As someone who leveled characters in the middle of Wrath, I can say this wasn’t true. At least not Area 52 Horde side. I might have see one or two other people in a three hour play session.
This is probably true.
This is somewhat true as well.
However, it’s also the core of the issue. People don’t play the game as a social experience anymore. They play it like any other online game. Like CS or Battlefield or whatever. Experiencing the content is more important that building connections to actual people. There’s not a lot you can do about that. From what I’ve heard, retail has taken this to it’s limit and basically nobody interacts with anybody outside of their guild anymore. But that’s what the majority of the players seem to want.
The place MMO RPG’s fill in the gaming market has lost a lot of the uniqueness it once had that made it so social. It used to be that MMO RPG’s were the central point of contact for the game and also had a persistent world. Back in the day FPS, RTS what not really were just isolated events that you logged into for a game or two but now virtually every game has some form of persistent content.
Similar with communication, in game used to be your central hub, your friend’s list was in game, you were lucky if your guild had a website/voice chat. Now virtually every game launcher has some form of friends list, social platforms are much more prevalent and obviously discord is a thing now. So also from that perspective MMO RPG’s have become more of an experience you just log into for a specific whatever.
I agree. I, naively in hindsight, though thing would be roughly the same as it used to be when I came back in 2019. But it can’t be the same. We’re not the same. The gaming subculture isn’t the same. Nothing is the same, and you can’t force it to be. People want to be efficient now, and that drive for efficiency tends to minimize anything deemed “inefficient”. And efficiency isn’t a bad word. Most of us don’t have 30 hours a week to put into the game like we used to, so efficiency is the name of the game.
All that said, it’s too bad more people weren’t honest with themselves about what they wanted out of the game. They rolled on PvP servers when they shouldn’t have. PvP servers are not efficient by nature.
Well, I guess they are when they’re all one faction.