How would we restore the community aspect?

Over the last month or so of Shadowlands, I’ve come to feel that it’s not the content of this expansion that I hate, it’s how little interaction I really have with the people around me anymore. Community is arguably one of the most important aspects of an MMO, and it feels like the most neglected feature of WoW.

I often find myself wishing we’d gotten some form of guild meeting place in place of WoD garrisons. Something that would remain relevant, however, throughout each expansion. I feel like seeing your guildies online by actually seeing their characters, and giving guilds a place to upgrade aesthetically or functionally together, would really add a stronger sense of community to the game.

Am I alone in feeling that this is the biggest area where WoW misses the mark? Is there a solution that would actually bring communities together again?

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You can’t at this point. Not like the good old vanilla days anyways.

I wasn’t a global wow player I was a crushridge server resident. GD was a wasteland people kept to their server boards. You knew all the top guilds and people in them. You cared about racing for raid kills against those guilds not some world first on some other server.

The servers were the communities now it’s giant unfeeling mega servers and pretending to care about mythic world firsts.

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I know it’s probably not possible, but there has to be something devs can do to at least bring back a modicum of community, right?

It really sucks not seeing my own guild in the wilds anymore, as we’re split between WM on and WM off, and server rivalry completely died with sharding. None of it feels… I dunno, right in an MMO.

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Too far gone. To easily replaceable.
The community you have now is the one you forge via guild circles, friends etc which I suck at all of them but I always try to be friendly to others.

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The issue isn’t the game. The issue is society as a whole.

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Care to elaborate?

I look at a community as a rough diamond ,it has a bases ,it just needs to be facet ,with grinding and polishing to make it shine. It has many faces many subgroups each one with it’s own beauty .As a whole depending on where this section is it’s hard to say it can be whole at one time by only whole partly.

And I think covid isolation is magnifying the need for social interaction in a game - that apparently used to be better at implementing.

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In what way? if they didn’t do any thing to it then you think it would now?

I work from home now, and despite my nature as an introvert, I need some social interaction.

I remember my guild hall in Dark Age of Camelot, and how nice it was to have something to work on with the guild, besides meeting for PvP/bosses. It was also nice to have a place to see other guildies and have impromptu social time. I think it made a huge impact on the game.

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wow needs more solo content for when your not doing endgame raids dungeons bgs so on, wow housing where you can get collectables to add to them including collectables you have to add to it. and crafting materials that allow you to build stuff for it expand. eso and other games do this stuff. blizzard if they were smart would add this and expand on it like they do pet battles and could even sell on the game store housing items.

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If what didn’t do what?

I’m not entirely sure I understand which part of my comment you’re referring to.

Imho,to restore a community aspect we have to have a common ground without social media not everyone as it or will have it (safety reasons) get out of your bubbles and talk openly.

It can definitely be done.

But Blizzard won’t do it.

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But does that mean Blizzard shouldn’t create things that allow for community development?

I’ve never talked politics in-game, I don’t see the “twitter effect” as being a detractor from in-game community.

Much has changed in our world. We see more and more people who have social anxiety and disabilities of this nature. We have a pandemic that has caused many to feed into solo isolation. We have a worldwide society norm of being part of social media, but still being singular individuals who wish to stay anonymous and hidden away alone. There’s a general need to accomplish things on our own and a feeling that others merely get in our way. It’s a mindset that’s developed over the generations and continues forward.

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In the long run we did it to ourselves,with new technology that we used today. It’s a "We can be so smart and yet be so dumb "effect. We separated ourselves with it.

Short answer: you cant.
It isnt WoWs fault that the community aspect has died, thats just the internets evolution. The atmosphere has changed.

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Players don’t socialize nearly as much in pressured go-go-go instances content. The more Blizzard emphasizes this as end-game, the less people are going to talk.

As for guilds: They improved the recruitment tools finally but didn’t give people incentives to be in social guilds and do anything but instanced content. Bring back guild perks! Make them abuse-proof (don’t let guild masters take advantage), make them scale so any size group of players who do content together can earn things.

Who knows if these steps would have a big effect? It may be that friendly players are just mostly gone and won’t ever come back or step outside their established community ever again. But the community won’t ever get better if Blizzard doesn’t try.

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WoW was a game of cliques, castes, self-styled elitists, ragers, and people trying to find their way through and around it all since long before COVID.

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