One of the things everyone keeps talking about in Classic is how there is a real sense of community on your server. That’s something I think everyone misses. Heck, I’m as anti-social as it gets and even I miss it.
How can Retail learn from this? Removing sharding and the LFG tool seems drastic. What if there was a hub-zone, sort of like a Class Hall, but specifically for players on your particular server? Put some shiny things in there so players will show up, and then create content that forces them together to get it. Just an idea.
You could tweak the LFG tool so for each current expansion, you need to visit the Instance/Raid at least once before being able to que up.
What are some of your ideas to try and capture some of that sense of community again?
The main problem imo is that there aren’t enough people per connected realm. Aside from a few servers, there is only one or two populated guild. This severely restricts choice in social environments.
I suggest they do another round of realm connections.
I second this. Beyond that the main problem is the playerbase itself. We’ll never go back to the “good old days”. FF14 has an amazing community overall, and even it wouldn’t compare to how things used to be. Gamers just aren’t the same as they were 20 years ago.
I think they can consolidate the sharding. Lets make up some numbers here. Let us say there are 100 shards active. If the servers can handle that traffic easily, but with 30 shards, then do it. Surround us with population, with players.
I don’t mind competing over tags. I want big large scale PvP battles. The technology is great, but it has gone too far I believe.
As for LFG, I don’t think it needs to be removed. But limit it to the people on your shard. If you drastically increase the population, it will accomplish the same thing, just more efficiently, of sitting in town spamming for a healer for 45 minutes, etc.
I feel like it depends on the server. One of the reasons I love being on an RP server is there is still a sense of community. There are huge gatherings at RP events, or even just random people in Orgrimmar looking for RP. So many folks will whisper you about the story you have in your TRP/XRP, or they’ll compliment your mogs. I’ve met a bunch of wonderful people here and other than the usual trade chat cesspool, it really feels like a form of estranged family.
I mean I think they are deploying their new technology next expansion. Instead of sharding, it will be layers - that might help. I think the biggest problem is that the community is so gamy - they don’t want to stop and socialize, they just want to get X done and get on with their day.
I see what you are saying, and I want to get whatever it is done and move on with my day too.
That said, just like much in this game, the pendulum has gone too far in this direction. A small shift back just a little and I feel players will adapt.
Really, I just want some good wPvP. I don’t want a shard where I am outnumbered 5 to 1 or where we outnumber the Alliance 5 to 1. That is not fun. There is no reason they cannot get this balanced out a little bit more all the way around.
Sadly retail will prolly never go back to being community centered. Too many years of designing the game for the anti social casuals. In an attempt to get my post flagged I will tell you a few things that would be start.
First, remove LFR and LFG. These were two of the worst design decisions Blizz ever made. We traded massive swaths of community for convenience with just these two systems.
Second, remove CRZ. Merge low pop servers and lock players back to said servers. As fun as playing with my friends on different servers this system degraded server identity. It opened up the floodgates to allow for dbaggery due to no one having to maintain a reputation on the server. You could be a complete jerk and there were 0 repercussions.
Third, revert every change to guilds and loot since Wrath. The removal of gloot is top 5 dumbest design decisions ever.
You have systems that encourage being a jerk, and you have the general player base in retail wow that, a lot of them, genuinely don’t care for that aspect or lots of aspects of Classic.
They just want to hop on, say nothing, and get what they want done.
That’s the reality of it now.
A lot of players seem to want convenience and something that doesn’t take long to do.
True players/fans of Classic and players of current WoW are two different beasts with two very different mind sets.
probably making mobs actually dangerous. If you can run in and pull infinite mobs there is hardly a reason to group. I find I bond with strangers whenever I have to group up to overcome content.
The problem with socializing isn’t LFR or Dungeon finder like people would want you to believe. If it were Mythic+ should be bringing this game together.
It’s the fact that people have no reason to group together in the open world. There is no sense of danger. We are basically gods who destroy the local life we come in the facinity of. Why help the fellow man or woman if they can slaughter the opponent by rolling their head on a keyboard?
Looking for group doesn’t help either. There is no communication involved. What’s the point of a big bad in the open world when there is no strategy or socializing involved? Why have friends or a guild in this game?
it is really difficult to change sharding at this point, sharding is the reason there isnt a sense of community.
in order to restore or improve the sense of community would be to make sharding available just for dungeons, battlegrounds, pve raids and raid/RARE world quests along with main neutral cities along with increasing the item drops from raids and dungeons in which each boss is killed with people from the same server perhaps 90% from the same server along with merging certain realms where polulation is low and faction imbalance is present in order to maintain a close marging of 50/50.
However,some or most wouldnt like these changes because now that there is sharding people are able to do WQ and play in random zones with their friends, therefore making the sense of community ‘realm wise’ nearly impossible. Flying is an example, once people have tasted flying they do not want to go back to ground mounts at any point, even if flying is locked for a reasonable timeframe such as it is now.
I’ve been doing some thinking on this and am going to play devils advocate for a moment. Be honest here, but has it ever been any different than in the past? Even with personal loot, it’s the same as it’s ever been.
The only real difference is (theoretically) more loot could drop off a boss and we don’t have as much control over it as we once did. Bosses are still loot piñatas, but we (or a raid leader/master looter) can’t delegate where it goes. It’s more up to the individual who got the loot to give it to someone else (provides they don’t need it), DE/scrap it, or just vendor it.
I felt it was all slot machine too, until I started comparing what we used to have and what we do have. Personal loot was blizz’s response to those who metaphorically used the loot swimming pool as a urinal and ended up ruining it for everyone else.
The community began to fracture when cross realm bgs were introduced. It went downhill from there with each breakdown of server boundaries.
A few years ago I began to notice guilds would get annoyed when guild members talked too much. People would be backstabbed after they logged off and some guilds I was in (briefly) actually came up with the ridiculous rule of not asking anyone in the guild questions relating to the game, “look it up on wowhead/google it instead! Stop clogging up guild chat!” At least 2-3 guilds I was in had people who became very hostile if anyone asked questions. So even guilds aren’t communities anymore.
I have about 20 alts, some are in guilds, some aren’t. When I am in a guild sometimes I can be on for an hour and no one speaks. If I say something sometimes no one answers. It’s awkward.
This. The MMO genere has slowly but steadily become a “Me Me Me” type of mentality, back then it was “let’s go and kill rag as a guild”, right now, it is “I need to kill Jaina to get X and pray for a Titanforge”.
The approach of players has changed, i remember running all of SM for the first time with a couple guildies, got jack for loot, still one of my fondest memories to this day, I couldn’t even tell you the character name of the tank I ran my last M+ with and got “generic pair of gloves that didn’t forge” for loot.
Maybe the RPG genere is, after all, outdated for this era of game design.
FFXIV has an LFG type thing, but in it you can give players “Commendations” and you get credit for giving so many commendations.
Their system actually encourages people to LFG, then also be friendly.
Like imagine something like the “failed?” Island Expeditions, where if instead of people just kicking anyone if they did not like what they were doing, there was instead incentive to cooperate and give each other “commendations.”
I like something like the difference between a Western MMORPG, and the Japanese FFXIV; The philosophy of Blizzard seems to have always been:
“Oh, people will be nice to each other just because…”
The philosophy of Japanese MMORPG makers seems to be:
“People will be nice because they get/give credit and get stuff and junk, happy good times all around and many presents and things!”
On the subject of commedations, people say different things, such as in this thread
They mean absolutely nothing.
For all we know, you could simply be the last player they can recommend and they need 5 of these for weekly challenge log.
Maybe your fall just reminded them of their early days fighting Titan and they want to encourage you.
As a DPS, take these rare commendations and go. It is a long journey to the white chocobo.
However, the thing is that there is ENCOURAGEMENT to do it there (as well as receive them, of course.)
