No, it is not. Even in world of Warcraft. In retail, they are just friendly and sociable in the guilds, while on other servers, they are in the dungeon runs as well. Nobody feels comfortable staying in a tense group for 1-3 hrs while the dungeon lasts.
Nowadays being everything so fast forward, you don’t even need to say hello.
Really?
If I were looking for a recently-released game that emphasized social interaction and player community like Vanilla WoW, which game would you recommend?
I would argue that gaming in general is moving toward less social interaction between players and a more detached commitment toward larger communities.
I don’t think that’s a thing that’s only prevalent in WoW.
Exactly. There are social and antisocial people regardless of age, gender or gaming preferences.
SWTOR, FFXIV for example.
Players are friendly if you engage in friendly conversations. I think now more than ever people are longing for social interaction.
This is one of the reasons wow classic is requested, it had something retail doesn’t, and that is the need for social interaction.
Isn’t SW:ToR an example of the opposite?
When SW:ToR was under development, BioWare made a big point out of emphasize that there wouldn’t be an LFG system like in WoW. They wanted players to socialize and create communities and so on. Ergo, if you wanted a group for an instance, then you would have to make one yourself. Talk to people, make friends, form communities – the traditional way of playing MMORPGs.
What happened? Well the game was released and people started complaining! It was bothersome to spam chat looking for a group. It was tiresome waiting ages to find a tank. It was frustrating when people started leaving because it took too long. It made instances slow and unrewarding for the time spent. And so on.
So BioWare added an LFG system!
The trend already back then was toward more ease of access, eliminating barriers to entry, and immediate gameplay.
SW:ToR leans way closer to the design of WoW than an actual oldschool MMORPG like Dark Age of Camelot or EverQuest or Ultima Online.
If there’s more social interaction in SW:ToR than WoW, then it is by coincidence, not by design. There are no design features in SW:ToR that encourages social interaction above and beyond what other modern MMORPGs do. Its design reflects the same gaming trends that all the other modern games also do, including WoW.
(plus, SW:ToR isn’t exactly a new game. It’s 7 years old!)
It was too late 9 years ago
I think if Devs will aim on long term goals instead of cattering to 3 month visitors, that would be a nice start.
I like your points.
I feel WoW can not be saved.
I’m glad in a sense. Hopefully more companies and developers see the negative side of joining up with vampire publishers like Activision and EA. They get “deadlines” to make money every year. They don’t care about what garbage is pumped out. Just make some quick dollars.
The only reason Activision had a reputable name was because Call of Duty. And you see that they quickly fired the creators and stole the IP when the creators refused to pump out a Call of Duty game every year.
The WoW we know is gone. I’m sure there are people at the company that still care but at this point most Blizzard staff are just zombified YES men that do as they are told.
It was too late 9 years ago
I can answer that for you they are a tiny community compared to wow a year ago estimates was 30k total.
Oh and FF14 got 40k active Characters, worldwide.
People seem to love to claim wow is dead but then in the next breath think these tiny mmos are alive and thriving
its too late for now. They even stated that the real issue will be fixed in 8.2. Which means 8.1.5 worthless as ever.
For WoW to get better the devs would first have to realize and admit there’s a problem. But their pride and stubbornness won’t let them.
The only thing that can help WoW is if Classic does WAY better than the main game.
Then and only then will things start to change for the better.
In the mean time, I’m out. BfA is total garbage, my sub runs out in 10 mins and I’m not renewing.
See you in classic.
You missed my points its not always about being the most popular, its about being something different, RS3 and modern wow are just generic mmo of nowdays while ironically games like old school Runescape (and possibly classic wow) are more attractive because they offer something impossible to find nowdays so they will have their niche and will preserve it easier.
When the Next big thing hits who will remember fortnite the week after?
There’s been games that saved themselves when everyone considered them dead (FF XIV) and games that killed themselves or killing themselves right now because they insisted on everything wrong despite having a strong following. (pubg, warhammer online, NBA 2K series, etc.)
The real question is not whether it’s possible, but whether the finance department will allow the developers to try to express themselves and do it. You can only play safe for so long. They don’t get it.
I hate to mention it but you can play it on your mobile phone.
Does this count as a qq thread? Can i start drinking?
So what? It started as a PC game but since modern mobile devices are powerful and RS is not exactly demanding in graphics they also put it there.
A game isn’t automatically $#!t just because its on mobile.
Remember even hearthstone is on the phone but also on battlenet launcher, along with cod and overwatch which are on console, you can bet by now if they wanted they could port wow on mobile too and maybe that day is not so far as we think considering Activision policy lately.
I agree 110% with you on this, pity i can’t upvote this more than once.
No game is unsalvageable, lot of examples especially with MMORPG with a foot in the grave (Runescape, Elder Scrolls online, FFXIV) that turned around and became somewhat succesfull and relevant to this day.
But they are games where developers still retain control, when a publisher like Activision is behind you have no way of knowing if they see the iceberg ahead or if they care about the game long term at all.
If all they care about is “make money now!” They will milk wow all they can while investing less and less on it until it will be just a dried corpse and they will close it and move to the next big money thing.
Runescape approx 40k total users worldwide(19k on the new one and 22k on old one) Elder scrolls online 29k active users worldwide, FF14 around 40k active users worldwide.
These are your examples of games that are somewhat successful.
The day that wow makes it so that everyone in the world can play together that is the day wow is struggling with sub numbers.
The irony being that FFXIV was saved by making itself more like WoW.
And before anyone pops off the director himself said as much.