…a very close friend stopped playing about 2 years ago, in very great measure because he was not only a very good tank. He was a very good leader.

He had/has that indefinable ‘it’ factor. You know, the one that makes people WANT to follow, rather than, ‘Oh ok, you’re good at what you do, I’ll go on a run with you quite happily *if you ask me to*.’ *Dry nugget tone* If you couldn’t guess, I was more of the second type than the first.

But… said friend’s problem was that he couldn’t log on anymore without being spammed by people asking him to run this/tank that.

And the funniest part is, he’s not all that social. He just knows how to be pleasant I guess.

…could it be that WoW’s LFD system might actually be better for such players? They can disappear more easily without people poking them when they don’t want to be poked.

HOOM!

As often as not, I am met with stony silence but a usually efficient run. Sometimes, though, it has led to other “I remember…” moments. Not bad for 20-25 minutes worth of play, but it is unlikely that I’ll ever see these random people ever again.

None was forthcoming.

We got the first Boss, killed him, and without saying a word one of our DPS dropped group. I guess he only wanted/needed loot from the first Boss. Replacing DPS is a quick, painless process though so we had a full group again within seconds.

In the gauntlet corridor as the waves of Mobs moved toward us and I stopped to Tank them someone finally spoke up, and said we could just keep going. So I slowly backed down the corridor (didn’t want to turn my back on the Mobs) and picked up the additional Mobs as they spawned.

The second Boss went down without a hitch and at the final Boss I asked if I should just pick up and Tank the Adds along with the Boss. “Could try,” was the only response, so with the group appearing ready I charged in. The Boss went down fast and only 1 Mob had time to spawn, and with the distribution of the Loot everyone dropped group.

Actually the Healer did ask if we wanted to run something else but when nobody spoke up right away she dropped group.

You know…WoW with its Dungeon Finder Tool now feels very much like DDO, where you sit around in the town putting a group together, and in most cases once you have a full group the Instance entrance is often usually no more than a few seconds away. No flying 5 zones then catching a boat then flying another 5 zones, then mounting up to ride halfway across the 6th zone to the Instance.

Just hit ‘I’, choose your poison, and within minutes you’re in an Instance. Okay, within minutes I’M in the Instance, or maybe you’re a Tank, too

I saw someone bemoaning the Random queue as being so long last night, and before I opened my mouth I Shift-Clicked his name. Ahh, a Hunter, not one of the multi-role classes. Yeah, that’s what you get for rolling pure DPS. I tactfully shut down my “snappy comment” about hybrids speccing DPS and went on my merry way.

Why not throw in a few ice-breaker games to entertain and encourage them to talk to each other, while they’re there?

About these icebreakes, doesn’t everyone secretly like those trivia bots? They seem to work marvelously in getting people to clump up around some bank alt and have some fun. No restrictions, no obligations. I would definitely like to see more things like that in game.

I think that MMORPGS charm is, playing together, but the absence of social behavior you are describing is a result of Warcraft currently lacking of any demand of social skills.

Or exaggerating: in the current state WoW is an Singleplayer Game with a Lobby, not an MMORPG.

WoW do it to some extent with cities like Dalaran and with their stoic refusal to introduce player housing. They wanted there to be a central area where players hung out (we’ll see how this works in Cataclysm when there isn’t a sanctuary city).

EQ2 has a global guild finder where guilds can write a bit about themselves, and what they are recruiting for.

LFG tools are another common way to get players together when they want to run similar content.

Games which include cities that have large spacious buildings where players could get together (to RP maybe) are offering some kind of meeting space, even if they don’t back it up with much of an activity. (Compare with STO which isn’t really built for easy socialising.)

So I think it’s quite untrue that games can’t make it easier for people to get together. It’s just that most of the ones we play don’t really try to encourage actual socialising. For example, it’d be easy to put some silly ice breaker games into holiday events, or into random in game pubs/hangouts. No one would mind that, and it might even be fun.

I am not going to annoy you again, it’s already said in one of my previous comments, but the basic problem is:

- being selfish does not require any friends.

Probably we agree, that Solo-Games focus on personal development and your own gaming experience, while RPG focus on group experience.

So you do not need any friends for a Solo Game, but you need a lot of contacts for an RPG, like in the P&P Days.

Warcraft is focused on your personal development, you are continuously striving for improvement. Most things can be done alone, and assignment of tasks is very standartised, thus does not require a lot of inter-personal organisation.

This is stressed by the fact, that individuality is limited, thanks to Min/Max System.

Basically we end up, being more or less eloquent Bots. You can easily exchange one tank with another, be his name Usiel or Spinks, in a minute his name will be forgotten.
Names are rarely used, most people just write the class or its task. “Hey Tank” instead of “Hey Spinks”.
I do not think, they would even care, if someone would try to “de-anononymize” you by throwing in some Ice Breaker like in a seminar.

In other words, friendships are individuality based, the problem is that there is not much room left to show your individuality, which would probably make other people become interested in you and not your gear or function.

So if they will change the game back to a more group based experience, you will see a growth in social networks again.