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Is it just me or do people not talk in mmorpgs anymore?
Gorakkh
Member Posts: 694
I guess everyone is busy with their guild or too engaged in grinding mobs to ever speak or give advice when a question is asked. I notice that especially more recently , out of the majority of the mmorpgs I've played in the past couple years the community is almost dead silent for the most part. This also takes some of the fun out of the game in my opinion because it's one of the unique aspects that mmorpgs have over single player games.
It really seems like alot of players are living out their single player gamer fantasy in an mmorpg which in my opinion is the opposite of what mmorpgs are about and should be about. A live community is what breathes life into the game and makes this genre special. It's sad to see some of that fading away.
I remember playing UO/EQ back in the day and you couldn't ask for more of a lively community. Where have the times gone? heh..
Comments
I dont know that its true. Some MMOs like WAR the channels were creepily silent for months after release. Other games like AoC and Darkfall were spamtastic.
Obviously Vent does play some role in the silencing of the chat channels. As more games provide in game voice chat, typing may become a lost art
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
I sympathise with your points, and I miss the communities of the good old days, but that stale old cliche that "mmorp = grouping up" is plain wrong. People play MMOs because there is usually a thriving auction house/bazaaar, where you can buy and sell to make a profit and also easily gain crafting materials you can't be bothered to gather. MMOs have regular new content and themed events for things like Christmas, New Year, whatever. Single player games don't.
The main disincentive to grouping is having to needlessly split XP and loot when there is simply no need whatsoever - current MMORPG content is mostly solo-friendly. The main reason there isn't much community is that apart from being able to handle most content solo, character death is trivial to the point of not even being mildly irritating. Let me explain... In Everquest, a character death was a MAJOR pain. There were no ingame maps whatsoever, no handy Corpse Indicator, and you spawned at your Bind point which could be several zones away. You spawned with no money, weapons or armour, and without food and water your Hit Points and Mana effectively (it was soooo slooooow) didn't regenerate, and because you had died, you LOST XP as well. While blundering about to find your corpse and get your gear back, you could die several more times, losing more XP every time, and usually getting more and more lost.
Having someone save your character's ass was a major help indeed, and because everyone was in fundamentally the same boat, players helped out other players more and responded to calls for help more readily. Essentially, it could be YOU in the crap the next time, so help was always on offer and always reciprocated. Faced with such a stiff death penalty, people stuck together.
In a game like WoW, you die, you spawn close by, pay a few coins in repair and you're on your way. No muss, no fuss, no-one else need bother.
I think it is also an issue of there are a lot of people playing MMORPGs that aren't worth talking to.
I find it true in some games and not true in others. There are places in EVE where you do not want to chat in local chat - attracts attention that could prove deadly. In Lotro I often turned the chat off because there were so many non-game related conversations going on it was impossible to use it. You would type something and it would be scrolled off the screen immediately by topics on gaming computers or car shows or GF's or just punk-outs with people griping about each other. I tend to use Guild Chat for questions - these are people who might have a vested interest in helping me, since I am part of the guild/corp/city/etc.
Those of us that played the older MMOs still talk, because we understand you don't have to be a mute. Its the downside of solo content. You get to play alone when you don't have time to group up, but plenty of people just don't want to talk to anyone ever. Add in Vent and its just a sign of the times. Since games aren't painful at the lower leveling anymore, there not much motivation to talk to people.
Luckily any MMO I've played more than a month, already has a few guilds I know, so its technically not a problem for everyone.
I blame it on the games themselves actually, for instance, SWG of old. If you had wounds you had to find a doctor or find a camp site set up by a scout or ranger and for relaxing your mind you found an entertainer. If you wanted the good armor or weapons you made friends with the best crafters in the game and so on. SWG had one of the best communities I have ever experianced in a game until they messed it up.
Nowadays most things looted far outway the crafted items most of the time and you dont really take any actual battle damage or fatigue that requires you to find someone to help heal it which in turn usually started conversation and so on. Today most people just talk in guild chat and like someone said a lot use Ventrillo or Teamspeak.
I still like to say hello to people I run into or help someone I see that might be in need even if I dont get a hello back or a thanks, to me it doesnt matter its just something I prefer to do. Unfortunately most games today do not worry so much about community, its more about just supplying someone a place to go and enjoy to take the everyday stress away.
Out of every 100 men, 10 should not be there,
80 are nothing but targets, 9 are the real fighters.
Ah, but one, ONE of them is a warrior,
and he will bring the others home.
-Heraclitus 500BC
It's not just you. I feel the same way. Mind you I was schooled on SWG and FFXI which were real community games.
If you want more interaction I would suggest that you might try a RP server. You will certainly meet a few people who are actually prepared to stop and talk.
Also they'll be some events and stuff that will keep things more interesting than just grind to max level.
I completely understand and agree with the OP. Communication via keyboard was lively back in the day and when other people were around you, you would hear them talk and possibly gain some valuable information and knowledge or find an opportunity to add your 2 cents to the conversation and answer a question, be helpful, and open an opportunity to meet and engage other players.
Nowadays with voice chat being so popular, you hardly ever hear anyone talk. Voice chat has done more harm towards community building than any theme park game design could and reduced social interaction by creating pockets of isolation amongst the playerbase.
Unfortunately voice chat is out of the bag and it can't be turned back now. I refuse to use it until a developer incorporates it into their game code and masks real voices with character voices so as not to ruin immersion. Hopefully that day will arrive soon.
I agree, combination of the popularity of voice comms coupled with game design that has no waiting and chatting in games has become a thing of the past.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I've used some Voice Changing software, and it works, up to a point where suspension of disbelief might kick in. Some of the sound samples on the vendor site are fake though, and are far too realistic to be done with the actual software, so don't go by those for the expected results.
I agree with the OP but i think it's more than just people not talking,i think mmorpg are losing or have lost that community feel about them. Seems like if you are not in a guild then you hardly ever hear anyone speaking in GC. A lot can be blamed on how the classes and skills/spells are given to each class.
Take EQ1, the daddy of all 3d mmorpg,you had the great feeling of chatting and asking about quests or asking for buffs(kei anyone).. The only way you could get a fast trip to some far flung corner of the world was by asking a wizard or a druid to take you to a circle.
There were no quests bubbles so you really had to have a conversation with the NPC and type in key words or you would ask in GC,it's a shame really that mmorpg are no longer massive in that respect even though they carry that label.
All the above has gone and now we are left with a game where you don't really talk to anyone outside your guild and vent does not help the situation .
Jah Rasta For I.
The Wicked Shall Fall..
http://www.ethnic2020.com/images/Ebay/black-jesus.jpg
It varies greatly from one game to another. One big factor is how often you can easily chat without hurting yourself in the game. If half your time is spent waiting for health to refill, waiting for group members to arrive, or waiting for something else, there's nothing else to do during those times except chat. To eliminate those is good game design, but it will lead to less public chatter.
A related point is how easy it is to chat while in combat. If you have to move or click on something every few seconds, it's hard to chat while doing that. If the game's combat mostly consists of start auto-attack and wait, and only infrequently do anything else, it's much easier to chat in the middle of combat. I'd argue that the former is better game design, but it leads to less public chatter.
The design of public chat channels plays a big role, too. If different zones have different chat channels and there are only five people in your zone, it's understandable if the chat is dead silent. If all 2000 people on the server shared a single chat channel in the same game, it would likely scroll so fast as to be nearly unusable.
Finally, Gresham's Law applies to public chat channels: bad chat drives out good. If public chat channels are overrun with gold farmer advertisements, a lot of people who would have been inclined to use the chat channel won't.
It seems like no matter what somebody says in a public channel, one of two things usually happens: 9 asshats chime in with a "ur mom" joke or nobody responds at all. So, I guess for me, the public channels now hold very little value. Even when there are nuggets of good chat, it's swamped by the 750 lines of <Anal Links> and RL junk. Back in EQ, the public chat channels were necessary. Today, turn them off and you're not going to miss anything (unless you like the babble).
---
I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.
I had that "ur mom" joke problem in TCoS in our House Chat. Some idiot kept going on and on for over an hour with these rediculous comments. Worst part is, you can't mute house chat (or any chat yet, for that matter).
I completely agree with the OP though, for the most part. Games these days are fairly silent. Personally, I like Voice Chat (Ventrillo over Teamspeak). But only to talk to my guild. I love to talk in the world with random people. My boyfriend is constantly asking how the heck I make so many friends in games, and I just tell him what I tell everyone, "I just start talking to them..." Meanwhile, he never makes any friends, because he only talks on Ventrilo to our guild, lol.
Back in the day, when MMO's were really in the starting phases, they were so much more lively. The communities, while there were some asshats, were generally wonderful. Players were talking to one and other constantly and people actually helped one and other out without many problems. However, these days its usually either trade chat, ooc (talking about how much everyone hates WoW -- I swear in every other MMO, this is a conversation topic that pops up at least twelve dozen times a day) and people just generally being rude, IF there is chat going on at all.
Truth be told, I miss the old days sometimes, especially my first MMO (2D Dark Ages by Nexon). But on with the new, I suppose!
/agree
We talked SO much in Asheron's Call that we got to know everybody on our server - Harvestgain. I miss the chatter....even when Dire the Mage would sing us rap songs he wrote:( I sure do miss the comraderie we had in the old school MMO's. We were a part of each others lives then. We knew when people were getting operations and when people were having babies, etc. We were FRIENDS with hundreds of people on our server. That doesn't happen at all now sadly.
It all became impersonal to me when WoW came out. I've thought about it and the leveling curve might have something to do with it. In AC- it took YEARS of grinding to max out your toon. While we were grinding in dungeons- we chatted and talked about everything. In WoW, everyone is so busy and maxing out their toons so quickly that they don't have the time to chat and get to know ppl.
Lori
OP said - I guess everyone is busy with their guild or too engaged in grinding mobs to every speak or give advice when a question is asked.
I presume the OP meant 'even' and not 'every'.
In, for instance AoC, the same question comes up every ten minutes. Therefore not worthy of an answer. And, yes I am busy with my guild, live with it, or find yourself a guild of your own. Also, think twice about asking questions in global chat. Look it up before you ask.
Onto voicechat, great stuff, imperrative for groups/raids with friends or guilds. OP? You have friends? A Guild? Voicechat?
Yes but sometimes when starting a new game I don't always have a guild right away. Part of the fun of playing the game is meeting new and interesting people.
but that stale old cliche that "mmorp = grouping up" is plain wrong. People play MMOs because there is usually a thriving auction house/bazaaar, where you can buy and sell to make a profit and also easily gain crafting materials you can't be bothered to gather. MMOs have regular new content and themed events for things like Christmas, New Year, whatever. Single player games don't.
I understand you but to me those are not what make the foundation of an mmorpg to me as far as I am concerned. Those are just bonus's of what an mmorpg offers in my opinion.
I still feel that if one is going to play full solo and not be a co-operative player than one should really stick to single player games and give feedback to those developers to help improve them , instead of trying to turn mmorpgs into a single player experience.
I don't play a game like counter-strike to play against bots all day ( Just an example ) , the fun is playing against or with other people as far as I am concerned.
I think it depends on the game to be honest. In DDO there doesn't seem to be a lot of random chatter but in GW I have to keep the local chat filters on.
-Almerel
Hello my old friend.
It certainly has changed although I don't miss the old days. Even then I was always more prone to just watching chat or mainly using guild chat to talk before I started using vent on a regualr basis. As much as I'm not a fan of the new wave "Barrens chat" that seemed to flood games for a while I remember back in the old days there was always some reject flipping out if they felt someone used the chat channels in any way they deemed unnecessary or ill used or the hourly war of words sparking over who trained who or who took someone's camp spot. Was just as annoying to me as those that flood the channels with the latest Chuck Norris, religious war, or political round table diatribe.
About the only time I used general chat was to provide assistance if i could to a player's question or looking for a group. Heh...and of course in EQ to rlh to wherever a KEI or SOW was being given.
I do miss how more helpful the gaming community seemed to be back then.
Warhammer was eerie though. Sometimes you wanted to say something just to see if anybody else was out there...heh...
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I partly blame vent for this, although arguably the games themselves require less communication, I think vent is the main reason why a good amount of chat is now gone.
Agree, but I will continue to ignore voice chat as a way to communicate. Not only because it ruins immersion for me but because I draw a line between my private life and the game and the two should not mingle. I usually raid with music and vent is not dependable enough or a good tool for communication. I refuse to raid with vent and our guild upholds that wish for all members, everything will always be explained in-game and never in vent.
I truly believe that vent has caused a lot of harm to the social aspect of mmo's.
There are three reasons why this is happening in some of the modern MMOs. They are Solo Content Orientation, Auction Houses and Voice Communications. These three things have almost totally negated the need for anyone to chat with anyone else.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
Just you.
I have had no problem with chatting and talking. I have played: WoW (OH NOES HE DIDNT! 11one), LOTRO, WAR (beta) and EvE Online.
Especially EvE should get a honorable mention. I really suggest that one if you got community on your number 1 spot as most important MMO 'feature'
I did it, and I never regretted
Agree, but I will continue to ignore voice chat as a way to communicate. Not only because it ruins immersion for me but because I draw a line between my private life and the game and the two should not mingle. I usually raid with music and vent is not dependable enough or a good tool for communication. I refuse to raid with vent and our guild upholds that wish for all members, everything will always be explained in-game and never in vent.
I truly believe that vent has caused a lot of harm to the social aspect of mmo's.