WoW Losing Its Social Aspect

I recently did RaF with my girlfriend and I realized how less social WoW is now. I realized this when she kept telling me how boring it was when she was on because she didn't know anyone. Back when I started playing, there was no cross-realm and you had to ask trade chat to join groups to do dungeons, which you actually had to communicate in. You needed to join a good active guild to survive well. My point is you had to be social and make friends to truly play the game. It's difficult to find social groups besides guilds.

To Blizzard: Do you intend on bringing any of this some what mandatory socialization back to the game?

There are still many facets of the game where socializing and communicating are mandatory. While maintaining the MMO nature, what we've been doing over the years is work to provide something for people to do when they don't have a lot of friends online, or not a lot of people on their realm who are willing or able to run a dungeon, or a Battleground.

This game has always had a broad appeal. We're committed to striking a balance between very social gameplay, and progression on a more individual level. We work to create systems to support different play styles so that, ideally, you get to choose how you want to spend your time in the game -- knowing that you progressed your character in some fashion by the time you log out.

09/13/2012 07:03 PMPosted by Snowfox

The thing is, it's always easy to forget that WoW is a delicate balance of opposing pressures. While we sit here remembering the time when we had long bonding dungeon crawls on realms where people knew each other and reputation mattered... there are also people who post here who just want the quick runs. They don't want to wait on others, they don't want a long crawl, they don't want to teach - they just want to play. Who is to really say who is right?

From my own perspective, I've certainly been in plenty of Dungeon Finder groups were there was virtually no communication -- though sometimes watching avatar body language, rare pets being pulled out, etc. brings about this funny sense of communication even in a virtual world. Yet, even in most of those relatively silent dungeon runs, I still had a great time playing the game. I definitely don't feel like it's the equivalent of playing alone when I'm a group. I still do my part and am happy to socialize if anyone in the group seems down for it. I just tend to be shy and not always initiate conversation myself. ;)

And I'll continue to do that in Mists. But I'm also looking forward to joining with a set group of people, traveling to an instance location out in the world, and zoning in for Challenge Modes. I'll just have more choices on any given night of queuing for something, or joining friends/guild mates to tackle content that requires more of a coordinated strategy.