How to get back the SOCIAL aspect of WoW

Community General Discussion
1

This post will not be to “Talk about content or balance” it is just to give blizzard ideas on how to get back the SOCIAL aspect of their game. In Shadowlands and the remake of leveling up 1-60 they focused on “Aggressive Marketing” to attract “Youngsters” to their game and to adapt to what people consume in 2021. But they forgot that humans are not MACHINES -AUTOMATS.

I’m going to use DUSKWOOD as an example of how the next EXPANSION should be to improve the social aspect.

The first thing is to use your character’s current strength at level 60 with ILV200.

The player enters Dusk-Wood and will encounter Level 65 / ILV210 enemies. Which will be able to “Kill you”. Upon entering duskwood they will tell you that you must EARN the reputation of the “Mayor of the area” to allow you to enter the first dungeon and prove your worth. To later let you fight against STICHES the “BOSS” of the area.

  1. Questing difficulty. Green :star: :star: / blue :star: :star: :star: / purple :star: :star: :star: :star:
  • From level 60-70 you will be in Duskwood, the QUEST will have difficulty “Normal for solos / duos with GREEN-GEAR. Heroic for 3-4 people with” BLUE-GEAR “and mythical for 5 people with” PURPLE-GEAR ". Give to your people a reason to form groups.
  1. Difficulty of the dungeon :star: :star: :star: :star:
  • At level 65 after gaining the reputation of “Mayor of duskwood” it will let you enter the dungeon and you will HAVE TO WALK inside of “Cross-server-Inn”. Once arriving at the INN you can use the GROUP-FINDER for that dungeon “ONLY”. If you leave that place the GROUP-FINDER will be blocked. When your party is ready they will have to fight their way into the dungeon like classic-wow. In that INN you can find groups and socialize with all the people who are going to play that dungeon. "
  1. Boss Difficulty :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
  • Finally in LEVEL 70. The mayor will let you face STICHES. You will have to go to another "Cross-server-Inn"similar to the dungeon one. Party comp will be 2 tanks, 2 healers and 6 dps. It will be a battle at the level of a HEROIC, you will have to be well equipped minimum with BLUE-GEAR otherwise Stiches will destroy you …

To continue with the same train of “All automatic” “All fast” “All braindead” is a tremendous mistake. People need to be “Pushed with moderation and after get rewarded.”

2

I think to some degree the social folks have to accept that players are different today and many of them just aren’t interested in the social aspect of the game.

And yes I know. Why play a game like WoW then.

14 Likes
3

Hate to say it, but MMO players are usually the nerdy antisocial type. The community is what it is.

Stretches feet in the air and wiggles toes

They tolerate players just enough to get their purples.

10 Likes
4

I understand that marketing strategies must be taken to keep your product current. But you can’t forget to make a good MMRPG with the “Core” elements just because you want to sell.

Yes. people are more anti-social in 2021, however, we must make the effort as a company not to forget the basic aspects of the human being, such as Socializing with other people.

WoW feels like an online RPG single player, I swear it feels like playing monster hunter world or pso2. FFXIV, which is its main competitor, also suffers from serious problems with the social aspect but at least it feels like an MMRPG.

5

I mean you’re right. However, the older I get, the less patience I have of hearing guild drama, pointless conversations and the blame game on wipes.
Wiggles toes

4 Likes
6

Making things more difficult won’t bring back a social aspect to the game because society and how people interact has changed. Go to a mall (now that it won’t kill you) and what do you see, people staring at their phones and essentially not interacting with each other, but they are interacting furiously with anonymous individuals through their phones. People would rather text than talk. One on one impersonal but “intimate” with tens of thousands.

Side note: Major overuse of bold it detracts majorly from your readability and message.

8 Likes
7

I’d like to take this opportunity to promote a change to the game I’ve come up with, which is: Make General chat, global. Or at least, city-wide. So that people don’t need to misuse trade, or LFG, in classic. At least if general reaches as far, people will have somewhat of a reason to use it, instead of misusing other channels. Although, I can see that maybe general would be misused, maybe. But idk. This is a simple fix to a large problem in the game and I hope you’ve enjoyed my ted talk.

1 Like
8

Great concept, but then the trolls will just use all available channels.
Wiggles toes

2 Likes
9

Talking about trolls

What did you think of the idea of a “Cross-Server-inn” about 4 times the size of a normal one with a broker, mail etc.?

That Inn-would be neutral so while you’re in that area you can flirt with humans with your Orc. Obviously the dungeon would be “Neutral” and the enemy of that expansion would be a third-faction.

10

Eh, Moonguard on steroids, no thank you.
Cackles
Goldshire Inn can be scary.
Wiggles toes

2 Likes
11

The game was never social…the people were. So that being said…the game will be as social as the people playing it.

5 Likes
12

All I can think about is the X-Men arcade game with your name.

Stretches feet

3 Likes
13

Brother don’t be silly if you don’t get out of the moonguard tavern. It is more lets take capture right now that you are there dancing. j / k

Yes. You’re absolutely right and that’s why blizzard did wow-retail thinking about what you said, but you saw that it doesn’t work in practice.

Your duty as a company is when creating a product you must analyze the human aspects of the players and not forget what an MMRPG is. Where are you going to do quests, dungeons, boss fights and raids.

In my idea if you are a “Solitaire” player. You can get green gear playing alone and collect money to buy later blues / purples. When you are lv 65 you go to the “Inn” where the dungeon is and you put the group finder or you join one of the 800 players that will be there lol. I’m not taking away your ability to play alone, I’m just telling you this is an mmrpg sir.

14

As much as I’d love to see the social aspect of WoW revived, I think that ship has already sailed, at least in WoW.

1 Like
15

Don’t give me ideas. Or I will invite you to play with my girlfriend and my friends that “Trash-game” of the x-men in the parsec.

Whoever kills “Fewer enemies” each level takes a shot of tequila as punishment. :slight_smile:

The social aspect is this. In classic-wow / FFXI-classic. You invited someone to play, and you had to chat with him.

Hey man come tanking this run I need you and then you became his friend. The following days you contacted him to play with him again and this is how friendships were forged. In wow-retail, you press a button you enter the dungeon and everyone playing as “Robots” fast as androids sometimes I do stupid shouts like

JEFF KAPLAN WHY DID YOU LEAVE BLIZZARD WITHOUT YOU WE ARE NOTHING return to wow or I’ll kill myself etc. Obviously many of them laugh and add me to their friends list.

Well brother from Wow-Classic to Mists of Pandaria is considered the golden age of this game.

Sadly from Warlords of Draenor to shadowlands people are already tired of the same formula every 2 years and right now with shadowlands. Sorry for the word but Blizzard sucked it up by putting level 1-60 so easy that you can do it in 10 hours and that the quests “Brother with my paladin in green gear I can put 20 enemies and AoE Destroy them without healer” Lol imagine. Finally people are standing in stormwind flirting with the elves who approach the broker by pressing a button every time you want to play is very boring.

2 Likes
16

Socialization is pretty subjective. How exactly you make it a core? Not even Classic can accomplish the same thing as Vanilla did before, and vanilla didn’t even accomplish anything. It was a different time back then compared to now. Smartphones wasn’t a thing, 4:3 monitors were the norm, computers was a bit behind PS2 in terms of price, ease of use and popularity, and the internet is basically in it’s child years.

Or you can just let people socialize with each other if they want to.

And that’s your opinion.

…So let me get this staright… WoW Retail suffers from serious problems with social aspect, that makes it an online RPG single-player in your mind. But FF14 also suffers the same issues, and yet it still feels like an MMORPG to you?.. :thinking:

As much i don’t have a problem with Cross Server stuff, i don’t think making a place where people gather will immediately make people social there. I like malls, but i don’t go there to chat with other people. I go there to buy stuff i like, play the arcade, sit down and look around, then left after 3 hours, hopefully with something awesome i just picked up.

I’m pretty sure Blizzard is well aware of what an MMORPG is. Infact, i think their definition is more correct then yours, because you seem to think that MMORPG’s needed to be social, when they don’t even need to be. It just means your playing a game on one of the servers that happen to house thousands of players, complete with role-playing features you would see in an RPG. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Also, it’s MMORPG, not MMRPG. This isn’t ten thousand player local couch co-op.

And you can do the same exact thing in WoW Retail.

This right here is why i don’t take the people who are about and want the social aspects back seriously, this whole “You’re a robot when you play a game i dislike and you’re forging friendships when you play this game i like”, thinking of convenience takes socializing away and having no convenience gives the socialization, when socialization and convenience are two separate things. Let’s be honest with ourselves. You can forge friendships in retail too, there is nothing there to prevent you from doing that even if the group making is automatic now. In the same vein, you can act like a “Robot” in Classic too regardless if it’s all done manually.

Can we please stop with this double standard here? :confused:

5 Likes
17

If people want to do it then they will and Blizz doesn’t have to do anything. Like right now, I’m socializing with you. If you’re ever in any zone and see someone randomly say something dumb in /1 that might be me, feeling social and knowing people will talk if I say something stupid to get them going :laughing:

18

The social aspect of the game was killed when they started merging servers, added sharding, added x-realm everything, etc.

I have said this before, but nearly all my good friends in this game I have known since wrath. A couple of them I know specifically from pugging. You know why? Because we kept running into each other doing the same content. That’s it. It’s that simple.

One of the mages I did a Nax raid with decided to join my group when I was looking for a 2s partner. We had already played a number of times prior and started chatting. That’s it. We are still friends. Now? Good luck running into the same person twice. I mean, good luck even running into people from your OWN server while you quest.

If you make servers more unique again and restrict restrict some of the insane sharding that goes on, maybe some of that will come back. I understand the hardware limitations have made unique servers tougher to have, but I do miss them.

2 Likes
19

i don’t understand why people think forcing other players to group with them is what the word “social” means.

if YOU only group with other players when it’s absolutely required, YOU’RE the one who’s being antisocial. that’s not a game design issue.

7 Likes
20

More players playing together at the intended difficulty forcing communication rather than zerging or boosting wouldn’t increase socialization? Challenge and unfamiliarity helps to create bonds between people. This is why teachers will have students make random groups in school rather than only ever working with their best friends.