More like .
I’m gonna do this ques… Ding > oh look a video of a guy drinking soda with his left nostril .LOOOL , Gotta share thi … Ding > 20 ways to use socks while cooking . WTF ? Gotta sha …
Your character autorun off a cliff . FFS STUPID GAME , they should add a teleport to this location . Stupid gam …
Ding > you got a new like on your photo .
And so it goes …
Those arent really guilds. Those are mass invite through addon “guilds”. Also define hundred of players? Players or characters (major difference)?
Also this. Pretty much every guild/community nowadays has their own discord servers. I’m chilling on 4 WoW related Discords alone (and I mean community/guild ones not mass ones like class discords etc where you don’t know the people)
I hope not. I’m fine with how it is.
The day I am required to socialize to do stuff in this game, is the day I quit.
What do you mean? Standing in silence at the entrance of the bugged cave on the siren isle that haven’t been fixed since it’s release is not enough socializing for you? This game is literally as dead as it can get at this moment.
Watching paint dry on the wall is more fun and engaging than logging on to WoW
Difficult when the trade channels are just spam now moving at 100mph. I remember when trade was full of people having a laugh now its not worth trying to scroll through all the spam to answer anyone.
Solo(able) content will always remain…
But I don’t think a game like WoW should lean more and more into the “everyone for themselves” direction.
It’s cos we have the group finder and can just pug stuff, so people are a means to an end.
There are of course guildies to keep in contact with, but there are so many other ways to communicate these days, plus people grew up, got lives, etc so Wow isn’t the primary source to make friends anymore.
Socializing is gone by the social contract. Social contract were meant to prohibit socializing?
yet we are all socializing in here.
Times has changed, blizzard made wow more work related and people are busy with their lives and dont have time to socializing because they only have 1 hour to do your fomo work related wow stuff.
With risk of potentially sounding rude, are you trying to? I feel like most people who say “people aren’t social” aren’t social themselves. You’ll need to put yourself out there, chat, start chats. It’s definitely less likely to find someone who would initiate chats than classic, but people are usually really happy if you compliment transmog, mount, ask a question, whatever. You can also initiate a chat and see what happens from there. Most of my wow friend list is met through me goofing around in the open world.
The rules highlighted in the social contract have always existed in the terms of service.
I think it’s because there is no surprise or discovery left in the game.
PTR
Datamining
Content creators
Wowhead
Etc etc
Back in the day if you want to know something in the game you joined a guild and talked about it.
Or grabbed some people and went to work it out together.
Guild were an important part of the game, they added value, they created friendships. They self regualted bad behaviour, between guilds on single servers.
Not so much now, guilds are optional to the game. People and friends are optional to the game. Toxic players get away with toxic behaviour.
The game didn’t used to reward people for stepping on others to get what you want.
There only used to be benefits from socialising and now there can be more negatives than positives.
I have no issue with the socializing aspect of the game. I don’t like the old style, pushed socialization within the game. Shout for grouping up, shout for the trades, shout for every single thing… I hated it.
Socialization aspect of the game is not zeroed, or dead. It is up to you now, join to the guild, join to the communities. It is just not forced anymore.
Really I only socialised in vanilla because you had to. Playing Classic, I sort of liked how easy it was to socialise but it really burnt my social battery out. You need to socialise to work together to get things done, and whilst that should still be true in retail for group content, everyone is for some reason expected to know what they’re doing… probably because we’ve all been playing this game a very long time.
what’s worse is that the " social part" went to discord and … nobody is social on there either.
Chat channels always dead. I love chatting whilst leveling , doing my dailies etc
Yeah people post memes or some screenshots
Now turning to classic wow atm because I’m on a retail hiatus for end content.
Busy discord chat channels , busy general chat in zones , busy guild chat
You got to remember these " classic player" are the majority retail players.
So why the big difference ? Same game after all just 20 years apart in content
Meanwhile i put my phone away for an hour and i return to 200+ new messages certain days 
why you say people have shifted to discords ?
as far as i play mmos there were team speaks and ventrillo and mirc back than
i dont know man, maby some nostalgia hit you 
quick recent example. people on siren island socialising about bugged enterance
I like and dislike the switching to external apps for information and socialising. I miss guild chat because I could just talk to people online, about the game, in the game and then log off. Now we are in a society where you are available 24/7 and as I said: social burn out. I know I’m not the only one. Also if you ask for some help, half the time you’re hit with “google it” because wowhead or someone else will know - even the bog standard blizz replies tell you to use that!
Oh, and there’s also the fact that back in the day talking to people from half across the world was new and exciting - now it’s completely normal. Society has just changed, I don’t think MMOs are entirely that popular any more.
yeah, usually for insulting each other like “why did you do that you … …”, “STOP DPS!!!”, “Huntard, use your pet for the good once and pull the boss” etc.
Because Discord combined Voice chat with Chat Channels that serve as a guild chat without the need to log in. Teamspeak is still being used by some guilds but they still have a Discord server as well.
And hands down most of us sat afk in Dalaran during Wotlk and the most “social interaction” we had was waiting for the eventual whisper to do something or joining the mammoth parade.