I hear all this talk about social media’s impact on society. I also know that WoW players use social media for various reasons. In your estimate, how has social media had an impact on WoW players and how they play the game. And has this been a good or bad thing?
Yes and that’s why people say wrath was more social cause it was before the social media boom wow was one of the best ways to talk to people on the internet.
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I believe Social media on mobile was what caused the loss of subscriptions after Cataclysm. Kids thought it was fun playing a dungeons and dragons like game in an MMO but they found that being the star themselves in social media was more fun.
If anything, I would say WoW chat has become much more tame since social media became popular
It is hard to explain how wild Barrens and trade chat was back in the day without breaking any rules.
I dont see very much influence of social media on this game.
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That’s really more a consequence of the internet reaching such a massive audience than social media. In its infancy, “normal” people didn’t use the internet, so it was just a bunch of weirdos who didn’t shy away from things like racial slurs and graphic trash talking.
The internet being able to fit in your pocket is what caused that massive population explosion and demographic shift.
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more like affected by the times, not really social media
Only thing i see on FB is wowhead and icy veins posts,
There was a time when the social aspect of this game was contained to the game because things like Twitter and Facebook hadn’t even really become a thing. The closest you got was somebody posting pictures on their MySpace page. Now you have YouTube and twitch streamers, giving their opinion about the game and thousands of lemmings who sit there and listen mindlessly, and then come here to regurgitate what they heard.
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a selfie camera was added (and twitter integration too but that actually was impactless)
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Outside of making the game larger, there was the lawsuit era where social media put a heavy amount of pressure on them. It’s one thing to be sued but another when the entire internet had their eyes on you.
This also meant other companies like Riot who did similar awful things still have leads / employees there that shouldn’t have jobs.
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I don’t think there has been any significant impact due to social media, gameplay wise. It’s the same as it has always been. When it wasn’t guild chat, it was Ventrilo. When it wasn’t Ventrilo, it was Skype. When it wasn’t Skype…I think you know where this is going. I don’t really see how social media fits into the gameplay aspect much when other avenues of communication and gatherings have always existed.
As far as allowing players to stay in touch with one another, I would argue that social media and platforms like Discord have been wonderful. I think the community has sort of evolved with these things in mind, hence why a lot of chats happen outside of the game. These things have definitely affected the community of the game, but I think in a mostly healthy way.
As to other influences on how people act…yeah, I’m not going to open that can of worms. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with WoW, per se. Most of it comes down to having anonymity on the internet though.
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We did get a twitter patch so
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Everything is impacted by social media, including WoW. That’s…not a good thing, given the shift in society witnessed as a result. Communication skills in-person sort of went down, tech addiction kinda turned people feral and asocial.
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There are a lot of ways to look at this, it’s a broad topic. One way that Social Media has impacted WoW is that we once had fun twitter stuff from the designers and then they got so much hate mail that they stopped. It was scary to learn about threats to the designers and their homes and families.
Yeah, especially on RP realms.
Everyone hates each other by default.
This is the main reason I think kids should be banned from social media. This is a far step from what I used to believe, but seeing how it effects mental health especially, I do not see social media as a positive for kids.
At least with games chat you typically could get away from it for stretches of time, but nowadays I see kids that are psychologically glued to their devices. Idk if a child ban is the best option, but it’s the only one I can currently think of.
It’s a tough topic
I also remember games used to limit your game chat if you said you were under a certain age, I don’t remember wow ever doing it though. (anyone else remember this?)
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Adults too.
Social media undoes almost as much good as it does. Maybe more.
I’m willing to bet mass shootings would be nearly non existent without social media.
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Yes.
I feel like this is a given, based on how old WoW is.
2004 was a very different time for the internet. I was in late elementary school, personally, yet I remember how different it was.
Word of mouth was still really important. Most things I had known about were through that, or TV.
Internet did not influence much in my life at this point.
WoW kinda was the social media before we had other options.
I had friends come online to WoW just to whisper me things. We had just began getting our cell phones.
Cities were just live forums, basically. Didn’t matter the topic.
It isn’t like that anymore because there’s a lot more avenues for specific social things.
A lot of people that used to use the chats are now arguing on Facebook instead lol.
Basically tech moved on, and surpassed WoW. And the social folks went on with it.
I don’t have social media. None. At best I have WhatsApp.
I simply don’t want to be in contact with people I’m not really interested in and don’t know personally.
It’s funny because in study groups or at work, when I say “I don’t have FB” or “I don’t have X,” they look at me as if I’m from another planet.
Btw, I see Discord as just a tool for raiding or doing M+.
I log in, do what I have to do, and then I leave.
If a guild forces me to stay on Discord just because they’re too lazy to type, then I leave the guild.