I think those aided in it becoming less-social, but definitely isn’t the only reason.
Source: I’ve played Classic since launch and without those QoL features people are still anti-social, and toxic gamers. If anything, I’ve had less social experience in Classic at end-game than I do in retail.
The biggest issue to me is the cross-realm open world zones, and killing off of PvP and PvE exclusive servers. The exclusive server worlds is what made the community thrive imo.
Most players need a nudge to get out of themselves and be social with one another. The in-game systems like LFG were designed to help make that easier, but the players took that as an opportunity to be less social. I started noticing this around WotLK.
This is what the community wanted, and it got what it deserved. Now almost no one talks to anyone. And why should they if they never wanted to in the first place?
This is what I was thinking. Classic != Vanilla despite the “inconveniences” being reintroduced, so there is definitely more to it overall.
So that’s exactly the issue, the issue isn’t LFR/LFD exists. It’s that servers are too small and can’t support LFR/LFD. If you could literally only queue with your server you’d find that you might suddenly have long queue times as you got added to people’s ignore lists.
The people changed. People are anti-social now. Stand at the scrapper, and say hello to everyone that comes by. You wont get many hello’s or engagement of any kind.
I used to have hour long conversations all the time in vanilla. The social aspect was one of the best things about wow. My at the time girlfriend used to tease me about always being knee deep talking to someone, and never actually playing. Causing her to always need to loan me gold. I might have also been a serial talent switcher.
Yeah, basically that’s my entire point with this. In my opinion, Cross-server zones was a huge one, and the removing of PvP and PvE specific servers was a driving factor in the killing of WoW’s communities.
The way I like to think of this whole cross realm thing is comparing New York City to a tight-knit, Suburban neighborhood. Bleeding Hollow used to be a very popular PvP server, and you recognized almost all the same names doing WPvP, selling bags, enchants, etc, etc. That’s your tight-knit neighborhood. Then if you look at WoW in itself… it is New York City. A huge mass of people getting from A to B, doing what they need to do to survive the day. There could be groups of people there that can be considered a community, but there’s so many people that it really doesn’t matter. Blizzard basically took the small towns and abolished them, leaving everyone in a sea of people without meaningful connections.
On top of that, you can dive deeper into current gaming culture, average age of WoW players, and so many other factors like that.
People who just use blanket statements like “accessibility” and “QoL” changes as the main factors that aided in WoW’s social decline are being disingenuous. Classic is living, breathing proof that these QoL factors are not the only, or even main reason, why the social aspect in WoW, and other video games for that matter, is not what it used to be.
I agree. The canonization of Moirhaime as “the guy who cared about the community above all else” around here borders on cultish. He admitted outright that he didn’t think a WoW MMO was going to do the business it did…but when Vanilla launched and shattered every expectation at an unprecedented scale, he saw the dollar signs written on the wall and went right for them.
But hindsight is 20/20 and he’s allowed to look back on the decisions they made and be critical.
One post wonder - how did you manage to reply to someone from 3 months ago. Are they even still playing?
I grew up on Bleeding Hollow as well. I used to know all of the big names before everything got shared. And if you ticked someone off, it was entirely possible to get blacklisted back then, because the community was so tight knit.
Want to socialize? Find a guild. Also, nothing is stopping players from saying hello to each other, carrying out a conversation or even emoting. The game itself isn’t antisocial, it’s the attitudes of the players themselves (example, crap-talking players during cross realm battlegrounds).
Mike Morhaime has apparently never tried to find a group as one of the untermenschen he allowed Jeff and Alex to create with their hatred of hybrid classes during the first third of the game’s lifespan.
Tell him to try getting into a serious guild as Ret or Enhancement in WoW Classic and report back with the results. There’s nothing “social” about becoming a pariah because of what you picked on the character select screen.
Let me tell you something, the players do in fact change
people leave and new people join
people like my brother that played in classic up to wrath left wow, he was more outspoken and more friendly to strangers
people like me joined (i joined in legion), i dont generally talk to people since im more closed off, the only reason i joined my amazing guild that i met some good friends is because i popped a joke in trade chat and they invited me, but i only started talking to them in guild when i got used to them and that was only a while after i was invited
so yes, the people do indeed change, not everyone played in classic - wrath, not everyone joined in legion
in short: people are different, everyone has their own perspective, just because YOU are the same doesnt mean everyone else is, just because I am different doesnt mean everyone else is
Exactly, the OP is reading into Mike’s response. Mike it talking about changes that required you to “play with the SAME group of people over and over”. Mike says that he feels it “takes away some of the reason for some people of why they play”.
The key take away is that Blizzard realize the affect. But still, since they have not changed, value accessibility over catering to a minor group. The Moderator goes on to point this issue of accessibility is not a WoW or Blizzard issue; it is an industry issue. Which in my assessment is a result of changing demographics and preferences. Wow is wise to not force socialization on people; it is better to provide ways to people to socialize who still want to pursue this but offer more accessibility as a whole.
This person gets it.
That’s not the point I was making… You’re taking it way too literally. Yes, the actual people playing have changed some. as in bob quit and joe started or w/e. My point is that people are people. It’s not like we had this huge influx of anti-social players join the game and now the game is anti-social because of it.
The bigger issue is how we interact with others in the game has changed. When I started in BC, if you wanted to do content you had to hit up trade chat and find people or join a guild. While that still happens on a small scale, most content can be done by just using LFR, LFG, etc. In all of that, you don’t even need to talk to anyone if you don’t want to.
Even doing PvP in the past was so different. I got to know a bunch of people simply standing by the battle masters so I could cue for arena, skirmishes, or bgs. I remember mounting up and following people to dungeons I had never been to and a long the way you go to chat a bit. That is almost non-existent now.
And even outside of ALL of that, servers are all x-realm and phased these days. I can’t tell you how many times I have phased into a zone joining groups with people on my OWN server. Good luck trying to see the same person in the major cities more than once.
I’m more social in classic than I am in retail, but I don’t enjoy classic more in proportion to the demanded socialization. If it had LFD instead of needing to be on when a bored 60 will nuke the dungeon for you (or less chance yet, you find a group around the right level), I’d probably play it more if anything.
This feels like a theoretical problem that doesn’t have a basis in reality. I mean, unless you only want hyper-social people to play your game, in which case see how that goes.
People are not People… the people that have left have been replaced by a new generation whose opinions and expectations have been moulded by mobile games and transformer movies. (And besides, what part of sitting in a city capital city spamming trade chat for hours sounds appealing? ) If you want to do this, nothing stops you. But as for people, yes, people have changed.
I’d say it became more asocial than antisocial, but yes.
LFR is a poor example since the people who use LFR were not raiding at all before it existed. LFD is a better example, since people did find groups before that.
That’s only half the issue, though. The other half is that you can’t invite people you meed in dungeon groups to your guild because they are on another server; you can’t even /friend them.
yawn.
the game has changed dramatically. saying that an entire population of players has grown more anit-social AS opposed to the OBVIOUS and massive changes the game has had just makes 0 sense. people are complaining that we don’t interact in the same way… yea, because we can’t any longer.
there is 0 reason to over complicate such a simple problem.
Of course it did. Any system that automatically puts people into groups of “free win” content (LFD, LFR, arena queues) encourages an anti-social, selfish style of gameplay.
Thanks for your incorrect feedback. Let me know when you got some stats to back it up with.