind socialising - safety in numbers - disappears. Modern MMOs have made it most often optimal to play alone and selfishly.
In fact, now I think of it, you can see the importance of basic game mechanisms on player behaviour in a specific mechanism of Guild Wars 2 - it's not as social as old WoW was, but players get an XP reward for reviving other players. As a result, EVERYONE revives. During major meta events/boss fights, you will often be unable to revive someone because too many people are trying to revive them.
That's all it really takes, I think - a little nudge, a minor necessity, so that the "line of least resistance" requires socialising.
@@NicholasBrakespear I have no arguments against any of your points about WoW, but the video is about MMOs. I played a few before WoW and I don't think anything I said was incorrect. Later
@@NeverBurrito "Back in the early 2000s most of the people that played these games were computer nerds/geeks/enthusiasts."
I mean I can understand what you're getting at, and you're certainly right pre-WoW... but I would observe - when an MMO has 12 million subscribers, then that actually represents "most of the people that played these games" - because the combined sub/player count of literally every other MMO in existence... still didn't add up to WoW's count.
More to the point, and directly relevant to the video - the state of all MMOs in existence was impacted by WoW. Things WoW did well, they tried to copy. Things WoW did badly, they tried to copy. Until the Wrath expansion, the social aspect of MMOs was intact.
I would strongly suggest it was the Wrath of The Lich King expansion that actually set in motion all the major changes in MMO social life - the focus on singleplayer story content in an MMO, the attempt at making dungeon content more "accessible", the cross-realm queuing... the biggest MMO in history made changes that visibly damaged the game's social aspects (and actually ended its growth), and yet was considered a hugely successful expansion... so everyone copied it, so MMOs were forever changed.
I think the biggest relationship breaker is how many players each player has access to. If you keep bumping into the same ppl often you're bound to develop a bond, even if never spoken to each other but when you see a player once, never to see them again why would you care.
On the other hand when you have so many ppl to chose from why would you pick a random without any logs when if you reject them there is another guy behind them that might have the logs giving them some creditability, while with smaller pool of players you'd pick first come first served to not wait for who knows how long.
We've traded social elements for convenience.
I felt this so hard while playing monster hunter. It was that interaction that got me deep into that series, but it feels so empty now. You can have dozens of players in a pub but most are empty or have very few in them. I rely on strangers for the social interaction, so I constantly feel left out since most groups are friends and everyone else is a solo player. I miss the days when you would enter a pub and just see people chatting away, discussing which quest to take, giving advice, so on and so forth. Now it’s like “why don’t you know? You can just look it up”.
I think this is something that I remember most fondly from my time in FFXIV. The group I was part of there really enjoyed going in blind into savage raids and extremes trials, learning mechanics as we attempt them, everyone brainstorming ideas, it's such an organic and fun way to prog fights.
It was a very jarring transition when I came back into WoW in early Dragonflight where people expect you to know mechanics before the raid is even out due to extensive tests on the PTR, Beta, etc. I, unfortunately, can't reminisce of a time when WoW wasn't like that because I started playing it in Legion, but I do wish end game content felt more organic in WoW.
WoW is so much more sweaty for the avg player. The PTR and the free labor that players do for devs to test their game for them is just wild in this day and age. Blizzard is just kinda off-kilter.
Why experience life, when you can simply find the information free online, and cheat your way to quick dopamine?
This will become the downfall of mankind, it has begun.
A big part of the social experience was when WOW had dedicated servers. You knew all the big players, guilds, and people on your server. When they merged the servers and added meshing it ruined everything (especially world pvp).
People were min-maxing their server selection. Back in the day you picked a server and sticked to it, had no idea about "faction balance" and just played with whoever was also playing.
@@froggin-zp4nr Stuck* not sticked.
@@MaoRattoboth work in this setting
That's certainly one reason. Nowadays u're only considered big if u're on twitch or something
Thank god they ruined world PvP 😂
Is not that MMORPGs are antisocial MADSEASON... PEOPLE in general are antisocial nowadays.
Most people are happy just chatting wth their clutches. Talking to random people? This aint the early 2000s. Things are just so diferent now.
Social Media have created a huge division bettween people... like factions. Most people nowadays are used to argue with others online, so they expect that to be the norm, so when they trying to relax they try to avoid people, afraid of confrontation.
I could elaborate longer, but doubt many will read or care anyway. I still try and talk to randm people in game from time to time, specialy when dong my timewalking dungeons, which are usualy chill and relaxed, and i get mostly positive answers in there, so you just gotta know when you can do it.. like you won't do that in M+, or pvp...
This is a really good comment, I myself behave this way.
Mads also has a great point that fits well in what you said:
There really isn’t any incentive to being social in mmos anymore because the game does everything for you so you don’t have to inconvenience yourself into interacting with other people.
And the reason why they design games this way nowadays is exactly what you brought to light in my opinion.
Maybe people are more anti-social. But a part is because of social media. When wow released, 3d game worlds were the social media like wow and 2nd life etc. Now we have social media already so wow is just a game to many.
On top the wow generation got older: having work, family, friends, sports. Most of us want to game to relax and that's the anti-social moment.
I play classic vanilla and I have to team up with people to get through content. In retail I soloed till endgame because it was possible.
@@N3mdraz if you really think about it, a lot of the things that made MMOs unique 20 years ago are done by other games or services now. Social media being a prime example.
Yep, computers really killed our society.
From what I've gathered from places like The Happiness Lab, actual data shows that people THINK they prefer to do things alone, but when they ACTUALLY do things with other people they end up having a significantly better time. Like there was one study done on transportation where they had the option to either take the quiet seats or the chatty seats. Everyone WANTED the quiets seats, but when they actually measured happiness the chatty seats won out. And you could say that the happier people would choose the chatty seats more often, but I want to say they accounted for that in the study (even if I forget exactly how :/). There were other studies though that showed that people constantly underestimate how much they'd enjoy doing things with a stranger so that point is moot anyway.
Something I really hate is we've gotten to a point where if you try to ask people for help they just say "look it up" now classic is even to a place where dps think they're supposed to do every pull like retail.
In WoW, I'm so used to most people being elitists, rage quitting the group after 1 wipe, telling you something you've never done should be easy, telling you the game is xx amount of years old and you should know everything, kicking people because they just want to blitz the run. Hardly anybody talks to each other in looking for group. Unless you're in a tight-knit guild or on discord with each other, I feel like chatting is out the window for most players.
Today, I was running a remix Heroic Brewing Storm scenario with two other players. We wiped 3 times at the final Elite, and I was expecting someone to rage but no we actually chatted for a bit and eventually got the Lock to bring out his Void Tank Pet and we beat it 4th try rather quickly lol.
I believe the down fall was with the random dungeon groups finder, i remember during wrath before it was implemented I had to talk in chat, healer LFG daily heroic to get my badges and that's when people still talked and helped others out. I was tanking a nexus dungeon on my DK and there was a fresh lvl 80 paladin as the healer and the rest of the group was giving that person a hard time about their gear and I just said the healer is doing fine, we all start somewhere and there wasn't a bonus at that time to wear your required gear as long as it had the stats you need to perform your class functions, what does it matter. It has gotten so toxic that I actually don't mind the follower dungeon runs that was implemented in dragonflight.
Another thing not mentioned, is probably the idea of the "server". Being able to meet the same people again, having famous and infamous players on the server, having rivals in world PvP. It's just another aspect that was removed to appease some niche part of the playerbase, another "problem" they had to solve that inadvertently contributed to the destruction of the soul of the game. And of course, flying mounts. And constantly making the old world irrelevant with every new iteration.
Seems like all the old school players think the solution to the genres problems is basically to roll back to 2004 design. But that's not going to work. All that would do is push away the casual dads, and still not attract the younger players because they don't want to get spoon feed dopamine in an MMO instead of getting constant hits of it like in Fortnite.
@@seanwilliams7655 We're talking about how the MMO turned into an empty game, not whether or not zoomers would like an old school game. Obviously zoomers won't like an old school style game, but they also don't like retail. The video and my comment is just exploring why the game came to feel so empty.
@@maddyleaf I get that. I'm just thinking of the follow up question of "how to fix it".
@@seanwilliams7655 I don't think you're gonna solve it by trying to cater to zoomers, I think the problem with instant gratification type content and games has already made sure that zoomers will never like MMOs, it's a nuanced societal problem that require a lot of work to address.
So, all we can really do is argue for our ideal version of the game and hope the developers care about their core audience more than catering to people who don't play the game.
@@maddyleaf I agree. Zoomers aren't the answer. But trying to keep the 35+ year old dad around is why the genre is where it is now, and I bet those guys make up a large chunk of players. So the main problem is: how do you make a game that, let's say, "strongly encourages" grouping and social interaction, but also attract a large enough player base that a developer is willing to spend multiple hundreds of millions of dollars making it?
Back in Vanilla and TBC there'd be a lot of times when you'd group together in the World to accomplish a quest. This was different than dungeons or raids because in the World, you were like fellow explorers spontaneously going on an adventure together. And at any moment, any number of you could easily leave the party, but instead people stuck around and stayed even after their quests were done just because it was more fun to quest with a friend than going solo. But nowadays you can just spam BGs/dungeons/heirlooms and grouping in the real world is just not as efficient for leveling.
hearing factorio music in a wow video tripped me up
Same! I was really confused when it started why it was so familiar to me... 🤣 (800h in Factorio)
He's used it before but I'm still not used to it yet.
The factory must grow.
I had a culture shock recently. I got back into Dragonflight to "finish" it, and decided to do all the raids since the whole new Awakened raids thing. I was able to pog heroic non-awakened raids. Now, sure, we have insane gear right now so it isn't a huge surprise, but it crashed my perception of group content in wow, I was never a huge raiding guy, and I always had this perception that anything above normal requires a guild, mythic dungeons requires a guild, etc. Now I know that anything below mythic raiding I can do without talking to a single person. And mythic raiding is hard, so if you want to find a guild specifically for that it isn't all that easy even if you try, so I found myself in a position where I don't need a guild for anything below mythic raiding, and I can't get a guild for mythic raiding.
And it's need for something that makes people join guilds in the first place, I remember back when hardcore became a thing people were joining guilds to always be able to find people for dungeons. And those hardcore guilds were something else dude, guildchat was always active, we would talk about different topics, you would start to make friends with certain people because you guys communicate in the same space every day anyway. We would cheer when one of us would get to lvl 60, and collectively spam F in chat when someone failed. After experiencing this my opinion is that people are willing and able to be social in mmos, but you gotta make it a necessity. Want to run mythic dungeons? Sorry pal, need a guild for that. Anything above LFR? Guild. World Bosses? Believe it or not, guild. I mean, it would never happen in retail again, but one can dream.
I think you are confusing friendship with "bargains of mutual use".
The obstacle vs asset point is very insightful. If I didn’t have any IRL friends who play, I would have quit long ago
Golden age MMO design philosophy was built on obscurity of information to necessitate player interactions. Now with modern internet that is no longer an option. That doesn't mean MMO's are hopelessly dead, it just means that someone has to make a new one that isn't just a reskin of WoW for the 1000th time.
Imagine how out of date RPG's would be if they never progressed past NES era turn-based combat. That's MMO's in modern day.
At some point in the future there will be a studio that makes an MMO from the ground up instead of trying to rehash "proven formulas" that haven't worked in 15 years, and that studio will rake in billions with a B.
Ignorance is bliss in MMO land.
This is the truth.
> Imagine how out of date RPG's would be if they never progressed past NES era turn-based combat.
A large number of Indie RPGs have turn based combat. Turns out people do enjoy it. Not to mention baldur's gate 3 is also turn based.
Studios know that the easiest way to make money now is to make an online game with sexy characters with cool skins locked behind gambling microtransactions so that players will spend $$$ on their video game waifu. There's hardly any online games developed today where this isn't the case and where the gameplay comes first.
I think people and communities respond to incentives, and WoW shaped the community into what it is by setting the incentives to solo play and actively against working with a guild. It's not impossible to change things, but it's a long-term project to reshape communities with shifting incentives.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
Pretty much. You design stuff like raid finders etc, you'll end up having a community that wants such stuff
As a former mythic raider and now a casual FFXIV club enjoyer.
Raiding was toxic, it wasn't about killing the boss it was how much can I screw over my raid members.
In FFXIV clubbing it's about enjoying the music looking at others glamor and just hanging out with people.
TLDR: competitive gameplay brings toxicity.
Idk my guild feels stronger now that we are competing in parses against each other
The asset/obstacle sums it up pretty well. I used to group and do dungeons/PvP content quite a bit in vanilla. As the game went on, more and more you'd get people who were bitchy and self-centered. People now expect you to read guides and know the dungeon prior to ever setting foot in it, and this is true at the beginning, middle, and end of an expansion. If you fuck a mechanic up, you get kicked and/or ridiculed... and this is just in normal or heroic dungeons. I've never touched Mythics because it just seems too much like a headache... and this is all as DPS. I've wanted to try tanking for the longest time, but if you don't know the mechanics and best route from the rip, you get trashed more often than not. I don't think much has changed about the genre... I think it is the player base and maybe the "go go go" mentality instilled by things like Mythics (which seems to be more of an overall video game mentality). So now I just level alts, do interesting looking dailies, maybe try going after a collectible, and random BGs.
There no longer is this sense of adventure and comradery. I remember BRD runs where it would be a struggle and slog, but no one complained and we all had fun overcoming obstacles and fights... and we were all just a bunch of randos who had grouped up through LFG chat. I think gamers as a whole have focused so much on the min/max portion and trying to do as much as they can to reduce the challenge that if things don't go as they had envisioned, they give up and move on to what they perceive as a more efficient group.
has the game changed? yes. but not as much as people try to make it seem. the truth is PEOPLE have changed.
it used to be a realm of nerds playing with other nerds and we all felt a sense of comrade being the outcasts playing wow. its not that anymore. now no one gives a shit about anyone else, in game and in real life.
it was just a different world back then and its NEVER coming back. people need to wake up to that reality. even classic era people do not play the same as they once did, its all min maxing BS. im trying to have fun, not play wow as a job.
In a way I agree but it's so weird how things changed , cause I can't figure out any one perspecific thing that happened , apart from social media and things like anime and marvel becoming more mainstream.
Players nowadays cant fathom casually joining other peoples teamspeak servers for raids, rounds or just casually chilling with each other.
They´d rather just stay with their own discord group and bubble, which in itself is not a problem, but it is something that I always connect with MMORPGs (or games in general tbh) and what made them so special back then.
I'm part of the "problem". I loved being in teamspeak with randoms when I was 16, was fun & cherish those times.
I'm 36 now and when I game it's my non social moment since I have work, family, sports etc (I like classic vanilla prefer to type)
@@N3mdraz understandable tbh
@@0685ukoM I kinda broke off my Social Circle in Discord with SoD and was in Discord during raids with my guild but honestly it didnt feel any different it was just WoW chat and joking with each other but in voice.
Youre right ive seen some guilds from UA-camrs and it sounded alot of fun when theyve been a guild for couple expansions and played with each other but i always liked just using ingame chat but id say Discord is kinda necessary for raiding if you dont know what happens during fights xD.
Other than that if i want i dont find it hard to sociliaze even in retail but its harder cause the World theres is way more dead than Classic.Althou im happy i got to experience the Guild/Group thing again since i havent experienced that in lotta years maybe abit in Legion/BFA.
Those same people: "what happened to strong server communities?"
Is difficult to met new people when they are a bunch of assholes, which wow is full of
Even if you spend many hours of your playtime mostly solo, a game world feels lively and more meaningful if there are many other players also in the server with you. One of my fondest memories from 2004-2006 (I think 2005) in WoW was when my guild geared me out in Gianstalker and I got my leaf and sinew to then go on the epic quest to kill four demons hidden around the world for my bow, staff, and quiver. A guildy helped me scout the demons and work on tactics. Good times that only came from cooperation with 39+ other players.
I've booted up a localhost [redacted], which was fun, but really didn't have that "magic" of having other players. Useful for some testing or exploration, but an MMORPG without other players is not much of an RPG.
yeah i would play WoW still but i didn't grow up playing it so there's a lot i just don't know. it would take me years to catch up. but each time i would join a raid or run a dungeon, it was like... just mean people. soon i just didn't say anything anymore. I would just play and even then if i missed something, it was crazy in the chat. it's hard to feel welcome in a game where everyone around you seems like they know exactly what they're doing ALL the time because they've been playing that game for 14 years.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
People are drowning in knowledge. We never stopped to think if we should allow everyone to know everything. The internet has made us smarter technically but it has stolen a lot of the soul of humanity and we aren't even fully aware of the great price we have paid.
There are no reasons to seek mentors among other players. The mentor role is now played by a wiki, the mentor is now an Indian guy on UA-cam whose knowledge is immortalised.
Played GW1 back in the day. Once Factions dropped, with its customizable heroes, I stopped interacting with other players alltogether.
So besides web guides and social media's antisocial practices, it's also an issue of game design. The more you introduce solo play mechanics, the less inclined people are to play together.
game designers add these for the exact reason that more people would leave if their experience with an MMO was super dependent intereacting with other people, rather than being optional
@@Fabriciod_Crv yep. It's a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario for devs. And these games cost too much to make to drive casual players away like that.
honestly, i rather have it be optional than mandatory, one of the reasons i quit Albion in 2019 was because i was dependent on having friends online to have a good time with the game, which lead me to not logging in much at all.@@seanwilliams7655
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
@@Fabriciod_Crv That goes against the fact that Vanilla WoW grew in subs and after WoTLK, it dropped. Also goes against everything that EverQuest used to be. I never played it, but you could say the same for Rust. I've heard Rust is very non-soloable on official servers, at least when it came out.
I want people to be patient with me, but i dont want be patient with others. -the modern wow player
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
Your points are valid, but there's also a deeper psychological reason as to why MMO's are so antisocial now. Humans are tribalistic and form tight communities. Both the internet and WoW used to be a much more niche and everyone who frequented these communities had a lot more in common - nerds who wanted an escape from real life to socialize and play with similar people. A group of people experiencing a brand new and exciting world together that no one else had access to. Everyone who played WoW saw each other as a part of the same tribe, and were much more social and friendly as a consequence. Now that everyone has the internet, it is no longer a "tight community". Players in video games are no longer similar - everyone plays them now. We no longer see other players as "us", we see other players as "them". This is just how humans are as tribalistic beings.
I think most of us are introverts, and this is ultimately what the majority of us wanted. MMORPGs have found a sweet spot between socializing when we want to, and still accomplishing things aoscially when we don't feel like it. Games like WoW and FFXIV have dominated, because they moved away from the forced socialization of open world bosses, non-solo leveling, and HNMs of the past. There's still people that pine for those days, but I think they overestimate their extroversion, and just how crucial your niche social circle of a dozen or so people was to the overwhelming social feeling of MMOs.
Also, they probably just forgot or downplay how horrible the experience of forced socialization in older MMOs was. This is probably the biggest X factor in every discussion that doesn't get referenced enough. Nostalgia is a helluva drug.
A latest event, purely coincidental, that happened last night in GW2 was a world boss that appears on a starting area getting tagged by 20 people using mentor/commander tags inviting new players to join the fight. It was super quick but 5 new players witnessed pure chaos and learned how to use tags (it's just a simple command: /mentor) to stand out in the map so other people would join you without needing to form a group.
I always hated having to run for ages to dungeons in Vanilla (and to a lesser extend BC), with a non zero chance of being ganked, or the group dissolving before, or soon after the arrival at said dungeon. That's why I really, really loved the introduction of the Dungeon Finder in WOTLK... But as the expansion grew older you could basically see the random groups becoming more and more toxic, "insta quit at the slightest sight of problem" monstrosities week by week. What a sad developement for such a nice quality of life tool and the beginning of the downfall of social gameplay...
Mad season, I appreciate your new content. I’m glad you are trying new ways to create content more frequently. You have a wonderful way presenting your ideas and I always enjoy what you put out. Keep up the good work and thank you.
Omg YES!!! Thank you for addressing that issue! It’s insane in Cataclysm Classic right now… no one ever talks to each other if it’s not completely necessary. Feels like a weird single player game now that it’s all monofaction server and there isn’t even an opposing faction. Today’s playerbase is just weird af… cba to play anything if im not in group with my friends
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
When I stopped playing WotLK, because was drafted into the army, and returned in Pandaria a couple of years later, the first thing I did was ask on the forum who wants to leveling together? They answered me - "why do you need this? all the leveling done by solo, if you not completely noob". I stopped playing after just a week, despite the remaining time in subscription, because in the 28 levels that I done, I had never met a single player who would show any activity. Yes, I felt exactly like an obstacle on the way to their leveling, not a help or friend.
The release of classic or playing p99 for EverQuest has definitely shown how big of an impact outside information and communication hubs affect in game socialization.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress. There are a lot of secrets to uncover because a lot of end game info is gatekept by the bigger guilds and merchants.
Well there's two factors here:
1) the actual existance of outside communication hubs/info
2) the audience that has been slowly accustomed to them and now it's their "normal"
I tried playing P99 without outside information, as much as I could handle, it was an amazingly fun time! Immediately became my fav MMO in 2 weeks. Best community I've ever seen.
I don't play anymore but I miss it so much. I started in MoP and was very lucky that I met so many people willing to help me and I still have them on my friends list to this day.
I remember playing a NORMAL dg in legion (it had been out a while) so most people just sped through them. One of the dps had obviously just capped and wasn't doing as much damage as the rest of us. (Most of us had mythic gear). The tank started singling out the dps and complaining that the dg was taking too long! (We were literally doing fine he just wasn't one shotting everything). I was the only person who stuck up for that poor new player and I quit shortly after that. I haven't played properly since the end of legion as that became a regular occurrence. I played a bit in dragonflight but mainly alone...
"Get off vent, or I'll have you bent."
I miss the ventrillo days.
I feel like this video is more "Why World of Warcraft is so antisocial" because a lot of that applies specifically to WoW. I am thinking about this whole datamining culture with guides released in advance and so on and so forth. That's really WoW and just WoW, I play GW2 and FFXIV and that's just not a thing, especially in XIV where it's literally impossible to datamine.
This is why I play Turtle WoW.
Everyone is super social, there is a sense of community and because it is a vanilla server people tend to help each other out.
On top of that there is a lot of custom content like continued Blizzard story lines or completely new ones to begin with. They even have new zones to explore so though almost twenty years old it feels fresh.
But... isnt turtle wow dying? Like, its population is dropping drastically... and theres no denying it...
this is complete BS, and lies, ive played that server, empty world and 30 people standing under some tent
group finder ruins the game since people are just waiting for ques, standing in the city
i just dont get why u promote that server. vanilla wow is much better in any way.
@@GriboedovAnton Tclans is right. When was the last time you played Twow, G? I just logged in on a Tuesday night (9PM Mountain Time, US) and there were nearly 2400 people on (often 3-4K during the day). Orgrimmar was crowded. There are many active raiding guilds (I'm in one) and a lot of people are friendly and helpful. I constantly ran into people and grouped up while leveling. People are always running dungeons and the dungeon finder works great. I think things may have changed since you played Twow last.
@@chrisr1382 ok thats cool, have fun
@@GriboedovAnton See, no BS and no lies.
Still an immensely active server.
Which is being worked on constantly.
Classic (cataclysm) Ha!
Gw2 brought me the best cooperative mmo experience in the last years. When I was just walking around, I saw large group of players gathering around. Apparently a big boss was about to spawn, so players organized themselves into 3 groups to fight 3 battles at once. Each group had an experienced leader who was willing to patiently explain what's about to happed and what players should do. It was both no pressure at all and very well thought out at the same time. Given how much Gw2 does already with its autoparties and loot and level scaling, it was amazing.
And the GW2 community has lost a lot of its spark lately. Even in its dimmed state, the light still shines through.
I don't get the "you need to work quickly to get a lifetime subscriber" mindset that they're going with. I played current WoW for the first time in a decade a few weeks ago and was totally put off by everything it has become. I will never play it again. Why do they want to appeal to the minmax crowd so badly? (I ask rhetorically. I won't get an answer that makes sense to me)
Just gotta say been watching you for awhile now and i may have missed it at some point but the Dave the Diver theme spun my head. Such a banger, thanks for the awesome content I really appreciate you.
How people can socialize if the game doesn't give you any opportunity to be social? Usually at the launch of every expansion you tend to meet random people through leveling, helping someone from getting ganked, or help them with the quest. That's usually the highest chance of you finding random people and maybe even finding friends. But that shit disappears after a month and you go back to your usual "click a queue" button.
There's no longer the living world where you can met a random guy in the wild, all of that was traded for convenience. Also the fact what the only thing wow developers focused on are the end game raid content doesn't help the situation either.
Yeah, if you only focus on the 20% of the game it’s going to seem that way. There is crafting, they add world events, world quests etc. and people choose not to do any of it and then complain that raids are the only thing to do.
ppl actively do the weekly events almost every day on my server, idk what you on about@@keithb6344
I remember back in Wrath my guild did an event for Karazhan for players who were at 70 and wanted to do BC content, or didn't have Wrath installed yet, could experience an endgame raid with the guild before the entire guild focused everything on Wrath. It was one of the most fun things in my life in WoW, seeing experienced and more geared players help me and others feel what it was like for endgame was awesome. I feel that having midgame raid content would be a nice addition WoW, where a raid unlocks at level X and it scales with you as you go higher so even if you are level Y, the raid is scaled to Y but is still X for level X players. Doesn't even need to make new raids, just stick with the runs from past expansions, MoP Remix started in the past week and it was fun running Throne of Thunder and Siege of Orgrimmar again. Would love to Karazhan, Magister's Terrace, Icecrown Citadel, Blackwing Lair, Tomb of Sargeras, and more. Even just added raids for TW, I don't care.
They wanted to expand their player base by appealing to a more casual style gamer, and ruined the game for so many people in the process.
Now they are forced to cater to a remaining demographic of antisocial/toxic players. And if you want to socialize, you're either gonna end up in a guild of smug elitists or some dudes who don't take the game seriously and rarely progress through challenging content, and do more LFG than guild groups.
And in the middle is the vast majority of solo LFG players who won't say a single word unless they're angry or upset about someone else being a "noob"
And now they've divided the player base up into multiple versions, further exacerbating the issue by isolating more and more players.
@@nathanielbellmore it's almost like casual appeal was the entire reason for wow to exist, who knew
Excellent analysis. As an aging gamer, I often look for "social" guilds on the basis of whether they have a discord or not. If the guild has a discord, then all communication happens on that and never in-game. I feel like the only person that actually uses guild chat. I also feel that keeping communication behind a guild chat keeps things at a more impersonal level than discord, which I like.
Since the beginning, WoW and FF14 have always had many solo quests and not enough content to really push people to socialize. That has always been one of my criticisms. I play MMORPGs to socialize and play with friends, not solo lame quests as u do most the time.
After playing WoW and SWTOR for so long, you definitely meet your fair share of gatekeepers. it was a huge breath of fresh air going back to GW2 after a 10 year hiatus. The community is top tier from what I have experienced and always friendly and helpful. The players definitely play a huge role on the success or demise of the game. Its very strange to see people refusing to help new players with mechanics, when it directly impacts the health of the game
GW2 is so friggen dead...
@@MikeyPaper meh 10-15M players is a decent enough size. Never had any issues finding players for any content and everyone is real chill and wants to play the game. New exp looks neat so we’ll see
@@MikeyPaper it may be smaller than others but feels very alive
Gear score and master looting getting turned on the second a woman got on voice chat was what got me to quit raiding.
The hard shift and strict focus on Arena was what got me to quit pvp.
The replacing on talent trees with the cookie cutter loadout system was what got me to never come back.
You should try other MMOs, the most antisocial MMO is World of Warcraft. In other MMOs, players still talk to each other. OSRS, FFXIV, ESO
Agreed. Whether its the 30min long random convos while mining stars in OSRS, or hanging out in my FC house with some of my Static before raids in FFXIV, I’ve never felt that like of sociality in years.
Being a CE raider in WoW just felt like a second job. Outside of raiding, it was only pushing keys. It just felt depressing and tiring over time. Some of my friends still play cata classic, but I dont think I could give up my current happiness in other MMOs for drug-like nostalgia
This is 100% true. Mortal online 2 has been my go to mmo for a while now because it has that social aspect and big guild communities that have lasted years.
@@Genjiiro How did you get over the bland, copy-pasted design in FFXIV? I wish I could enjoy it, but the leveling is so bad, its so solo, I can't take it every time I try.
@@poisonated7467 What I couldn't get over in FF14 was how raid healing played out; even when I had my priorities straight, from a medical standpoint, I had far too much on my plate because of non-medical stuff... (SWTOR might not be as mechanically intensive, but what mechanics you do have, in HM and NiM anyway, are still unforgiving, especially to non-DPS)
They've become too P2W and nerfed for non hardcore gamers that many hardcore gamers have left a lot of the major MMOs due to it. A huge part of the social aspects in games were from hardcore gamers that would talk while playing the games for hours a day. In some games such as Eve Online where alliances require members to be on comms at all times while online, a huge part of the time was just passing time talking with each other in comms while playing. The social aspects was even more prevalent in certain local BBSs running MUDs in the 90s where some would do a meet up each weekend and even camping trips a few times a year in helping the members bond even more. I personally did this a lot in the mid-late 90s.
I'm a bit sorry you only consider "WoW like MMOs". GW2 has much more social people playing. Partially the things you describe (automatic queues) are not everywhere, partially people have reasons to go to old zones and generally are willing to help and even if there is wiki, there is definitely less "social media" coverage of GW2. Also since there is not really a character progression (which I'm sure you hate), people play much more casually. To be honest, it actually creates environment, where strong ties are much less common, but weak ties are all over the place.
Madseason has been absolutely insane with the content this year. Let’s keep going bro! Love it!
Just watched your series on MMO Theory, very interesting (liked and subscribed).
Before the LFG tool you had to sit and ask for dungeon and quest groups and sometimes had good interactions. Because it took a while to level you levelled with basically the same group of people outside your guild. Before Battlegroups and crossrealm you often saw the same group of people in BGs, so you built some recognition. The attitudes were less selfish, we were young we had more free time, now your game time comes after work and family commitments.
Ever noticed back in the day, in a random group we called people by their in game name, now we call them by their class. They aren't a person or another player now, we've dehumanized them, and turned them into a number.
With crossrealm LFG and Battlegroups now you don't build those social groups levelling or even at max level. That low geared dps, tank or healer or someone that keeps screwing up is seen as a hindrance and replaceable easily, not a person that is trying to get levels, gear or experience in game same as you. The gear piece drops that you want, someone else wins the roll you're salty because now you have to requeue with another group of idiots.
Why be social or courteous you aren't going to see this group again. Why lug a deadweight they are just wasting your time. These attitudes were a byproduct of what is a good system for streamlining content delivery, the price is social interaction and promotion of toxicity among players. Played from around TBC to Legion, since WOD the levelling experience had felt lonesome, promoting the anti-social, toxic feeling so I left.
In Runescape when the Grand Exchange was introduced it almost completely killed player interaction overnight. There used to be people in every city selling and buying goods, but then they became ghost towns. You used to have to seek out and barter with people. Sometimes you'd have to go on the forum to find a specific item for sale and meet people in weird spots to trade them. I think the Grand Exchange is overall a good addition to the game, but without anything to replace it, a huge social part of the game was cut out.
REAL story time now: i got hyped for cata classic, i figured i could install wow and jump in just to run around town on the trial mode to get the feels again. In 5 minutes of running around the town - and i remind you, as free to play account you cant talk to people or trade or interact - i received warning that i have been reported multiple times for misconduct and bad behavior and if it continues im getting banned. In 5 minutes. Being idle in town. While im unable to interact with other players. My hype for cata classic died instantly.
„Hype“ and „Cata“ in the same sentence is a weird combination
@@pandurlolgg5780 i stopped playing retail in middle of cata just before firelands release, because of people. I was looking forward to continue the experience, but instead got disgusted by people again even before it started
I dont talk to ppl too in wow classic era. And i get everyday warnings for no reason. Ppl hate me in this server maybe because im always first place with kills, and on AV weekend i go way over the honor hitcap. Last week 650k honor heading for r14 1 week left. I get so much hate. Its insane
There is one word you need to learn and it is "ASOCIAL". Meaning NON social. ANTISOCIAL means against social. People in wow are not doing terror attacks to break down society.
MMOs sucked in the past too. 😂 One of the reasons I gave up on WoW is because no one had time to help with anything that didn't have to do with raid progression, farming mats for raid food & potions, etc. My guildies weren't even interested in raid training for those of us who aren't hardcore players but wanted to try raiding. 👀 I will say that I had some memorable pugs though. One Druid, on a particularly dismal Fall of Deathwing run, gave me wisdom that I still use to this day: "Don't stand in the fire". 😂 Tbh I had never looked at the ground and was just swigging millions of potions bc I was standing in fire, toxic waste, general miasma, etc.
Besides burnout from 4 years as a GM and raid leader running 2 raid groups per week the main reason I bailed out for wotlk classic, handed over control and quit is because I knew wotlk was the beginning of no longer needing a guild for effectively clearing content.
The game is great, the content and game loop is great but the community and social aspect is what I truly love and just like original wotlk pugging taking over started in a major way during that expac.
Even towards the end of vanilla and BC classic GDKP and pugs were becoming more prominent than organized guilds to the point once content was well established as on farm alot of people wanted to do gdkp for easy gold instead of do a guild clear for one or two items we still kind of needed.
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress.
To be fair, group quests have always been a pain in the ass in wow. Even back in the day I rarely actually found anyone to do them with.
Servers used to have a capcity of 2000 players. 1000 for each faction, but most servers never actually hit that cap, so if you were a random level 47 character, there were pretty good chances that you'd keep asking the local chat if someone wants to do a group quest while you do other quests, and before you know it, you found a Sunken Temple group before you actually did the quest.
Bro the production value of this videos top notch. The tracks and the audio scaling all of it was perfect. Amazing video!!
The reliance on Discord seems like a sneaky way for a certain population to gain access to children.
I'm talking about the Skaven.
Tinfoil moment?
Reliance on Discord is just cause ppl don't want to bother having to login to talk to their guildmates and such. Plus even if you miss some message it's there to read later, unlike guildchat
@@MaakaSakuranbo Another unfortunate convenience that the players have attached to. Guild chat used to be vibrant and enjoyable. Now Discord is a requirement, so sad.
The antisocial nature in WoW is that people play not to make friends. They are there for the gameplay, and that's what makes all the difference.
It's not like modern games/players dont crave social interaction. Modern games like VR chat or GTA online have thriving and very social communities. Heck, games like Rust, sea of thieves, roblox, minecraft, and even Amongus are very popular because of their social nature.
However, you can't blame WoW's game design. FF14 has the same design in regards to streamline leveling and systems like LFGs or single-player stories, yet they became popular because of how sociable the game is.
In WoW I've noticed ever since the dungeon finder was added everyone has a speed runners mentality now and never wants to stop and talk anymore. Anyone who speaks gets vote kicked by the rest of the group because it's incredibly easy to replace people with the dungeon finder now.
Not just mmos, but any game, really. I remember talking tons when first starting out on wc3, lol, smite, etc. Now if you try to talk in a public game you'll get told to shut up about as often as not.
I hear you. Im a [[woman]] so this has been my experience with any and every game with in game comms ever since I started playing in 2008. Some things just never change
The word you're looking for is asocial, not anti-social 🤦
I feel like you don't get invited out very often
I want to say, I never ever comment on videos but since you've been putting out so much content lately I felt the need to let you know how much we all appreciate it!
Don't burn yourself out if you can help it. Just know we all see the hard work man, the videos are great as well!
The amount of new players that quit sod because of getting called a toxic casual etc is amazing. All my friends quit cuz they couldnt get groups. Then they checked reddit and saw how everyone refers to new players as toxic casuals.
Now those elitists are now complaining about a dead game and cant fill raids.
Maybe they should've nurtured the player base... cuz u know.. thats the best way to ha e a long lasting game😊
Reminds me of when I started getting into Bloodborne last year. I had a question regarding a certain thing, and instead of looking it up on a wiki, I posted my question to reddit in hopes of a helpful response and some community interaction. That helpful response did come, but in turn I was asked a question, regarding why I didn't just search for my answer on the internet directly like through a wiki.
the only anti social mmo is wow. in FFXIV, SWTOR, GW2, DDO, even champions online, all of which has dungeon finders and raid finder I was still talking to ppl and just chilling with them. This is a WoW problem since everyone in WoW just speedruns and min/max. Even in classic. Plus the reason ppl chatted in wow, UO and EQ was because at the time those game were one of the few space at the time where you can talk to ppl online but now ppl do that with discord and twitch and even facebook still (yes i'm old).
Give mortal online 2 a chance its on sale right now. Its like fantasy dayz with a big social aspect, you need to talk to people to progress. The tutorial island just got a big update.
Not so much a WoW problem as much as it is a Blizz problem, cultivating the player base into what it has become. I played WoW on Nostalrius. Since it was a private server, the competitive nature that permeated on retail wasn't really there. There little to none gdkp and boosting services. Min maxing seemed more like an option than a requirement. Once Blizz launched classic, I knew it would be different. As soon as phase 2 hit, you could see the retail mentality with how many sweaty try hards were rolling in huge 40 man death squads to farm honor like a fucking job. Completely different player base.
Ehh it's kinda rare people talk in Duty finder in FF14 really
Past an "hey o/" or something
And it would lead ot much more talking if you didn't have the DF imo
That said, you can approach people in Limsa or such and they're usually happy to talk
@@MaakaSakuranbo I feel you don't do MSQ roulette often or alliance roulette because I constantly see jokes/conversations being thrown around in those. only in expert roulette & leveling it's silence usually beyond the initial greeting and GG at the end.
@@Raya.T Shocker, the game mode that offers downtime leads to talking
Now tell that to all the "I don't want any downtime, I'll just tab out anyway" people
awesome vid and touched on all the points i was hoping it would (especially the use of MMORPGs as social media, which was a huge part of the appeal to me), but i just want to point out that the random inclusion of a slyfoxhound and immortalHD clip made me really happy. i just wasn't expecting it at all, i have a rlly big fondness for slyfox in particular. really love your vids & excited by all the new uploads!
keep up the good work💪
Been loving the community in Guild Wars 2. I've actually been *meeting* people who consistently ask to hang out. It's been wild in comparison to WoW. You never need to really even talk to people in WoW unless you're doing content you can't que for.
Yet another reason to play guild wars 2.
this is the way
To answer your question, yes I would still play OSRS if everyone else quit. Rev Caves would be MUCH LESS nerve racking. Trying to get my clan mates to anti PK is like pulling teeth, especially in multi combat areas.
I think it's a bunch of things. I can't and wouldn't dare say what other people's reasons are, but I can give my own experiences. I have played "retail" off and on for 15 years now, and frankly I am a different person than I was. I see my everyday world different than I used to. I have few friends outside the game, but wow is my game. Selfish as it may sound. I play for me and to keep alive the memory of a friend I lost about a year ago. When I play with people who are really good and I make a mistake, I feel judged even when I am not being judged. I enjoy playing with people who don't know the ins and outs because I feel like I have a voice. But that just happens by chance. Frankly the game is not to blame. I am now more antisocial. I would love to fix that but how can I fix something when I don't know what happened to cause it to be broken. I would love to be more out there but I have excuses in my mind that allow me to cop out a reason not to. Either I just want to relax after work or my guildies aren't on or my buddy isn't here to do something with. If I am going to fix the problem, I have to give up my excuses and do it. I'm scared but I guess I need to be brave and try. But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Dude I really appreciate the consistent content as of late. I love the philosophical dives into these things that really started with our generation and haven't been dissected quite yet.
Thanks, the MMO genre is super fascinating to me. Expect lots more analysis videos coming up!
Kids, this is what happens. You’re happy and full of life…then you go around the sun a few times and you find new and interesting ways to complain.