I don’t believe the community is “dying” now - I think much of that sense of isolation (if that’s even the right word) has always been there. Being sociable is an individual choice, not something forced on us by the game.
However, I will agree that pug dungeons can be quiet. And anyone who disagrees only needs to think of the last random dungeon (apart from Mythic+) that they did and how much talk went on during that. You could indeed have been playing with a somewhat unpredictable set of AI creations.
There is generally more talk in LFR but that mostly because of the larger numbers and so the odds are higher that one or two people will speak at some stage, even if just to complain.
Guilds are the only real part of the game that fosters social interaction and talk, and sometimes even those are quiet. It’s why I’m always pleased to find a friendly active guild where people do actually talk in guild chat.
But – to a degree it’s always been this way. Prior to automated group creation, you had to talk somewhat in order to form the group but beyond that, if everyone knew their job, there wasn’t a huge need to speak much and not a lot of time to engage in conversation. With the increased desire for fast runs, there is even less time now.
However, games like WoW remain social because people do talk when the opportunity or need presents. You can’t force people to be talkative and chatty. All you can do is look for your own little friendly space, get comfortable there and interact with the wider community as need requires.
Hullo Trade Chat, you crazy place 
True. They are a bit better in those respects. I played both of them too. They still couldn’t hold my attention like WoW though.
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As did I, hence the giant Collector’s Edition box that continues to gather dust, near my desk…
“A feature akin to Final Fantasy XI’s Trust system will be added in Shadowbringers, allowing non-player character heroes to accompany players through dungeons. This will allow players to play through the story scenario of the expansion completely solo.” from an article on Kotaku (eww).
Basically, there will be NPCs that you can recruit and train and take them through the instances in the next expansion Shadowbringers. I would imagine they want to expand it in the future.
Think of the mission tables in WoW since Legion, but you actually accompany them for the instance based missions. I’d imagine they will be combining it with the Adventure Squadrons systems, but it could be an individual thing.
Do you have a link?
I thought they didn’t announce the next xpac yet for wow?
I think it’s that games are changing as the years go by and it is not in a good way. I’ve been in quite a few really good mmo’s but I noticed they have a tendency to remove stuff players really enjoy and either replace it with crap or not even replace it.
When you remove the things that are fun it depreciates the game and hence the enjoyment factor. I play games for fun. When you remove the things I play that game for then you remove the reason I play that game and I will sooner or later get tired of not having fun and leave said game and go looking for fun somewhere else.
Right now WoW is not all that fun. I find customization fun in mmo’s. Customization of characters looks, armor and weapon enchants and sockets, skills and abilities, mounts, etc. The more I can make my character different from everyone else’s the better. I don’t want cookie cutter meta builds. I want the ability to play my character any way I want. If that means having the worst dps skills and abilities but the most fun then so be it. It should be my, and other players, choice to build our characters any way we want.
Mmo’s need to give players choices. Right now mmo’s start with player choices but remove them later on thinking they somehow made the game better when in reality they made it worse and less fun. Give us choices and don’t remove them, period.
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For FFXIV, not WoW.
It would be interesting for WoW to be sure.
I don’t think they can. They can implement systems to encourage people to play together but that’s all they can do.
I think it’s a RL societal problem brought on in large part by technology.
It’ll change.
Into what? Idk but it will.
Why would you think it’s dying? People come and go, games come and go.
Name another game that is continually being updated and is 15 years old?
Wow, it’s very unique.
Don’t believe all the toxic haters in these forums. The game is not in a bad place at all.
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WoW has always been the flagship MMORPG, a trend setter. With WoW trying to appeal to non-MMORPG players, the genre itself watered down to the point where a lot of MMORPG players are at a loss of what to play while WoW tries to be a jack of all but master of none, with only the personal ties we’ve made and the work we put in keeps us around. The genre itself will always be niche, but with how much it is said to cost to make an MMORPG, I don’t see the current gaming industry making that effort outside a passion project.
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i have the same thing lol
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Basically this - it feels spread incredibly thin lately, and even if there’s something you really liked, chances are there’s not much of it to actually play, right now…
I suppose it’s great if you love literally every facet of the game, but for people who just wanna hone in one one sort of thing, it feels kind of lacking. There’s a lot of other games out there that specialize in said things, and do them better: but WoW does have the variety going for it.
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I think the best way to salvage the game is;
- Make professions a gameplay style. Let ‘crafters’ be a thing like ‘raiders’ or ‘pvpers’ are.
- Give more structure to gear, while having less paranoia of catching up so that gear at least has some timely value. Its hard to care about putting effort into gear when you know how easily it will (or can thanks to RNG) be replaced.
- Identify the fields people focus on and try expanding their content while keeping in mind that they’re people and not drones. This one will probably take a bit of design brainstorming, but things like WQs, M+ and multiple difficulty raiding with WF/TF reeks of trying to wring as much content out of a single rag as humanly possible.
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Because none of them are really massive and everything is sharted/instanced.
Wow in it’s hayday had large living worlds and communities. Now everything is click a button to queue up for something.
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That last part really resonates with me. I actually lost interest in raiding once all the different difficulty levels started to become a thing (with Ulduar being a bit of an exception … I really liked how that place handled difficulty).
Knowing I can just hop into easy mode and see all those bosses that’d previously have been these enticing mysteries kind of kills the magic, somehow. It’s dumb, I know, but that’s how I feel about it. That, and the knowledge that I’d essentially be playing the same content 2-3 times kind of turns me off.
It’s bad enough in M+. The affixes really don’t do enough to differentiate them from Normal and Heroic, mechanically. It’s just bigger numbers + a few new, irritating mechanics to track while you kill the vast amounts of trash. The boss encounters, arguably the best part of dungeons, are mostly unchanged. It sucks.
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I personally loved having different raids for different difficulties and sizes. I mainly focused on the 20 man raids in classic dipping my toes in 40 man enough to down MC and clear half of BWL (I was mostly casual). BC and Wrath also had good examples of mixing it up with actual raids rather then a difficulty toggle. I think its so they can more tightly tune it for mythics, as I’m sure that takes a lot of testing and effort… maybe I’m bias since I don’t mythic raid but I’m not sure MMORPGs are the best place to focus on tuning things that tightly… especially when the only competitions don’t really matter for anyone but a few people you could probably fit in a small apartment without over exceeding the weight capacity. That’s mostly why I mention the ‘designing for players and not drones’ because things like WF/TF, world quests, affixes and raid difficulties seem like that or the idea that they’re trying to design for esports, which are not compatible with the genre as it stiffles the idea that RPGs are suppose to be about customization, diversity and immersion (How boring would Fire Emblem be if you always took the same characters with the same classes, or Golden Sun if you had to use a specific Djinn combo.)
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I don’t get why people think the community is more toxic now tham ever before.
I guess because before you were not exposed to the entire player base and just your own niche.
People in the olden days were also terrible. But like today not all. In BC there were plenty of guilds that would bring you and others in to help fill out a roster and then treat you like trash if you were not in the inner circle. No matter how much you contributed, the circle of friends got the goods. Only hope was to get them geared out then hope for it to drop again.
I think guilds have a higher chance of being overly accommodating to new recruits today than before due to how small the pool of players is getting.
As for the dungeon troll, they were there back then. There just weren’t random ques so you already knew what you were gettkng into before you were magically warped to the start.
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Even some of us veteran players can’t play much anymore. Real life has gotten very hectic. I’m just glad its easter.
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Agreed. I hardly have time for my other hobbies/games due to how much time it can take to progress in WoW. I am reaching a point of diminishing returns though and may start adopting a much more casual playstyle that revolves around primarily raiding with my guild.
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People are no longer willing to play non-meta gameplay. When I was growing up the online gaming community was far less obsessed with whats meta and just wanted to have fun no matter what it was they considered fun. Now its all about what has the best stats, does the most damage and what shortcuts I can take to get in and out as fast as possible. Meta players ruin the fun of just playing the game to enjoy the game.
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Shorter attention spans. This goes hand in hand with number one. Players these days seem stray away from gameplay that “takes too long”. You can see this with the “one wipe and im out” mentality in raids and pvp. Players are not open to failure. They try once and if its fails they move on.
Casual games are more popular with the gaming community at large because they don’t require much in the way of time commitment and rewards are often very easy to obtain. I think this is why mobile gaming and micro-transactions are so popular despite being looked down upon by the internet at large. Its quick and easy. Lots of gamers like quick and easy.
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