The biggest problem with other players becoming just quickly replaceable members of your party is when kicking started being abused to get a slightly more performing player rather than removing someone abusing or annoying
Im sure you heard this before. You can make your own groups. Make your own friends. Make your own insert current members group name here. Make your own fun, that's what the kick em group is doing they enjoy kicking
@@fayvampire That's more a problem with the community being garbage than the kick function itself. That's why I loved to tank during vanilla and wow classic, I knew just how much power I had in the group decision making as a warrior tank and if the group decided to kick a player for stupid reasons, I could leave the group, form a new one and sometimes finish the dungeon before the other group.
People tend to be removed more for being nasty than for being useless. Good enough at the role tends to be good enough. If the main people are good enough, then woohoo, the group can have more fun. Being top damage isn't an excuse to be nasty. However, I am aware that I might just be playing with more decent people (as in being lucky).
I'm one of those weirdo solo players in MMOs who is sometimes told I should go play a single player game. And I do play those too. But what people forget is that there are systems and experiences you can only really find in a multiplayer game. A big thing for me is the marketplace economy of a game. I absolutely love crafting and lifeskilling or even just grinding mobs to get drops to trade and sell. Sure, some solo games allow the players to sell to NPC shops but it isn't the same as the supply and demand of a fluctuating marketplace. I also enjoy seeing the world alive with other players even if I'm not chatting. It simply feels good and helps with immersion.
Same here, I really enjoy the resource, crafting and economy sides of MMOs. I tried out Albion online last year or so. I didn't play it for long, but my favorite thing to do was to buy goods low at one marketplace and sell high at the other. I didn't make a lot of money, I'd have been better off just gathering raw materials, but the sense of discovering my own way of contributing my small part to the larger living adventurer economy was really cool. Knowing that the resources I brought over would get sold and used, while managing to make a profit at the same time by paying attention to the fluctuating prices, made me feel like I had accomplished something in the world. And it wasn't completely trivial, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of prices and profits, noting which wares were currently worth trading. Nobody told me this was a thing you could do, I just discovered it to be possible. To this day, Runescape is my favorite MMO for very similar reasons. I enjoy gathering resources and selling them, or buying raw materials and making a profit refining them. Finding friends in a game always makes it better of course, but in an MMO, playing solo doesn't necessarily mean playing alone. Even when I play solo, the presence of other people is very important for my enjoyment of the game.
It’s such a weird criticism. You aren’t going to attack someone for going out to dinner alone, or walking on their own in the park when everyone else is there with a group. Why are you going to do the same in a game? I don’t always like to play WITH people, but I like playing AROUND people. I’d argue that MMOs are the only genre that lets you play around other players without needing to team up, interact, or fight each other.
I might be an introvert, but not even close to a hermit. While i enjoy the solitude of playing games by myself, it is also fun to cooperate with others. It is good to have the social aspect in the game, but not a constant requirement for clearing it.
As someone who played a lot of the original Everquest, another big factor was downtime. You'd kill a monster then have to sit to meditate mana/health back for bloody ages. This is when everyone would start chatting in group or guild just to alleviate the boredom. Dark Age of Camelot had a bit less downtime and WoW much less, so you'd constantly be fighting and less chatting.
I can agree with that. The most social I've been on MMOs was when I was building my garrison in WoW or using an auto clicker in Runescape, when I would have several minutes of basically no interaction and yet despite knowing that I would prefer something with more interaction.
Yep. During downtime there was nothing to do but talk. Even with buffs like KEI and Flowing Thought items, there was tons of downtime, and that was right in line with The Vision.
Which I am so glad there isn't 10-30 mins of downtime between fights in MMOS anymore, games like that feel like they don't value the time you are giving to it. When I was a child in the early 2000's with nothing to do these features felt like they built a community but as I got older I realized they were just time sinks to keep you on game and keep their numbers up for investors.
When I started playing MMOs, I was a kid/teen and had tons of free time. When you can be present in the game for 6-8 hours every day, coordinating with other people isn't a problem. But now when I find time to play, I just can't afford to waste most of it by trying to find people to play with, so the evolution of MMO towards more solo play is what allows me (and many other players who have gotten more real life responsibilities over time) to continue playing the genre I enjoy.
My brother talks about missing the old MMO days and I tell him I don’t and remind him that he has two kids now does he really want to get 4-5 people together and spam chat LF1 tank for 40 minutes and then having to just suddenly drop because you gotta handle the kids? Not only is the only fun you got to chat to people but you screwed those people over because now they need to find a tank and healer and the tank is gonna go with the other group that just needs a tank. Life and the world has changed. Do I have great memories of playing social MMOs definitely. Do I lie to myself thinking I want that back like my brother? Definitely not. I have an hour maybe 2 if it is a game night I want to get on and have fun. Hell I don’t even do many traditional MMOs any more because if I want to play DPS I’m in queue for 20 minutes. Now I play Destiny 2 that just finds any other player and lets me kill some baddies. On the weekends when I have time I do a raid with my clan but without tank/healer getting a group is fast and painless.
@@Pixiwish ...what you're describing just sounds like it's time to pass the torch to the next generation, so they can have fun and create the same memories you have. But they can't, because games have changed. Teens and people without full irl lives have nothing now. There are casual mmos out there like guild wars 2 that adults with responsibilities and lives could play, but I guess that's just not good enough.
Another good thing about being able to actually play solo is the fact that people can level up solo, and prepare for a specific day when a whole group will be able to team up, take Warframe for example, everyone is able to upgrade it's own Warframe and its own weapons alone, this allows people to prepare for a bigger, for a boss battle, for a session through a more challenging map,
I think this is a similar problem to "too many MMORPGs are ruining MMORPGs": too many people, too many possible options to socialize with -> don't know what to choose -> don't choose any. And as someone else said in another comment, you need repeated exposure to people to even want them as potential friends/play-buddies. Having so many people all over the place means you will never have a reason to bond: lose one, find another, and move on. That's also where elitism can come into play, since wanting someone highly skilled becomes a reason to want someone specific, as opposed to any average player, so there is a reason to form a bond in that case. With randoms, though...why even bother? Why invest in a relationship just to find out they won't be playing as intensly as you (could be more, could be less), or at the same hours as you? Waste of time, really. In short: play the way I want, when I want, or I'll find someone else who will. Ergo, I don't need you -> I'll go by myself.
It's also definitely a matter of time. As in, how much time people have to play. "Back in the day" people would easily play mmos for 6+ hours a day, maybe 10+ hours in the weekend. Nowadays a lot of those same people are adults, and at most might have around 4 hours to play. Often even 2 or less. With so much less time people don't want to deal with time wasters. Be that taking ages to find a group, or dealing with people that make mistakes and cause a party wipe. Hence why in WoW these days, for PUG raids, the gear they require you to have is often equal or higher than what you'd get from the raid you're going to do.
I for one am glad that mmos cater towards the solo player more, because I always end up playing them solo since I live in Australia and very few mmos have servers centered here in Oceania. So its much easier to get through content and join international friends in end-game content when I don't have to waste time looking for the few other players playing at the same time as me xD
There is one design shift I noticed that does hurt social interaction. Combat has gotten much faster and more involved while time between combat has shrunk. I really noticed this when I started playing FFXI. In XIV and WoW, the longest you go without pressing a button in normal combat is 2.5 seconds. There’s no time to chat in a fight, and there’s no reason to stop between pulls beyond rezes and mana. Eureka in XIV felt particularly bad because of this (the chain system meant you were punished for stopping). Compare that to XI where combat is so much slower. There’s no filler button or combo to spam, auto attacks are the filler. You’re weapon skills take time to build up and your abilities all have cooldowns. You don’t need to reposition anywhere near as much. And after some combat, if you don’t have an MP regen effect, you’ll need to take a bit of a break to restore it. It also helps that not everything has sight aggro when reaching the first expansion (seriously, the amount of aggro enemies in XIV and WoW expansions is ridiculous). In XIV and WoW, I talk in between doing stuff. In XI, I talked while doing stuff.
I noticed the same thing, we used to chat furiously didn't matter if it was grinding mobs for XP or raiding back in 99-'02 during EQ's heyday, everyone would plant themselves in a spot and you wouldn't have to budge your character for the half hour it'd take to burn a boss down or several hours of mob grinding, just occasionally hit a cooldown or heal and chat like it was an AOL chatroom. These days when I hear someone complain about the lack of chatting during a dungeon run I'm like, "When do you have time to type anything?", these days there's no down time, it's run from point to point at full speed, using a array of abilities with quick cds to burn the trash along the way, kill the boss, loot the chest, rinse and repeat. The only real chance at chat is after killing the final boss before everyone hits the exit button.
@@MrNhlam123 That's great for when you are already part of a guild or some sort of group that does activities together. But, for the vast majority of any given playerbase, simple text chat will be the main source of communication with your fellow players.
@@khankhomrad8855 So, what you're saying in essence is: People: "Communication is made difficult". Also people: "I don't want to use the facilitating tools to communicate".
Saying the socialization moved is a massive difference though. If MMOs used to be a good place to find people to socialize with, but now you need to find those people elsewhere and can then play MMOs together and socialize elsewhere, MMOs are now no different from any other multiplayer game. And in general that's like, a massive difference with very far-reaching consequences, not a simple difference
You have a point. But, how do MMOs evolve past just being social? Bc like you said, I can socialize with people while playing the Witcher and it be just as much interaction as an MMO. I think they would have to focus on a reliance to your team or group. But even then, how does that differ from an mmo-lite like destiny.
@@ortiznikko I think the industry should take a look at survival games... They are much like MMOs, dedicated server maintaining that world alive, you can certainly solo play a survival game with no problem but it is really much better and easier with a group. That's why coop survival games are making a huge success, even more than the old pvp ones. I'm not saying it should be a gather resources and maintaining base kind of game (I don't want to be worried of losing something while offline) but look at how they work and how it allows people to solo and socialize in the same environment without compromising each type of player. It doesn't force social interactions and at the same time it doesn't isolate players.
Most MMOs just don't have the chat features on par with something like Discord. I'm a pretty slow typer, and it's simply faster and more efficient for me to talk to my guild in Discord or a party chat.
@@raulzilla I do like how survival games work like that. But, i think, you would have to keep the server size really small to make it have that same feel.
@@Sabersquirl While I see your point... I've grown up making friends IN MMO's and now joining a discord server to make friends, to THEN play the game is so foreign and scary to me that I just can't do it... I guess when you play and chat there's a lot less emphasis on chat and you can get to know someone through the shared experience which works well for me, while sole chatting does not
@@knightmer3645 exactly.. my social anxiety doesn’t allow me to just “join a discord server and join a call” before this happened much more naturally in mmos you’d find someone and you’d just have a nice chat and have fun.. now it’s so “you gotta work for it yourself on purpose” kind of thing.. wich frankly as an introvert doesn’t work.. especially when you tend to not like actually introducing yourself.. in an mmo you can be anyone or anything where as in that discord server that’s just not the case..
I think having social "classes" and social skills would go a long way towards building a social scene. Star Wars Galaxies had a plethora of instruments, each of which provided different buffs to listeners. This created player bands, with dancers and pyrotechnics, but it also got people to cluster up and interact. The bars were packed, roleplayers and guilds bragged about their bands.
Doctors healin in the hospitals, Dancer and musicians in the Cantina's. Travelling to well-known player towns with well-known player vendors to buy your favourite composite armour. I miss Galaxies :(
@@ShadyLurker16 Yeah, my favourite MMO community (provided you stayed out of the BH/Jedi forums, anyway). Even the "well, Ahazi still isn't up, let's allt make a fat white wookiee band on some other server to pass the time". I did most of my lot trading with fat white wookiees.
@@ShadyLurker16 Honestly? That's what I think other MMO's needed to steal from Galaxies. I made a Doctor/Dancer so I could fix all the ill's of people and enjoyed that game the most in two situations. 1. When I would have someone come in to be healed and I would ask them how they got the damage while the healing went on. I'd end up with a cluster of people talking, most already fully healed, virtually every time. 2. The rare times I made a house call. A character with no combat capacity being hauled into a deadly place to fix damage that would otherwise strand someone out there. A REAL escort quest, complete with coordination by the people who hunted me down because one of them had chatted with me the week before. A once in a life time experience of a group tanking a de-facto raid boss while I fixed damage on the other group in the battle area itself despite not being a part of their group, guild or anything. When they raped that game to make a wow clone, I was done and sad to see it happen.
@@Sorain1 YES!!! I remember escorting someone to their mining equipment because they were pure crafters. It was one of the most memorable experiences ever, and it was so natural.
@@BoogerLeader Potentially Ashes of Creation will have a bit of that, though in that case your escort target will likely be a little less useless in combat then I was at the time. (I had decent armor just because I knew I might need to do a field medic call, but still.)
Your description of a solo player who wants to be a part of the shared world without needing to interact with others fits me perfectly. Hell even in the real world I enjoy being around other people just as much as I enjoy being alone, but I just don’t have that need to be social with the people I’m with.
I'm so glad to have been a teenager during the early days of online games. The "world" was much smaller and everyone knew each other back then. I remember spending hours just chatting and laughing with my guildmates, learning about their lives, where they lived in the world, and thinking those days would never end. I still remember the names of many of my guildmates from 15-20 years ago, but don't really remember any of my guildmates from BDO, Destiny 2 or any recent games I've played :\
@John Philip When you're a kid/teen, you're just more receptive to making new friends in general. Your brain is basically empty of relationships, and you have a lot more free time to fill. Older you get, you have less cognitive space & leisure time. So if someone - or some activity - is going to gain a precious spot, then they have to earn it, essentially.
Agreed. Tho recently I've moved all my gaming time to VR and it feels very reminiscent of how it was back in the days, communities are small, everyone is exploring the newness of it all and the games are far more about the social aspect of the game than amazing graphics/min maxing. The gaming landscape is just changing and while I think it's in a bit of a slump at the moment, with VR video games will likely get much more social in the coming years.
True!!! OMG I remember back when I played Lunia and I was in that awesome guild with our own forum. And there were hard hitting real life posts there. Those friendships were deep! Actual conversations. It was so awesome. I get it. These days it can be just like that, yes. But back then you were FORCED to group up and that made it easy for the awkward, shy, introverted players. These days I feel so lost inmost MMOs.
The most social i've ever felt in a mmo was in a small community mmo or ones without global chat/whispering. To talk to people you had to be be near them. It was great, you actually made friends, traveled together, visited etc.
Because they different Social interactions. The the old Social interaction on MMO's are interpersonal you got to know the people your with Talk Traded and played with them all the time. The social interactions of CZcams, Twitch and Reddit are parasocial for the most part although the community gets a personality it personality bases of crowd involvement and that stuff is great it was makes sports events so fun. Discord can be a little interpersonal Discord is the closest to what MMO's use to be in that your just hanging out and talking but it is not running a shop and talking with friends or being out in the world and getting a friend call to meet up. Discord is similar but it just a chat box.
I think that nowadays there is a information and communication overflow in so many aspects of life. Social media kinda became a mandatory part of everyones life, but managing social media accounts, posting this picture or that picture and contacting 20-30 different people every day is exhausting. Why don't play a game and grind for an hour to shut your brain off. Wait, I need to look for people again? That random guy wants me to join a discord? There is so much social social interaction from 9-5 every day, why does it need to continue when I just want to relieve some stress?
The reason I stopped socializing in MMO's is because the chat was 99% toxic. If every time you log in and try to chat with random players, and just get called horrible things, you just stop talking. When you play a game, and you watch chat fill up with toxic nonsense, you stop reading chat. So, ultimately, MMO's social interactions died because people stopped having fun talking/reading in chat. When this happens, people stop finding new people to play with and either leave the game, or try to solo the game. It's what happened to me. I became a solo player, I didnt start out as one. Trying to be a non-solo player now, is incredibly uncomfortable. There is a lack of trust that has been built up over the years, and those walls are not coming down easily.
Same here. There's a lot of political, anti-American, vitriolic, hostile, uninformed nonsense. (Kind of like everything online now.) I miss when people just enjoyed the novelty of being able to talk to anyone, anywhere. For a short period of time, online was a nice little niche for the introverts among us. Just a tiny window where everything was great. Miss those days...
Same, especially in gw2. And there's no point in arguing with toxic players, because you're just wasting time and energy, which could be managed better. I laugh at those SJWs who get so fired up about someone being toxic, and fight fire with fire. Or the main reason why I don't get on discord for raids in WvW is because it's usually filled with sexist pigs and racist fucks who are horny over that one girl in the party or make so many toxic remarks about literally everything. It's not a fun environment and it's much better to just listen to music and do your thing. The fact is that the gaming community as a whole is very diverse and amongst us there are a lot of toxic players who don't wanna admit they're being toxic and pretend they're just having fun at the expense of others.
@@viscousgoo2021 My days in older mmorpgs like Perfect World, Lucent Heart, Terra and probably any other older mmorpg out there (since i played them all) were so much more peaceful and meaningful because there were MODs or Admins moderating chats sometimes and people weren't as toxic because they feared the ban. Nowadays in Gw2 i haven't seen a single GM in 5 years and Guild Leaders are usually toxic themselves as well.
"those walls are not coming down easily." OH BOY, do I understand that. I have various walls built up for... reasons. And most people I run into in games makes me glad I've built them. Especially back when I played Call of Duty, let me tell you most of my walls were built because of the Call of Duty community.
And it all fits in with what he said that players have become numbers and replacable. They treat you as toxic because they know that they don't need you or your help and most likely will never even see you with all the merged realms, sharding, instancing, and all that bullshit that are in modern MMOs
When I first started playing MMOs, I was super social and had a blast. As I got older, I started being more personal and I made my social circle smaller. The same thing happens to a lot of people in games. It's more like the same reasons that "MMOs aren't the same as they used to be", when in actuality the social systems are still there. Most people have changed, and so have their lives. On the other hand, I refuse to ignore MMOs just because I'm not super social. I play for the mechanics, the content, and sure enough the players. I like the idea of others playing and the OPTION to play with them. I chat now and again but I like playing the game first and foremost.
I've moved pretty much entirely to solo play in MMOs now. The thing is that the gameplay aspect of MMOs are fun. The provide a progression system, and combat mechanics that you don't really get anywhere else. So it's fair to say why play an online game if you don't want to talk to anybody, but also remember that there isn't exactly an offline version of WoW you can play. I think there is a pretty easy balance to strike. Endgame hardcore content should require this type of communication, and the open world questing or crafting does not. I think your last video on guides is worth mentioning too since that plays a huge part. If you wanted to know where to get a certain item, how to beat an encounter, or the best way to build your character you had to go find someone who knew and ask them. Nowadays people get upset at you for wasting their time when you can google all the answers yourself. Even end game raids can be completed with no planning or talking because you already know your job and exactly what you need to do before you've ever even seen the fight. We don't need to talk about how we're going to manage aggro or how we can manipulate the fight to increase our damage. No, you're the tank, this is what all tanks everywhere will do just do it.
I complain about MMOs being less social these days but none of this "I want to sit around and chat with people all day" stuff. I'm talking about the fact that older MMOs required more strategy and communication to progress in. I find myself enjoying games like CSGO and League of Legends more than most MMOs now and not because I like the gameplay but because it actually feels like a team effort with ongoing collaboration and strategy. Anytime I run WoW dungeons now it's a purely mechanical process. You just execute the mechanics and leave without saying a word. Anyone who actually says like "hey, should we try this?" is immediately flamed for "not knowing the fights", etc.
That's information era issue more often than not. There's no sense of discovery anymore. Infact if you "dare" to discover the mechanics yourself, prepare the lube because you are going to get flamed for not following "the guide". Now there's only the META chase. It happened to old MMOs as well. I recently downloaded Lineage 2, quite an old game. I downloaded a private server of it for an older expansion, the one I used to play back in the day. Well ... the game plays differently now. Apparently with higher rates people have figured out a meta that just makes the game disgusting. You either meta slave or you lose 9/10 times.
@@xtremescript I play off meta in LoL these days because it is fun. I get frequently flamed. I get what you mean. I'm from the old school era of mmo players as well.
This. Collaboration means nothing if there isn't something to overcome by its merit. If the teamplay isn't fun because the odds are stacked against us, then why am I even online?
@@SiisKolkytEuroo True, but it's definitely not like it used to be. I remember people standing near the fountain in Varrock to show off their fashion scape and chat or how house parties weren't about the portals or the gilded altars, but the whole purpose of it was to socialise.
@@biikuajet Disagree with that heavily. It's the same situation, where people are just as social and possibly even MORE social, but it's in different places. Online, it's much easier to talk to others, but if you're a solo gamer you might forego lengthy conversations in an MMO for the sake of making more personal progress, and then go to places like Twitter later to have that socialization in whatever dose you feel you need.
I mean solooing world/raid bosses feel amazing, even if it takes 15 min instead of 2mind (for example) with a group the fact that you alone with your dedication, skill and tactics was able to take down a boss dsigned for groups is a rewarding and fulfilling deed.
A lot of us played in a guild back in the days. We raided so much. Eventually you have no more motivation to do that 3-4x a week. After so many years I play it only solo without a guild.
that's what I love about GW2, you do social events without beeing actually social active, you wandering around the map, participating in events without having the need to communicate to anyone.
Exactly, I rather just chill with my "guild" in FF than trying to gather strangers in a group, it's a very enjoyable experiance just chatting with the people you want to while waiting on the groupfinder do its job, and should it take too long for it to find strangers, there's allways someone ready to help in my guild. After work I may not want to talk to anyone, so forcing me to do so to enjoy a game I play to relax is pretty bad imo.
@@ItsBoyRed im sort of on the fence tbh, im a massive fan of Classic WoW so I like that the older games do promote a sort of comradery amongst your server mates that MMO's are lacking now days, it was nice redoing raids with people and names I recognised, seeing the new gear they got since the last time I saw them, I think it definitely adds to the experience.
There's also the event of playing with randoms who might suck ass. So, would you rather be just stuck there with terrible players or with friends you know are at least competent? I don't even play mmos so I mean this for online games in general
@@ItsBoyRed yeah true, but usually that person would have garnered a reputation for being a useless fucker on the server, from people grouping up with them before.. thats the good thing about a constant server is people actually build a reputation and arent protected by the "Dungeon Finder" systems we see today 😂 if someone sucks, or has sucked in the past then there's probably someone there that will warn you about that guy haha.
I really dislike using voice chat options. I fundamentally disliked/still dislike using Skype, TeamSpeak, Discord, etc. Its very hard for me as an mmo player who primarily uses in-game chat to truly engage in the social aspect of these games, as less and less people are using in-game chat now days. You join a guild? Sometimes they even REQUIRE you to have discord. I hate it.
Wouldn't it be more beneficial to use voice chat at times that require it? People use voice chat because it's easier to communicate than the in-game chat. not that there's anything wrong with using the in-game chat, but it takes time to type, that's why people prefer voice communication: the ease of just saying words and not having to type is already a blessing within itself. I still communicate with people using the in-game chat and have fun, but I prefer to use voice communication because it's easier to communicate with people. I love to roleplay and people prefer to use in the in-game chat for roleplaying because that's just how it is. Another thing is that it is easier to organize events and times on these external programs. Discord is exceptional at using its chatroom functions for organizing raids, dungeons, etc; It helps keep people online outside of the game. (of course there are downsides to this, but there are other downsides to solely using in-game chat.) Sure, a game might have a pin board for organizing times, but not everyone goes to check it. sometimes people miss the announcement that there's a new guild raid on Sunday, whereas using discord, you can easily ping everyone and the ping is there for the rest of time until checked, or they turned off pings for everything, which is quite unreasonable since they'll need at least the pings for guild announcements. Again, I am not saying it's wrong to solely use the in-game chat, but wouldn't it be more beneficial to use discord?
@@luckneh5330 because in-game chat is more immersive. with in-game chat, you can imagine any voice when talking to someone while reading a text chat. while hearing other people's voice ruin the immersion. imagine this, you are talking with a female elf character but you hear their voice they are middle age neckbeard.
@@luckneh5330 Some people don't like talking too much or might be afraid their spoken English is bad. Reading English as a 2nd language is pretty simple, but speaking and listening is another thing entirely. Especially if you couple it with a person who just doesn't like talking in the first place.
Discord is not _fundamentally_ a voice chat platform. In fact I haven't used voice chat in almost any of the rooms I've joined, and even if a clan wants you to use it, it's enough for you to be there and listen in as long as it's not your job to shotcall. Mostly it's just a chatroom with a lot of knobs and levers for the server controllers.
@@Hotshot2k4 If you are not using the voice portion of it, what advantage it has over in-game guild chat? Maybe the ability to ping people? Or read backlogs if necessary? For just chatting in-game chat would actually be better then imo because you don't need to either use your phone or constantly alt+tab between the game and the discord chat.
There's another one you missed: the control of community. Smaller servers, not allowing changing of name or server, and taking longer to level all made Everquest a very tight community. There were celebrities on servers, you knew and recognized people and remembered their names from grouping or events. You'd pass by someone and remember them. Making bigger, more flexible servers meant you'd not often remember names unless they were in your guild. You'd not recognize characters because they might not be the same race next time you saw them.
@@longleaf0 For some people, interacting with others actively makes an experience worse. The stress, observing of unwritten social rules, time and scheduling commitments that clash with their real lives, and more, make that side of MMOs a nightmare. Some people just like playing in a world populated with other people, perhaps interacting by putting their goods up for sale in the auction house, or contributing to their NPC kingdom's influence over an area by clearing out monsters, solo... and while these players might as well play single player games, single player games rarely get updated content, new classes, new monsters, new quests, etc, released on a monthly-quarterly rate... often just getting bug fixes past the release. MMOs let you build one character for years, and explore an expanding world... whether one wants to do this in a group or solo has entirely different motivations and impacts on the player. So, some people may love being around others, while others enjoy being on their own... (some may know these distinctions as extroversion vs introversion, and neither is good or bad, just different - however, most of this world is built around extroversion, such as getting jobs and junk... leaving introverts, who generally like gaming, also not finding fun when forced to group even in their recreational time.)
@@longleaf0 I would love playing with others but finding the right person to play with is the most difficult task on this planet and I never found anyone in the past 2 decades. Every time I tried to team up with someone was one hell of a stressful experience which I wont put myself through anymore.
You always have a great perspective on these aspects. Ever since I found your videos I have been trying to remold my playstyle towards enjoyment of gaming rather than efficiency(to an extent). It's been very helpful and even improved my skill in a way. Still very hard to resist the temptation of optimal progression but definitely have a different outlook on it now.
I can't talk for others, but i'm now 32 and i just want to play by myself or if i absolutely have to group with someone, i just do it because it's mandatory, and only do the polite stuff like saying hello and goodbye. I used to be social when i was playing WoW back in high school and University, but since i started working and have a lot less time for myself, i just want to spend it however i like, play at my own pace and not have to deal with others. I played WoW for about 2 months before and after Shadowlands launched, now i'm mostly playing RDR2 Online and ESO, and i do that almost entirely solo.
@@remondx8880 If you get ESO+ (the subscription) it's a blast, you can enjoy it for a few months for sure, that is if you like questing and professions and treasure hunting and stuff like that :D It has SO much content, it's a bit insane! It can take you 20+ hours to do all the quests, solo dungeons, rares and exploration stuff in any zone, and there are over 30 such zones :o
I'm totally a solo player. But I love being in a world that is full of other players interacting together. About a month or so ago I was running through Bree on the Brandywine server in Lotro and came across The Whute Owl Band having a concert - a band of hobbits just out there having a blast putting on a show. It's awesome 👌
I remember the day the dungeon finder came out in WoW. I had a big friends list full of people I often played with, people I had known for a long or short time, who I knew were reliable people to do dungeons with. Within the matter of days, that list became useless. Even if I contacted people on that list, nobody would be interested in grouping up, because the dungeon finder tool was just more convenient. It only took about a month until the only people I still talked to were the ones I already raided with. MMOs started dying to me on that day, I still played one more patch, but it couldn't keep me interested anymore and I basically dropped MMOs entirely after that.
Interestingly enough I found WoW to be more "social" on retro servers than on Retail Idk why but retail mentality is just so devoid of social interaction in lieu of "go next raid fastfastfast"
have you played classic? like peps want full world buffs for this boss a couple of friends just duoed like lmao. The community is pretty much the same in both games.
The perfect game for me makes all content available to solo players but makes room for benefits if you team up with people. I hate having my experience depend on the chances of finding the right people at the right time
And hard enough that you only need three people at maximum. In TBC I could not do some group quests because despite being social it is hard to get 4 more people asking for help. But needing only half of them is doable.
Changing systems to attract solo players can also drive away the more social players. Game companies take that trade because there's more solo players these days. However, solo players will exhaust the game's content and then move on, because the game itself is the only thing keeping them there. Social players will exhaust the content, but in many cases stick around and continue to socialize. Focusing on solo players means keeping up a grueling pace of content release, or else you lose them. I feel that's why people sticking around in older games that haven't had any new content tend to be more social, because it was never about the content for them. Solo focused games look great for short term numbers, but social games have longevity and a loyal playerbase. It's a case of $1000 now or $2000 spread out over the next month. Execs choose the immediate reward every time.
Yeah even Wow has felt the bite of this... It's still riding the hype from it's heyday where it was more of a balanced experiance, but has been dying a slow death ever sense, a death that has only accelerated in recent years.
true I was playing on the shatar wow server. and it was fun because I was part in a RP guild that 2009 was invited to our server RP council (where the bigger active RP guilds meet to decide the servers cannon like what guild owned what how ingame big any guild was) we had guilds whit 1000 active players but lore wise it was 50 peaple and one shop in stormwind. another guild had 200 active member lore wise we had about 2500ish member and ran a mid sized military base somewhere. and it was fun because when the latest content was dried up by our servers PVE elite player guilds they left untill the next thing came up and that was a few weeks/month where none of there member would log in at all the same as on the PVE and PVP servers. RP player we whent into over drive maybe some of the RP guild also would finish up the content right as the next content would release didn´t really care RP was on the agenda whit PVP and PVE been secondary.
They've become less social as they've become more competitive, imo. When the objective takes priority, people don't interact unless they're required to in order to succeed and even then it becomes entirely about "what do you bring to the table?". It started with clearing content, allowing people to stand out but wielding gear no one else had. Then the race to world first became something to lord over people who DID wield the same gear as you. People who initially come together through impersonal systems like guild applications, parse logs and raid achievements become friends seemingly by accident over time. It's great when it works, but those friendships can also fall apart via the same systems when people find they're no longer accomplishing objectives in one group over another. Your "friends" become your online coworkers/ex-coworkers and little else.
Exactly. It‘be seen the same in Adventurer’s League DnD. Interchangeable objective-focused and resource motivated players are … well honestly, they’re pretty close to mercenaries. Ironically, that might be a more realistic take on fantasy adventurer as opposed to a tight-night party.
One of the reasons the socialization has shifted to platforms like Discord, I think, is this: you can put those messaging platforms on your phone. You can't put the game there. So, you can communicate with your friends and social circles wherever you are. When your social sphere from the game is on a 3rd party platform, you can use it to chat and prepare for things hours before you log on. These chat platforms are more broadly available than MMOs so it is easier to reach people on short notice, or while they are out running errands, at work, or at school. In my WoW guild, for example, we have a discord that everyone uses. We go there to share funny pictures and pet photos, but we also use it to plan raids and dungeon runs long before the planned time for them. We can then use the voice channels while doing the activity and actually talk with each other. The game does have a voice chat service, but it's subpar.
It has moved to discord cause it's more convenient in almost every single way. Simple as that. And not to mention how So many MMOs don't even have a game chat. Ok now I'll read your comment lol.
Thing is we've always had ventrillo/teamspeak/mumble/raidcall and now discord, it's just games don't point you in that direction early and they have realized that to get to endgame faster the more solo you are the easier it is to manage. It's not a shift of where the social is, it's a shift of why the social is.
@@sciencethygod Non of those really took off like discord has though. Even people who aren't gamers use discord a ton. Like people who have discord tend to expect you to already have discord, heck even xbox lets you link your discord to your live account. It has more than thrived because it went well beyond the gaming stratosphere and every corner now uses it.
@@MasudaOfKorriban well ya discord became huge because it focused on the community part, and I think twitch and reddits growth helped with that. Like raid call had all the features discord has and it still didn't do as well. Take tcgs for instance, magic has had many digital games and is still one of the best, but then came along hearthstone that totally dominated the market, right time right place right tweaking of the genre and the marketing. Same deal different object. Still doesn't change that its the why that has changed, why we socialize in games has changed over the years.
@@sciencethygod Raidcall also ran worse, had worse advertising, and did actually not have the same features at the time that discord had. It also marketed itself as a gaming app. Which then began to hurt it's growth as well. Same goes for most of the similar apps as well. I think the main reasons why discord did so well was because it advertised itself to everyone, ran better than the other apps right off the bat and was making quick improvements the others couldn't keep up with.
one thing that made mmos less social for me is phasing technology. the servers ability to pull in players from different servers at any time to make your current world seem more populated if it was on the downfall.
This, absolutely this. Phasing removed so much of the communication for me as anytime i met someone i thought was cool, they were on another server and we would rarely see one another. Or if we were on thr same server, theres the chance we wouldnt be in the same PHASE on the same server even if at the same place / time. You had to know they were on to join them to be in the same phase to see them.
I actually mentioned this in another one of these videos. The fact that you get phased out woth other people from other servers, or players are tossed around in to Shards/Sub-Servers makes it very hard to know when you'll encounter the same player consistently. It really doesn't do much good for the social aspects if you know that the players you meet are likely to be never seen again.
Aren't there such things as mega servers nowadays? Why can't developers make 1 massive server for 100k people or whatever the amount is in each region? Why not have variable server caps. I don't understand how this hasn't become a staple in mmo development. Server death/merges kills games.
@@alainsauve5903 Absolutely they could - they just don't prioritize it. I remember that has been asked for in WoW for nearly a decade now. Blizzard's best _excuse_ given is that then there'd be name conflicts and players might lose their desired name. Within seconds, people chimed back with the most obvious answer - give us surnames... like so many other MMOs do already... still waiting for them to care...
It is right. Game servers are now very poorly capable of hosting many players. For example, games like GTA SA could hit 100 players or more in a single server, while GTA V barely reaches 25 (and hopefully it doesn't disconnect for unknown reasons).
I don´t know abput others but i when i say "MMO's have become less social i mean less that players don´t talk as much with one another but how they do it. Mostly it is just a cesspool of flaming and dickmeasuraing. A player isn´t a person anymore but rather just a number. That is the sad part about it.
I agree, I've personally moved to playing my mmos solo or with friends I know in real life because one misstep in a raid or instance and you just get trashed on. No helpful comments or coaching to help the raid be successful, just rage, flaming and kicks.
@@kyleorigliosso2276 This isn't nearly always the case. This is mostly in the hardcore raiding guilds imo. (at least in WoW) In the casual raiding guilds I've been in tons of mistakes were made time and time again, and the "offending" players would patiently be guided. Up to the point where even I started thinking "ugh, just remove this guy already! He never pays attention to tactics, never walks out of bad stuff on the ground, and just tunnel-visions on doing damage!" Now in hardcore raiding guilds. My younger brother has been in those. In those it's usually "You made this mistake twice now! You've been able to read the tactics and still make stupid mistakes! You're kicked from today's raid!"
"Oh look at my high-tier raid gear! If you would have grinded the same amount as me, you wouldn't have a hard time beating this boss!" - Yeah, sorry not sorry. I was busy having fun people from my guild, decorating someone's house, or helping other's with crafting the gear they requested.
IMO, MMORPGs were supposed to remain a niche genre. Something like PnP RPGs are today. You know how everybody says people were more neighborly back in the day? That's cause those people sometimes needed each other. Sometimes you needed a cup of sugar, a couple of eggs, help getting a couch up the stairs, whatever the case may be. Those little challenges helped build comradery. Something similar happened with old school MMOs. Having to work together builds bonds in people. Since the games have been made less social, those bonds don't form quite as naturally. Sure, you can seek them out, but it's not the same. Now what I'm talking about isn't something that appeals to all players, hence my earlier statement. This is a genre that simply wasn't made to be mass market without compromising what are, IMO, it's most appealing aspects.
Melding the solo and group has been bad. It's been what's happening ever since the decline of the MMO. They are trying to appeal to the broad audience while pleasing nobody. The solo player can't play alone and the group player can't be social. We have a solo rpg followed by people sitting around in 1 town while 99% of the world is uninhabited doing content with strangers, there's something wrong with this picture. Liking it is the same as liking fast travel. Going from your town and preparing to set out from land sea and air to another zone, meeting people along the way, and forming a group to do content with was the soul of the MMO. And back then we did have solos too, there was the solo-classes who could lone-wolf out in the world at a slower pace, they got to be the badass they want to be. Now nobody is special.
While I understand and agree with your thesis, I think bringing fast travel into it was a bit of a wobble. Fast travel became a necessity because great level/zone designers (like John Capozzi) are few and far between and are often kept on short leashes. So many of the zones you get in MMOs are either copy-pasta BS or wildly out of sync with player behavior. In the old days, people clustered around the handful of great zones (The Kunark Express, Fungus Grove, etc) and cut the travel requirement out completely. Imagine not having fast travel and spending an entire play session just getting to a zone only to find the zone is poorly designed (or, in more common parlance, it sucks). You wouldn't feel very good about having to spend another play session to get back or to get to a zone you know is good. Fast travel isn't evil or if it is, it's a necessary one.
@@hanataba1291 So true. You either had to progress at a far slower rate or multibox (and thus, pay more). Hell, for better or worse, those "you must play together" games were what led to the multibox trend.
@@delunk5906 Really? Are we talking the nebulous "accounts created" or people playing every day religiously? I recall a time when the bigger games had 30+ servers, all full to bursting and games having to launch 2-5 new servers every year just to keep up with demand. I don't see that now. This is with people playing daily for hours. Today, I see people (myself included) playing multiple games a few hours a week. I don't see that as an improvement.
Idk I think he meant that people don't use ingame chat as much since they can talk with their party through voice chat or groupchat which means quieter games
Why did you put "communities" in quotes? They are communities. You can join one and make friends. It's in many ways better than the simple chat boxes that exist in game.
I love that Guild Wars 2 is mostly soloable, as well as fun in a group. Now that we're older, it's hard to get my friends online at the same time. (kids, work, etc)
I actually like the way it is now. I dont like to be in the game at certain time and i dont like to force myself to be good. I mean this is a freaking game not a job. I already have many things to improve myself, i really need to relax. If game also become a job, when am i gonna relax?
I think there has to be a middle ground. I had friends who were big into WoW back in the day, and they would be playing at work or during club events, because that's when the guild said to show up. Meanwhile, my late husband played Star Trek Online, Old Republic, EVE, etc, but always strictly solo, mainly because he didn't want to be harassed about his progress/pacing. Best - only - MMO experience I ever had was Marvel: Avengers Alliance, basically a single-player game with server-wide chat and some asynchronous boss raids towards the end. You could play when/as you wanted, and that incentivized social behavior rather than requiring it. IMO that's the best approach - carrot, not stick.
Well thats the whole point of mmorpg especially the early mmorpgs like everquest and wow, you had lazy players which often ended on lvl 20, casual players which hit 60 but had average gear, and sickos which raided 4 times a week and had everything best (reffered as an best guild/clan on the server). You had all the classes of society and people were satisfied, just like in real life. Nowdays everyone wants max lvl and epic gear without investing 2hrs a day, during the early days of vanilla hiting max lvl was an achivment, you cannot drive a lambo or ferrari without working your ass out, and thats the whole point of mmorpg having living breeding world were everyone has their role.
@@denirebic5769 In that sense, I think there's been too much mirroring of real world stratification in online games. The players with lots of IRL money (or credit), and/or loads of free time, or who straight-up cheat, create an elite tier, and then pat themselves on the back for working hard. But the other players aren't less "dedicated" to the game, they likely just have other constraints. I play games to get away from all that socioeconomic class-strata BS in the real world. Which is why I mainly play Nintendo and avoid MMOs altogether, no matter how sweet-looking :sigh:
MMORPG's didn't become less social, we did. I remember early-mid 2000's playing WoW and guild wars and LOTRO and those things, it was just how people were.
I think its both. As someone who was never social, when I first played wow It forced me into socializing for raiding, and dungeons. If I wanted to do that kind of content I had to talk to people or reach out in chats. If dungeons went bad. Most people would communicate with each other to figure out the problem cause dropping out and finding another group was usually too much more work no one really felt like doing right after just doing it. I didnt wanna keep tryna convince strangers to let me join groups repeatedly so i eventually joined guilds and had semi social relationships with people in them. Now a days you can queue for stuff so you dont even have to join guilds or look through chats. If a dungeon is running bad then you can just drop out and queue for another no problem. Its true that people are far more isolated then in the past due to not having to leave but, mmos have also become more isolated as well.
I think there's definitely a generational change. I play ESO and most of the (few) 30+ people I raid with have normal social skills, at the very least they say hello and goodbye if they don't feel like chatting. But when I'm grouping with someone with an anime pfp, there's a 50/50 they won't utter a single word during the entire raid. And when using the activity finder, a lot of people can't even be bothered to type hello or tyfg. To me it's creepy that after smoothly completing group content and people are exchanging tyfgs you just leave. And I'm the 'toxic' endgame player with top-5% parses in the world, so I'm not getting carried in any of this face roll content. I just add those people to my ignore list if they're going to behave like NPCs.
I remember being so social when I was a kid playing some mmorpg. Didn’t know about toxic people then. I stopped being social after the many toxic people I met running dungeons/instances.
Might I make this suggestion as an additive statement? Modern MMO communities are garbage and that's driving people to avoid socializing internally. The number of times I have met absolutely horrific human beings in MMOs(and games in general) has exponentially increased over the years admittedly partially because of those no accountability solo player systems that were put in. People not only are mean and rude in increasing amounts but go out of their way to waste people's time and even hurt their progression in a variety of ways. I wont say that kind of behavior didn't exist before because it most certainly did and I experienced it in games like EverQuest even but the community was able to deal with it because of the social aspect. It appears to be far more common nowadays since you're essentially anonymous in dungeon finders and megaservers much like social media where you have the same kind of behavior occurring with troll accounts and the like and there is no punishment source for deterring that kind of malicious behavior because it's not outright hurtful like homophobic or racial slurs so you can't report it. The video I mostly agree with, I just think that bit is something else to note.
Were as making friends used to be somewhat necessary to really grow and gain certain achievements in most MMO games all you need now is your wallet or a lot of time spent in front of your PC so people are quicker to be assholes. Plus society itself is becoming darker and more mentally fucked year after year so it only makes sense that our virtual worlds would begin to reflect that darkness.
Honestly.... I've met shitty people since 2004. It hasn't gotten any better. Being able to anonymously speak whatever you want isn't something a human can handle mentally when taken advantage of. It's simple as that.
Guilds and Raiding are very exclusive by nature and quite anti-social for the majority of players on a server. It's also harder to socialize when adventuring when the pace is so fast, whether due to action combat or little to no downtime.
You aren't old enough to know how chat happened during the early days of MMOs. TeamSpeak and other VoIP software started at the same time. It was common for guilds to have their own VoIP servers. In EQ, every server had their own VoIP server as well. However, new players were encouraged to join the VoIP server by existing players inside the game. Facebook, IRC, and Myspace wasn't where the chat happened.
Those where also the days where if you wanted to join a serious guild you have to go to the guild's website that the leadership had made online and apply through there like it was a job.
There isn't really any point to talking to other players even through discord because the content is single player and I can I always look up a guide rather than ask strangers. For group quests there is always group finder.
I'm a Solo MMO player. I have anxiety but I enjoy playing MMOs, so I actually like the way MMOs are now. I have in the two MMOs I play regularly (FF14 and ESO) maybe one good friend and we group up together sometimes or queue together for dungeons and then meet after and chat. If MMOs became more like they were back in the nineties again, I would not be able to play them because I'd be terrified to do anything in the game since it would mean having to talk to strangers, which is terrifying for me.
Thanks for the video, the is an interesting opinion. I think there is more to it though than just "Social aspects have moved off onto things like Discord". The thing is that you can take any single-player game and find a community/Discord online around that too. So what is the point of playing an MMORPG with people who feel like anyone is replaceable and therefore tend to be absolutely toxic jerks to each other because there is no reputation to keep? In my example, I've been a WoW fan for years but the most recent expansions were just missing something. I stopped playing BFA after a week and Shadowlands I got bored of it within 3 weeks due to a complete lack of real social interaction and just constant grouping with strangers. I thought it was just me but WoW Classic brought back everything I loved. The server Discord has taken over the forum posts but reputation still matters, I still get to see and fight the same people and just overall there is an awesome community experience. I got hooked again. External communication options don't really matter. I'd rather just play a single-player game and find a community for that than play a toxic MMO where people either don't talk or are nasty all the time. Especially if said MMO has a monthly sub.
Who wants to pay money & (precious) time to have abuse heaped on them? A lot of folks who are vulnerable to harassment also tend to shy away from group play in the newer communities - the lack of reputation allows toxic behavior to fester.
You made me miss the old Everquest days. I was an account helper back in the day, before EQ had an account bank, if you wanted to move things from one character to another, I'd act as a mule, holding bags for a person as they logged out and logged back in on another account. I was trustworthy enough I charged 100platinum and people paid it knowing it was safe, even people I'd never met gave me a level of trust.
The problem I've found with the social-aspect of games being separate to the games themselves is that there's not really an easy place for players that are either high skill or more knowledgeable (depending on the game, often a mix of these) to cross-polinate with players that are considered bad, which leads to a lack of comradery within the games alongside it just being harder to make friends.
Today they are OPTIONALLY social. There is plenty of social interaction in today's MMOs. But, because they are optionally social, a wider scope of people have the chance to play... 🤷♀️
And very few of them are social. Which leaves the whole game to a bunch of edge lords in the back of a tavern who won’t talk to anyone. It ruins the entire purpose of the game.
I would also add the possibility of overly negative online interactions to the mix, when i was younger and playing online games literally all i would hear from other people online where slurs and insults so i just started turning off chat functions, and that just kind of become one of the default things i do in online games.
I think this is linked to lack of accountability. In the early days you chose a server and play on it, encountering people playing on the same server. As such, if you started to act like a jerk, it would be quickly known and you get a bad reputation on the server, making it difficult to get groups or find a guild. Today, with systems that let you freely switch between server, cross-server group finders and so on, there is no more accountability. Act like an idiot, and it doesn't matter, because you will certainly never encounter the same person twice.
That's how I felt as the years went on in WoW. When I started back in Wrath, it seemed plenty of people were plenty friendly and kind, sometimes even going out of their way to help new players and it was super cool to be a part of that. Then that slowly stopped being a thing. LFG along with a new younger generation of players coming in to replace older ones leaving the game, changed the culture into something like you describe.
@@RED_Theory038 I started playing MMOs with the old Everquest. My first encounter with a player in this game was right at the start, players would hangout at the spawn point and welcome newcomers, handing out some basic spells. Going a bit farther away, you would find other players buffing everybody to help them with their first fights (yeah it was a thing, some classes would have access to some pretty neat buffs, and it was not uncommon to have people asking for a buff in chat) and answering questions (In-game tutorials were still a foreign concept). Grouping and cooperation was essential, as there was basically no solo content. When you wanted to grind, you'd pop into the appropriate zone, and immediately look for a group camping at one of the spawn points. As there were also a lot of down times between pulls, you would get a lot of time to chat with your teammates and make friends. There were also regular guild meetings, where everybody would assemble and share equipement, giving away whatever they didn't need anymore to whoever needed it. The MMO landscape as mutated so much since then... it's hard to imagine such things taking place today.
@@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065 Indeed, it was an amazing experience. But it was at a time when internet wasn't yet available in every home, and so the playerbase was small and entirely made of dedicated players and RPG lovers. MMOs were in their infancy and still experimenting, it was a very new thing, and we didn't have the same expectations as we have these days. If EQ released today in the same state it was then, it would fail spectaculary.
I don’t know how much you know about vr but there is a vrmmo I played called Orbus. Because everyone is in vr can’t type for obvious reasons, the game uses localized voice chat to communicate with other players. The effect of this is that everyone was much more social. If you needed to know where to go for a certain quest or where a specific place in town was, you could go up to another person and talk with them. The first thing I did when I first played was me and 2 other new players and 1 experienced player used teleport spells to explore the world. It was mainly us running from higher level monsters but because we all had voice chat, it was a super fun social experience.
I love it in ESO and SWTOR, where you can play solo for the story, quests, etc. and when I feel like it, just by click of the button I can join others on their missions, dungeons, pvp etc. Guilds on the other hand, I always look for social guilds with active chat where you can talk about anything
ive been playing mmos since runescape was released. And even games that were made purely for social such as furcadia, habbo hotel, etc.. but it turns out i'm just as shy online as i am in person. so 20 years later i still haven't made a friend lol.
I remember the old social mechanics in the text based MUDS. Gemstone III only allowed you to gain so much experience before your head was "full" and you needed to rest for a while and let it sink in. That resting time was in social areas where people hung out an entertained each other or worked on crafting projects while socializing. I remember I could smoke a pipe and blow smoke rings. There were drinks with various effects at the bar. Bards could sing songs that helped the experience soak in faster. Dragon Realms had healers who were "empaths" that could only heal themselves, but they could also transfer people's wounds to themselves. People could get wounds of different kinds on all their body parts. The empaths needed to be in a safe place to do this kind of healing because they can kill themselves just by taking on too many wounds. When a person died, they would slowly loose experience over time as they decomposed until finally reaching permanent death. They needed someone to drag their body to a cleric and an empath. Young Clerics would cast spells to restore the experience and keep the body preserved until a higher level cleric could resurrect them. There were social areas that were like clinics where clerics and empaths hung out. People would drag bodies in from the field or come running in with a bleeding wound begging for a heal before they bled out. Man... that stuff created so much more social depth than just hack, slash potion potion... hack slash. It was helpful to have more than one character, though, in case you needed a drag to a cleric... lol. Gemstone and Dragon Realms are still active text games today. I wonder if they have changed much.
I like playing with friends, but I don't like playing with strangers. The things I dislike most from modern MMORPG's is being forced into group activities with strangers, and the competitive nature of games (trying to get the best items, trying to be the first ones to do something, trying to take down the hardest fights to prove your worth). What I like most about MMORPG's is the relaxed lifestyle in a second world where I can explore, craft, discover, grow my character and help friends do the same. I like challenging combat and dangerous locations, but being forced to fight a boss for 20 minutes with 20+ other players is extremely boring and unfulfilling. I've had more fun doing heroic dungeons in Burning Crusade with 4 friends than trying to go for server first boss kills in hardcore 25 man raiding in later years.
"Everquest is often referred to as the worlds prettiest chat room." As an EQ player back when it released through to about 2006 and then an additional 5 years in the progression servers...I've never once heard this. I mean...I get it and don't necessarily disagree with it. But I've never once heard it.
Point is you spent a lot of time in EQ resting and waiting which gave time to chat between players. The game was slow yet still needed everyone to play together to make progress. Modern MMOs are all silent solo go go go, no time to chat except to troll the newb.
As late as 2018, there was still pull to join a guild , so you could do content in game for groups. But most conversations in the guilds took place on sites like Discord, PS app, Facebook, ect. Fast forward to 2021, I'm seeing guilds that have x amount of players, but No interaction even on the Discord. So No point joining guilds anymore in most MMOs. Its saddens me to see this because the best of times for me was playing with people in my guilds.
Some of the best things (imo) that devs could do to correct this and increase the actual life in their games are 1. Add enough random phases and actions to boss fights so people cant just cruise control execute meta. You have to talk strategy and adapt in real time. 2. Remove global chat. Proximity chat and something like Linkshells from FF. Whispers require extreme proximity. 3. Stop matchmaking. Entirely. Put up things at least like Help Wanted boards or merc recruitment hangouts. IE - Player sets up as a merc for hire. They are paid by the party that hires them but they have no claim to loot drops unless the party decides to allow it. Merc gets other perks from a merc title/ranking system. 4. Add small passive things to the game. Card games, music and bands, ingame bards that sing of recent achievements but only if the successful adventuring party spends time at the tavern, etc. 5. Require consistent minimum membership from guilds to exist and give guilds reasons to interact beyond competition with each other. 6. Stop pushing the "You're the only one to save us" and "You're the One Neo" narratives. We are clearly not. 7. Put hard limits on Epic items but allow them to be tradable, tie names of notable past owners in and incentivize eventually giving it up after doing something amazing. 8. Add actual consequences. Stop catering to the purely power fantasy crowd. Putting hard limits on how many things someone can be good at. 9. Make items gained matter, not because you give everyone cookie cutter epic weapons, but because a favored weapon can be good later on. 10. Stop tying levels purely to power. Higher level could still mean a slight power increase but moreso give you increased options on how to play, and more than just the typical three skilltrees. Allow scaling down to play with new players and incentivize it with titles or other kinds of buffs.
Spot on, as always; very insightful. I think we all know that you can't force people to play a certain way. Today, there are just too many ways for people to play together online for MMOs to be able to dictate how people play. They had to change to survive, and, even so, some might say they're still just barely hanging on.
Here's the BIGGEST problem I have with your 4th point Josh : While I DO agree that it's POSSIBLE to meet people on Discord and Reddit and other social media to group up with, I also remember that when I started playing MMO's I'd love the spontaneity of meeting someone in the forest and helping them with a quest, then they'd help me and we'd add each other to a party, then when we'd say goodbye we'd add to friends list. It was all so natural and IN the game itself so it didn't feel weird. I tried playing with people I've met on Discord and Reddit but we either didn't "vibe" or it felt too FORCED... I know we can't go back now to the old days(although I wish we could) but it really felt much more natural to communicate in-game than to try and force a friendship or a casual quest adventure from a third-party website...
I really respect your opinions and the presentation of them in your videos. Thinking broadly and not reducing issues down to simple ideas and concepts is criminally underrated. Keep it up mate
Ironically the Group Finder was the thing that MADE me social in WoW. I was a solo player, just teaming with my RL friends when they came online. Then the Group Finder appeared and I could suddenly do Instances and get proper gear. Once I was properly geared, I could start doing Raids and suddenly being able to do end game content got me talking to the people I found more than once. Then I got into a proper Guild and could do weeklys but anytime I wanted to just be anti-social, I still had the Group Finder. It was a game changer for sure.
Plus it gives opportunities to meet the same people again, or if you went to dungeons together - recognition. Plus if you were summoned to a new dungeon, you might need help getting back, that causes social interaction as well.
The only mmo I have played is eso as a long time elder scrolls fan. I pretty much ignore everyone and play it like a single player game but sometimes I goof around with others and had some fun interactions and also some fun dungeon runs. I like to be able to play solo and than if I want have some fun with others but I like how eso is balanced towards both sides
I subscribe to the philosophy of "maximize the most unique feature", which is basically more fancy and general way of saying: "Movies should SHOW, not tell, because that's their unique feature that no other media until then had. Games should DO, not show, because that's their unique feature/ability that no other media has." According to this principle, MMO's unique feature is that it enabled, even motivated, emergence of unique virtual societies and relationships and dynamics in unique virtual worlds. And therefore - any mmo that is not tailoring itself towards this goal/with this in mind in the first place is an mmo that doesn't strive to be the best mmo it can be. (And included in that is the opinion that the game client itself should provide rich and useful communication tools of all kinds so that the players didn't have to resort to breaking immersion by having to go to external tools to supplement the experience. I mean... yes... external comms about any mmo will always exist, but in-game comms should be done in-game, leave the meta tools for the meta talks.)
Exactly. The strength of a MMORPG is the Massively Multiplayer Online, not the RPG. There's already plenty of way better single player games than anything a MMORPG can muster. What the MMORPG DOES have though, is the massive player-interaction-content possibilities of player-emergent gameplay. And instead of doubling down on that super strength they completely walked away from it, and now they wonder why they're all bland and forgettable single player games when actual single player games offer a way better single player experience.
@@ZapatosVibes >The strength of a MMORPG is the Massively Multiplayer Online, not the RPG. It's also it's greatest weakness. The amount of trolls that were empowered by being anonymous was through the roof. People didn't want to deal with it, which is why it wasn't uncommon for people's blacklists to be absolutely full. The other misstep I think MMOs did was not making us want to communicate, but making it so we _had_ to communicate for the full experience.
Hey Josh, I rarely comment on a video but always make sure to leave a like. This in particular touched me because I love playing dead games (catching up to past titles) and picking up a Tank class. Nowadays the shift to solo has impacted on the choice of a classes too: you'd better pick up a DPS to clear dgs fast and farm for yourself instead of being the one people rely on for a hard boss fight. I hear that all the time, and with high survivability being achievable through other methods other than pumping your Def stats, the solo shift changed the priority of your party members too.
You bring up a lot of good points about how the overall socialization around MMO's has only increased, even if mandatory in-game socialization has decreased. I like to chat and hang around in the MMO's I play, but I always found the "LFG, need healer and tank!" parts excessively dull and frustrating. I like having a group of players to run around with, but I want the option to be able to do stuff without wasting my time with fruitless searches. Besides, just because it's no longer mandatory to shout "LFG, need DPS" doesn't mean you *can't.* If nobody wants to assemble groups the old fashioned way, that tells me that nobody really wanted to do that in the first place.
I've been playing since the early days and I've always been a solo player as much as I can be. Yes, I've had friends, joined guilds, and even role played but I don't really play MMOs for that social aspect. I play them because I enjoy progression and striving for something and very very few games outside MMOs will allow you to put the amount of time and effort in that an MMO will. Amount of content and design is why I love and continue to play MMOs many many years later. Also, there is a certain sense of pride doing things by your self while others are doing it in a group.
100% this! Plus MMOs are basically these big open world rpgs with the benefit of other players that can help you on your way, simply by asking them a question ingame, or cooperate in some event. I like to play alone but i also like to help if someone needs it or be helped if i need it.
Because the things that require social interaction take time, and mmo's try to optimize time and therefore remove the social requirements of the games. Shouting in cities trying to form a group for a dungeon has turned into a automatic que that transports you instantly to said dungeon. You no longer have to talk to find party members, the game does that for you.
Well said sir. If I may add two points from my experience, when a game has been around for a long time a gap in player levels can appear. When the social interactions took place in the beginning, everyone was new and had the same goals. In contrast a new player coming in 5 years later would find an empty starting area because all the experienced players would be off doing the end game content. I found this to be true even in a guild, coming into an established group only let me hear about the fun times while i ran the newbie grind alone. The people were there, and i enjoyed the conversations, I was still in effect playing a MMO alone. Secondly is something that may not effect all MMO's but early ones like Ultima Online had expansions that added new content and new areas witch is great, but when that content is the only worthwhile thing for most players to do and a new player comes along that doesn't get that expansion.... the whole community is effectively locked behind a paywall.
I remember being a young teen playing EverQuest. Someone in the game once told me "This is just a glorified chat room." and that wounded me. I had grown to love my character and the bonds he created, and to hear it relegated to "chat" just rubbed me wrong. By taking social interaction out of the game, and onto social apps, you've removed yourself from the community. It used to be that you built up a reputation on your server, and shared memories with people who could relate to you on that server. Now, we post screenshots on Twitter or Discord to people who will likely never see us in-game, or interact with us beyond that post. There's no bond there. MMOs like PSO2 have been a real breath of fresh air for me because it is a very social game where characters hang out in the main hub lobby or café, share their stories and costumes. Show off emotes, ect. People can even come to your personal quarters and play games with you. I think it comes from the rewards that have been implimented for being social. Specifically in PSO2, you get FUN points when interacting with other characters which can be used to buy house items, costumes, ect. Incentivizing social interactions in-game is a great idea that I wish more MMOs would incorporate. Its almost recaptured that old EverQuest feeling for me.
Personally, I feel there is a demand for more social pushing game mechanics. I know personally its what I look for in games now, its part of why I have recently moved to RP realms, as I enjoy the mix of gameplay with social interactions in the world. when I play an MMO i want the immersion of a living world, and having gameplay elements that nudge players to interact helps make that world feel more real, it can be something simple like having a reason to trade in person rather than on the Auction house While I think it IS true players socialize outside of games more, it's not what I look for in an MMO. you can socialize about any type of game outside of it, and there are great communities that form around single-player games. I think striking a balance is key, you don't always want to have to socialize I understand that, but having a game gently nudge you out of your comfort zone and come out glad that you did is a GOOD thing, it's what is beautiful about MMO's and it's something only that type of game can bring, to abandon it almost completely alienates players that are looking to have that immersive social experience.
I am a Solo player but a Social Gamer. I often use Mabinogi as my Example as its The Longest MMO I played. I Was Primarily a Solo Player. But the Overworld had meaning. So People were often shuffling around dungeons and crossing paths. Usually you the most anyone would do is do a fine how do ya do and move on. Sometimes you and another person would Arrive at the same dungeon and you would Just Without partying up. Do the dungeon together since Most overworld dungeons where not instanced But Kills and Loot were still shared. People would also Gather in the City Sq's. I Spent HOURS just sitting and chatting with strangers. Just talking shit or hanging out with players who put time into Social skills, Like cooking and the Instruments.
@@BlueBD I had never heard of Mabinogi until now, and I have to say it feels like it it's very forward looking, but unsure exactly what it wants to be based on the trailer.
The social media aspect is a really good point, but... I guess it's just not the same as your avatar and another player's avatar encountering each other in the game organically. There's something magical about stumbling into a friendship due to you bonding together to overcome life's inconveniences. Alas, games generally criticized for being inconvenient, eh? Such is the dilemma.
When I think of all the best gaming experiences I have ever had, it was always with other people. From playing street fighter2 with my cousins to grouping with guildmates in EQ2, it was the social aspect that made it fun. I don't remember the game as much as I remember laughing and having a good time with other people.
When lfg systems first arrived in mmo, it actually allowed players to connect with more people. However, shit hit the fan when developers decided that it would be fun to add a time based mode to each dungeon/group content to make the game more engaging. Some developers did it with hidden mechanic, some did it openly, making the game less social because now everyone wants to just rush and rush and rush. And soon it was not enough to just rush, people started looking at gear score of their group mates, atk or def stat and so on and then kicking left and right. From this point, mmo became less and less social.
I guess I am a gaming anti-social type of guy. Sometimes I have played on line things with friends or groups - but mostly I want to game when I have time, not adjust to link up with others, and not have a dozen or more other people doing the same quest or using the same crafting station I want to do. I don't really play any MMOs these days except rarely dropping into Fallout 76 - where I go out of my way to avoid other players. (Well, I do drop stuff I don't need anymore in front of newbies when I run across them - but I never stick around to take them under my wing or such. Kinda stinks because the final end game and some of the daily event things require a group and I don't do groups)
Guild Wars 1 did it well. You could always play with others , or just play with your NPC / heroes and take control all of them. Vanquish areas for hours and do whatever you want, however you want. People could solo farm stuff and coordinated players had PvP and speed farming special areas. It all worked basically perfectly. ---- MMOs suffered from the social aspect, as its a shore to even get started and the required coordination and planing basically made the games into the social pitfalls that had many lose their jobs, disregard their non-digital social life and fail school ... it festered all the bad in humanity.
Several things shifted me from being a very social player to solo/casual. My work schedule meant I'd often be on when most weren't. Guilds I was in would end up losing players who did the crafting for particular items. Using group finders tended to end up with me grouped with the players who were intense about everyone having the best of the best gear even when it wasn't necessary. Over time, I found it more enjoyable to go solo with only relying on myself for crafting and taking my time with quests and exploring, and seeing what group content I could solo. I still socialize, but it's with a small group of steady people which works for me.
A well-considered and interesting discussion of a genre I've semi-regularly interacted with, but never fully understood. Thank you for taking the time. =)
The reason meta is there is because players don't want to do the whole struggle against the boss every single time. Your build can be massively shitty and do like 0 dps. This waste everyone's time. If you want to do a dungeon without players that just want to do the dungeon smoothly, just make a everyone welcomed lfg.
@@iamwritingrightnow8217 I don't see what is wrong with that. If You are not pulling your weight, theb You shouldn't join a serious group. Imagine you are doing a project in school. One person does little work. That workload is placed on someone else. Luckily, if you want to play your shitty solo build, mmorpgs has a field for that. Open world lets you play without judgement.
Biggest problem I had with this video is that the shift has made it so much harder for a lot of people to get into the social aspect of the game. I hate joining strangers discords and talking to them before I know them, I absolutely would prefer the initial interaction to occur in game and not just be immediately invited to a discord of some stranger I've never met. I believe this is why people think the social aspect is gone. It's so much harder to make those initial connections if you're not a super outgoing charismatic person now and this makes a lot of people feel really left out of the social aspects of the game and thus they complain that the social aspect is gone. This might be a case where that is their issue but imagine having anxiety about talking to new people and the only way to find new people is to join a discord where if it's something like a guild; you feel completely out of place because everyone already has their cliques. I'll tell you it's not comfortable, my social anxiety isn't even as bad as others and I still have a lot of issues making these connections. So I believe that the social aspects need to be focused on again, because frankly without them a good portion of the player base in any game wont be able to make connections with people in organic ways.
I don't know if it's because I started playing MMOs in the late 90s and early 2000s or if it's just a part of my personality but I never saw the appeal of the social part of MMOs. To me, having to trade with people was a huge chore because I had to interact and that interaction was mandatory in order for me to get a certain item. I never cared about chatting or looking for guilds, I just wanted to do my very comfy repetitive grind and acquire my items. Sure at the time I started playing in net cafés and had irl friends to talk to about the game but god have I ever despised the idea of talking to strangers in-game. And now, 20 years later, MMOs are better than ever. You can go to a city hub and talk to randoms if you want or you can just play your own game. You don't need to trade with anyone because you have the marketboard that makes it fast and hasslefree. And if you still want to talk about the MMO or things in general who play the game you can just join a discord server or go to reddit or even an anonymous image board. No one wants to be forced to do just one thing. MMOs need the option to be social AND solo friendly. Just like how Final Fantasy XIV has some exclusively social activities, like Blue Mage achievement hunting.
I remember that back in the day I played a lot of mmorpgs, never talked to anyone and I was just the lone wanderer farming in wierd areas that no one touched, I liked to see groups of people talking and farming, some times they Come to me when I was farming and ask me why I am alone? Then they invited me to their groups and I farmed a bit with them and we never talked again, I miss that feel of a real society, now this never happens.
Now I'm reminded why I quit Warframe, despite liking the gameplay. Hit a brick wall where everything needed me to be in a guild or clan and couldn't figure out how to progress further as a solo player.
@@boom-toby easy for you to say, not everyone has the same play schedule, thats one of the main problems solo players try to avoid by being solo players.
I only grouped up with people when I needed something leveled up quickly or wanted some Prime stuff, even then I just set my matchmaking to public and went to Helene, Hydron or did Sanctuary Onslaught or went to recruiting chat and found a group in a few minutes. Also the game doesn't really need you to be active in a clan, just to exist in it. Don't need to do anything
The key to this topic is that it has nothing to do with pick one vs another option! WOW's Cataclysm was a prime example of having it both ways (the first example would be the difficult dungeons that required team work even with randoms, but still used a dungeon finder).
Man, I just need to say, I love your videos. I found you two days ago while doing research (I'm on a team working on an MMO project--I'm doing game mechanic concepts, economy and social interaction concepts, sound engineering, and the OST) To be honest, I have no idea how I got involved in a team of such fantastic people. Anyway, your videos address points I've been researching, and it's awesome (Not to mention I've learned about new MMOs, and have gotten leads on places to analyze, from your videos) So, thank you for your amazing content!
![Can you Judge an MMO in just 1 hour? [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JpkGbVVLExw/mqdefault.jpg)
![Can you Judge an MMO in just 1 hour? [MMOPINION]](/img/tr.png)
![Why do Gamigo kill MMO's? - [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CPZkfYWp9uo/mqdefault.jpg)
Hi Asmongold, watching with everyone else live - 20th March
came here instantly to enjoy video because his chat is cancer.
Hey mate! Great vid!
@@DanSikelia thanks dan, loving watching the stream with everyone :)
Hi
Okay, dude.
The biggest problem with other players becoming just quickly replaceable members of your party is when kicking started being abused to get a slightly more performing player rather than removing someone abusing or annoying
Minmaxing zoomers
Im sure you heard this before.
You can make your own groups.
Make your own friends.
Make your own insert current members group name here.
Make your own fun, that's what the kick em group is doing they enjoy kicking
@@fayvampire That's more a problem with the community being garbage than the kick function itself.
That's why I loved to tank during vanilla and wow classic, I knew just how much power I had in the group decision making as a warrior tank and if the group decided to kick a player for stupid reasons, I could leave the group, form a new one and sometimes finish the dungeon before the other group.
@@mrillis9259 Even in your own group that start with randoms they can vote someone out without you in many mmos.
People tend to be removed more for being nasty than for being useless. Good enough at the role tends to be good enough. If the main people are good enough, then woohoo, the group can have more fun. Being top damage isn't an excuse to be nasty.
However, I am aware that I might just be playing with more decent people (as in being lucky).
I'm one of those weirdo solo players in MMOs who is sometimes told I should go play a single player game. And I do play those too. But what people forget is that there are systems and experiences you can only really find in a multiplayer game. A big thing for me is the marketplace economy of a game. I absolutely love crafting and lifeskilling or even just grinding mobs to get drops to trade and sell. Sure, some solo games allow the players to sell to NPC shops but it isn't the same as the supply and demand of a fluctuating marketplace. I also enjoy seeing the world alive with other players even if I'm not chatting. It simply feels good and helps with immersion.
Same here, I really enjoy the resource, crafting and economy sides of MMOs.
I tried out Albion online last year or so. I didn't play it for long, but my favorite thing to do was to buy goods low at one marketplace and sell high at the other. I didn't make a lot of money, I'd have been better off just gathering raw materials, but the sense of discovering my own way of contributing my small part to the larger living adventurer economy was really cool. Knowing that the resources I brought over would get sold and used, while managing to make a profit at the same time by paying attention to the fluctuating prices, made me feel like I had accomplished something in the world. And it wasn't completely trivial, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of prices and profits, noting which wares were currently worth trading. Nobody told me this was a thing you could do, I just discovered it to be possible.
To this day, Runescape is my favorite MMO for very similar reasons. I enjoy gathering resources and selling them, or buying raw materials and making a profit refining them.
Finding friends in a game always makes it better of course, but in an MMO, playing solo doesn't necessarily mean playing alone. Even when I play solo, the presence of other people is very important for my enjoyment of the game.
It’s such a weird criticism. You aren’t going to attack someone for going out to dinner alone, or walking on their own in the park when everyone else is there with a group. Why are you going to do the same in a game?
I don’t always like to play WITH people, but I like playing AROUND people. I’d argue that MMOs are the only genre that lets you play around other players without needing to team up, interact, or fight each other.
You should go play single player though. MMOs are designed to be social
I might be an introvert, but not even close to a hermit. While i enjoy the solitude of playing games by myself, it is also fun to cooperate with others. It is good to have the social aspect in the game, but not a constant requirement for clearing it.
Always giving more options in a game is a positive, specially if other can still play the game the way they want
@@smoke420chillandromeda8 thats why mmos have a chatbox. use it.
As someone who played a lot of the original Everquest, another big factor was downtime. You'd kill a monster then have to sit to meditate mana/health back for bloody ages. This is when everyone would start chatting in group or guild just to alleviate the boredom. Dark Age of Camelot had a bit less downtime and WoW much less, so you'd constantly be fighting and less chatting.
I can agree with that. The most social I've been on MMOs was when I was building my garrison in WoW or using an auto clicker in Runescape, when I would have several minutes of basically no interaction and yet despite knowing that I would prefer something with more interaction.
I remember my wpm went through the roof in early WoW days because it took some skill to have a proper conversation while running a dungeon.
Yep. During downtime there was nothing to do but talk. Even with buffs like KEI and Flowing Thought items, there was tons of downtime, and that was right in line with The Vision.
@@randzopyr1038 Yea I think we mmo players all learned emergency onehanded not even lookin at the kb typing quite well huh ;p
Which I am so glad there isn't 10-30 mins of downtime between fights in MMOS anymore, games like that feel like they don't value the time you are giving to it.
When I was a child in the early 2000's with nothing to do these features felt like they built a community but as I got older I realized they were just time sinks to keep you on game and keep their numbers up for investors.
When I started playing MMOs, I was a kid/teen and had tons of free time. When you can be present in the game for 6-8 hours every day, coordinating with other people isn't a problem.
But now when I find time to play, I just can't afford to waste most of it by trying to find people to play with, so the evolution of MMO towards more solo play is what allows me (and many other players who have gotten more real life responsibilities over time) to continue playing the genre I enjoy.
Exactly this
My brother talks about missing the old MMO days and I tell him I don’t and remind him that he has two kids now does he really want to get 4-5 people together and spam chat LF1 tank for 40 minutes and then having to just suddenly drop because you gotta handle the kids? Not only is the only fun you got to chat to people but you screwed those people over because now they need to find a tank and healer and the tank is gonna go with the other group that just needs a tank.
Life and the world has changed. Do I have great memories of playing social MMOs definitely. Do I lie to myself thinking I want that back like my brother? Definitely not. I have an hour maybe 2 if it is a game night I want to get on and have fun. Hell I don’t even do many traditional MMOs any more because if I want to play DPS I’m in queue for 20 minutes. Now I play Destiny 2 that just finds any other player and lets me kill some baddies. On the weekends when I have time I do a raid with my clan but without tank/healer getting a group is fast and painless.
@@Pixiwish ...what you're describing just sounds like it's time to pass the torch to the next generation, so they can have fun and create the same memories you have. But they can't, because games have changed. Teens and people without full irl lives have nothing now. There are casual mmos out there like guild wars 2 that adults with responsibilities and lives could play, but I guess that's just not good enough.
Another good thing about being able to actually play solo is the fact that people can level up solo, and prepare for a specific day when a whole group will be able to team up, take Warframe for example, everyone is able to upgrade it's own Warframe and its own weapons alone, this allows people to prepare for a bigger, for a boss battle, for a session through a more challenging map,
I think this is a similar problem to "too many MMORPGs are ruining MMORPGs": too many people, too many possible options to socialize with -> don't know what to choose -> don't choose any. And as someone else said in another comment, you need repeated exposure to people to even want them as potential friends/play-buddies. Having so many people all over the place means you will never have a reason to bond: lose one, find another, and move on. That's also where elitism can come into play, since wanting someone highly skilled becomes a reason to want someone specific, as opposed to any average player, so there is a reason to form a bond in that case. With randoms, though...why even bother? Why invest in a relationship just to find out they won't be playing as intensly as you (could be more, could be less), or at the same hours as you? Waste of time, really.
In short: play the way I want, when I want, or I'll find someone else who will. Ergo, I don't need you -> I'll go by myself.
It's also definitely a matter of time. As in, how much time people have to play. "Back in the day" people would easily play mmos for 6+ hours a day, maybe 10+ hours in the weekend. Nowadays a lot of those same people are adults, and at most might have around 4 hours to play. Often even 2 or less. With so much less time people don't want to deal with time wasters. Be that taking ages to find a group, or dealing with people that make mistakes and cause a party wipe. Hence why in WoW these days, for PUG raids, the gear they require you to have is often equal or higher than what you'd get from the raid you're going to do.
not enough quality ones tho imo & most are ageing ! but most are diff genres/styles which helps decide what 1 or 2 to stick to
@@Sanquinity sorry to comment on a 6 month old comment, but even the people who are on the game all day wind up thinking like this.
That doesn't make a lot of sense considering older mmos also had lots of people.
I for one am glad that mmos cater towards the solo player more, because I always end up playing them solo since I live in Australia and very few mmos have servers centered here in Oceania. So its much easier to get through content and join international friends in end-game content when I don't have to waste time looking for the few other players playing at the same time as me xD
Hey Stella.
Greetings from GR.
There is one design shift I noticed that does hurt social interaction. Combat has gotten much faster and more involved while time between combat has shrunk. I really noticed this when I started playing FFXI. In XIV and WoW, the longest you go without pressing a button in normal combat is 2.5 seconds. There’s no time to chat in a fight, and there’s no reason to stop between pulls beyond rezes and mana. Eureka in XIV felt particularly bad because of this (the chain system meant you were punished for stopping).
Compare that to XI where combat is so much slower. There’s no filler button or combo to spam, auto attacks are the filler. You’re weapon skills take time to build up and your abilities all have cooldowns. You don’t need to reposition anywhere near as much. And after some combat, if you don’t have an MP regen effect, you’ll need to take a bit of a break to restore it. It also helps that not everything has sight aggro when reaching the first expansion (seriously, the amount of aggro enemies in XIV and WoW expansions is ridiculous). In XIV and WoW, I talk in between doing stuff. In XI, I talked while doing stuff.
I noticed the same thing, we used to chat furiously didn't matter if it was grinding mobs for XP or raiding back in 99-'02 during EQ's heyday, everyone would plant themselves in a spot and you wouldn't have to budge your character for the half hour it'd take to burn a boss down or several hours of mob grinding, just occasionally hit a cooldown or heal and chat like it was an AOL chatroom. These days when I hear someone complain about the lack of chatting during a dungeon run I'm like, "When do you have time to type anything?", these days there's no down time, it's run from point to point at full speed, using a array of abilities with quick cds to burn the trash along the way, kill the boss, loot the chest, rinse and repeat. The only real chance at chat is after killing the final boss before everyone hits the exit button.
lol imagine wanting combat to be even slower than it already is.
Well, voice chat will have solved that easy and i think ppls do voice chat since 2000s
@@MrNhlam123 That's great for when you are already part of a guild or some sort of group that does activities together. But, for the vast majority of any given playerbase, simple text chat will be the main source of communication with your fellow players.
@@khankhomrad8855 So, what you're saying in essence is:
People: "Communication is made difficult".
Also people: "I don't want to use the facilitating tools to communicate".
Saying the socialization moved is a massive difference though. If MMOs used to be a good place to find people to socialize with, but now you need to find those people elsewhere and can then play MMOs together and socialize elsewhere, MMOs are now no different from any other multiplayer game. And in general that's like, a massive difference with very far-reaching consequences, not a simple difference
You have a point. But, how do MMOs evolve past just being social? Bc like you said, I can socialize with people while playing the Witcher and it be just as much interaction as an MMO. I think they would have to focus on a reliance to your team or group. But even then, how does that differ from an mmo-lite like destiny.
@@ortiznikko I think the industry should take a look at survival games... They are much like MMOs, dedicated server maintaining that world alive, you can certainly solo play a survival game with no problem but it is really much better and easier with a group. That's why coop survival games are making a huge success, even more than the old pvp ones.
I'm not saying it should be a gather resources and maintaining base kind of game (I don't want to be worried of losing something while offline) but look at how they work and how it allows people to solo and socialize in the same environment without compromising each type of player. It doesn't force social interactions and at the same time it doesn't isolate players.
Most MMOs just don't have the chat features on par with something like Discord.
I'm a pretty slow typer, and it's simply faster and more efficient for me to talk to my guild in Discord or a party chat.
I agree 100%
@@raulzilla I do like how survival games work like that. But, i think, you would have to keep the server size really small to make it have that same feel.
I would have never thought to think about social media having to do with the decline of MMOs, but now it makes sense.
Exactly, now you can talk and play with your friends in any game, not just games built around that experience.
I think social media has a lot to do with the decline of everything really.
@@Sabersquirl While I see your point... I've grown up making friends IN MMO's and now joining a discord server to make friends, to THEN play the game is so foreign and scary to me that I just can't do it...
I guess when you play and chat there's a lot less emphasis on chat and you can get to know someone through the shared experience which works well for me, while sole chatting does not
@@socklips7655 It does also narcisstic behavour
@@knightmer3645 exactly.. my social anxiety doesn’t allow me to just “join a discord server and join a call” before this happened much more naturally in mmos you’d find someone and you’d just have a nice chat and have fun.. now it’s so “you gotta work for it yourself on purpose” kind of thing.. wich frankly as an introvert doesn’t work.. especially when you tend to not like actually introducing yourself.. in an mmo you can be anyone or anything where as in that discord server that’s just not the case..
I think having social "classes" and social skills would go a long way towards building a social scene. Star Wars Galaxies had a plethora of instruments, each of which provided different buffs to listeners.
This created player bands, with dancers and pyrotechnics, but it also got people to cluster up and interact. The bars were packed, roleplayers and guilds bragged about their bands.
Doctors healin in the hospitals, Dancer and musicians in the Cantina's. Travelling to well-known player towns with well-known player vendors to buy your favourite composite armour. I miss Galaxies :(
@@ShadyLurker16 Yeah, my favourite MMO community (provided you stayed out of the BH/Jedi forums, anyway). Even the "well, Ahazi still isn't up, let's allt make a fat white wookiee band on some other server to pass the time".
I did most of my lot trading with fat white wookiees.
@@ShadyLurker16 Honestly? That's what I think other MMO's needed to steal from Galaxies. I made a Doctor/Dancer so I could fix all the ill's of people and enjoyed that game the most in two situations.
1. When I would have someone come in to be healed and I would ask them how they got the damage while the healing went on. I'd end up with a cluster of people talking, most already fully healed, virtually every time.
2. The rare times I made a house call. A character with no combat capacity being hauled into a deadly place to fix damage that would otherwise strand someone out there. A REAL escort quest, complete with coordination by the people who hunted me down because one of them had chatted with me the week before. A once in a life time experience of a group tanking a de-facto raid boss while I fixed damage on the other group in the battle area itself despite not being a part of their group, guild or anything. When they raped that game to make a wow clone, I was done and sad to see it happen.
@@Sorain1 YES!!! I remember escorting someone to their mining equipment because they were pure crafters. It was one of the most memorable experiences ever, and it was so natural.
@@BoogerLeader Potentially Ashes of Creation will have a bit of that, though in that case your escort target will likely be a little less useless in combat then I was at the time. (I had decent armor just because I knew I might need to do a field medic call, but still.)
Your description of a solo player who wants to be a part of the shared world without needing to interact with others fits me perfectly. Hell even in the real world I enjoy being around other people just as much as I enjoy being alone, but I just don’t have that need to be social with the people I’m with.
I'm so glad to have been a teenager during the early days of online games. The "world" was much smaller and everyone knew each other back then. I remember spending hours just chatting and laughing with my guildmates, learning about their lives, where they lived in the world, and thinking those days would never end. I still remember the names of many of my guildmates from 15-20 years ago, but don't really remember any of my guildmates from BDO, Destiny 2 or any recent games I've played :\
The world felt more smaller, because gaming wasn't as mainstream as it is now. Way less people were playing MMOs back then.
@@allthatishere Gaming was very big then, but mostly off-line, because most *people* were off-line (or had strict caps on internet speed/bandwidth).
@John Philip When you're a kid/teen, you're just more receptive to making new friends in general. Your brain is basically empty of relationships, and you have a lot more free time to fill. Older you get, you have less cognitive space & leisure time. So if someone - or some activity - is going to gain a precious spot, then they have to earn it, essentially.
Agreed. Tho recently I've moved all my gaming time to VR and it feels very reminiscent of how it was back in the days, communities are small, everyone is exploring the newness of it all and the games are far more about the social aspect of the game than amazing graphics/min maxing. The gaming landscape is just changing and while I think it's in a bit of a slump at the moment, with VR video games will likely get much more social in the coming years.
True!!! OMG I remember back when I played Lunia and I was in that awesome guild with our own forum. And there were hard hitting real life posts there. Those friendships were deep! Actual conversations. It was so awesome. I get it. These days it can be just like that, yes. But back then you were FORCED to group up and that made it easy for the awkward, shy, introverted players. These days I feel so lost inmost MMOs.
The most social i've ever felt in a mmo was in a small community mmo or ones without global chat/whispering. To talk to people you had to be be near them. It was great, you actually made friends, traveled together, visited etc.
Because they different Social interactions. The the old Social interaction on MMO's are interpersonal you got to know the people your with Talk Traded and played with them all the time. The social interactions of CZcams, Twitch and Reddit are parasocial for the most part although the community gets a personality it personality bases of crowd involvement and that stuff is great it was makes sports events so fun. Discord can be a little interpersonal Discord is the closest to what MMO's use to be in that your just hanging out and talking but it is not running a shop and talking with friends or being out in the world and getting a friend call to meet up. Discord is similar but it just a chat box.
I think that nowadays there is a information and communication overflow in so many aspects of life. Social media kinda became a mandatory part of everyones life, but managing social media accounts, posting this picture or that picture and contacting 20-30 different people every day is exhausting. Why don't play a game and grind for an hour to shut your brain off. Wait, I need to look for people again? That random guy wants me to join a discord? There is so much social social interaction from 9-5 every day, why does it need to continue when I just want to relieve some stress?
play single player game then
The reason I stopped socializing in MMO's is because the chat was 99% toxic. If every time you log in and try to chat with random players, and just get called horrible things, you just stop talking. When you play a game, and you watch chat fill up with toxic nonsense, you stop reading chat. So, ultimately, MMO's social interactions died because people stopped having fun talking/reading in chat. When this happens, people stop finding new people to play with and either leave the game, or try to solo the game. It's what happened to me. I became a solo player, I didnt start out as one. Trying to be a non-solo player now, is incredibly uncomfortable. There is a lack of trust that has been built up over the years, and those walls are not coming down easily.
Same here. There's a lot of political, anti-American, vitriolic, hostile, uninformed nonsense. (Kind of like everything online now.) I miss when people just enjoyed the novelty of being able to talk to anyone, anywhere. For a short period of time, online was a nice little niche for the introverts among us. Just a tiny window where everything was great. Miss those days...
Same, especially in gw2. And there's no point in arguing with toxic players, because you're just wasting time and energy, which could be managed better. I laugh at those SJWs who get so fired up about someone being toxic, and fight fire with fire. Or the main reason why I don't get on discord for raids in WvW is because it's usually filled with sexist pigs and racist fucks who are horny over that one girl in the party or make so many toxic remarks about literally everything. It's not a fun environment and it's much better to just listen to music and do your thing. The fact is that the gaming community as a whole is very diverse and amongst us there are a lot of toxic players who don't wanna admit they're being toxic and pretend they're just having fun at the expense of others.
@@viscousgoo2021 My days in older mmorpgs like Perfect World, Lucent Heart, Terra and probably any other older mmorpg out there (since i played them all) were so much more peaceful and meaningful because there were MODs or Admins moderating chats sometimes and people weren't as toxic because they feared the ban. Nowadays in Gw2 i haven't seen a single GM in 5 years and Guild Leaders are usually toxic themselves as well.
"those walls are not coming down easily." OH BOY, do I understand that. I have various walls built up for... reasons. And most people I run into in games makes me glad I've built them. Especially back when I played Call of Duty, let me tell you most of my walls were built because of the Call of Duty community.
And it all fits in with what he said that players have become numbers and replacable. They treat you as toxic because they know that they don't need you or your help and most likely will never even see you with all the merged realms, sharding, instancing, and all that bullshit that are in modern MMOs
When I first started playing MMOs, I was super social and had a blast. As I got older, I started being more personal and I made my social circle smaller. The same thing happens to a lot of people in games. It's more like the same reasons that "MMOs aren't the same as they used to be", when in actuality the social systems are still there. Most people have changed, and so have their lives.
On the other hand, I refuse to ignore MMOs just because I'm not super social. I play for the mechanics, the content, and sure enough the players. I like the idea of others playing and the OPTION to play with them. I chat now and again but I like playing the game first and foremost.
I've moved pretty much entirely to solo play in MMOs now. The thing is that the gameplay aspect of MMOs are fun. The provide a progression system, and combat mechanics that you don't really get anywhere else. So it's fair to say why play an online game if you don't want to talk to anybody, but also remember that there isn't exactly an offline version of WoW you can play. I think there is a pretty easy balance to strike. Endgame hardcore content should require this type of communication, and the open world questing or crafting does not.
I think your last video on guides is worth mentioning too since that plays a huge part. If you wanted to know where to get a certain item, how to beat an encounter, or the best way to build your character you had to go find someone who knew and ask them. Nowadays people get upset at you for wasting their time when you can google all the answers yourself. Even end game raids can be completed with no planning or talking because you already know your job and exactly what you need to do before you've ever even seen the fight. We don't need to talk about how we're going to manage aggro or how we can manipulate the fight to increase our damage. No, you're the tank, this is what all tanks everywhere will do just do it.
every time I watch one of your videos I just want to work on my indie MMO 😢
Hopefully you will make one then that successful if you watch videos like this.
@@FlamespeedyAMV That would be sweet!
What game is that?
Every MMO even indie ones on steam I try to follow.
Good luck to you my friend!
I complain about MMOs being less social these days but none of this "I want to sit around and chat with people all day" stuff. I'm talking about the fact that older MMOs required more strategy and communication to progress in. I find myself enjoying games like CSGO and League of Legends more than most MMOs now and not because I like the gameplay but because it actually feels like a team effort with ongoing collaboration and strategy. Anytime I run WoW dungeons now it's a purely mechanical process. You just execute the mechanics and leave without saying a word. Anyone who actually says like "hey, should we try this?" is immediately flamed for "not knowing the fights", etc.
That's information era issue more often than not. There's no sense of discovery anymore. Infact if you "dare" to discover the mechanics yourself, prepare the lube because you are going to get flamed for not following "the guide". Now there's only the META chase. It happened to old MMOs as well. I recently downloaded Lineage 2, quite an old game. I downloaded a private server of it for an older expansion, the one I used to play back in the day. Well ... the game plays differently now. Apparently with higher rates people have figured out a meta that just makes the game disgusting. You either meta slave or you lose 9/10 times.
@@xtremescript I play off meta in LoL these days because it is fun. I get frequently flamed. I get what you mean. I'm from the old school era of mmo players as well.
@@Voidwatcher Since when LoL became a mmo?
@@Zhay_ never said it was.
This. Collaboration means nothing if there isn't something to overcome by its merit. If the teamplay isn't fun because the odds are stacked against us, then why am I even online?
It’s not just MMOs, it’s life. People in general now are less social than ever regardless of social media.
Or maybe even BECAUSE of social media. ;)
Last week I logged in to runescape after a long break. People are still social and approachable at least on the f2p side
@@SiisKolkytEuroo True, but it's definitely not like it used to be. I remember people standing near the fountain in Varrock to show off their fashion scape and chat or how house parties weren't about the portals or the gilded altars, but the whole purpose of it was to socialise.
@@biikuajet Disagree with that heavily. It's the same situation, where people are just as social and possibly even MORE social, but it's in different places. Online, it's much easier to talk to others, but if you're a solo gamer you might forego lengthy conversations in an MMO for the sake of making more personal progress, and then go to places like Twitter later to have that socialization in whatever dose you feel you need.
@@BlueSparxLPsIn my experience most people spend more time on reddit talking about games like POE or Warframe than actually playing the game.
I mean solooing world/raid bosses feel amazing, even if it takes 15 min instead of 2mind (for example) with a group the fact that you alone with your dedication, skill and tactics was able to take down a boss dsigned for groups is a rewarding and fulfilling deed.
A lot of us played in a guild back in the days. We raided so much. Eventually you have no more motivation to do that 3-4x a week. After so many years I play it only solo without a guild.
that's what I love about GW2, you do social events without beeing actually social active, you wandering around the map, participating in events without having the need to communicate to anyone.
I think people just got sick of talking to strangers, its like the honey moon period of Internet interaction has faded 😂
Exactly, I rather just chill with my "guild" in FF than trying to gather strangers in a group, it's a very enjoyable experiance just chatting with the people you want to while waiting on the groupfinder do its job, and should it take too long for it to find strangers, there's allways someone ready to help in my guild.
After work I may not want to talk to anyone, so forcing me to do so to enjoy a game I play to relax is pretty bad imo.
@@ItsBoyRed im sort of on the fence tbh, im a massive fan of Classic WoW so I like that the older games do promote a sort of comradery amongst your server mates that MMO's are lacking now days, it was nice redoing raids with people and names I recognised, seeing the new gear they got since the last time I saw them, I think it definitely adds to the experience.
There's also the event of playing with randoms who might suck ass. So, would you rather be just stuck there with terrible players or with friends you know are at least competent? I don't even play mmos so I mean this for online games in general
@@Walamonga1313 the random people you gather in the city's are random too, and they could be just as bad.
The best way is to be part of a guild lol
@@ItsBoyRed yeah true, but usually that person would have garnered a reputation for being a useless fucker on the server, from people grouping up with them before.. thats the good thing about a constant server is people actually build a reputation and arent protected by the "Dungeon Finder" systems we see today 😂 if someone sucks, or has sucked in the past then there's probably someone there that will warn you about that guy haha.
I really dislike using voice chat options. I fundamentally disliked/still dislike using Skype, TeamSpeak, Discord, etc. Its very hard for me as an mmo player who primarily uses in-game chat to truly engage in the social aspect of these games, as less and less people are using in-game chat now days. You join a guild? Sometimes they even REQUIRE you to have discord. I hate it.
Wouldn't it be more beneficial to use voice chat at times that require it? People use voice chat because it's easier to communicate than the in-game chat. not that there's anything wrong with using the in-game chat, but it takes time to type, that's why people prefer voice communication: the ease of just saying words and not having to type is already a blessing within itself.
I still communicate with people using the in-game chat and have fun, but I prefer to use voice communication because it's easier to communicate with people. I love to roleplay and people prefer to use in the in-game chat for roleplaying because that's just how it is.
Another thing is that it is easier to organize events and times on these external programs. Discord is exceptional at using its chatroom functions for organizing raids, dungeons, etc; It helps keep people online outside of the game. (of course there are downsides to this, but there are other downsides to solely using in-game chat.)
Sure, a game might have a pin board for organizing times, but not everyone goes to check it. sometimes people miss the announcement that there's a new guild raid on Sunday, whereas using discord, you can easily ping everyone and the ping is there for the rest of time until checked, or they turned off pings for everything, which is quite unreasonable since they'll need at least the pings for guild announcements.
Again, I am not saying it's wrong to solely use the in-game chat, but wouldn't it be more beneficial to use discord?
@@luckneh5330 because in-game chat is more immersive. with in-game chat, you can imagine any voice when talking to someone while reading a text chat. while hearing other people's voice ruin the immersion. imagine this, you are talking with a female elf character but you hear their voice they are middle age neckbeard.
@@luckneh5330 Some people don't like talking too much or might be afraid their spoken English is bad. Reading English as a 2nd language is pretty simple, but speaking and listening is another thing entirely. Especially if you couple it with a person who just doesn't like talking in the first place.
Discord is not _fundamentally_ a voice chat platform. In fact I haven't used voice chat in almost any of the rooms I've joined, and even if a clan wants you to use it, it's enough for you to be there and listen in as long as it's not your job to shotcall. Mostly it's just a chatroom with a lot of knobs and levers for the server controllers.
@@Hotshot2k4 If you are not using the voice portion of it, what advantage it has over in-game guild chat? Maybe the ability to ping people? Or read backlogs if necessary? For just chatting in-game chat would actually be better then imo because you don't need to either use your phone or constantly alt+tab between the game and the discord chat.
There's another one you missed: the control of community. Smaller servers, not allowing changing of name or server, and taking longer to level all made Everquest a very tight community. There were celebrities on servers, you knew and recognized people and remembered their names from grouping or events. You'd pass by someone and remember them. Making bigger, more flexible servers meant you'd not often remember names unless they were in your guild. You'd not recognize characters because they might not be the same race next time you saw them.
after 12 years of playing mmos , ive always been alone. SOLO STYLE!!
That's sad, you can have great fun playing a game, but you can have even more fun sharing that with others.
@@longleaf0 For some people, interacting with others actively makes an experience worse. The stress, observing of unwritten social rules, time and scheduling commitments that clash with their real lives, and more, make that side of MMOs a nightmare.
Some people just like playing in a world populated with other people, perhaps interacting by putting their goods up for sale in the auction house, or contributing to their NPC kingdom's influence over an area by clearing out monsters, solo... and while these players might as well play single player games, single player games rarely get updated content, new classes, new monsters, new quests, etc, released on a monthly-quarterly rate... often just getting bug fixes past the release. MMOs let you build one character for years, and explore an expanding world... whether one wants to do this in a group or solo has entirely different motivations and impacts on the player.
So, some people may love being around others, while others enjoy being on their own... (some may know these distinctions as extroversion vs introversion, and neither is good or bad, just different - however, most of this world is built around extroversion, such as getting jobs and junk... leaving introverts, who generally like gaming, also not finding fun when forced to group even in their recreational time.)
@@longleaf0 I would love playing with others but finding the right person to play with is the most difficult task on this planet and I never found anyone in the past 2 decades. Every time I tried to team up with someone was one hell of a stressful experience which I wont put myself through anymore.
@@longleaf0 Different tastes.
You always have a great perspective on these aspects. Ever since I found your videos I have been trying to remold my playstyle towards enjoyment of gaming rather than efficiency(to an extent). It's been very helpful and even improved my skill in a way. Still very hard to resist the temptation of optimal progression but definitely have a different outlook on it now.
I can't talk for others, but i'm now 32 and i just want to play by myself or if i absolutely have to group with someone, i just do it because it's mandatory, and only do the polite stuff like saying hello and goodbye. I used to be social when i was playing WoW back in high school and University, but since i started working and have a lot less time for myself, i just want to spend it however i like, play at my own pace and not have to deal with others. I played WoW for about 2 months before and after Shadowlands launched, now i'm mostly playing RDR2 Online and ESO, and i do that almost entirely solo.
Hey I am also a solo player, looking for a new mmo to enjoy. How's the ESO solo experience in your opinion?
@@remondx8880 If you get ESO+ (the subscription) it's a blast, you can enjoy it for a few months for sure, that is if you like questing and professions and treasure hunting and stuff like that :D It has SO much content, it's a bit insane! It can take you 20+ hours to do all the quests, solo dungeons, rares and exploration stuff in any zone, and there are over 30 such zones :o
I'm totally a solo player. But I love being in a world that is full of other players interacting together. About a month or so ago I was running through Bree on the Brandywine server in Lotro and came across The Whute Owl Band having a concert - a band of hobbits just out there having a blast putting on a show. It's awesome 👌
I remember the day the dungeon finder came out in WoW. I had a big friends list full of people I often played with, people I had known for a long or short time, who I knew were reliable people to do dungeons with. Within the matter of days, that list became useless. Even if I contacted people on that list, nobody would be interested in grouping up, because the dungeon finder tool was just more convenient. It only took about a month until the only people I still talked to were the ones I already raided with. MMOs started dying to me on that day, I still played one more patch, but it couldn't keep me interested anymore and I basically dropped MMOs entirely after that.
Interestingly enough I found WoW to be more "social" on retro servers than on Retail
Idk why but retail mentality is just so devoid of social interaction in lieu of "go next raid fastfastfast"
have you played classic? like peps want full world buffs for this boss a couple of friends just duoed like lmao. The community is pretty much the same in both games.
@@SH4D0WBattousai Ye, that's why I stated retro servers not classic (which I also consider part of retail)
When u Design your game like a treadmill people will behave like that.
Hello Christian Acquasanta, may I ask if by "retro" servers you meant "private servers"?
The perfect game for me makes all content available to solo players but makes room for benefits if you team up with people. I hate having my experience depend on the chances of finding the right people at the right time
And hard enough that you only need three people at maximum. In TBC I could not do some group quests because despite being social it is hard to get 4 more people asking for help. But needing only half of them is doable.
Changing systems to attract solo players can also drive away the more social players. Game companies take that trade because there's more solo players these days. However, solo players will exhaust the game's content and then move on, because the game itself is the only thing keeping them there. Social players will exhaust the content, but in many cases stick around and continue to socialize. Focusing on solo players means keeping up a grueling pace of content release, or else you lose them. I feel that's why people sticking around in older games that haven't had any new content tend to be more social, because it was never about the content for them. Solo focused games look great for short term numbers, but social games have longevity and a loyal playerbase. It's a case of $1000 now or $2000 spread out over the next month. Execs choose the immediate reward every time.
Yeah even Wow has felt the bite of this... It's still riding the hype from it's heyday where it was more of a balanced experiance, but has been dying a slow death ever sense, a death that has only accelerated in recent years.
Yes the instant gratification is powerful in all aspect of life.
true I was playing on the shatar wow server.
and it was fun because I was part in a RP guild that 2009 was invited to our server RP council (where the bigger active RP guilds meet to decide the servers cannon like what guild owned what how ingame big any guild was) we had guilds whit 1000 active players but lore wise it was 50 peaple and one shop in stormwind.
another guild had 200 active member lore wise we had about 2500ish member and ran a mid sized military base somewhere.
and it was fun because when the latest content was dried up by our servers PVE elite player guilds they left untill the next thing came up and that was a few weeks/month where none of there member would log in at all the same as on the PVE and PVP servers.
RP player we whent into over drive maybe some of the RP guild also would finish up the content right as the next content would release didn´t really care RP was on the agenda whit PVP and PVE been secondary.
Someone finally said it
They've become less social as they've become more competitive, imo. When the objective takes priority, people don't interact unless they're required to in order to succeed and even then it becomes entirely about "what do you bring to the table?". It started with clearing content, allowing people to stand out but wielding gear no one else had. Then the race to world first became something to lord over people who DID wield the same gear as you. People who initially come together through impersonal systems like guild applications, parse logs and raid achievements become friends seemingly by accident over time. It's great when it works, but those friendships can also fall apart via the same systems when people find they're no longer accomplishing objectives in one group over another. Your "friends" become your online coworkers/ex-coworkers and little else.
Exactly. It‘be seen the same in Adventurer’s League DnD. Interchangeable objective-focused and resource motivated players are … well honestly, they’re pretty close to mercenaries.
Ironically, that might be a more realistic take on fantasy adventurer as opposed to a tight-night party.
One of the reasons the socialization has shifted to platforms like Discord, I think, is this: you can put those messaging platforms on your phone. You can't put the game there. So, you can communicate with your friends and social circles wherever you are. When your social sphere from the game is on a 3rd party platform, you can use it to chat and prepare for things hours before you log on. These chat platforms are more broadly available than MMOs so it is easier to reach people on short notice, or while they are out running errands, at work, or at school. In my WoW guild, for example, we have a discord that everyone uses. We go there to share funny pictures and pet photos, but we also use it to plan raids and dungeon runs long before the planned time for them. We can then use the voice channels while doing the activity and actually talk with each other. The game does have a voice chat service, but it's subpar.
It has moved to discord cause it's more convenient in almost every single way.
Simple as that.
And not to mention how So many MMOs don't even have a game chat.
Ok now I'll read your comment lol.
Thing is we've always had ventrillo/teamspeak/mumble/raidcall and now discord, it's just games don't point you in that direction early and they have realized that to get to endgame faster the more solo you are the easier it is to manage. It's not a shift of where the social is, it's a shift of why the social is.
@@sciencethygod Non of those really took off like discord has though. Even people who aren't gamers use discord a ton.
Like people who have discord tend to expect you to already have discord, heck even xbox lets you link your discord to your live account. It has more than thrived because it went well beyond the gaming stratosphere and every corner now uses it.
@@MasudaOfKorriban well ya discord became huge because it focused on the community part, and I think twitch and reddits growth helped with that. Like raid call had all the features discord has and it still didn't do as well. Take tcgs for instance, magic has had many digital games and is still one of the best, but then came along hearthstone that totally dominated the market, right time right place right tweaking of the genre and the marketing. Same deal different object.
Still doesn't change that its the why that has changed, why we socialize in games has changed over the years.
@@sciencethygod Raidcall also ran worse, had worse advertising, and did actually not have the same features at the time that discord had.
It also marketed itself as a gaming app. Which then began to hurt it's growth as well.
Same goes for most of the similar apps as well.
I think the main reasons why discord did so well was because it advertised itself to everyone, ran better than the other apps right off the bat and was making quick improvements the others couldn't keep up with.
one thing that made mmos less social for me is phasing technology. the servers ability to pull in players from different servers at any time to make your current world seem more populated if it was on the downfall.
This, absolutely this. Phasing removed so much of the communication for me as anytime i met someone i thought was cool, they were on another server and we would rarely see one another. Or if we were on thr same server, theres the chance we wouldnt be in the same PHASE on the same server even if at the same place / time. You had to know they were on to join them to be in the same phase to see them.
I actually mentioned this in another one of these videos.
The fact that you get phased out woth other people from other servers, or players are tossed around in to Shards/Sub-Servers makes it very hard to know when you'll encounter the same player consistently.
It really doesn't do much good for the social aspects if you know that the players you meet are likely to be never seen again.
Aren't there such things as mega servers nowadays? Why can't developers make 1 massive server for 100k people or whatever the amount is in each region? Why not have variable server caps. I don't understand how this hasn't become a staple in mmo development. Server death/merges kills games.
@@alainsauve5903 Absolutely they could - they just don't prioritize it. I remember that has been asked for in WoW for nearly a decade now. Blizzard's best _excuse_ given is that then there'd be name conflicts and players might lose their desired name. Within seconds, people chimed back with the most obvious answer - give us surnames... like so many other MMOs do already... still waiting for them to care...
It is right. Game servers are now very poorly capable of hosting many players. For example, games like GTA SA could hit 100 players or more in a single server, while GTA V barely reaches 25 (and hopefully it doesn't disconnect for unknown reasons).
I don´t know abput others but i when i say "MMO's have become less social i mean less that players don´t talk as much with one another but how they do it. Mostly it is just a cesspool of flaming and dickmeasuraing. A player isn´t a person anymore but rather just a number. That is the sad part about it.
I agree, I've personally moved to playing my mmos solo or with friends I know in real life because one misstep in a raid or instance and you just get trashed on. No helpful comments or coaching to help the raid be successful, just rage, flaming and kicks.
@@kyleorigliosso2276 This isn't nearly always the case. This is mostly in the hardcore raiding guilds imo. (at least in WoW) In the casual raiding guilds I've been in tons of mistakes were made time and time again, and the "offending" players would patiently be guided. Up to the point where even I started thinking "ugh, just remove this guy already! He never pays attention to tactics, never walks out of bad stuff on the ground, and just tunnel-visions on doing damage!"
Now in hardcore raiding guilds. My younger brother has been in those. In those it's usually "You made this mistake twice now! You've been able to read the tactics and still make stupid mistakes! You're kicked from today's raid!"
"Oh look at my high-tier raid gear! If you would have grinded the same amount as me, you wouldn't have a hard time beating this boss!" - Yeah, sorry not sorry. I was busy having fun people from my guild, decorating someone's house, or helping other's with crafting the gear they requested.
Everquest isn't like that.
@@Sanquinity Personally, I'd punch that raid-leader in the face and walk away from the guild permanently.
IMO, MMORPGs were supposed to remain a niche genre. Something like PnP RPGs are today.
You know how everybody says people were more neighborly back in the day? That's cause those people sometimes needed each other. Sometimes you needed a cup of sugar, a couple of eggs, help getting a couch up the stairs, whatever the case may be. Those little challenges helped build comradery. Something similar happened with old school MMOs. Having to work together builds bonds in people. Since the games have been made less social, those bonds don't form quite as naturally. Sure, you can seek them out, but it's not the same. Now what I'm talking about isn't something that appeals to all players, hence my earlier statement. This is a genre that simply wasn't made to be mass market without compromising what are, IMO, it's most appealing aspects.
"MMORPGs were supposed to remain a niche genre" Those normies ruining everything again.
Melding the solo and group has been bad. It's been what's happening ever since the decline of the MMO. They are trying to appeal to the broad audience while pleasing nobody. The solo player can't play alone and the group player can't be social. We have a solo rpg followed by people sitting around in 1 town while 99% of the world is uninhabited doing content with strangers, there's something wrong with this picture. Liking it is the same as liking fast travel. Going from your town and preparing to set out from land sea and air to another zone, meeting people along the way, and forming a group to do content with was the soul of the MMO. And back then we did have solos too, there was the solo-classes who could lone-wolf out in the world at a slower pace, they got to be the badass they want to be. Now nobody is special.
Man, that what you said its just so true. Back then, if you want to become a solo player you need to work harder for it, be a true badass.
While I understand and agree with your thesis, I think bringing fast travel into it was a bit of a wobble. Fast travel became a necessity because great level/zone designers (like John Capozzi) are few and far between and are often kept on short leashes. So many of the zones you get in MMOs are either copy-pasta BS or wildly out of sync with player behavior. In the old days, people clustered around the handful of great zones (The Kunark Express, Fungus Grove, etc) and cut the travel requirement out completely. Imagine not having fast travel and spending an entire play session just getting to a zone only to find the zone is poorly designed (or, in more common parlance, it sucks). You wouldn't feel very good about having to spend another play session to get back or to get to a zone you know is good. Fast travel isn't evil or if it is, it's a necessary one.
Decline of MMO? Have you seen player numbers lately? Between Wow, FF14, ESO, Guild Wars 2 there are more players than ever.
@@hanataba1291 So true. You either had to progress at a far slower rate or multibox (and thus, pay more). Hell, for better or worse, those "you must play together" games were what led to the multibox trend.
@@delunk5906 Really? Are we talking the nebulous "accounts created" or people playing every day religiously? I recall a time when the bigger games had 30+ servers, all full to bursting and games having to launch 2-5 new servers every year just to keep up with demand. I don't see that now. This is with people playing daily for hours. Today, I see people (myself included) playing multiple games a few hours a week. I don't see that as an improvement.
Discord “communities” Kill a lot of social interactions In the game. People don’t even know how to express themselves through chat bars anymore.
So? How is this a "bad" thing
Idk I think he meant that people don't use ingame chat as much since they can talk with their party through voice chat or groupchat which means quieter games
@@ruefysh9576 i get that, but its still does not change anything :P
Why did you put "communities" in quotes? They are communities. You can join one and make friends. It's in many ways better than the simple chat boxes that exist in game.
@@ItsBoyRed He said why it's bad. It kills social interactivity.
I love that Guild Wars 2 is mostly soloable, as well as fun in a group. Now that we're older, it's hard to get my friends online at the same time. (kids, work, etc)
I spaced out and suddenly heard, "and then we all come together", best part of my day so far
I actually like the way it is now. I dont like to be in the game at certain time and i dont like to force myself to be good. I mean this is a freaking game not a job. I already have many things to improve myself, i really need to relax. If game also become a job, when am i gonna relax?
literally how classic wow feels right now im so sick of it
I think there has to be a middle ground. I had friends who were big into WoW back in the day, and they would be playing at work or during club events, because that's when the guild said to show up. Meanwhile, my late husband played Star Trek Online, Old Republic, EVE, etc, but always strictly solo, mainly because he didn't want to be harassed about his progress/pacing.
Best - only - MMO experience I ever had was Marvel: Avengers Alliance, basically a single-player game with server-wide chat and some asynchronous boss raids towards the end. You could play when/as you wanted, and that incentivized social behavior rather than requiring it. IMO that's the best approach - carrot, not stick.
Well thats the whole point of mmorpg especially the early mmorpgs like everquest and wow, you had lazy players which often ended on lvl 20, casual players which hit 60 but had average gear, and sickos which raided 4 times a week and had everything best (reffered as an best guild/clan on the server). You had all the classes of society and people were satisfied, just like in real life. Nowdays everyone wants max lvl and epic gear without investing 2hrs a day, during the early days of vanilla hiting max lvl was an achivment, you cannot drive a lambo or ferrari without working your ass out, and thats the whole point of mmorpg having living breeding world were everyone has their role.
@@denirebic5769 In that sense, I think there's been too much mirroring of real world stratification in online games. The players with lots of IRL money (or credit), and/or loads of free time, or who straight-up cheat, create an elite tier, and then pat themselves on the back for working hard. But the other players aren't less "dedicated" to the game, they likely just have other constraints.
I play games to get away from all that socioeconomic class-strata BS in the real world. Which is why I mainly play Nintendo and avoid MMOs altogether, no matter how sweet-looking :sigh:
MMORPG's didn't become less social, we did. I remember early-mid 2000's playing WoW and guild wars and LOTRO and those things, it was just how people were.
Exactly!
I think its both. As someone who was never social, when I first played wow It forced me into socializing for raiding, and dungeons. If I wanted to do that kind of content I had to talk to people or reach out in chats. If dungeons went bad. Most people would communicate with each other to figure out the problem cause dropping out and finding another group was usually too much more work no one really felt like doing right after just doing it.
I didnt wanna keep tryna convince strangers to let me join groups repeatedly so i eventually joined guilds and had semi social relationships with people in them. Now a days you can queue for stuff so you dont even have to join guilds or look through chats. If a dungeon is running bad then you can just drop out and queue for another no problem.
Its true that people are far more isolated then in the past due to not having to leave but, mmos have also become more isolated as well.
I think there's definitely a generational change. I play ESO and most of the (few) 30+ people I raid with have normal social skills, at the very least they say hello and goodbye if they don't feel like chatting. But when I'm grouping with someone with an anime pfp, there's a 50/50 they won't utter a single word during the entire raid. And when using the activity finder, a lot of people can't even be bothered to type hello or tyfg. To me it's creepy that after smoothly completing group content and people are exchanging tyfgs you just leave. And I'm the 'toxic' endgame player with top-5% parses in the world, so I'm not getting carried in any of this face roll content. I just add those people to my ignore list if they're going to behave like NPCs.
I remember being so social when I was a kid playing some mmorpg. Didn’t know about toxic people then. I stopped being social after the many toxic people I met running dungeons/instances.
Might I make this suggestion as an additive statement?
Modern MMO communities are garbage and that's driving people to avoid socializing internally.
The number of times I have met absolutely horrific human beings in MMOs(and games in general) has exponentially increased over the years admittedly partially because of those no accountability solo player systems that were put in. People not only are mean and rude in increasing amounts but go out of their way to waste people's time and even hurt their progression in a variety of ways. I wont say that kind of behavior didn't exist before because it most certainly did and I experienced it in games like EverQuest even but the community was able to deal with it because of the social aspect. It appears to be far more common nowadays since you're essentially anonymous in dungeon finders and megaservers much like social media where you have the same kind of behavior occurring with troll accounts and the like and there is no punishment source for deterring that kind of malicious behavior because it's not outright hurtful like homophobic or racial slurs so you can't report it.
The video I mostly agree with, I just think that bit is something else to note.
Were as making friends used to be somewhat necessary to really grow and gain certain achievements in most MMO games all you need now is your wallet or a lot of time spent in front of your PC so people are quicker to be assholes. Plus society itself is becoming darker and more mentally fucked year after year so it only makes sense that our virtual worlds would begin to reflect that darkness.
Honestly.... I've met shitty people since 2004. It hasn't gotten any better. Being able to anonymously speak whatever you want isn't something a human can handle mentally when taken advantage of. It's simple as that.
Sounds like you are just toxic.
Guilds and Raiding are very exclusive by nature and quite anti-social for the majority of players on a server. It's also harder to socialize when adventuring when the pace is so fast, whether due to action combat or little to no downtime.
You aren't old enough to know how chat happened during the early days of MMOs. TeamSpeak and other VoIP software started at the same time. It was common for guilds to have their own VoIP servers. In EQ, every server had their own VoIP server as well. However, new players were encouraged to join the VoIP server by existing players inside the game. Facebook, IRC, and Myspace wasn't where the chat happened.
Those where also the days where if you wanted to join a serious guild you have to go to the guild's website that the leadership had made online and apply through there like it was a job.
@@Ehh..... I completely forgot about the guild websites. I know that the EQ Lanys T'vyl server had their own webpage as well.
What he refers to is that 3rd party websites / software took the natural human need to socialize, not that they were used to socialize while playing.
@@johnmaco And he was wrong. I was there and he wasn't.
There isn't really any point to talking to other players even through discord because the content is single player and I can I always look up a guide rather than ask strangers. For group quests there is always group finder.
I'm a Solo MMO player. I have anxiety but I enjoy playing MMOs, so I actually like the way MMOs are now. I have in the two MMOs I play regularly (FF14 and ESO) maybe one good friend and we group up together sometimes or queue together for dungeons and then meet after and chat. If MMOs became more like they were back in the nineties again, I would not be able to play them because I'd be terrified to do anything in the game since it would mean having to talk to strangers, which is terrifying for me.
I like this way. When grouping is optional and not forced.
Thanks for the video, the is an interesting opinion. I think there is more to it though than just "Social aspects have moved off onto things like Discord". The thing is that you can take any single-player game and find a community/Discord online around that too. So what is the point of playing an MMORPG with people who feel like anyone is replaceable and therefore tend to be absolutely toxic jerks to each other because there is no reputation to keep? In my example, I've been a WoW fan for years but the most recent expansions were just missing something. I stopped playing BFA after a week and Shadowlands I got bored of it within 3 weeks due to a complete lack of real social interaction and just constant grouping with strangers. I thought it was just me but WoW Classic brought back everything I loved. The server Discord has taken over the forum posts but reputation still matters, I still get to see and fight the same people and just overall there is an awesome community experience. I got hooked again. External communication options don't really matter. I'd rather just play a single-player game and find a community for that than play a toxic MMO where people either don't talk or are nasty all the time. Especially if said MMO has a monthly sub.
Who wants to pay money & (precious) time to have abuse heaped on them? A lot of folks who are vulnerable to harassment also tend to shy away from group play in the newer communities - the lack of reputation allows toxic behavior to fester.
You made me miss the old Everquest days.
I was an account helper back in the day, before EQ had an account bank, if you wanted to move things from one character to another, I'd act as a mule, holding bags for a person as they logged out and logged back in on another account. I was trustworthy enough I charged 100platinum and people paid it knowing it was safe, even people I'd never met gave me a level of trust.
The problem I've found with the social-aspect of games being separate to the games themselves is that there's not really an easy place for players that are either high skill or more knowledgeable (depending on the game, often a mix of these) to cross-polinate with players that are considered bad, which leads to a lack of comradery within the games alongside it just being harder to make friends.
Today they are OPTIONALLY social. There is plenty of social interaction in today's MMOs.
But, because they are optionally social, a wider scope of people have the chance to play... 🤷♀️
And very few of them are social. Which leaves the whole game to a bunch of edge lords in the back of a tavern who won’t talk to anyone. It ruins the entire purpose of the game.
I would also add the possibility of overly negative online interactions to the mix, when i was younger and playing online games literally all i would hear from other people online where slurs and insults so i just started turning off chat functions, and that just kind of become one of the default things i do in online games.
I think this is linked to lack of accountability.
In the early days you chose a server and play on it, encountering people playing on the same server. As such, if you started to act like a jerk, it would be quickly known and you get a bad reputation on the server, making it difficult to get groups or find a guild.
Today, with systems that let you freely switch between server, cross-server group finders and so on, there is no more accountability. Act like an idiot, and it doesn't matter, because you will certainly never encounter the same person twice.
That's how I felt as the years went on in WoW. When I started back in Wrath, it seemed plenty of people were plenty friendly and kind, sometimes even going out of their way to help new players and it was super cool to be a part of that. Then that slowly stopped being a thing. LFG along with a new younger generation of players coming in to replace older ones leaving the game, changed the culture into something like you describe.
@@RED_Theory038 I started playing MMOs with the old Everquest. My first encounter with a player in this game was right at the start, players would hangout at the spawn point and welcome newcomers, handing out some basic spells. Going a bit farther away, you would find other players buffing everybody to help them with their first fights (yeah it was a thing, some classes would have access to some pretty neat buffs, and it was not uncommon to have people asking for a buff in chat) and answering questions (In-game tutorials were still a foreign concept).
Grouping and cooperation was essential, as there was basically no solo content. When you wanted to grind, you'd pop into the appropriate zone, and immediately look for a group camping at one of the spawn points. As there were also a lot of down times between pulls, you would get a lot of time to chat with your teammates and make friends.
There were also regular guild meetings, where everybody would assemble and share equipement, giving away whatever they didn't need anymore to whoever needed it.
The MMO landscape as mutated so much since then... it's hard to imagine such things taking place today.
@@theslay66 what you described seems amazing
@@pneumonoultramicroscopicsi4065 Indeed, it was an amazing experience. But it was at a time when internet wasn't yet available in every home, and so the playerbase was small and entirely made of dedicated players and RPG lovers. MMOs were in their infancy and still experimenting, it was a very new thing, and we didn't have the same expectations as we have these days.
If EQ released today in the same state it was then, it would fail spectaculary.
I don’t know how much you know about vr but there is a vrmmo I played called Orbus. Because everyone is in vr can’t type for obvious reasons, the game uses localized voice chat to communicate with other players. The effect of this is that everyone was much more social. If you needed to know where to go for a certain quest or where a specific place in town was, you could go up to another person and talk with them.
The first thing I did when I first played was me and 2 other new players and 1 experienced player used teleport spells to explore the world. It was mainly us running from higher level monsters but because we all had voice chat, it was a super fun social experience.
I love it in ESO and SWTOR, where you can play solo for the story, quests, etc. and when I feel like it, just by click of the button I can join others on their missions, dungeons, pvp etc.
Guilds on the other hand, I always look for social guilds with active chat where you can talk about anything
There can be no satisfying social interactions with a bunch of misfits.
ive been playing mmos since runescape was released. And even games that were made purely for social such as furcadia, habbo hotel, etc.. but it turns out i'm just as shy online as i am in person. so 20 years later i still haven't made a friend lol.
Same 😭
Damn, that's rough. I'm a very insecure person, also not very good at making friends....
I remember the old social mechanics in the text based MUDS. Gemstone III only allowed you to gain so much experience before your head was "full" and you needed to rest for a while and let it sink in. That resting time was in social areas where people hung out an entertained each other or worked on crafting projects while socializing. I remember I could smoke a pipe and blow smoke rings. There were drinks with various effects at the bar. Bards could sing songs that helped the experience soak in faster.
Dragon Realms had healers who were "empaths" that could only heal themselves, but they could also transfer people's wounds to themselves. People could get wounds of different kinds on all their body parts. The empaths needed to be in a safe place to do this kind of healing because they can kill themselves just by taking on too many wounds. When a person died, they would slowly loose experience over time as they decomposed until finally reaching permanent death. They needed someone to drag their body to a cleric and an empath. Young Clerics would cast spells to restore the experience and keep the body preserved until a higher level cleric could resurrect them.
There were social areas that were like clinics where clerics and empaths hung out. People would drag bodies in from the field or come running in with a bleeding wound begging for a heal before they bled out. Man... that stuff created so much more social depth than just hack, slash potion potion... hack slash. It was helpful to have more than one character, though, in case you needed a drag to a cleric... lol.
Gemstone and Dragon Realms are still active text games today. I wonder if they have changed much.
I like playing with friends, but I don't like playing with strangers. The things I dislike most from modern MMORPG's is being forced into group activities with strangers, and the competitive nature of games (trying to get the best items, trying to be the first ones to do something, trying to take down the hardest fights to prove your worth). What I like most about MMORPG's is the relaxed lifestyle in a second world where I can explore, craft, discover, grow my character and help friends do the same. I like challenging combat and dangerous locations, but being forced to fight a boss for 20 minutes with 20+ other players is extremely boring and unfulfilling. I've had more fun doing heroic dungeons in Burning Crusade with 4 friends than trying to go for server first boss kills in hardcore 25 man raiding in later years.
And who forced you to do server boss kills in hardcore 25 man raiding?
"Everquest is often referred to as the worlds prettiest chat room." As an EQ player back when it released through to about 2006 and then an additional 5 years in the progression servers...I've never once heard this. I mean...I get it and don't necessarily disagree with it. But I've never once heard it.
Point is you spent a lot of time in EQ resting and waiting which gave time to chat between players. The game was slow yet still needed everyone to play together to make progress. Modern MMOs are all silent solo go go go, no time to chat except to troll the newb.
As late as 2018, there was still pull to join a guild , so you could do content in game for groups. But most conversations in the guilds took place on sites like Discord, PS app, Facebook, ect. Fast forward to 2021, I'm seeing guilds that have x amount of players, but No interaction even on the Discord. So No point joining guilds anymore in most MMOs. Its saddens me to see this because the best of times for me was playing with people in my guilds.
Some of the best things (imo) that devs could do to correct this and increase the actual life in their games are
1. Add enough random phases and actions to boss fights so people cant just cruise control execute meta. You have to talk strategy and adapt in real time.
2. Remove global chat. Proximity chat and something like Linkshells from FF. Whispers require extreme proximity.
3. Stop matchmaking. Entirely. Put up things at least like Help Wanted boards or merc recruitment hangouts. IE - Player sets up as a merc for hire. They are paid by the party that hires them but they have no claim to loot drops unless the party decides to allow it. Merc gets other perks from a merc title/ranking system.
4. Add small passive things to the game. Card games, music and bands, ingame bards that sing of recent achievements but only if the successful adventuring party spends time at the tavern, etc.
5. Require consistent minimum membership from guilds to exist and give guilds reasons to interact beyond competition with each other.
6. Stop pushing the "You're the only one to save us" and "You're the One Neo" narratives. We are clearly not.
7. Put hard limits on Epic items but allow them to be tradable, tie names of notable past owners in and incentivize eventually giving it up after doing something amazing.
8. Add actual consequences. Stop catering to the purely power fantasy crowd. Putting hard limits on how many things someone can be good at.
9. Make items gained matter, not because you give everyone cookie cutter epic weapons, but because a favored weapon can be good later on.
10. Stop tying levels purely to power. Higher level could still mean a slight power increase but moreso give you increased options on how to play, and more than just the typical three skilltrees. Allow scaling down to play with new players and incentivize it with titles or other kinds of buffs.
I like most of your ideas
After I watch your videos I always get this overwhelming feeling like I could design the worlds best video game lol, keep up the good work mate!
Spot on, as always; very insightful. I think we all know that you can't force people to play a certain way. Today, there are just too many ways for people to play together online for MMOs to be able to dictate how people play. They had to change to survive, and, even so, some might say they're still just barely hanging on.
This has been my thinking for awhile. The newness of the internet has been conflated with the newness of the MMO.
Here's the BIGGEST problem I have with your 4th point Josh :
While I DO agree that it's POSSIBLE to meet people on Discord and Reddit and other social media to group up with,
I also remember that when I started playing MMO's I'd love the spontaneity of meeting someone in the forest and helping them with a quest,
then they'd help me and we'd add each other to a party, then when we'd say goodbye we'd add to friends list.
It was all so natural and IN the game itself so it didn't feel weird.
I tried playing with people I've met on Discord and Reddit but we either didn't "vibe" or it felt too FORCED...
I know we can't go back now to the old days(although I wish we could) but it really felt much more natural to communicate in-game than
to try and force a friendship or a casual quest adventure from a third-party website...
I really respect your opinions and the presentation of them in your videos. Thinking broadly and not reducing issues down to simple ideas and concepts is criminally underrated. Keep it up mate
Every good thing will go down when it tries to cater to everyone
Ironically the Group Finder was the thing that MADE me social in WoW. I was a solo player, just teaming with my RL friends when they came online. Then the Group Finder appeared and I could suddenly do Instances and get proper gear. Once I was properly geared, I could start doing Raids and suddenly being able to do end game content got me talking to the people I found more than once. Then I got into a proper Guild and could do weeklys but anytime I wanted to just be anti-social, I still had the Group Finder. It was a game changer for sure.
Plus it gives opportunities to meet the same people again, or if you went to dungeons together - recognition. Plus if you were summoned to a new dungeon, you might need help getting back, that causes social interaction as well.
I’m so glad I found your channel, it’s hard to find content like this. Well done as usual.
So many good points in this video, I didn't think of before. Good stuff.
The only mmo I have played is eso as a long time elder scrolls fan. I pretty much ignore everyone and play it like a single player game but sometimes I goof around with others and had some fun interactions and also some fun dungeon runs. I like to be able to play solo and than if I want have some fun with others but I like how eso is balanced towards both sides
I subscribe to the philosophy of "maximize the most unique feature", which is basically more fancy and general way of saying: "Movies should SHOW, not tell, because that's their unique feature that no other media until then had. Games should DO, not show, because that's their unique feature/ability that no other media has."
According to this principle, MMO's unique feature is that it enabled, even motivated, emergence of unique virtual societies and relationships and dynamics in unique virtual worlds. And therefore - any mmo that is not tailoring itself towards this goal/with this in mind in the first place is an mmo that doesn't strive to be the best mmo it can be.
(And included in that is the opinion that the game client itself should provide rich and useful communication tools of all kinds so that the players didn't have to resort to breaking immersion by having to go to external tools to supplement the experience. I mean... yes... external comms about any mmo will always exist, but in-game comms should be done in-game, leave the meta tools for the meta talks.)
Exactly. The strength of a MMORPG is the Massively Multiplayer Online, not the RPG. There's already plenty of way better single player games than anything a MMORPG can muster. What the MMORPG DOES have though, is the massive player-interaction-content possibilities of player-emergent gameplay. And instead of doubling down on that super strength they completely walked away from it, and now they wonder why they're all bland and forgettable single player games when actual single player games offer a way better single player experience.
@@ZapatosVibes >The strength of a MMORPG is the Massively Multiplayer Online, not the RPG.
It's also it's greatest weakness. The amount of trolls that were empowered by being anonymous was through the roof. People didn't want to deal with it, which is why it wasn't uncommon for people's blacklists to be absolutely full.
The other misstep I think MMOs did was not making us want to communicate, but making it so we _had_ to communicate for the full experience.
Hey Josh, I rarely comment on a video but always make sure to leave a like. This in particular touched me because I love playing dead games (catching up to past titles) and picking up a Tank class. Nowadays the shift to solo has impacted on the choice of a classes too: you'd better pick up a DPS to clear dgs fast and farm for yourself instead of being the one people rely on for a hard boss fight. I hear that all the time, and with high survivability being achievable through other methods other than pumping your Def stats, the solo shift changed the priority of your party members too.
You bring up a lot of good points about how the overall socialization around MMO's has only increased, even if mandatory in-game socialization has decreased.
I like to chat and hang around in the MMO's I play, but I always found the "LFG, need healer and tank!" parts excessively dull and frustrating. I like having a group of players to run around with, but I want the option to be able to do stuff without wasting my time with fruitless searches.
Besides, just because it's no longer mandatory to shout "LFG, need DPS" doesn't mean you *can't.* If nobody wants to assemble groups the old fashioned way, that tells me that nobody really wanted to do that in the first place.
I've been playing since the early days and I've always been a solo player as much as I can be. Yes, I've had friends, joined guilds, and even role played but I don't really play MMOs for that social aspect. I play them because I enjoy progression and striving for something and very very few games outside MMOs will allow you to put the amount of time and effort in that an MMO will. Amount of content and design is why I love and continue to play MMOs many many years later. Also, there is a certain sense of pride doing things by your self while others are doing it in a group.
100% this! Plus MMOs are basically these big open world rpgs with the benefit of other players that can help you on your way, simply by asking them a question ingame, or cooperate in some event. I like to play alone but i also like to help if someone needs it or be helped if i need it.
FFXII is the perfect game for solo MMO players, or so I hear. Plays exactly like one, but offline.
Because the things that require social interaction take time, and mmo's try to optimize time and therefore remove the social requirements of the games. Shouting in cities trying to form a group for a dungeon has turned into a automatic que that transports you instantly to said dungeon. You no longer have to talk to find party members, the game does that for you.
Well said sir. If I may add two points from my experience, when a game has been around for a long time a gap in player levels can appear. When the social interactions took place in the beginning, everyone was new and had the same goals. In contrast a new player coming in 5 years later would find an empty starting area because all the experienced players would be off doing the end game content. I found this to be true even in a guild, coming into an established group only let me hear about the fun times while i ran the newbie grind alone. The people were there, and i enjoyed the conversations, I was still in effect playing a MMO alone.
Secondly is something that may not effect all MMO's but early ones like Ultima Online had expansions that added new content and new areas witch is great, but when that content is the only worthwhile thing for most players to do and a new player comes along that doesn't get that expansion.... the whole community is effectively locked behind a paywall.
I remember being a young teen playing EverQuest. Someone in the game once told me "This is just a glorified chat room." and that wounded me. I had grown to love my character and the bonds he created, and to hear it relegated to "chat" just rubbed me wrong.
By taking social interaction out of the game, and onto social apps, you've removed yourself from the community. It used to be that you built up a reputation on your server, and shared memories with people who could relate to you on that server. Now, we post screenshots on Twitter or Discord to people who will likely never see us in-game, or interact with us beyond that post. There's no bond there.
MMOs like PSO2 have been a real breath of fresh air for me because it is a very social game where characters hang out in the main hub lobby or café, share their stories and costumes. Show off emotes, ect. People can even come to your personal quarters and play games with you. I think it comes from the rewards that have been implimented for being social. Specifically in PSO2, you get FUN points when interacting with other characters which can be used to buy house items, costumes, ect. Incentivizing social interactions in-game is a great idea that I wish more MMOs would incorporate.
Its almost recaptured that old EverQuest feeling for me.
Personally, I feel there is a demand for more social pushing game mechanics. I know personally its what I look for in games now, its part of why I have recently moved to RP realms, as I enjoy the mix of gameplay with social interactions in the world. when I play an MMO i want the immersion of a living world, and having gameplay elements that nudge players to interact helps make that world feel more real, it can be something simple like having a reason to trade in person rather than on the Auction house
While I think it IS true players socialize outside of games more, it's not what I look for in an MMO. you can socialize about any type of game outside of it, and there are great communities that form around single-player games.
I think striking a balance is key, you don't always want to have to socialize I understand that, but having a game gently nudge you out of your comfort zone and come out glad that you did is a GOOD thing, it's what is beautiful about MMO's and it's something only that type of game can bring, to abandon it almost completely alienates players that are looking to have that immersive social experience.
I am a Solo player but a Social Gamer.
I often use Mabinogi as my Example as its The Longest MMO I played.
I Was Primarily a Solo Player. But the Overworld had meaning. So People were often shuffling around dungeons and crossing paths. Usually you the most anyone would do is do a fine how do ya do and move on. Sometimes you and another person would Arrive at the same dungeon and you would Just Without partying up. Do the dungeon together since Most overworld dungeons where not instanced But Kills and Loot were still shared.
People would also Gather in the City Sq's. I Spent HOURS just sitting and chatting with strangers. Just talking shit or hanging out with players who put time into Social skills, Like cooking and the Instruments.
@@BlueBD I had never heard of Mabinogi until now, and I have to say it feels like it it's very forward looking, but unsure exactly what it wants to be based on the trailer.
The social media aspect is a really good point, but... I guess it's just not the same as your avatar and another player's avatar encountering each other in the game organically.
There's something magical about stumbling into a friendship due to you bonding together to overcome life's inconveniences.
Alas, games generally criticized for being inconvenient, eh? Such is the dilemma.
When I think of all the best gaming experiences I have ever had, it was always with other people. From playing street fighter2 with my cousins to grouping with guildmates in EQ2, it was the social aspect that made it fun. I don't remember the game as much as I remember laughing and having a good time with other people.
When lfg systems first arrived in mmo, it actually allowed players to connect with more people. However, shit hit the fan when developers decided that it would be fun to add a time based mode to each dungeon/group content to make the game more engaging. Some developers did it with hidden mechanic, some did it openly, making the game less social because now everyone wants to just rush and rush and rush. And soon it was not enough to just rush, people started looking at gear score of their group mates, atk or def stat and so on and then kicking left and right. From this point, mmo became less and less social.
I guess I am a gaming anti-social type of guy. Sometimes I have played on line things with friends or groups - but mostly I want to game when I have time, not adjust to link up with others, and not have a dozen or more other people doing the same quest or using the same crafting station I want to do. I don't really play any MMOs these days except rarely dropping into Fallout 76 - where I go out of my way to avoid other players. (Well, I do drop stuff I don't need anymore in front of newbies when I run across them - but I never stick around to take them under my wing or such. Kinda stinks because the final end game and some of the daily event things require a group and I don't do groups)
Guild Wars 1 did it well.
You could always play with others , or just play with your NPC / heroes and take control all of them.
Vanquish areas for hours and do whatever you want, however you want.
People could solo farm stuff and coordinated players had PvP and speed farming special areas.
It all worked basically perfectly.
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MMOs suffered from the social aspect, as its a shore to even get started and the required coordination and planing basically made the games into the social pitfalls that had many lose their jobs, disregard their non-digital social life and fail school ... it festered all the bad in humanity.
Several things shifted me from being a very social player to solo/casual. My work schedule meant I'd often be on when most weren't. Guilds I was in would end up losing players who did the crafting for particular items. Using group finders tended to end up with me grouped with the players who were intense about everyone having the best of the best gear even when it wasn't necessary. Over time, I found it more enjoyable to go solo with only relying on myself for crafting and taking my time with quests and exploring, and seeing what group content I could solo. I still socialize, but it's with a small group of steady people which works for me.
A well-considered and interesting discussion of a genre I've semi-regularly interacted with, but never fully understood. Thank you for taking the time. =)
The only problems are Elitist and "Meta" you can't even load to a dungeon without some SHIT-head questioning your class and race choice for the role
/ignore
The reason meta is there is because players don't want to do the whole struggle against the boss every single time. Your build can be massively shitty and do like 0 dps. This waste everyone's time.
If you want to do a dungeon without players that just want to do the dungeon smoothly, just make a everyone welcomed lfg.
@@goruu and that is exactly the problem. If I‘m running around solo with a shitty build then nobody is gonna bother me.
@@iamwritingrightnow8217 I don't see what is wrong with that.
If You are not pulling your weight, theb You shouldn't join a serious group.
Imagine you are doing a project in school. One person does little work. That workload is placed on someone else.
Luckily, if you want to play your shitty solo build, mmorpgs has a field for that. Open world lets you play without judgement.
Thank you! I play solo 90% of the time 10% is what I can handle.
Biggest problem I had with this video is that the shift has made it so much harder for a lot of people to get into the social aspect of the game. I hate joining strangers discords and talking to them before I know them, I absolutely would prefer the initial interaction to occur in game and not just be immediately invited to a discord of some stranger I've never met.
I believe this is why people think the social aspect is gone. It's so much harder to make those initial connections if you're not a super outgoing charismatic person now and this makes a lot of people feel really left out of the social aspects of the game and thus they complain that the social aspect is gone.
This might be a case where that is their issue but imagine having anxiety about talking to new people and the only way to find new people is to join a discord where if it's something like a guild; you feel completely out of place because everyone already has their cliques. I'll tell you it's not comfortable, my social anxiety isn't even as bad as others and I still have a lot of issues making these connections.
So I believe that the social aspects need to be focused on again, because frankly without them a good portion of the player base in any game wont be able to make connections with people in organic ways.
I don't know if it's because I started playing MMOs in the late 90s and early 2000s or if it's just a part of my personality but I never saw the appeal of the social part of MMOs. To me, having to trade with people was a huge chore because I had to interact and that interaction was mandatory in order for me to get a certain item. I never cared about chatting or looking for guilds, I just wanted to do my very comfy repetitive grind and acquire my items. Sure at the time I started playing in net cafés and had irl friends to talk to about the game but god have I ever despised the idea of talking to strangers in-game.
And now, 20 years later, MMOs are better than ever. You can go to a city hub and talk to randoms if you want or you can just play your own game. You don't need to trade with anyone because you have the marketboard that makes it fast and hasslefree. And if you still want to talk about the MMO or things in general who play the game you can just join a discord server or go to reddit or even an anonymous image board. No one wants to be forced to do just one thing. MMOs need the option to be social AND solo friendly. Just like how Final Fantasy XIV has some exclusively social activities, like Blue Mage achievement hunting.
I remember that back in the day I played a lot of mmorpgs, never talked to anyone and I was just the lone wanderer farming in wierd areas that no one touched, I liked to see groups of people talking and farming, some times they Come to me when I was farming and ask me why I am alone? Then they invited me to their groups and I farmed a bit with them and we never talked again, I miss that feel of a real society, now this never happens.
Now I'm reminded why I quit Warframe, despite liking the gameplay. Hit a brick wall where everything needed me to be in a guild or clan and couldn't figure out how to progress further as a solo player.
Exactly why I quit too, glad it isn't just me then... It's not the only game that I played like that either.
You guys should team up! :D
@@boom-toby easy for you to say, not everyone has the same play schedule, thats one of the main problems solo players try to avoid by being solo players.
I only grouped up with people when I needed something leveled up quickly or wanted some Prime stuff, even then I just set my matchmaking to public and went to Helene, Hydron or did Sanctuary Onslaught or went to recruiting chat and found a group in a few minutes. Also the game doesn't really need you to be active in a clan, just to exist in it. Don't need to do anything
The key to this topic is that it has nothing to do with pick one vs another option! WOW's Cataclysm was a prime example of having it both ways (the first example would be the difficult dungeons that required team work even with randoms, but still used a dungeon finder).
Man, I just need to say, I love your videos. I found you two days ago while doing research (I'm on a team working on an MMO project--I'm doing game mechanic concepts, economy and social interaction concepts, sound engineering, and the OST) To be honest, I have no idea how I got involved in a team of such fantastic people. Anyway, your videos address points I've been researching, and it's awesome (Not to mention I've learned about new MMOs, and have gotten leads on places to analyze, from your videos)
So, thank you for your amazing content!