Something Arb and I noticed this week is that people seem to get chattier in Outland. Maybe there’s something in the water, but we’ve encountered a few people in level 70-80 instances who just wanted to hear the sound of their own virtual voice.
There was the guy who told the story about how his dad (some relative, I think it was his father) found a bear on his front lawn that had escaped from the zoo. Or the guy who ended up in several PUGs with us and quickly became our pet gnome (sorry gnome players, we all think of you as pets.) And the other guy who insisted on telling us his life story and particularly the great dramatic romance of his life. He was an emo kid, and she was a goth! Drama!
Arbitrary remarked snarkily, “So it’s like Romeo and Juliet, then?” (She likes to push the bounds of how sarcastic it is possible to be in chat without actually getting reported.) And proving his emo credentials, the rogue answered promptly, “No, it’s not like that because her parents like me,” proving that he actually knew the story of R&J and winning us both over instantly.
Now, if these guys had been dreadful players, it would not have been amusing. It would just have been another day of random PUGs. But they were both actually quite decent players, they just liked to run off at the mouth (keyboard?). Maybe they were lonely. Or just chatty. It’s probably very unfair of me to judge the same behaviour (random chatter) differently depending on whether the player is good or not.
Chatty groups do feel more friendly to me, but I don’t normally go out of my way to make conversation. Maybe it’s because I have enough friends in game that I don’t feel the need. I’m sure when all MMOs are new, groups are more expressive because a lot of people are looking to try to make connections. So it could be that these guys are either new players, or new to their servers, and using a similar stratagem to make friends. Or maybe they just spew stream of consciousness wherever they are anyway.
Do you like it when people spam chat in your instances, or is it just annoying? And has anyone else noticed that Outland instances become chatroom city?
Welcome to Spinksville! 
In level 80 heroic PUGs no one says a word between the “hi” and “bye”. When I did some ~60 dungeons in Outland with my priest a few nights ago I turned up into a group which we ran the instance like 5 times, and everyone talked a lot. Mostly about how crap the latest expansion is, and raiding in general.
So yes, I have noticed.
I LOVE it when people are chatty in PUGs – it almost guarantees they’re gonna be nice people. I don’t really chat a lot myself when tanking (too much else to do), but when I’m healing on my shaman I can spare the time to type a bit more (earthshield does most of the work for me 😉
I don’t think I’ve ever gone and blathered on about significant events in my life though, as I’m fairly sure nobody really cares about that sort of thing, and I don’t really posess the art of the storyteller.
@Matt – I think the chattiness of 80 heroics depends on the gear level of the players. Last night I did a HoL run with some just-dinged-80 folks, judging by their gear (mostly blues and greens), and they all seems a nice friendly bunch and we chatted away happily to each other when there was time (I was tanking, though, and I tried not to waste much time).
It’s the people in ICC gear churning out 7K DPS that tend to be the silent “let’s just get this done as fast as possible” ones.
I agree, give me more chatter. I haven’t had a toon in Outland recently, so I’m at a loss as to the relative chatter factor there.
With the advent of LFD, it seems people chat less and less. I’m glad to see I’m not the only chatterbox left out there.
I like chatter. Silence is unnatural and not what you would get if you really were bundled with 5 other people in pursuit of a common goal. That’s my excuse for rambling on, anyway.
I don’t know about Outland or any other part of your candy coloured cartoon game. But in good old EQ it was almost reguired to be chatty to fill the long downtimes between pulls. Because of that people with a reputation of being silent or grumpy sometimes had a hard time finding groups.
I like chat if it isn’t filled with personal details or references that I won’t understand. The emogoth drama probably wouldn’t have worked for me.
I love chatty groups, it often coincides with a group being friendly and there to enjoy themselves. Being a tank, I’m often able to control the pacing and success with far more regularity than most other roles (second perhaps to a fantastic healer) and I do so enjoy those runs that feature ‘fun with others’ on the menu.
The ‘just business’ types are rather impersonal, which seems rather at odds with the inherent purposes of a social game.
I mostly 3-mam level appropriate dungeons with the wife and strangers, and I always offer to jump on my Ventrilo.
Most players are curious about how I came about this preference and it makes for a good conversation starter. As the pace is slower than the 5-man zerg and strategy needs to be discussed for certain pulls, it creates a friendly and trusted environment conductive to conversation.
I think it is chatty people that make MMOs great.
What I do not like is TeamSpeak chat.
Usually two buddies talking to each other and you have to bear it or have to enjoy the utter absence of ingame chat text.
I only have two level 80’s, so I can’t comment from personal experience about Outlands Dungeons, but I have a guess as to why you’re seeing this:
– Lower level dungeons, people (especially if they’re new to the game) are just getting the hang of the game and their toons. They’re probably not all that comfortable with either the social dynamic of the game OR their ability to play and talk. I remember running SFK way back in the day, and a chatty person in the group commented that I didn’t have much to say. My answer was ‘I can’t talk and run at the same time.’ It was true!
– At the highest level, as others pointed out, it’s mostly ‘let’s get this over with, I want my two frosties.’
– The middle levels (i.e. Outlands) are where people have been playing for a while and you see people who are more comfortable talking while playing, and are better with the social aspects of the game.
I prefer groups where there’s some chat so that I know I’m playing with real people. Notable chats include the guy who told us he had passed out earlier in the day and knocked out a tooth doing so (and was apparently still woozy and wacky), and the girl from San Diego who interrupted our UK run with ‘OMG, we just had an earthquake’. She only missed one or two pulls.
I used to spend the gaps in Violet Hold chatting about anything that came to mind.
One particularly epic conversation about toast, marmite and anchovies (no, really) lasted sall the way from the first boss, through the remaining 12 waves, which were handled slowly because of the chatting, and for 5 minutes after we were done.
I was tanking.
Good times.
I love it when people are chatty. But then I’m fascinated by people in general. Their perspectives and experiences. At the end of the day you can always decide not to be chatty. That and I’ve met a whole host of great players and interesting people (not mutually exclusive or inclusive necessarily) and learnt some great tricks and such from just chatting for 20 or so minutes while helping them run some quests or a dungeon.
Human beings have evolved to be very social creatures, often at odds with the lifestyles we impose upon ourselves or develop through experience and circumstance and as such, I embrace my chatty fellow adventurers fully!
(sorry gnome players, we all think of you as pets.)
That’s not true. Some think of gnomes as vermin and think the real shame of the fate of Gnomeregan is that some gnomes survived. 😉
As for chattiness, I don’t mind it. On Massively’s Wednesday night DDO outing I was in a group with a really chatty guy on voice chat. He had obviously played a lot of DDO and was going on about the game, which was kind of useful. It was okay listening to him and throwing in the occasional comment, too. But, I can see how some people might get annoyed. I don’t like suffering in silence, though, without even in-game discussions going.