Guild Wars 2

Playing on Tarnished Coast and I’ve noticed that most of the time the chat is almost completely empty except for stuff like ‘’ LFM Cadecus Explorable ’’ or the obligatory ‘’ Thanks ’’ after being revived, it it because I hang out in the beginner area? I think not since it’s usually in those areas the players are the most vocal and talkative, even if it’s not gaming related stuff.

I find it kinda strange since the game was supposedly built with socializing in mind and yet it seems to achieve the complete opposite, a game in which nobody socializes because grouping for PvE (except for dungeons) is pretty much useless (except if you have IRL friends to play with I guess, I don’t).

I’m still enjoying the game a LOT, but coming from mmos such as Ragnarok Online which pretty much are chat rooms with MMO elements (quite literally) it’s kinda weirding me out, I expected the same and even more when I got this!

Cities are pretty lively though, but it’s mostly RPers (TC is the unofficial RP server) so while it’s social interaction it’s not exactly the one I’m looking for (not 100% of the time anyway).

I can say that I keep map chat confined to a tab of it’s own. For the first week of play it was filled with nothing but nonsense and crap. So I keep it to a separate tab to make sure I can see the important stuff in the main tab.

Thus, I pretty much never look at it.

As far as “say” chat goes, you’ll probably only see RP’ers using “say”. Map chat is usually OOC.

People are busy doing things.

Depends on which zone you’re in. I was in the Norn starter zone (I’m on the same server btw) and there was a constant stream of conversation the whole time I was there (I was getting 100% completion so I was there for a while).

Depends on the time of the day too.

One place that is always quiet is the Grove. Seems like no one is ever there. I don’t spend much time there anymore since all my story quests are near Lion’s Arch and going towards Orr now.

People are busy doing stuff, and then occasionally somebody says something along the lines of “Hey, Romney or Obama?” and all hell breaks loose.

I experience people talking everything from quests to politics everyday on my realm,. It might be the current zone you quest in, that you play on the overflow shard most of the time, or maybe just the server you’re on.

Being on Tarnished Coast myself I kinda have to say… it depends on time of day, region, and level of activity. Discussions can range from “Event is up!” to “Ugh horrible bug.” to random crap. Just be patient, or try to start up a conversation yourself.

Map chat on my server is pretty much always going no matter what zone I’m in, sometimes to my chagrin. There are a few zones that I just can’t turn off chat fast enough! Sparkfly Fen is definitely one of them, I’m sokittentired of. WHEN IS DA DRAGUNS UP and WHERE IS DRAGUNS?

Otherwise for the most part it’s pretty good chat, some trollish behavior but not as much as I’d have suspected. When I party up there’s plenty of chat, but the local or /s chat is rarely seen on my window.

I would rather mine to be a bit silent, I’m tired of:

Person 1: Does anyone know how to get the POI at X place?
Person 2: Yeah, through your mom!

I am in Tarnished Coast, too, and when I am playing I usually notice a lot of chatter. Usually it’s pretty lighthearted and funny and hardly silent when I’ve seen it.

As an Australian player, I often feel like I’m playing on a dead server (I’m on Ferguson’s Crossing) but I know its not the case. My partner lives in the U.S and its totally packed and lively at U.S peak times. I suppose its a fresh new game too, people are simply busy enjoying themselves or chatting to their close friends. It’s not like WoW atm where people are so bored they must incessantly troll chat channels.

You may want to count yourself lucky. My experience of clearing Bloodtide Coast yesterday will always carry reminders of the map chat at the time, which involved exploring the possibilities of Norn/Asura “relations”…

It’s quiet in the middle of the night, but even then I still see the chat moving a bit.

I agree that lots of players seem too busy to just “chat”. I wanted to help someone find a Vista, but I had to find a safe place to rest first – or risk being killed. So I don’t feel like I could chat all the time, even if I wanted to.

I see lots of people out in the world, so doubtlessly they are in the same situation.

Not sure if you’re looking for RP – but if you’re not, you might find it more lively on another server since the RP is what a lot of people are doing on TC when it comes to “socializing” and that alone takes a good chunk of players out of map chat.

The dynamic world of GW2 doesn´t leave much room for standing around and pondering what to do, whenever I pause on the map, some event starts nearby – hence less boredom time to fill with chats.

Actually, I am quite happy map chat isn´t filled with the usual religious, political and game vs game fights as in other games. You have enough of that in safe zones, the cities.

The term social is not restricted to written communication btw, the events bring people together in an interesting way.