Or do you just play in a guild and consider it a social experience?
I’m kinda looking at this like being in a band. You’re either a touring band from the inception (parsing, streaming, community driven) or you’re the 2 beer local band who hasn’t played in more than 2 towns (Blue parsers talking about how good survival hunter is).
On the one hand, you got the high performing people literally playing the game at the highest level. The game is tuned for these people - just like the music industry and touring. You suck? Gonna have a bad time bruh.
Local bands? Well well well. You got Chad, an untrained bass player who looks up tabs and doesn’t understand theory. You got Chippendale on drums and well, he’s always been drumming and we get paid after each show so that means he’s good and deserves respect!
See where this is going? The majority is Local Band guilds acting like they know what’s up.
Why do people play? If you join a guild and immediately see a hierarchy of fart sniffers - what causes you to stay? What attracts you to strangers to get gear? I’ve been in enough raiding guilds to know it isn’t social or enjoyable unless you like taking orders from some dude with IBS.
What’s the drive? Big damage? Looking cool? Why look cool if you just ignore your team and don’t use chat?
I think the thing people MAJORLY overlook with why classic feels different than vanilla - you used to play with people you actually knew.
All I see are strangers trying to impress each other to save time. When was the last time you saw a decked out player and thought 'wow really cool '.
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Yes a lot of my online friends sadly didn’t survive the event
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Not in WoW. But I did for stuff like Overwatch. If we’re just talkin’ blizz.
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Yes but only in classic, they all quit retail.
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I used to, but they’ve moved on for one reason or another.
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Everytime someone IRL says they play WoW I always tell them I don’t play that much anymore to avoid any situation where they would want to play with me. Even girls I met on dating apps I would say the same; when we talk about the games we play I only bring solo games.
I don’t like playing with people unless I need to or for a very specific thing.
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Do you play with Real Life friends?
No, I play with imaginary friends. It’s the same imaginary friends that I’ve had since I was a kid.
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Both. I have a group of friends I regularly see irl and play m+ with. I have a guild of people I’ve never seen before, that I raid and m+ with.
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Between my friends that play MMOs I play WoW, one plays FFXIV, and another plays Guild Wars 2.
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Used to, last time I played with an IRL friend was Legion. We were high school friends.
Had tons of friends that I used to play WoW with, they mostly left around the MoP/Cata era.
I’ve also had two brothers that played WoW as well, one quit in Wrath, the other quit in MoP.
The one that quit in MoP later came back with me for SoD P1, but we both left shortly after ‘finishing’ it and both concluded it wasn’t different enough to continue, lol.
I’ve mostly been a solo and PuG player since they’ve left.
They’re still gamers, they just don’t play MMOs anymore, I’m still a huge MMO fan. Feeling like a part of a community, I enjoy the social elements.
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As a professional musician, I’m not sure I understood your music analogies …
… but I’ve had rl friends play off and on, and when they do play, it’s the best times I’ve had in WoW.
Just that they all only enjoy WoW, like … for a couple weeks, every other year. lol
My friends no longer play this game so I play with myself. 
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Back in the day… I ran with guilds. We even did IRL meetups where we all went to comic-con together and had fun.
Now, I’m too old / have too much adulting to do to deal with guild drama and just want to play a game at my own pace and my own schedule. I still play with my spouse (that I met in WoW many years ago) and some of my old friends from time to time.
You’ve either only played on touring bands and never played in a local chud band.
Or you’re in a local chud band who gets paid $120 a month and you call yourself a ‘professional wedding band’.
Point I’m making is every local band I’ve been in was full of bigger egos than actual superstars I’ve worked 1 on 1 with.
If you didn’t get it. Then snicker
It must just be me but I find this aforementioned behavior extremely repulsive and cringey. Am I the only player in Retail that plays for themselves??
I don’t care what gear, mounts, titles, achievements, parses etc. others have at all. None of it impresses me nor do I try to impress others with my performance. I can’t be the only one who is indifferent right??
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I don’t know of any touring band that didn’t slog around locally for some period of time.
But it true for most of my time, I was exceedingly lucky that I went straight to regional touring.
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See I made this mistake a few times thinking I could be ~me~ and interact amongst people who take the game very seriously.
I took it seriously enough that I’m putting 30+ hrs a week on top of my 50+ hr job.
And you have to impress these people. Who usually are disabled or just not personable.
I’m glad to see a lot of answers it’s gives a good sample perspective of the average player I feel.
I got like four real friends (besides relatives ) - not a single one is a pc gamer.
So nope. Had a bunch of online friends for over a decade that played wow and occasionally Diablo once in a while but I rarely seek them online more than once a few months.
Mind you I’m in the over 40s crowd yeah I say that.
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Okay I think the little detail I didn’t specify - it’s yes. Everyone starts local
It’s the mindset when you create the band. Either you’re serious or mentioning touring will get you laughed at. 2 kinds of musicians
OK, that I get. And have totally seen.
It’s why everyone looked at us funny when we said “we’re not doing covers - only originals.” I think that defines the mindset you’re talking about. 
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