The friend thing

Community General Discussion
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TLDR: who skips the friend thing and who doesn’t? And why is it such a emo pain?

I’ve been burning to ask this question forever, but first felt shy or idiotic, or there was never the right time to post it.

Many say the game is more fun with friends and perhaps this is true. When I started my older sons and girlfriends still played - a perfect 5 for dungeons. That was truly really fun. Eventually one by one they stopped playing. So I tried a guild - nope, another guild, nope - over the years I just hung with one for the perks I guess. One of those was totally emo. Then I found a decent one. They did have quite a hard set of originals that seemed like a block you couldn’t get past.

When I played with my original group we were always on headset chats. I CANNOT type and play…at all. I have no idea how to communicate in a dungeon; the pauses are taken up so fast by others that my sentence/question gets buried. When I play I do not look at that chat box, I can’t. Despite it all a few from various have friended me. I think I have four LOL!!
I never really talk to them, but they’re still there and one tries to get in touch, but I’ve never looked at that chat box much since the beginning of playing.

The thing about guilds & discord. I’ve tried, but if you aren’t talking constantly, or on enough, or willing to just make small talk it doesn’t work. Nobody’s fault. Just normal.

So you finally find a few friends, but for some they want …something or “I’m unfriending you!” like it’s third grade. My son told me this is normal behavior on social media altogether.

So, when a bunch of people say, ‘join a guild, or discord’ and you don’t play at night and you don’t play for more than two hours a day - except for a raid run, you’re not good at being clever and friendly with small talk, you can’t run long raids or dungeons without a real chat…

Why at that point does anyone care that playing solo and still be around others is enough. The rest can be nonsense with random people getting hurt or upset and you wondering what the heck. This day and age everything has to be instantaneous or “you don’t like me” or “you aren’t contributing enough to the guild.” What??? Am I supposed to sit there and chat for 20 minutes about nothing when I could be playing and later if I accidentally don’t respond I’m a horrible person?

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I’m lucky to have spent almost a decade and a half in the same two guilds, but even we don’t do too much voice chatting. These days it’s more like people keeping each other company while doing solo content. I’ve learned not to use voice chat with strangers, because while most people are really cool, the creepy ones are really creepy.

Life can be stressful. I come here to get away from that and can’t be bothered with other people’s drama, and you’re right, much of it is like being back in high school, and all the petty nonsense that goes along with it. Staying out of it, and refusing to get sucked into much of the drama keeps me enjoying the game. I’m able to disappear into the background, chatting with people occasionally. Most of them I know IRL. And of course there’s the forums and social media, which I can put down at a moments notice if need be.

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I’ve been fortunate in that my current guild and past guilds are cool with me not using voice chat and way patient when I type any responses.

And because of my whacked out work schedule I’ve never got to join any guild activities and mainly do things solo or with pugs and no one minds.

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I have plenty of friends in wow, but recently everyone has gone quiet, quit, or decided to play classic. It kind of demoralizes me from making new friends, not sure if I will end up leaving new friends/guilds and going back to my old community when they get interested in retail again.

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This is kind of my problem too. My last social guild was in MoP.

It’s kind of hard to meet new people and if I join a guild or community or group I’m actually afraid of having to keep up with talking a lot. When often I’d rather just log on and quietly do my own thing, rather than someone trying to small talk or want to do something with me.

It can be a tricky environment to just jump into other’s social circles. And your mileage will vary, they’re all different and want different things. It’s not a big deal though! Do whatever works for you :slight_smile:

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My active friends list dropped in half after July. :frowning:

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The other thing too is that you need friends to make this game worthwhile. It doesn’t matter how much gear you have, what you collect, what your achievements are, if no one is around to see it imo.

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sorry, what I do matters to me, not just in game, but life as a whole… friends are welcome, not required. I walk in my boots.

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I don’t do the friend thing. I’m not a gregarious person. I gotta know my toon’s limitations and I can’t figure that out unless I tackle stuff on my own. I don’t mind helping others who ask and if it looks like someone’s losing a fight, I’ll try to help them, sometimes dying in the process. Not into PVP. Not into min/maxing. Not into BIS. Not into raiding. Just into having an adventure with my toon(s).

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People are a PITA. This is why I play alone mostly. I like grouping with others and sometimes that can be fun, especially when banter happens but that’s rare.

Because it’s so rare, I usually don’t bother talking and I won’t use discord.

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I think the issue at this stage is that you just don’t meet people by naturally playing the game anymore. That’s something Classic->WotLK was very good at.

Leveling wasn’t necessarily hard, but there were a handful of tougher quests, group quests in general were actually tuned for groups (as opposed to now where they’re just tuned for not being afk and braindead while solo), and the general power level of the player vs the world meant that grouping up with people doing the same things as you was a legitimate boon, rather than an annoyance that forces you to match pace with someone else when its not needed (which is what it’s like now).

And then, for dungeons and endgame, as much of a pain as not having LFD was, the lack of it created a more interactive social experience. You HAD to talk in chat to find people for groups, or groups looking to fill spots. You had more downtime while groups filled to chat with your party. Mana Regen and such was actually relevant even for DPS, so there was more room to chat while IN the dungeon between pulls as well. And overall you got to know the people on your server as your participated in more content in this manner.

None of this exists now. Leveling solo is most efficient for world content. Dungeons are almost exclusively queued for – with randoms from other servers you’ll never see again with no downtime and no communication needed.

Which basically only leaves organized high-end content to actually interact with people by playing. And in that environment, there are other factors, like ability to communicate, ability to perform mechanics, ability to perform well with your spec, effort put in outside of scheduled raids/whatever (since borrowed power and related systems matter a lot now).

It’s still better than just never seeing the same person twice, but it’s not the same as naturally meeting people on your server from back in the day.

Everything is a LOT more accessible, which for most players makes this a better video game. I don’t actually blame Blizzard for making such changes and additions. It should probably be a game first, social experience second.

But it undeniably hurt the social side of things. Meeting new friends in-game has become a lot more of a deliberate process with lots of misses before you land a hit.

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I…are you sure that you aren’t avoiding interacting with people? I’ve met keystone players while doing keys, arena players setting up alts for arena, fellow achievement hunters when tagging along to achi/mog runs, etc.

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Just for comparison: we have a small handful of people who have HEADSETS, but either: don’t have a mic; can’t use it; don’t want to use it. But at least they can listen.

And we have a small handful that twice a year might say “yep!” in chat, but are otherwise content to just be a fly on the wall.

Not only is everyone welcome in our guild/discord, but frankly-- people like that are GREAT because otherwise everyone is just talking over each other. First rule you should learn in your teens: you don’t always need to be talking.

Keep trying and just, in general, don’t feel like you HAVE to talk. But at least LISTEN. So much stuff in WoW is easier when you can coordinate by voice. :slight_smile:

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My point was that that sort of thing mostly lives in organized endgame content now. It used to be a fairly built-in part of every level of the game.

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Again, I’ve met people while fishing, grinding rep, even just checking the black market daily.

The only thing that has changed is that you have access to more people. In the pre-LFG/LFD era you were limited in to who you could play with, which meant that people played with each other because they had to, not because they wanted to.

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Something I have learned is that I prefer to play with my friends but that doesn’t mean I don’t try and still put myself out there when I can. Still I would rather play with people who want to be with me for who I am and vise versa then “Hey were are in this guild together. You like WoW? Good enough.” That isn’t friendship, that is about as much as I know the people who support me on my writing sites which is little to non.

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/Jumps up and down!

Can you share the sites! Serious writer here. Or just a couple? Or where to look?

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I got an empty friends list and no guild, and happy as a clam. My psychological state deteriorates when I have people pestering me to tank things all day. I quit for a long time in late legion because I was the go to tank for multiple raids and dungeon carries in my guild and it drove me crazy. I wanted to help them all and it led to me misery tanking for like 16 hours a day. I expel it all and my life is better. I play on my own terms now.

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All I can say is that this:

Is nothing like anything I’ve ever experienced in 16 years playing this game. The massive gap between player experiences in this game is really remarkable.

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Right? I swear that I’m never hearing the full story.