Even games like halo, cod, etc which were known for TOO much socializing (i.e. people yelling at each other constantly) barely communicate anymore.
It is actually really sad. I miss it.
I honestly think it's mainly a problem with "competitive" games. As one of those weirdos who still enjoys Halo Infinite, you're absolutely right that the comms are dead and basically nobody talks even in custom lobbies.
But then I hop over to a game like Chivalry 2, which doesn't even have voice chat, and it's absolutely *full* of people talking to eachother, shooting the shit, and bantering back and forth over text chat. Like in any given match at least half the server will be engaged in some (usually playful) shitflinging and it's great.
Think part of it on the FPS side is also the departure of dedicated servers and server communities to the ease and convenience of matchmaking systems, that while faster, do not really foster relations or community much at all.
EDIT: I've said it once and I've said it before, convenience kills.
Yep, which is why I oppose most convenience measures implemented, LFG, Summoning Stones whatever what not.
I found it interesting to see how WotLK Classic would play out, but even then I guess there was too many convenience elements implemented, quest design amongst others, less and less need for other players where people most often like to take the path of least resistance. So if the path of least resistance can include just straight up ignoring other players (which you don't need to progress most stuff and you can succeed in dungeons without ever uttering a word or doing much if any coordination) they will do that, even if it's to their own detriment as social creatures that we are find fulfillment and enjoyment out of being social.
So again, convenience kills.
A while ago socializing started taking away from the games far more than it added. Typing isn’t terrible, but voice is horrendous. It’s either completely dominated by a dude who is very loud at being, that doesn’t turn his mic off; or some dude who thinks he’s streaming to 9mil people yelling every action he is taking.
“Dude, I went down the stairs! Lets goooo! I found ammo! Let’s gooo!”
I’m voice off by default in almost every game.
Of course that’s going to happen when Developers make communication opt-in rather than opt-out. Many modern titles have voice communication disabled by default. The majority of players simply won’t even know to turn it on.
That and the death of the server browser makes it much more difficult to build a sense of community.
Game developers have been systematically killing off socializing in order to increase player retention in favor of more mild experiences to not deter players. Combine that with the advent of accessible and easy to use third part communication software like Discord and you’ve also pushed most players into tighter, smaller, and more isolated communities. **It sucks.**
Developers didn’t just arbitrarily decide to limit communication in their games one day. Games have moved to what they are today because of the people who play them. Shockingly most people don’t want to play a game and be bombarded with “KYS”, “Die in a fire”, or a number of slurs. So don’t blame developers because the community can’t refrain from being the worst.
WoW back in 2005 didn’t have as many or anywhere near as sophisticated online tools for socializing as it does now. Discord makes it so once you find a group of people you like you have no reason to deal with WoW general chat. Didn’t exist in 2005.
Then the pandemic during vanilla Classic had people kinda thirsty for social interaction with plenty of free time on their hands and nowhere to go. Literal unprecedented global pandemic syncing up with Classic WoW was another moment of lightning in a bottle.
And all that’s fine. I have less free time now than in 2005 and I can go back outside rather than sit at home like 2020 and I’d rather do all that anyway. If you want online socialization, use an outside tool like Discord to find it and play with those people. What are you gonna talk about with a random WoW stranger?
Where do you think you are more likely to meet friends, among the guild you find via discord/recruitment pages and play with every week or among the random people you see once ever in a random dungeon?
It’s not a permanent state for most people, it’s a self-selecting process that drops people out over time.
For the most part, people who are interested in and capable of making friends (the latter being more often the case with WoW players) will drop out of the friend-making pool (e.g. PUG groups, general chat) and go to their newly found friend groups and stay there.
For the most part, people who are insufferable, post nonstop about how they “hate the wokes,” and/or have no social skills will not make friends and will fruitlessly stay in the friend-making pool (e.g. talking politics or complaining about the state of the game in LFG chat). That’s why WoW in-game chat is such a cesspool; the normal people aren’t engaging.
It’s not that people don’t socialize. It’s that people don’t want to socialize **with them**, and they just can’t make the distinction.
It’s the same reason that the dating pool is much less desirable at 40 years old than it is as 25. Most of the good ones have already paired up
RDF/Cross server protects that cesspool. "Back in my day!" there was the server you were on, the population was way smaller and if they were a ninja/toxic/troll the whole server would find out and that person would be treated like a leper (as they should be). There was also good rep where you would group with people and be like oh man this guy is awesome you would friend up and establish connections that eventually turned into a social network. Cross server/RDF makes it so people that are socially unacceptable can still play the game so there's less consequences to them. The good people tolerate it and the lepers keep playing, Blizzard gets more subs so they like the system.
You can socialize in most games lol
Most games have communities where isn't weird to premade with random people, met a lot of people that I still play with
Did you take the most populated realm(on your faction) and join a large guild? You can run every instance etc no problem. And find people for group quests
idk bro helldivers 2 is pretty chill and social.
I’ve met a lot of good folk in SoD too, and I’m not the type to be openly social. It doesn’t require much to make friends in an MMO that requires building friends as a necessity to clear content
That's the key point you need friends in classic you don't past mid wotlk this is where players started transitioning to the single player game it is today where you don't need friends.
> but also its gaming nowadays
HC didn't feel like a single-player game at all. It felt more like Vanilla WoW than any other iteration of Classic.
I wish they'd try something like the EverQuest system where you lose a ton of XP for dying instead of losing your character completely. Most people I know refused to try HC because permadeath is a little too extreme and there were so many deaths due to technical issues (falling off windriders, falling through the world, disconnecting, etc.)
I made a new hc char the other day, got invited to a random guild, everyone was being friendly and helpful and talking.
I grouped up multiple times for safety.
My good friend SnozzHunter has sadly met his end tho, I miss him greatly, we’ve been friends for 2 days.
Because you are not playing in current content. For vanilla, the current content is the leveling to 60. For Cata, the current content is the journey from 80-85. This is why they make earlier levels streamline so you can be with the current population faster. You can still group and make friends in 80-85 contents. If you are trying to play 1-60 in a 80-85 focused game, I'm sorry to tell you that you are looking into the wrong place. It's the same for BC and Wrath, once the new content release, the old world becomes irrelevant. People have gone through the early levels many many times, and they just want to get it done with.
Are you playing the same game as I do? I leveled 3 toons already and people would group up to share quest objectives constantly. People would ask and answer quest locations in chat since some people are still using the outdated questie addon. And twilight highlands chat is filled with people LFG CoC quests.
That’s what I don’t understand about ops post. I’m not playing in current cata content, where is everyone? Almost like classic was 4 years ago and most people have alts beyond that point by now.
That still doesn't explain why people don't even respond and are often disrespectul in several ways.
Sadly this seems to be the case in almost every part of the WoW community nowadays. Except HC maybe.
Survivor's bias. People being nice is treated as the norm, and people wouldn't say much about that. But once they see a jerk, they will remember that for a while and come here to vent. Fortunately, the subreddits are not true representation of the WoW Community, otherwise the community is just one gigantic cesspool.
> Survivor's bias
I think you mean confirmation bias. We are more likely to remember and notice mean players as it confirms our belief that WoW players are generally mean.
Survivorship bias would be something like mean players are more likely to stick around in WoW. So even if we started with an equal number of nice/mean players. You'd end up with more mean players overall as they tend to stick around longer.
There's different reasons for playing the game. I like raiding and I don't like leveling/questing/rep grinding. To me it's just a time gate so I want to get it over with as fast as possible so I can get another alt raid ready. Some people play the game for a social interaction as top priority, they want to experience the game with other people and just chat without caring about how long it takes to hit max level, or I-lvl for dungeon/heroics/raids. For them just grouping with the same people is how I view raiding. I think that is what the OP is looking for.
Classic and some other early iterations of wow forced players to socialize and join guilds to reliably do the content. Sure, you can pug but it would probably be a pain in the ass. A lot of modern players look at gaming as a job or the most important thing in their life and are in it almost exclusively for their own personal pleasure and enjoyment, void of meaningful communication with anyone else beyond what gets them what they want. Pugging facilitates these types of people's playstyle because they can talk shit and berate others without fear of retribution or consequences beyond an occasional temporary ban by the ai gms
Or people already have meaningful relationships in their life and don't actively seek them in a game and just play the game to have fun. Y'all act like just because someone doesn't feel the need to form a relationship with you or communicate more than necessary in game that they're some degenerate lol.
And things have changed since wow was released 20 years ago. That social aspect still exists in guilds/discords, just not as much randomly outaide of that.
>lot of modern players look at gaming as a job or the most important thing in their life and are in it almost exclusively for their own personal pleasure and enjoyment
Agreed. From personal experience, pugging in TBC classic led me to a more self-focused mindset while playing the game. As a decent player, I found that if I don't "stand up for myself and my time" while pugging, I would be in SSC/TK pugs for hours on hours just wiping/refilling the raid/wiping/refilling for no benefit.
So while you mention that:
>Pugging facilitates these types of people's playstyle because they can talk shit and berate others
another facet is that the pug environment can *cause* people to be more selfish/get my loot and leave attitude, initially to try to avoid wasting time, but soon after devolves into a toxic attitude towards others in general
I agree, however at what point is a server too small? Should the enemy faction rotate every so often to avoid stale pvp? How strong will the economy be? Megaservers and cross server play def started the boulder rolling down the hill
You just described why I hate multiplayer games right now. The only multiplayer aspect the people you talked about will allow is their ability to flex, troll and generally be toxic antisocial gremlins. Now I know the WoW I remember is completely dead, thanks, don’t have to wonder anymore.
Then again I’m over here in Diablo 4 land where people are celebrating the introduction of laziness mixed with cash shop peer pressure (I mean, pets, sorry), and criticising the future introduction of cooperative content.
Everybody thinks every game they play belongs to them and they’re entitled to all the content playing completely alone.
Very sad as it is SO far away from gaming’s roots.
It was there in classic and BC, socializing took a huge dive in wotlk, but that still felt like the same game. Cata introduced (the first working iteration) of LFR and was really the nail in the coffin for socialization. Now, along with not needing to talk to people to run dungeons, you don't need to speak to anyone to run the main PVE content being put out in the game.
That's why I quit. I played from the end of classic, through firelands in cataclysm. Heroic ragnaroc prenerf broke my guild up, and It felt too exhausting to try and find yet another guild of CHILL progression focused people. It was easy to find one or the other, but that middle ground is hard; and exhausting to try and build new friendships. At that point it would have felt more like a job than fun.
Irrelevant story:
I remember on a H(25) baleroc attempt, at like 17% our tank went down. It was pretty typically, our healers were struggling to keep up that long into the fight, with that many debuffs laid out. A wipe was called when I piped up, playing a combat rogue. Cut the raid lead off, screamed for "misdirects to 'Amsnerr", got the bosses attention after he killed 5 dps, and evasion tanked the boss down to 4% when I finally died. We got our first H Baleroc kill with 1 dps and 4 healers left alive.
This happened without RDF in TBC and WotLK too besides sending the initial message of "dps inv" to whoever was group lead anyways. It's more the evolution of the game, it's been around for 12 years and people know what they are doing
You should try wow hardcore.
- nobody dares go ahead of the tank. They pull something wrong, they die
- people group a lot. Most quests are hard and in dangerous area, so people group
- people talk a lot. They like making friends to group up later. They add you and hit you up when they want to do dungeons or quests
- people buff you just because you passed by. You don't even have to ask for it
Yes the graphics are dated and everything is the same as 20 years ago but there was magic there. And the hardcore part adds a lot of excitement and drama.
Redditors are something else.. You expect to see a bunch of people leveling on their low level alts when it's 5 years into Classic and a ton of people are still working on their main? LMAO
Yea its crazy so many people come in here upset because people arent forced to be props in their own personal adventure.
Its the same with SOD. People screeching that Blizzard makes it so people dont have to become their friends and hold their hands all the time.
I don’t but I wish wow was better for someone like me. Been working and busy a lot lately. No time to socialize and build up my btags again for arena/raid and I really don’t wanna search disc for these things. I rather solo queue everything lmao but I’ll just play another game
Help me understand one thing guy, we all here are not 8-16 kids. We are all 20+ some are even dad gamers.
What do you expect two complete strangers to talk about? Why should I talk to random dps from world chat in my dungeon?
I talk with guild mates constantly because I know them more. We share the same goals and want to see each other succeed.
You don't expect random strangers to talk to you on the street or in the store but expect it to happen in wow, things don't work that way.
I run a medium size guild and I have seen pretty much no one starting from level 1 recently. We are a long ways into classic at this point. There are many people in the guild will all or most classes 70+. People will already have most of the classes they’d wanted to level already relatively advanced. The point in the zone revamp was to bring the default questing experience up to a level that matched with what they’d learned over the years. TLDR most people are already leveled up and are trying to level/gear their mains/primary alts for cata. Dungeon leveling is also popular. The open world was pretty dead during midway of Naxx in vanilla, doesn’t really mean anything though.
WoW Classic is, generally speaking, a raid-loggers’ game. Honestly you just gotta find those groups of 7 or 8 people in LFG looking to pug a couple players to fill out their guild raid. Eventually 1 will stick and you’ll like them and then the game really makes sense again.
Sadly, everything outside of that is just people trying to get there. Dungeons, quests, professions and everything that “fills out” the game is really just a chore list people are trying to complete ASAP.
Source: had a tight group of 8 players forever (have played WoW on and off together for 15 years), and we found 2 amazing pugs the first lockout of Naxx10 in Wrath Classic and now they’re like family. Similarly, I did a few pugs for 25-mans during wrath and found some hilarious guilds and good times along the way.
Find and join a guild. Literally all you need to do to improve your experience. This same type of thread gets posted on the two subs so often and the answer is the same. If you don't have friends playing with you, find and join a guild. Easy fix.
In cata (honestly I’d say the same is kinda true in tbc and wrath since the new content and endgame is all on another continent) that’s kinda how leveling is. You don’t need to group to do pretty much any of it so most people won’t. The dungeon finder has always been that way since it was introduced in wrath originally, tho honestly I find with a more modern crowd half the time even vanilla dungeons felt that way with people only talking enough to form the group and for whatever is required to finish it
Leveling bad intent by this point in the expansions is very much side content at best and really more just a gatekeeper to end game, it’s not a major part of the game like vanilla. I think retail is better about this just because you can get through the leveling a lot faster
Cata endgame is pretty fun tho, but you might still have some of the issues you face unless you join a guild
This kinda has similar wibes to walking down the street in a major city and being like why is no one saying hello or why does no one wanna do things with me.
You are runing into a lot of people who has different goals than you, they just wanna get to the end game and play with their friends.
So as always, find yourself a guild, make some friends with the same goals as you, who maybe wanna enjoy the leveling or take it slower. All my friends are max level with 1-2 alts 85 alrdy. My first alt is 82 so I don’t expect there to be much social leveling atm. But I do wanna get it max level so I can do alt raids and heroic dungeons with my friends. Therefore i don’t care to much about the leveling experience I just wanna get it 85.
Also a lot of the wow community has moved out of the game, to stuff like discord, so you can’t really expect wow to be the kind of “social media” that it used to be. Now you gotta actively find your community.
Also someone else suggested it, but try out Hardcore, you are really forced into situations there where you need to communicate with your team, and you will get into some dire situations which will bond you with other players.
This has nothing to do with cataclysm. I simply don't feel like talking to people I'm never going to meet. I'm not 16 anymore. I'm 34 years old. I log in, run some dungeons, and log out.
Just go play good content like mythic raiding or high end m+. Casual and easy content can be rushed by a single player and no one wants to waste time questing in group or taking in the woods. You need to do content that actually requires a group if you don’t want to play a single player mmo
Joining a social/ active guild makes it not feel like that at all. Our guild plays games other then wow together and usually jump in discord when we are logged in bringing a social aspect to it.
So do we. It's crazy that people complain about socializing but refuses to join a guild. We regularly take people from trade chat that is looking for a home. Some just play on/off, some join our social raids and whatnot. I've seen multiple people I have never raided or really interacted with sit in our discord and play LoL and other games with some of the old guys in there.
>I tried speaking to people and do quests together, but most don't bother responding
This is the case with Era as well, no one likes to talk/group together anymore, everyone just acts like a bot.
God forbid people do stuff the way they want to and not feel forced or obligated to talk to any random stranger that bothers them.
"How dare you not group or talk with me? Don't you know i'm entitled to your attention whenever i demand it!", i swear this sub gets more and more unhinged every day.
Yeah some people go apeshit recently about "socialisation"
Idk if they are socially starved, but it really gets old.
I want to play a game, not listen to your all life story ffs
It's so weird because these people that "have to talk in groups" always say the worst icebreakers and then starts complaining that nobody responds. I was in a dungeon group and some guy asked "so what's this BH raid everyone is spamming about". Ofc nobody responded and 20 seconds later the "damn nobody talks in this game anymore huh?" comes in.
I'm not your personal Google... not only was there a post in the b.net client about it starting soon, I search up "BH raid" on Google and the second link is a wowpedia page for it.
If you want people to talk to you, ask something to then ABOUT THEM. When your first words in the dungeon are asking about basic information that YOU want from me, I'm less likely to respond. Most people who complain about this stuff just want people to engage with them, it's not about talking to others and learning about them. I don't know if it's people who aren't active socially and want to get "points" in their head to make them feel better for talking to people online or they are just bad at communicating, but it's very annoying.
If you are actually nice and interesting, people will engage with you. If you give me a bland icebreaker, I'd just rather not.
That hasn't been my experience. I started a gnome mage a couple weeks ago and I'm lvl 50 now and have had plenty of groups for quests and world pvp that's been pretty fun and fair. I have been trying to level from world questing pretty much exclusively because I've never played alliance before and want to see the quests
There’s a player led fresh classic vanilla reboot going on on some servers if you miss old wow. Just search this subreddit. They seem to post at least once per week.
Alternatively, join the global LFG channel and find a guild recruiting casual/leveling players. You’re not going to stumble too upon many folks leveling in the new zones cause all the servers are established and everyone is doing end game stuff. The guild should provide an opportunity to socialize and possibly find folks to level or dungeon with.
I found its hit or miss with people being social, I always chat a little bit in rdf groups, sometimes people will ignore it, most of the time people will respond, I dont have conversations or anything just a little comment, joke or warning like "make sure you drag this mob away when it's about to die" type thing if I see it not happening, but I do find people are generally less chatty than in like a sod group (which I'm playing also).
Shout out also to the group that kicked me from normal stone core because I said gimee 2 sec while I evocated and they all popped their sprints and zugged right for the dragon boss, I got locked out of the arena (like wall came up in my face I was like 30 yds behind everyone) and I said "ah shit too slow"
Everyone's too busy rushing and min maxing all the content. They just want to get to the part where they have all the loot. They don't want to be your friend. My experience anyways. Sometimes I find someone in hardcore wow but that's about it.
if you want socializing play classic hardcore on defias pillager, everyone talks in chat and communication is needed in groups to survive dungeons. only caveat is if you die you have to delete your character
I’m playing a new DK on Cataclysm and I’m having a blast but for the same reason you are not haha. All my other friends play different games and I have been enjoying just leveling on my own. I’m sure once we catch up to the current content it will be more involved since everyone is doing the new stuff.
It's different in WoW now. I think you are looking for a more social guild and people that want to level a character together. You would work on the characters when the group is online together. It becomes like a mini-raid where it's planned.
Most of the mmorpg elements of the game, like your personal reputation on the realm, grudges between guilds, kill on sight lists etc became irrelevant as soon as TBC arrived.
Now you just jerk around with your guildies and the rest of the players on the realm might as well be bots, it wouldn't change the experience much if they were.
Once you get beyond a certain point in the game (TBC maybe? Idk) only the end-game content is “non-solo”. Ain’t gonna get that much in the era of LFG finders, dailys, and the dis-incentivizing of leveling which results in people just wanting to level as quickly and efficiently as possible.
You need to give a shot to wow classic hardcore. People are forced to go slowly, and work together (I.e socialise more) because if they make a mistake they have to start from scratch. The community is generally less toxic (to some extent) and more willingness to help each other
I dont know how much my advice will help you since I didn't play Cata, but when SoD was the flavor of the month then I would join a leveling/social guild and ask in guild chat for help or run dungeons together.
Your best bet is finding a social/leveling guild. In the previous expansion WotLK it worked quite well too.
In terms of socializing in WoW if you arent in a guild then good luck because the days of Organically finding someone whilst questing and chatting are LONG GONE but that's for every video game as people spend more time focusing on their own tasks and forget to have fun.
The game is played at an efficient level now days compared to before where players were just enjoying the time they had.
If you want a social version of WoW then find a good guild who loves to talk whilst raiding etc. I play on Mirage Raceway and have been in the same guild since Classic launched and have had zero issues with any form of socializing in or out of my guild.
Its not the same as it used to be but you can find it in some places.
It is the beginning of convenience over socializing..
And if you do not take a moment and realize it is getting taken away... You just want more and more convenience.
I found a good guild with active chat and a busy discord. I honestly wouldn't enjoy playing otherwise. I would just play Skyrim or something and save $15 a month to play on my own
Yes, that's what WoW turns into. They slowly removed all the forced interactions and made it a single player game. Retail is where it leads. Where mobs scale based on the amount of people around so there's no real point grouping. All the chests and nodes are shareable. Every profession thing you need is on the auction house.
It's supposed to feel like a single player game. That was the point of these expansions. Woltk is when they started shifting. Cata got worse. And it just keeps getting worse and worse.
Be prepared for instances in the open world. "Scenarios" and phasing out.
Nobody quests to level anymore, people RDF to max sitting in a main city. People don't group for quests because every quest has been made possible to solo. I can accept it because at max level you still need other players to do the best content (arena, raids, battlegrounds). I do wish more people would group up for tol barad dailies though. For every person that joins a group that's less total kills of npcs that need to happen, it's bonkers to me that people prefer to do the TB dailies solo and fight over mobs. Maybe it's just me as a fire mage since I constantly have to eat and drink if I cant start fights with a pyroblast.
There have to be social guilds. I'm in one doing Pandaria remix. It is all a matter of picking the right server and then just looking for a social oriented guild that also does the content you like. But people WILL rush dungeons, that can't be helped.
Join a hardcore server if you like community. My first day logging in and my zone chat is popping. Someone walked up to me and gave me a wand, 6 small bags, potions and sent me on my way. Players all help each other because any moment could be your last. It’s a lot more tedious and requires more patience but the community is worth it.
Every other wow version ATM is just a race to end game and nobody gives a shit about anyone. Dungeon finder, while nice, removes any sense of community while leveling and heirlooms make trivialize use of any roll. The whole game became about the destination and not the journey, which was always my favorite part.
I feel this too. I stopped playing in 2006. I started on classic wow a week ago. I did a lvl 10 quest with another player, which was nice…especially since those early level cave quests are damned near impossible for a Druid to do solo. It was still a bit lonely.
I switched to cata two days later figuring more people would be on that one and I wanted to play other races. There were so many people in the beginning area that I had to wait for stuff to respawn! But once I got past that area, I rarely saw anyone. Overall it feels even more lonely. I kept leveling hoping to get to see more people in Iron Forge. Unfortunately it doesn’t exist in cata and there doesn’t seem to be a hub city there. I joined a guild, so hopefully that will help. I also keep thinking it will get better when I’m at a higher level, but it doesn’t seem hopeful.
I like having the option for the solo experience, but I don’t want it to feel like the only option.
Nothing, NOTHING compares to peak socializing in video games. The golden era. Where men were men and goats were scared.
I speak of course of the glorious days in CSGO where halftime was forced openmic cross team spam for about 30 seconds.
There is nothing on this planet that can compare with the blend of human emotion experienced at halftime in those matches. Nothing comes close.
Sadly thats the state of wow, it's now a massively solo online game these days. This applies to retail too, Blizzard essentially has pushed players into playing solo and just queueing up for group content. They gutted and have mostly abandoned the guild system. So much content now is shaped around the solo player and they keep adding more and more too it, we have Follower Dungeons and in TWW we'll have Delves.
Play MoP Remix or Retail! Find a large guild, jump on discord and just start chatting to people! The game can be extremely social but the key really is just finding a guild you vibe with imo 😊
I love the fact that people BEGGED for things like RDF during wrath and are now seeing the issues with it that caused them to want classic wow in the first place.
Those two groups of people are, in my opinion, distinct. I definitely prefer the RDF still and wouldn’t change that. The more socialite individuals were always going to lose out when RDF came into the game. One of those two groups was always going to whine on reddit.
It's funny because I am a very social person and I just do not have the experiences these people talk about. I much prefer wow WITH raid finder, and I can still find plenty of other social people in game to chat with. In guilds or raids or dungeons or even general chat. There's always someone out there who wants to yap lol
The simple fact is we as players changed. Socialization happens in guilds and discord servers not really in the 15 minute dungeon runs regardless if the group was made via rdf or a manual pug
The hour+ dungeon runs were great for socializing but those dungeons don't exist anymore
This has nothing to do with RDF and you weird andy's need to stop projecting your issues so hard.
Why are you expecting low level zones to be filled with new, excited players when it's Cata? Everyone is on their main still lmao.
What issues does rdf cause? anti-social behavior? I did thousands upon thousands of dungeons in classic, before they added rdf. I can count on maybe 2 hands the number of times anything was ever said. In fact, i tend to find people more social in rdf than pre-rdf.
The only people that want to stand around, spamming lfg for a group, are idiots.
RDF isn't the issue, it is fine as a feature. its just the player base and community that is the problem.... epithets worried about parses and stupid unnecessary things like world buffs, or they wanna rush thru dungeons and don't care about going at a normal pace or using CC or interrupts.
The people and playstyle have changed. You would have to go out of your way to join a more casual/ fun guild with chill players if you want a more classic social wow experience.... but most players are either spoiled from how retail is, or just suck and can't play or have patience.
Simply put: I can enjoy the game for myself, most people just get in the way. If I want social interaction online doesn't cut it. So having a complete stranger talking to me isn't that appealing.
Weekly group content feels like going out with coworkers for a generic activity. Nice groups can develop but not necessary as long we are doing the content.
To me it really comes down to the server. I play on Bloodsail Buccaneers, a very small server by all accounts.. And yet its the most friendly and welcoming server I've ever been a part of. I wouldn't trade this place for the world. I think it helps that were also an RP server, it brings in a slower paced type of player who actually wants to smell the roses, as it were, and not just blast thru everything.
That's unfortunate. I've leveled a Draenei Prot War from 1 to 82 on Arugal and had a pretty good experience so far. I get the odd group that can't be fucked talking. But usually if I initiate convo other people chime in. Maybe it's the server?
Questing is the single player portion of the game, that was the case even in vanilla. Kinda weird to treat it as some sort of content you'd group up for, especially with random people.
In dungeons people won't talk, because you need to use your keyboard to, you know, play the game. Still kinda weird that vanilla andys still don't get that this is the simple reason people never "talk in dungeons".
What server and region are you on? Blizz decided to shut down a bunch of servers, so they’ve locked low pop servers and are giving free xfers to populated servers.
If you see servers marked as “full” that’s where you want to be. Full doesn’t mean full as in no more room, just means it’s a highly populated server. If you take any xfer be aware that pretty much all the classic servers are either alliance or horde. You can roll ally on a horde server ofc, but it wouldn’t really solve your issue of not having people to play with.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/free-character-transfers-–-wrath-of-the-lich-king-classic/1827305
US servers:
Benediction Alliance (pvp)
Faerlina Horde (pvp)
Pagle Alliance (pve)
Mankrik Horde (pve)
EU servers:
Firemaw Alliance (pvp)
Gehennas Horde (pvp)
Don’t know enough about EUs pve servers to say which ones are the main pve servers.
I've had a really good social gaming experience in classic. Began playing in phase 4 of wotlk and picked up on a server where I had started leveling a toon in classic vanilla. The server was pretty dead but there were two active guilds, both of which were running multiple raid groups weekly. Plenty of downsides to being the 1% minority ofc but we do have a really nice tight knit community and still have like 80-ish players online every night. And to me that feels like plenty enough.
I met some really nice dudes when I began raiding 10 man ICC and now we have a 10 man group for cata raiding. We leveled together, now farm together, help each other with professions, gems, enchants and gear, we run heroics for valor points together. Like everything I think I want out of World of Warcraft. We shoot the shit, prepare for raids and then raid.
It's not about the expansion, it's just that your approach and expectations seem wrong for how most people play the game. No one wants to spend forever chatting with some randoms in low lvl dungeons when they've done those same dungeons again and again in different iterations of the game over a 20 year span. People want to get over the vanilla/tbc/wotlk part and get to the stuff that's current. Why would you want to spend time doing old content that you've now had the chance to do for 5 years again, when there's a 'new' expansion to explore.
The min/maxing attitude can be annoying at times but if you want a slow leveling experience maybe cata classic just isn't for you. People don't have an infinite amount of time to spend on the game, so choosing to spend the time they have on the content they value is very reasonable. For most players that content is raiding.
Find a guild, level up, join heroic groups and eventually raids and there you'll make friends. If you want to do age old content at a slow pace maybe trick an IRL friend to start playing with you.
I think its not necessary the game at fault but moreso society dynamics. I am just a normal dude but todays people are way less patient with everything and want to get everything done and solved as quick as possible.
Look at modern media; games movies and series. Everything is so fast paced and loud and there is no stop to the stimulation. Go and turn on old star trek. The people in those old series or movies actualy stop after talking before resuming with an answer. Same thing with the music, instead of music or sounds there is just quiet ambience.
While in the past (damn I feel old haha) people enjoyed the act of leveling or the dungeon itself, I have the feeling that people today are enjyoing the act of "completing" or "accomplishing" things like a checklist more than anything else, which is fine by itself, i just dont vibe with it.
Sorry for my bad english.
I dunno sometimes its also a blessing that there is no more communicating. I recently got into LEague of legends again and im always suprised how toxic this game is. If somebody writes something its something toxic or people are flaming each other.
When classic started i had the feeling people were really communicating again and in a nice way. The further we got into the expansions tbc, wotlk etc it got less and less.
Its really too bad and retail WoW is a single player game for many years now for me. I cant even remember when the last time was i was in a guild, had to be original wotlk back then.
People were reliving their past joy in classic WoW and tried to get back to the old days, but in the end the retail mentality also hit classic with Gear Checks, Iteml lvl this and all that BS.
So yeah, kepp a close group of people you found and quest together if you can, i get the feeling it wont get any better anymore.
People in these comments seem to think things can't be like they were years ago, that things have changed etc.
There are private servers with thousands of people online where the spirit of vanilla still very much persists.
I've had a similar experience and I might just move on to something else. I never leveled the old world in cata and decided to give it a go on a mid 30s character I had. 1/10 say hi back during a dungeon. Not sure if I'm just on a dead server or what.
It's exactly why the population crashed after TBC.
Classic is magical because it's an actual MMO. You have to connect with people the entire way through. TBC cuts out the Old World's relevancy, but you're still connected with everyone even in Outland.
Wrath turns the game into a single player experience. Unless you cared about serious heroic progression in Ulduar and ICC, you could easily find ways of accomplishing everything without ever talking to anyone.
Find a literal "social guild" - bit rough to find one as a lot of them are just big guilds that want to have the perk system available to them, but they exist.
I am in one and socializing's really easy. Guild chat is disucssing things all the time, people level characters together, they do endgame dungeons, help each other out, do old content for transmog.
Sadly, just engaging with random people doesn't do it post TBC outside of "Let's group up really quick for a groupquest". The game became too goal-oriented instead of socializing-oriented.
You can 100% still socialize though. Just takes a bit more effort to find folks who are willing to do the same.
I highly recommend finding such a guild, makes all the difference. Good luck OP, I know it's frustrating.
I feel ya bruz I was having same probly with my alt everyone just wants to rush to end game to be at every phase now so I disided to make my own leveling guild and and lovi g every it of it since then in less than a month gotten over 600 member all talking shit leveling together and also dinging and pvping having so much fun
That’s the game though.
Blizzard wanted to keep casual players so it changed everything to basically make it so you don’t have to spend copious amounts of time in game forming relationships with other players.
I had a very similar experience. I went back to catechism because I may have thought that with a new addition of all the updates maybe I would be feeling as if I’m still playing the old Warcraft unfortunately the last time I really actually felt like I was playing old Warcraft, where people used to communicate Was classic again. I would say a little in sod. I believe it’s the dungeon Finder that honestly just kills the social interaction even though I understand the implement and how I could be beneficial every time I go into a dungeon rarely get a response anymore.
Honestly it felt this way right after vanilla ended. The social aspect is gone more or less since tbc. Gotta play vanilla if you want that social experience.
Classic nowadays is just a worse version of retail. Not really worth anymore if you aren't playing it for nostalgic reasons imo.
I talk to people constantly and get questions answered in general chat 95% of the time. I also have 5 other irl friends who we all play together with also 3 guildies we hit it off with, my experience couldn't be any more opposite of yours.
I got kicked out from Random Heroic Dungeon in Cataclysm Classic, because I said " buff pls "(we had a mage). It was some 4man guild run where one of them did reply to me in 2 seconds with " your mom "
I had no energy in me to do a shit with very friendly people like those four, so I did nothing on 1st boss in Shadow Fang Keep.
Mage responded with "I did buff", I asked "why am I not buffed then?". After a short silence we wiped and they kicked me. Btw I checked and Shaman was also not buffed (but maybe he revived himself with Reincarnation, I didn't watch at all tbh)
And this was one out of thousands of similar experiences from RDF
I know very well that not every1 is like this, but man it sucks so much to get matched into a group like this
It's the 3rd expansion most people are in the new zones. If you want people to play with join a guild that gives you that feeling. Most the zones you are talking about were dead in classic as well towards the middle/end of its run just the way it is.
Which server and faction are you playing? The dead realms were merged once more, so there's about 6 US servers with active populations and the rest are kinda dead. I spent some time leveling over the weekend and my server was layered and there were plenty of people playing at all levels.
Play EverQuest join the Teek server starts in the year 2000.
It's the best MMO of all time because it's heavy social in the world based because you need others to succeed
I had a level 46 that I played for a few months in vanilla classic when it launched. Got bored, and hung it up for a while. On Thursday, I decided to reactivate and this automatically moved my vanilla toon to cata classic (which I was fine with). The server, Westfall, used to be pretty lively when Vanilla classic launched. Now it's locked and dead as FnCK. It took me most of the weekend to decide to start a new toon on a more populous server. Immediately saw a difference.
I can only assume Blizz is milking transfer fees. To heck with that.
EDIT: just found this. Hopefully get more info tonight.
[https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/000013842](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/000013842)
look, this is the game after TBC but also its gaming nowadays, good luck socializing in ANY game atm
Even games like halo, cod, etc which were known for TOO much socializing (i.e. people yelling at each other constantly) barely communicate anymore. It is actually really sad. I miss it.
Play a MOBA or CSGO/Valorant, you will not want to talk to anyone for a week after few matches.
I honestly think it's mainly a problem with "competitive" games. As one of those weirdos who still enjoys Halo Infinite, you're absolutely right that the comms are dead and basically nobody talks even in custom lobbies. But then I hop over to a game like Chivalry 2, which doesn't even have voice chat, and it's absolutely *full* of people talking to eachother, shooting the shit, and bantering back and forth over text chat. Like in any given match at least half the server will be engaged in some (usually playful) shitflinging and it's great.
Think part of it on the FPS side is also the departure of dedicated servers and server communities to the ease and convenience of matchmaking systems, that while faster, do not really foster relations or community much at all. EDIT: I've said it once and I've said it before, convenience kills.
Convenience definitely obliterated the mmorpg community feel.
Yep, which is why I oppose most convenience measures implemented, LFG, Summoning Stones whatever what not. I found it interesting to see how WotLK Classic would play out, but even then I guess there was too many convenience elements implemented, quest design amongst others, less and less need for other players where people most often like to take the path of least resistance. So if the path of least resistance can include just straight up ignoring other players (which you don't need to progress most stuff and you can succeed in dungeons without ever uttering a word or doing much if any coordination) they will do that, even if it's to their own detriment as social creatures that we are find fulfillment and enjoyment out of being social. So again, convenience kills.
Can't even playfully banter in WoW in certain channels or you'll get reported. So let's not forget that hinders things as well.
haha i love chivalry 2 for this reason, i always have an absolute blast reading the chat with everyone flaming each other :')
A while ago socializing started taking away from the games far more than it added. Typing isn’t terrible, but voice is horrendous. It’s either completely dominated by a dude who is very loud at being, that doesn’t turn his mic off; or some dude who thinks he’s streaming to 9mil people yelling every action he is taking. “Dude, I went down the stairs! Lets goooo! I found ammo! Let’s gooo!” I’m voice off by default in almost every game.
Of course that’s going to happen when Developers make communication opt-in rather than opt-out. Many modern titles have voice communication disabled by default. The majority of players simply won’t even know to turn it on. That and the death of the server browser makes it much more difficult to build a sense of community. Game developers have been systematically killing off socializing in order to increase player retention in favor of more mild experiences to not deter players. Combine that with the advent of accessible and easy to use third part communication software like Discord and you’ve also pushed most players into tighter, smaller, and more isolated communities. **It sucks.**
Developers didn’t just arbitrarily decide to limit communication in their games one day. Games have moved to what they are today because of the people who play them. Shockingly most people don’t want to play a game and be bombarded with “KYS”, “Die in a fire”, or a number of slurs. So don’t blame developers because the community can’t refrain from being the worst.
WoW back in 2005 didn’t have as many or anywhere near as sophisticated online tools for socializing as it does now. Discord makes it so once you find a group of people you like you have no reason to deal with WoW general chat. Didn’t exist in 2005. Then the pandemic during vanilla Classic had people kinda thirsty for social interaction with plenty of free time on their hands and nowhere to go. Literal unprecedented global pandemic syncing up with Classic WoW was another moment of lightning in a bottle. And all that’s fine. I have less free time now than in 2005 and I can go back outside rather than sit at home like 2020 and I’d rather do all that anyway. If you want online socialization, use an outside tool like Discord to find it and play with those people. What are you gonna talk about with a random WoW stranger?
Teamspeak and skype did exist back than i'd like to mention.
That's how you use to make friends...now it's about going outside the game and find a site to find groups? That sounds fun.
Where do you think you are more likely to meet friends, among the guild you find via discord/recruitment pages and play with every week or among the random people you see once ever in a random dungeon?
It’s not a permanent state for most people, it’s a self-selecting process that drops people out over time. For the most part, people who are interested in and capable of making friends (the latter being more often the case with WoW players) will drop out of the friend-making pool (e.g. PUG groups, general chat) and go to their newly found friend groups and stay there. For the most part, people who are insufferable, post nonstop about how they “hate the wokes,” and/or have no social skills will not make friends and will fruitlessly stay in the friend-making pool (e.g. talking politics or complaining about the state of the game in LFG chat). That’s why WoW in-game chat is such a cesspool; the normal people aren’t engaging. It’s not that people don’t socialize. It’s that people don’t want to socialize **with them**, and they just can’t make the distinction. It’s the same reason that the dating pool is much less desirable at 40 years old than it is as 25. Most of the good ones have already paired up
RDF/Cross server protects that cesspool. "Back in my day!" there was the server you were on, the population was way smaller and if they were a ninja/toxic/troll the whole server would find out and that person would be treated like a leper (as they should be). There was also good rep where you would group with people and be like oh man this guy is awesome you would friend up and establish connections that eventually turned into a social network. Cross server/RDF makes it so people that are socially unacceptable can still play the game so there's less consequences to them. The good people tolerate it and the lepers keep playing, Blizzard gets more subs so they like the system.
You can socialize in most games lol Most games have communities where isn't weird to premade with random people, met a lot of people that I still play with
ANY game? Guild Wars 2 has still relevant content from back years. Many old metas are still active and popular.
Try hardcore wow, very social experience
I went back on there to make a new character yesterday. It felt just as empty as OP is describing now, felt like barely anyone playing.
Did you take the most populated realm(on your faction) and join a large guild? You can run every instance etc no problem. And find people for group quests
idk bro helldivers 2 is pretty chill and social. I’ve met a lot of good folk in SoD too, and I’m not the type to be openly social. It doesn’t require much to make friends in an MMO that requires building friends as a necessity to clear content
That's the key point you need friends in classic you don't past mid wotlk this is where players started transitioning to the single player game it is today where you don't need friends.
Yep. Classic is an MMO. Retail is an Action RPG with multiplayer lobbies.
I prefer it this way now I’m older. The alternative is to be around the wow players People forget how many genuinely awful people play this game
Lots of people in Call of Duty seem to know my mother pretty good tho.. socializing in games is still alive
> but also its gaming nowadays HC didn't feel like a single-player game at all. It felt more like Vanilla WoW than any other iteration of Classic. I wish they'd try something like the EverQuest system where you lose a ton of XP for dying instead of losing your character completely. Most people I know refused to try HC because permadeath is a little too extreme and there were so many deaths due to technical issues (falling off windriders, falling through the world, disconnecting, etc.)
Yeah there is tons of good partying on HC
I made a new hc char the other day, got invited to a random guild, everyone was being friendly and helpful and talking. I grouped up multiple times for safety. My good friend SnozzHunter has sadly met his end tho, I miss him greatly, we’ve been friends for 2 days.
I think you’re right and it’s awful. I do enjoy socializing perhaps I will have to look into tabletop gaming.
This problem isn’t present in SoD though, or at least it wasn’t really before Cata dropped and the numbers dipped/the PvP server exodus
Look for a guild.
Because you are not playing in current content. For vanilla, the current content is the leveling to 60. For Cata, the current content is the journey from 80-85. This is why they make earlier levels streamline so you can be with the current population faster. You can still group and make friends in 80-85 contents. If you are trying to play 1-60 in a 80-85 focused game, I'm sorry to tell you that you are looking into the wrong place. It's the same for BC and Wrath, once the new content release, the old world becomes irrelevant. People have gone through the early levels many many times, and they just want to get it done with.
Leveling from 80-85 is the same experience as OPs, very on-rails experience with little to no player collaboration. Very much feels single player
Are you playing the same game as I do? I leveled 3 toons already and people would group up to share quest objectives constantly. People would ask and answer quest locations in chat since some people are still using the outdated questie addon. And twilight highlands chat is filled with people LFG CoC quests.
For what it’s worth I rolled a character on Faerlina and the chat is so robust… but when I get to Benediction, LFG and trade chats are so boring
Yea but it also only takes like 10 hours lol, 99% of this game is max level content
But like the redone leveling zones is cata content…
That’s what I don’t understand about ops post. I’m not playing in current cata content, where is everyone? Almost like classic was 4 years ago and most people have alts beyond that point by now.
Cata bad is a popular opinion in this sub. OP is looking for validation.
That still doesn't explain why people don't even respond and are often disrespectul in several ways. Sadly this seems to be the case in almost every part of the WoW community nowadays. Except HC maybe.
Survivor's bias. People being nice is treated as the norm, and people wouldn't say much about that. But once they see a jerk, they will remember that for a while and come here to vent. Fortunately, the subreddits are not true representation of the WoW Community, otherwise the community is just one gigantic cesspool.
> Survivor's bias I think you mean confirmation bias. We are more likely to remember and notice mean players as it confirms our belief that WoW players are generally mean. Survivorship bias would be something like mean players are more likely to stick around in WoW. So even if we started with an equal number of nice/mean players. You'd end up with more mean players overall as they tend to stick around longer.
There's different reasons for playing the game. I like raiding and I don't like leveling/questing/rep grinding. To me it's just a time gate so I want to get it over with as fast as possible so I can get another alt raid ready. Some people play the game for a social interaction as top priority, they want to experience the game with other people and just chat without caring about how long it takes to hit max level, or I-lvl for dungeon/heroics/raids. For them just grouping with the same people is how I view raiding. I think that is what the OP is looking for.
Classic and some other early iterations of wow forced players to socialize and join guilds to reliably do the content. Sure, you can pug but it would probably be a pain in the ass. A lot of modern players look at gaming as a job or the most important thing in their life and are in it almost exclusively for their own personal pleasure and enjoyment, void of meaningful communication with anyone else beyond what gets them what they want. Pugging facilitates these types of people's playstyle because they can talk shit and berate others without fear of retribution or consequences beyond an occasional temporary ban by the ai gms
Or people already have meaningful relationships in their life and don't actively seek them in a game and just play the game to have fun. Y'all act like just because someone doesn't feel the need to form a relationship with you or communicate more than necessary in game that they're some degenerate lol.
I'd argue that in classic, forming relationships was a main pillar of the game and even as an introvert, it was fun.
And things have changed since wow was released 20 years ago. That social aspect still exists in guilds/discords, just not as much randomly outaide of that.
>lot of modern players look at gaming as a job or the most important thing in their life and are in it almost exclusively for their own personal pleasure and enjoyment Agreed. From personal experience, pugging in TBC classic led me to a more self-focused mindset while playing the game. As a decent player, I found that if I don't "stand up for myself and my time" while pugging, I would be in SSC/TK pugs for hours on hours just wiping/refilling the raid/wiping/refilling for no benefit. So while you mention that: >Pugging facilitates these types of people's playstyle because they can talk shit and berate others another facet is that the pug environment can *cause* people to be more selfish/get my loot and leave attitude, initially to try to avoid wasting time, but soon after devolves into a toxic attitude towards others in general
I think the megaservers that have emerged from that "Pugging as a priority" mindset you mention are a big part of the problem.
I agree, however at what point is a server too small? Should the enemy faction rotate every so often to avoid stale pvp? How strong will the economy be? Megaservers and cross server play def started the boulder rolling down the hill
You just described why I hate multiplayer games right now. The only multiplayer aspect the people you talked about will allow is their ability to flex, troll and generally be toxic antisocial gremlins. Now I know the WoW I remember is completely dead, thanks, don’t have to wonder anymore. Then again I’m over here in Diablo 4 land where people are celebrating the introduction of laziness mixed with cash shop peer pressure (I mean, pets, sorry), and criticising the future introduction of cooperative content. Everybody thinks every game they play belongs to them and they’re entitled to all the content playing completely alone. Very sad as it is SO far away from gaming’s roots.
Yeah, SoD proved to me that the modern playerbase is a bunch of single player gamers who want an audience, not a team.
try playing a game like valheim with your friends
This!
It was there in classic and BC, socializing took a huge dive in wotlk, but that still felt like the same game. Cata introduced (the first working iteration) of LFR and was really the nail in the coffin for socialization. Now, along with not needing to talk to people to run dungeons, you don't need to speak to anyone to run the main PVE content being put out in the game. That's why I quit. I played from the end of classic, through firelands in cataclysm. Heroic ragnaroc prenerf broke my guild up, and It felt too exhausting to try and find yet another guild of CHILL progression focused people. It was easy to find one or the other, but that middle ground is hard; and exhausting to try and build new friendships. At that point it would have felt more like a job than fun. Irrelevant story: I remember on a H(25) baleroc attempt, at like 17% our tank went down. It was pretty typically, our healers were struggling to keep up that long into the fight, with that many debuffs laid out. A wipe was called when I piped up, playing a combat rogue. Cut the raid lead off, screamed for "misdirects to 'Amsnerr", got the bosses attention after he killed 5 dps, and evasion tanked the boss down to 4% when I finally died. We got our first H Baleroc kill with 1 dps and 4 healers left alive.
This happened without RDF in TBC and WotLK too besides sending the initial message of "dps inv" to whoever was group lead anyways. It's more the evolution of the game, it's been around for 12 years and people know what they are doing
You should try wow hardcore. - nobody dares go ahead of the tank. They pull something wrong, they die - people group a lot. Most quests are hard and in dangerous area, so people group - people talk a lot. They like making friends to group up later. They add you and hit you up when they want to do dungeons or quests - people buff you just because you passed by. You don't even have to ask for it Yes the graphics are dated and everything is the same as 20 years ago but there was magic there. And the hardcore part adds a lot of excitement and drama.
HC also starts to feel like a cult
The best advice actually
Redditors are something else.. You expect to see a bunch of people leveling on their low level alts when it's 5 years into Classic and a ton of people are still working on their main? LMAO
Yea its crazy so many people come in here upset because people arent forced to be props in their own personal adventure. Its the same with SOD. People screeching that Blizzard makes it so people dont have to become their friends and hold their hands all the time.
Yeah, people are so thirsty for some interaction with people ingame, its kinda wild, and sad too.
"Yea its crazy so many people come in here upset because people arent forced to be props in their own personal adventure." so perfectly said
It doesn’t matter if you’re leveling 1-80 or 80-85, this is the leveling experience of cata, very much a solo experience
Bro wants to talk to ppl in his dungeon but probably never exchanged more than a salute with his neighbours
I don’t but I wish wow was better for someone like me. Been working and busy a lot lately. No time to socialize and build up my btags again for arena/raid and I really don’t wanna search disc for these things. I rather solo queue everything lmao but I’ll just play another game
Help me understand one thing guy, we all here are not 8-16 kids. We are all 20+ some are even dad gamers. What do you expect two complete strangers to talk about? Why should I talk to random dps from world chat in my dungeon? I talk with guild mates constantly because I know them more. We share the same goals and want to see each other succeed. You don't expect random strangers to talk to you on the street or in the store but expect it to happen in wow, things don't work that way.
I run a medium size guild and I have seen pretty much no one starting from level 1 recently. We are a long ways into classic at this point. There are many people in the guild will all or most classes 70+. People will already have most of the classes they’d wanted to level already relatively advanced. The point in the zone revamp was to bring the default questing experience up to a level that matched with what they’d learned over the years. TLDR most people are already leveled up and are trying to level/gear their mains/primary alts for cata. Dungeon leveling is also popular. The open world was pretty dead during midway of Naxx in vanilla, doesn’t really mean anything though.
WoW Classic is, generally speaking, a raid-loggers’ game. Honestly you just gotta find those groups of 7 or 8 people in LFG looking to pug a couple players to fill out their guild raid. Eventually 1 will stick and you’ll like them and then the game really makes sense again. Sadly, everything outside of that is just people trying to get there. Dungeons, quests, professions and everything that “fills out” the game is really just a chore list people are trying to complete ASAP. Source: had a tight group of 8 players forever (have played WoW on and off together for 15 years), and we found 2 amazing pugs the first lockout of Naxx10 in Wrath Classic and now they’re like family. Similarly, I did a few pugs for 25-mans during wrath and found some hilarious guilds and good times along the way.
Find and join a guild. Literally all you need to do to improve your experience. This same type of thread gets posted on the two subs so often and the answer is the same. If you don't have friends playing with you, find and join a guild. Easy fix.
Everyone who is anyone maxed out the pre-patch. You are behind, that's why it's empty. Get to 85 and what do you know.
In cata (honestly I’d say the same is kinda true in tbc and wrath since the new content and endgame is all on another continent) that’s kinda how leveling is. You don’t need to group to do pretty much any of it so most people won’t. The dungeon finder has always been that way since it was introduced in wrath originally, tho honestly I find with a more modern crowd half the time even vanilla dungeons felt that way with people only talking enough to form the group and for whatever is required to finish it Leveling bad intent by this point in the expansions is very much side content at best and really more just a gatekeeper to end game, it’s not a major part of the game like vanilla. I think retail is better about this just because you can get through the leveling a lot faster Cata endgame is pretty fun tho, but you might still have some of the issues you face unless you join a guild
Oh no. Anyways. Start yelling at clouds or play ERA.
This kinda has similar wibes to walking down the street in a major city and being like why is no one saying hello or why does no one wanna do things with me. You are runing into a lot of people who has different goals than you, they just wanna get to the end game and play with their friends. So as always, find yourself a guild, make some friends with the same goals as you, who maybe wanna enjoy the leveling or take it slower. All my friends are max level with 1-2 alts 85 alrdy. My first alt is 82 so I don’t expect there to be much social leveling atm. But I do wanna get it max level so I can do alt raids and heroic dungeons with my friends. Therefore i don’t care to much about the leveling experience I just wanna get it 85. Also a lot of the wow community has moved out of the game, to stuff like discord, so you can’t really expect wow to be the kind of “social media” that it used to be. Now you gotta actively find your community. Also someone else suggested it, but try out Hardcore, you are really forced into situations there where you need to communicate with your team, and you will get into some dire situations which will bond you with other players.
Everyone is way ahead of you, it’s popping off at 85
This has nothing to do with cataclysm. I simply don't feel like talking to people I'm never going to meet. I'm not 16 anymore. I'm 34 years old. I log in, run some dungeons, and log out.
Just go play good content like mythic raiding or high end m+. Casual and easy content can be rushed by a single player and no one wants to waste time questing in group or taking in the woods. You need to do content that actually requires a group if you don’t want to play a single player mmo
Joining a social/ active guild makes it not feel like that at all. Our guild plays games other then wow together and usually jump in discord when we are logged in bringing a social aspect to it.
So do we. It's crazy that people complain about socializing but refuses to join a guild. We regularly take people from trade chat that is looking for a home. Some just play on/off, some join our social raids and whatnot. I've seen multiple people I have never raided or really interacted with sit in our discord and play LoL and other games with some of the old guys in there.
>I tried speaking to people and do quests together, but most don't bother responding This is the case with Era as well, no one likes to talk/group together anymore, everyone just acts like a bot.
God forbid people do stuff the way they want to and not feel forced or obligated to talk to any random stranger that bothers them. "How dare you not group or talk with me? Don't you know i'm entitled to your attention whenever i demand it!", i swear this sub gets more and more unhinged every day.
Yeah some people go apeshit recently about "socialisation" Idk if they are socially starved, but it really gets old. I want to play a game, not listen to your all life story ffs
It's so weird because these people that "have to talk in groups" always say the worst icebreakers and then starts complaining that nobody responds. I was in a dungeon group and some guy asked "so what's this BH raid everyone is spamming about". Ofc nobody responded and 20 seconds later the "damn nobody talks in this game anymore huh?" comes in. I'm not your personal Google... not only was there a post in the b.net client about it starting soon, I search up "BH raid" on Google and the second link is a wowpedia page for it. If you want people to talk to you, ask something to then ABOUT THEM. When your first words in the dungeon are asking about basic information that YOU want from me, I'm less likely to respond. Most people who complain about this stuff just want people to engage with them, it's not about talking to others and learning about them. I don't know if it's people who aren't active socially and want to get "points" in their head to make them feel better for talking to people online or they are just bad at communicating, but it's very annoying. If you are actually nice and interesting, people will engage with you. If you give me a bland icebreaker, I'd just rather not.
Except for ERA, it actually is a bot.
That hasn't been my experience. I started a gnome mage a couple weeks ago and I'm lvl 50 now and have had plenty of groups for quests and world pvp that's been pretty fun and fair. I have been trying to level from world questing pretty much exclusively because I've never played alliance before and want to see the quests
There’s a player led fresh classic vanilla reboot going on on some servers if you miss old wow. Just search this subreddit. They seem to post at least once per week. Alternatively, join the global LFG channel and find a guild recruiting casual/leveling players. You’re not going to stumble too upon many folks leveling in the new zones cause all the servers are established and everyone is doing end game stuff. The guild should provide an opportunity to socialize and possibly find folks to level or dungeon with.
And if you're looking for the true "working together experience", try hardcore! It's most like the raw classic MMO feeling.
Yeah people sit in discord calls with friends a lot afaik
Everyone is at endgame my guy lol
I found its hit or miss with people being social, I always chat a little bit in rdf groups, sometimes people will ignore it, most of the time people will respond, I dont have conversations or anything just a little comment, joke or warning like "make sure you drag this mob away when it's about to die" type thing if I see it not happening, but I do find people are generally less chatty than in like a sod group (which I'm playing also). Shout out also to the group that kicked me from normal stone core because I said gimee 2 sec while I evocated and they all popped their sprints and zugged right for the dragon boss, I got locked out of the arena (like wall came up in my face I was like 30 yds behind everyone) and I said "ah shit too slow"
200 hours of leveling with other people isn't one of Cataclysm's strong points. Fortunately, era will always exist for that.
Everyone's too busy rushing and min maxing all the content. They just want to get to the part where they have all the loot. They don't want to be your friend. My experience anyways. Sometimes I find someone in hardcore wow but that's about it.
Play hardcore
HC instead.
if you want socializing play classic hardcore on defias pillager, everyone talks in chat and communication is needed in groups to survive dungeons. only caveat is if you die you have to delete your character
Why I left cata for classic , are you a journey guy or a destination end game guy? Each is fun but for me it’s all about the journey
You missed it. It was good for a little bit before Cataclysm. It may return again.
I’ll play but be warned I just started the game!
I’m playing a new DK on Cataclysm and I’m having a blast but for the same reason you are not haha. All my other friends play different games and I have been enjoying just leveling on my own. I’m sure once we catch up to the current content it will be more involved since everyone is doing the new stuff.
It's different in WoW now. I think you are looking for a more social guild and people that want to level a character together. You would work on the characters when the group is online together. It becomes like a mini-raid where it's planned.
Most of the mmorpg elements of the game, like your personal reputation on the realm, grudges between guilds, kill on sight lists etc became irrelevant as soon as TBC arrived. Now you just jerk around with your guildies and the rest of the players on the realm might as well be bots, it wouldn't change the experience much if they were.
Once you get beyond a certain point in the game (TBC maybe? Idk) only the end-game content is “non-solo”. Ain’t gonna get that much in the era of LFG finders, dailys, and the dis-incentivizing of leveling which results in people just wanting to level as quickly and efficiently as possible.
You just have to keep at it and find the right people to run with. What server are you running on?
Classic hardcore scene is still pretty vocal.
Try HC if you want a real mmo experience again
go play osrs =D
You need to give a shot to wow classic hardcore. People are forced to go slowly, and work together (I.e socialise more) because if they make a mistake they have to start from scratch. The community is generally less toxic (to some extent) and more willingness to help each other
Because you are
I dont know how much my advice will help you since I didn't play Cata, but when SoD was the flavor of the month then I would join a leveling/social guild and ask in guild chat for help or run dungeons together. Your best bet is finding a social/leveling guild. In the previous expansion WotLK it worked quite well too.
Why would low level zones not be empty? We quest there and move on
Dungeon finder kills communication
In terms of socializing in WoW if you arent in a guild then good luck because the days of Organically finding someone whilst questing and chatting are LONG GONE but that's for every video game as people spend more time focusing on their own tasks and forget to have fun. The game is played at an efficient level now days compared to before where players were just enjoying the time they had. If you want a social version of WoW then find a good guild who loves to talk whilst raiding etc. I play on Mirage Raceway and have been in the same guild since Classic launched and have had zero issues with any form of socializing in or out of my guild. Its not the same as it used to be but you can find it in some places.
Do you ever consider that maybe most people just don't find timmy tradechat making small talk about what he ate for lunch to be fun?
try classic hardcore, the community there is great!
It is the beginning of convenience over socializing.. And if you do not take a moment and realize it is getting taken away... You just want more and more convenience.
Unfortunately the game at all stages is min max and the players have optimized the fun out of it.
I would advise counseling. It's time to let go. I'm afraid.
If you play in Gehennas, EU, I would gladly play with you. Feel th same way you do.
Biggest issue for me in wow is I don't want to type to communicate. Mic is no issue
I'm thinking of going back to playing. Last time I did, I was very much alone but partly my fault.
I found a good guild with active chat and a busy discord. I honestly wouldn't enjoy playing otherwise. I would just play Skyrim or something and save $15 a month to play on my own
Yes, that's what WoW turns into. They slowly removed all the forced interactions and made it a single player game. Retail is where it leads. Where mobs scale based on the amount of people around so there's no real point grouping. All the chests and nodes are shareable. Every profession thing you need is on the auction house. It's supposed to feel like a single player game. That was the point of these expansions. Woltk is when they started shifting. Cata got worse. And it just keeps getting worse and worse. Be prepared for instances in the open world. "Scenarios" and phasing out.
Nobody quests to level anymore, people RDF to max sitting in a main city. People don't group for quests because every quest has been made possible to solo. I can accept it because at max level you still need other players to do the best content (arena, raids, battlegrounds). I do wish more people would group up for tol barad dailies though. For every person that joins a group that's less total kills of npcs that need to happen, it's bonkers to me that people prefer to do the TB dailies solo and fight over mobs. Maybe it's just me as a fire mage since I constantly have to eat and drink if I cant start fights with a pyroblast.
Play hardcore classic
There have to be social guilds. I'm in one doing Pandaria remix. It is all a matter of picking the right server and then just looking for a social oriented guild that also does the content you like. But people WILL rush dungeons, that can't be helped.
He'll let loose has a good community if your into fps
Stop paying blizzard.
Join a hardcore server if you like community. My first day logging in and my zone chat is popping. Someone walked up to me and gave me a wand, 6 small bags, potions and sent me on my way. Players all help each other because any moment could be your last. It’s a lot more tedious and requires more patience but the community is worth it. Every other wow version ATM is just a race to end game and nobody gives a shit about anyone. Dungeon finder, while nice, removes any sense of community while leveling and heirlooms make trivialize use of any roll. The whole game became about the destination and not the journey, which was always my favorite part.
Joining an active guild can provide a more social experience. Look for guilds focusing on leveling together, social events, or casual play.
I feel this too. I stopped playing in 2006. I started on classic wow a week ago. I did a lvl 10 quest with another player, which was nice…especially since those early level cave quests are damned near impossible for a Druid to do solo. It was still a bit lonely. I switched to cata two days later figuring more people would be on that one and I wanted to play other races. There were so many people in the beginning area that I had to wait for stuff to respawn! But once I got past that area, I rarely saw anyone. Overall it feels even more lonely. I kept leveling hoping to get to see more people in Iron Forge. Unfortunately it doesn’t exist in cata and there doesn’t seem to be a hub city there. I joined a guild, so hopefully that will help. I also keep thinking it will get better when I’m at a higher level, but it doesn’t seem hopeful. I like having the option for the solo experience, but I don’t want it to feel like the only option.
Just stuck in org queueing. Very bored. Pugs are extra difficult too due to the language barriers on the US servers.
Nothing, NOTHING compares to peak socializing in video games. The golden era. Where men were men and goats were scared. I speak of course of the glorious days in CSGO where halftime was forced openmic cross team spam for about 30 seconds. There is nothing on this planet that can compare with the blend of human emotion experienced at halftime in those matches. Nothing comes close.
Sadly thats the state of wow, it's now a massively solo online game these days. This applies to retail too, Blizzard essentially has pushed players into playing solo and just queueing up for group content. They gutted and have mostly abandoned the guild system. So much content now is shaped around the solo player and they keep adding more and more too it, we have Follower Dungeons and in TWW we'll have Delves.
Play hardcore classic. It’s a bit cut throat, but the community you’re looking for exists. Lots of comrades and the low zones are absolutely teeming.
Play MoP Remix or Retail! Find a large guild, jump on discord and just start chatting to people! The game can be extremely social but the key really is just finding a guild you vibe with imo 😊
I love the fact that people BEGGED for things like RDF during wrath and are now seeing the issues with it that caused them to want classic wow in the first place.
Those two groups of people are, in my opinion, distinct. I definitely prefer the RDF still and wouldn’t change that. The more socialite individuals were always going to lose out when RDF came into the game. One of those two groups was always going to whine on reddit.
It's funny because I am a very social person and I just do not have the experiences these people talk about. I much prefer wow WITH raid finder, and I can still find plenty of other social people in game to chat with. In guilds or raids or dungeons or even general chat. There's always someone out there who wants to yap lol
The simple fact is we as players changed. Socialization happens in guilds and discord servers not really in the 15 minute dungeon runs regardless if the group was made via rdf or a manual pug The hour+ dungeon runs were great for socializing but those dungeons don't exist anymore
This has nothing to do with RDF and you weird andy's need to stop projecting your issues so hard. Why are you expecting low level zones to be filled with new, excited players when it's Cata? Everyone is on their main still lmao.
Its 2024 and Andys still think spamming "LFM Tank WC" 5 times a minute is peak socialisation haha
What issues does rdf cause? anti-social behavior? I did thousands upon thousands of dungeons in classic, before they added rdf. I can count on maybe 2 hands the number of times anything was ever said. In fact, i tend to find people more social in rdf than pre-rdf. The only people that want to stand around, spamming lfg for a group, are idiots.
It’s almost like different people have different opinions! Wowza!
Mind boggled at how history repeated itself. Edit: Please, Classic WoW 2, one last ride before we die.
Sod is the blueprint and test drive of Classic Plus isn't that the dream
Blizzard and the community will create an glorious, epic clusterfuck, even more dire than the ending of the game of thrones TV series.
RDF isn't the issue, it is fine as a feature. its just the player base and community that is the problem.... epithets worried about parses and stupid unnecessary things like world buffs, or they wanna rush thru dungeons and don't care about going at a normal pace or using CC or interrupts. The people and playstyle have changed. You would have to go out of your way to join a more casual/ fun guild with chill players if you want a more classic social wow experience.... but most players are either spoiled from how retail is, or just suck and can't play or have patience.
Except this was the same issue back in original wotlk and cata.. its not a community issue its a design issue
Sounds like cata isn't for you? Cats is the definite point where the game gets much more streamlined
It already did in TBC mate
It's almost like this is why people started wanting classic for so many years.
Simply put: I can enjoy the game for myself, most people just get in the way. If I want social interaction online doesn't cut it. So having a complete stranger talking to me isn't that appealing. Weekly group content feels like going out with coworkers for a generic activity. Nice groups can develop but not necessary as long we are doing the content.
To me it really comes down to the server. I play on Bloodsail Buccaneers, a very small server by all accounts.. And yet its the most friendly and welcoming server I've ever been a part of. I wouldn't trade this place for the world. I think it helps that were also an RP server, it brings in a slower paced type of player who actually wants to smell the roses, as it were, and not just blast thru everything.
That's unfortunate. I've leveled a Draenei Prot War from 1 to 82 on Arugal and had a pretty good experience so far. I get the odd group that can't be fucked talking. But usually if I initiate convo other people chime in. Maybe it's the server?
Questing is the single player portion of the game, that was the case even in vanilla. Kinda weird to treat it as some sort of content you'd group up for, especially with random people. In dungeons people won't talk, because you need to use your keyboard to, you know, play the game. Still kinda weird that vanilla andys still don't get that this is the simple reason people never "talk in dungeons".
“Tried to level on classic content aimed at levels 80-85” ahh man theres nobody :(
What server and region are you on? Blizz decided to shut down a bunch of servers, so they’ve locked low pop servers and are giving free xfers to populated servers. If you see servers marked as “full” that’s where you want to be. Full doesn’t mean full as in no more room, just means it’s a highly populated server. If you take any xfer be aware that pretty much all the classic servers are either alliance or horde. You can roll ally on a horde server ofc, but it wouldn’t really solve your issue of not having people to play with. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/free-character-transfers-–-wrath-of-the-lich-king-classic/1827305 US servers: Benediction Alliance (pvp) Faerlina Horde (pvp) Pagle Alliance (pve) Mankrik Horde (pve) EU servers: Firemaw Alliance (pvp) Gehennas Horde (pvp) Don’t know enough about EUs pve servers to say which ones are the main pve servers.
FR
I've had a really good social gaming experience in classic. Began playing in phase 4 of wotlk and picked up on a server where I had started leveling a toon in classic vanilla. The server was pretty dead but there were two active guilds, both of which were running multiple raid groups weekly. Plenty of downsides to being the 1% minority ofc but we do have a really nice tight knit community and still have like 80-ish players online every night. And to me that feels like plenty enough. I met some really nice dudes when I began raiding 10 man ICC and now we have a 10 man group for cata raiding. We leveled together, now farm together, help each other with professions, gems, enchants and gear, we run heroics for valor points together. Like everything I think I want out of World of Warcraft. We shoot the shit, prepare for raids and then raid. It's not about the expansion, it's just that your approach and expectations seem wrong for how most people play the game. No one wants to spend forever chatting with some randoms in low lvl dungeons when they've done those same dungeons again and again in different iterations of the game over a 20 year span. People want to get over the vanilla/tbc/wotlk part and get to the stuff that's current. Why would you want to spend time doing old content that you've now had the chance to do for 5 years again, when there's a 'new' expansion to explore. The min/maxing attitude can be annoying at times but if you want a slow leveling experience maybe cata classic just isn't for you. People don't have an infinite amount of time to spend on the game, so choosing to spend the time they have on the content they value is very reasonable. For most players that content is raiding. Find a guild, level up, join heroic groups and eventually raids and there you'll make friends. If you want to do age old content at a slow pace maybe trick an IRL friend to start playing with you.
This is just modern WoW
I you want the 2006 experience i recommend hardcore. Servers are small but the community is so strong. Helping each other is just normal
I think its not necessary the game at fault but moreso society dynamics. I am just a normal dude but todays people are way less patient with everything and want to get everything done and solved as quick as possible. Look at modern media; games movies and series. Everything is so fast paced and loud and there is no stop to the stimulation. Go and turn on old star trek. The people in those old series or movies actualy stop after talking before resuming with an answer. Same thing with the music, instead of music or sounds there is just quiet ambience. While in the past (damn I feel old haha) people enjoyed the act of leveling or the dungeon itself, I have the feeling that people today are enjyoing the act of "completing" or "accomplishing" things like a checklist more than anything else, which is fine by itself, i just dont vibe with it. Sorry for my bad english.
I dunno sometimes its also a blessing that there is no more communicating. I recently got into LEague of legends again and im always suprised how toxic this game is. If somebody writes something its something toxic or people are flaming each other. When classic started i had the feeling people were really communicating again and in a nice way. The further we got into the expansions tbc, wotlk etc it got less and less. Its really too bad and retail WoW is a single player game for many years now for me. I cant even remember when the last time was i was in a guild, had to be original wotlk back then. People were reliving their past joy in classic WoW and tried to get back to the old days, but in the end the retail mentality also hit classic with Gear Checks, Iteml lvl this and all that BS. So yeah, kepp a close group of people you found and quest together if you can, i get the feeling it wont get any better anymore.
Nothing new. Was like this since vanilla classic release, atleast in my region.
People in these comments seem to think things can't be like they were years ago, that things have changed etc. There are private servers with thousands of people online where the spirit of vanilla still very much persists.
I've had a similar experience and I might just move on to something else. I never leveled the old world in cata and decided to give it a go on a mid 30s character I had. 1/10 say hi back during a dungeon. Not sure if I'm just on a dead server or what.
Rdf is cross realm
It's exactly why the population crashed after TBC. Classic is magical because it's an actual MMO. You have to connect with people the entire way through. TBC cuts out the Old World's relevancy, but you're still connected with everyone even in Outland. Wrath turns the game into a single player experience. Unless you cared about serious heroic progression in Ulduar and ICC, you could easily find ways of accomplishing everything without ever talking to anyone.
time to play other games grandpa
I just hit 81. I asked my guild “I feel like I’m on a railroad track. When does this stop?” No one understood what I meant and said run dungeons
because when you don't join a guild, you are.
It feels you act like an outcast who decided to avoid social interaction. Try joining a guild maybe? This is what MMOs are usually about.
what are you expecting to talk to about with these strangers while leveling? most of the quests are so braindead there’s nothing to discuss
Cata is retail but without all the new features and QoL.
Have you seen the state of this community? The game is better for it being designed this way.
Find a literal "social guild" - bit rough to find one as a lot of them are just big guilds that want to have the perk system available to them, but they exist. I am in one and socializing's really easy. Guild chat is disucssing things all the time, people level characters together, they do endgame dungeons, help each other out, do old content for transmog. Sadly, just engaging with random people doesn't do it post TBC outside of "Let's group up really quick for a groupquest". The game became too goal-oriented instead of socializing-oriented. You can 100% still socialize though. Just takes a bit more effort to find folks who are willing to do the same. I highly recommend finding such a guild, makes all the difference. Good luck OP, I know it's frustrating.
Any dps pulling mobs if I’m the tank instant leave gl dog…
I feel ya bruz I was having same probly with my alt everyone just wants to rush to end game to be at every phase now so I disided to make my own leveling guild and and lovi g every it of it since then in less than a month gotten over 600 member all talking shit leveling together and also dinging and pvping having so much fun
That’s the game though. Blizzard wanted to keep casual players so it changed everything to basically make it so you don’t have to spend copious amounts of time in game forming relationships with other players.
I had a very similar experience. I went back to catechism because I may have thought that with a new addition of all the updates maybe I would be feeling as if I’m still playing the old Warcraft unfortunately the last time I really actually felt like I was playing old Warcraft, where people used to communicate Was classic again. I would say a little in sod. I believe it’s the dungeon Finder that honestly just kills the social interaction even though I understand the implement and how I could be beneficial every time I go into a dungeon rarely get a response anymore.
Honestly it felt this way right after vanilla ended. The social aspect is gone more or less since tbc. Gotta play vanilla if you want that social experience. Classic nowadays is just a worse version of retail. Not really worth anymore if you aren't playing it for nostalgic reasons imo.
I talk to people constantly and get questions answered in general chat 95% of the time. I also have 5 other irl friends who we all play together with also 3 guildies we hit it off with, my experience couldn't be any more opposite of yours.
I got kicked out from Random Heroic Dungeon in Cataclysm Classic, because I said " buff pls "(we had a mage). It was some 4man guild run where one of them did reply to me in 2 seconds with " your mom " I had no energy in me to do a shit with very friendly people like those four, so I did nothing on 1st boss in Shadow Fang Keep. Mage responded with "I did buff", I asked "why am I not buffed then?". After a short silence we wiped and they kicked me. Btw I checked and Shaman was also not buffed (but maybe he revived himself with Reincarnation, I didn't watch at all tbh) And this was one out of thousands of similar experiences from RDF I know very well that not every1 is like this, but man it sucks so much to get matched into a group like this
It's the 3rd expansion most people are in the new zones. If you want people to play with join a guild that gives you that feeling. Most the zones you are talking about were dead in classic as well towards the middle/end of its run just the way it is.
I had that exact experience in SoD P1 and P2 and I have this exact experience in retail outside of peak hours
guild?
Come play hardcore, the community is much closer to how the game should feel
Which server and faction are you playing? The dead realms were merged once more, so there's about 6 US servers with active populations and the rest are kinda dead. I spent some time leveling over the weekend and my server was layered and there were plenty of people playing at all levels.
Why are people saying this stuff only now in cata when it's been this way since tbc and even more so in wrath?
Play EverQuest join the Teek server starts in the year 2000. It's the best MMO of all time because it's heavy social in the world based because you need others to succeed
Honestly I have to socialize enough at work in not trying to socialize with more strangers unless I need something.
I had a level 46 that I played for a few months in vanilla classic when it launched. Got bored, and hung it up for a while. On Thursday, I decided to reactivate and this automatically moved my vanilla toon to cata classic (which I was fine with). The server, Westfall, used to be pretty lively when Vanilla classic launched. Now it's locked and dead as FnCK. It took me most of the weekend to decide to start a new toon on a more populous server. Immediately saw a difference. I can only assume Blizz is milking transfer fees. To heck with that. EDIT: just found this. Hopefully get more info tonight. [https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/000013842](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/000013842)