Guild Wars 2

I will take some time to post about the lack of a server community feeling that
GW2 is struggling with, and what it will mean for the longetivity of the game.

In WoW when Vanilla launched they did a great job of building a sense of
Server community, in the end of the levelling process i had 25-30 friends on
my freinds list. And those stayed good friends of mine for the next 4-5 years of
playing the game.With time in WoW my friends list grew and grew.

At the end of the GW2 leveling process i still had Zero friends on my friends list. Why is that?
Because in GW2 you simply dont need friends or a guild to complete the content, its easy enough
to get a group for anything you want to do that is currently ingame. To this date from release i have not
felt the need or urge to add anyone to my friends list, aint that strange for an MMO?

That is both good and bad. It means that at any time you can get a group up and
running for the content you want to do, but it also means that the people you will
do the content with will be complete randoms, and the sense of community wont be there.

What further built the sense of community in WoW was of course the PvP and the PvE raids. In the beggining there
there was no Battlegrounds at all, just Alliance vs Horde World pvp, you got to know the fighters of
your own server, both on your own side and on the other side. Then when the battlegrounds came along
you were still Alliance vs Horde on your own server duking it out, so it was easy to get to know everyone in the scene, both
friends and foes.

In GW2 the people running beside you feels like randoms, i havent made a single friend in WvW yet, and ive been
playing it alot. The lack of seeing the competitions names in WvW makes it even more unpersonal so to speak. It could just aswell be
NPCs im fighting against.

The lack of a /inspect commmand to just check other people out gearwise and traitwise is another hit against the server community, just
hanging out by the AH checking your friends out was a big part of the other MMO.

Being able to duel other players in the PvE gameworld furthermore detracts from
trying to create an active server community, in WoW people met in the PvE world
dueled eachoter at set meet up points, compared equipment, speccs, enchants and gems with eachoter, here Arena teams and Battleground
teams were created aswell.

There were no problems with duel spamming as people here suggests from having an /duel command implemented.

People wonder why people all the time is going back to WoW? well it for sure aint the game in itself that people are going back
to, its the player community, and the friends you made that makes people going back time after time. If you fail with the task of creating
a server community then it doesnt matter what features you have in your MMO, it will be dead in a couple of months.

You are creating an online world, please do it properly, with small simple features that enchances the server community feel.

Below are two simple commands that would help to implement a further sence of server community :

/inspect xxxx
/duel xxxx

Dungeon finder is a relative new thing in that other game, it was not there for the first years of the game, and having an instant dungeon finder did wonders with removing the server community feeling.

Same with the cross server LFG for both the PvE and the PvP.

Vimes.2645:

Below are two simple commands that would help to implement a further sence of server community :

/inspect xxxx
/duel xxxx

How would /inspect give a “sense of server community”?
The server unites to spy each other’s underwear’s stats?

“Hey you have such nice condition damage on that bra, let’s be friends!”

Well, I didn’t read the entire thing, sorry it was pretty long and I am feeling lazy at the moment. However, I do agree with the gist of what I read.

I have only a few friends on my friends list, and I haven’t played with more than 2 of them since the game released. Generally I just wander around on my own and kill things. With the proper use of dodging I can take out almost anything alone (as long as it isn’t a mob against me — then things can get tricky). I can also pull most things away from their mobs as long as they don’t respawn too quickly due to agro range in comparison to that of my greatsword (Mesmer).

I think that having the ability to duel players would be quite nice, like a mini PVP right then and there without having to worry about someone strolling over and taking out the victor (or buffing/ conditioning one party). It would be an interesting game mechanic. I also think that an optional PvPvE would be an interesting addition to the game (something that you could enable/ disable at will – while out of combat that is).

However, I don’t really agree with the inspect command. I would much rather not make it easy for people to either find out what I am using or decide to kick me for not having an exotic weapon equipped.

What I think would be able to provide a more closely knit server is more common group events, and a revamp to the commander/squad system. As it currently stands I only see group events from time to time, and most people aren’t around at that point to even attempt it. The commander system on the other hand is great for having zones flock to a certain point, but also costs 100GP to get. There should be something like a Lieutenant that can be purchased for say 10GP and have a different symbol while being able to run a squad of say 10 people (as opposed to a party of 5, or a full squad of 50). I also believe that Commander should be something earned instead of purchased, but that is a different story.

You guys are in denial if you don’t believe that this games social aspect is horrific.

Vimes.2645:

It has, if i would reactivate my old account and login to my old WoW server i would have people greeting me from left and right and welcoming me back again inside a couple of minutes.

Thats a community.

That would never happen in a game like GW2 that dont care so much about building a Server/Player community.

Hmm. A game you played for how many years? made how many friends?

Maybe they would welcome you back. GW2 has been out what.. 2 months? And you expect to have made 100’s of friends by now?

Also, I dare you to reactivate your account and goto a random server, saying that you’re ‘back’. I can assure you no one will greet you with any form of ‘welcome’. Trade trolls aren’t that nice.

Sky.7610:

You guys are in denial if you don’t believe that this games social aspect is horrific.

Ah, hello Strawman.

Sin.8174:

Vimes.2645:

It has, if i would reactivate my old account and login to my old WoW server i would have people greeting me from left and right and welcoming me back again inside a couple of minutes.

Thats a community.

That would never happen in a game like GW2 that dont care so much about building a Server/Player community.

Hmm. A game you played for how many years? made how many friends?

Maybe they would welcome you back. GW2 has been out what.. 2 months? And you expect to have made 100’s of friends by now?

Also, I dare you to reactivate your account and goto a random server, saying that you’re ‘back’. I can assure you no one will greet you with any form of ‘welcome’. Trade trolls aren’t that nice.

Sky.7610:

You guys are in denial if you don’t believe that this games social aspect is horrific.

Ah, hello Strawman.

Whats the point of going back to a completly random server and saying im back? i dont get it…

I disagree with inspecting other player’s gear. The community will be so “gear conscious” even though this game does not really emphasize on it. I’ve got a feeling that people will be like “LFM with over 2048 damage” .

This is a Buy to Play game after all. People jump in whenever they like, do things at their own pace. It is not like in other subscription game where everyone has a purpose in mind “Hey I paid for this and I better make my $15 worth.”

Well i rather have a /duel and /inspect command (wich i both find great addition to the game) then having a dead server, population wise in one years time. Its the small things that does it.

Sky.7610:

You guys are in denial if you don’t believe that this games social aspect is horrific.

This game actually discourages teamwork and social behavior when you look at it. Tagging is a huge example. Rezzing/saving people not mattering, the fact that there isn’t multiple objectives and really difficult events that DEMANDS actual teamwork with strangers, communicating in map or w/e if you actually want to push an event chain.

And it is dissapointing, was hoping with how DE’s work I would have those moments of finding friends by doing some challenging stuff with random people and just “clicking” like in past MMO’s. One of my favorite ways of making friends.

Whats the point of going back to a completly random server and saying im back? i dont get it…

Exactly my point. if you’re not going to invest time trying to make friends here, then you have no room to say that no one would welcome you back when they don’t even know you. It would be the equivalent of going to a random server and asking for the same.

Also, I’m tiring of this already. Since when is it the game’s responsibility to hold people’s hands to help them make friends? I see a lot of people daily who chat it up, hang out, party together etc. Maybe you’re stuck on a crappy server? Idk.

It’s up to you to make yourself known and introduce yourself to the community. I’m sure I’ve made many enemies on the forums by now, but in game? I’m made a few alliances (not quite friends yet, because that’s how I am), and people that I’m friendly to. Hell, there’s even people on the server I’m up against that i’ve a truce with on a personal level.

Forging a strong community is up to the playerbase, not the developers. You want to look so negatively on this game and the way it was done- your decision. Many others will take what they have and make it better for themselves and those around them.

Sin.8174:

Whats the point of going back to a completly random server and saying im back? i dont get it…

Exactly my point. if you’re not going to invest time trying to make friends here, then you have no room to say that no one would welcome you back when they don’t even know you. It would be the equivalent of going to a random server and asking for the same.

Also, I’m tiring of this already. Since when is it the game’s responsibility to hold people’s hands to help them make friends? I see a lot of people daily who chat it up, hang out, party together etc. Maybe you’re stuck on a crappy server? Idk.

This argument gets thrown out there way too often. In the end it’s about poor game design, games aren’t supposed to “hold your hand”, but encouraging social behavior is a good thing and it’s a huge part of MMO’s (or any social game for that matter). Hell Anet WANTS good server communities, look at WvW.

Well in WoW your friends list was a crucial tool, i bet it was one of the tools thats most used in the game. In GW2 they might aswell take the friends list out of the game completly because noone has made use of it as of yet.

You should be making friends and socializing because you want to, not because the game requires it.

Preventing free server transfers would help increase ingame server community because people wouldn’t be able to hop between servers so easily to gain advantages in WvW. At least there would be a higher chance that the same people we see in Orr everyday will most likely be the same people who leveled up their characters from that same server.

They can’t take away free transfers until they get guesting working.

I think there is a nice sense of community in this game- it all depends on your server I guess. Also once server get locked down I think the sense of server community will only improve.
I have made a lot of friends in the game and we talk all the time, do stuff together, or just hang out while you are doing your own stuff across the map etc.
If one of us get a cool item or find something the other might like we link it in whisper.
There is no need for an inspect tool or duels- those things are more divisive than community building. Nothing stops you from showing off your stuff if you wanted to do so.

Sounds like you need to join a guild.

Social aspect of this game isn’t so good, they need to do something to encourage socializing asap

I’ve built up a decent sized friends list over the last few weeks of people who whisper me to play, even joined a couple of other guilds to meet new people.

What I do agree with though, is that some areas of the game are pretty quiet, but I’d take that over the hell that is Barrens chat any day. Sadly, I think a lot of players have cottoned on to the fact that by removing parties from the system for DE’s/mobs etc that you can talk to anyone and go with it.

I’ve made a few friends here and there, even dropped into Lion’s Arch the other day to say hi to the resident troll after a fortnight or so of not seeing him and had a bit of a catch up. He’d been ‘pwning n00bs’ or something.

But yeah, I hope the experience does turn round for you Vimes because I’m feeling pretty social in game at the mo.

Social is as social you make it.
Last night I came across a champion guarding a chest. I tried to take it down solo but it was to tough. Nobody I have met so far in game was online, so I used Map Chat to request help.
One person replied, and brought his mate who he was already partied with. The three of us were then joined by a 4th and we had a laugh with good banter and a good fight.
Loot sucked.
Thats social to me, unplanned, spur of the moment, but social none the less

Everything the OP said. This game has an absolute garbage sense of community. My chat box isn’t filling up with players connecting like it is in other MMOs, just people running around like mindless rats to the next dynamic event or heart, it gets old quick.

WoW has migrated from what you spoke of to cross-server everything. PUGs for dungeons, raiding and PvP battlegrounds: All cross-server.

Now, if the community feel to the game was so kitten strong, why would they have implemented such a massive change to the nature of grouping and interaction?

Easy: People were facing long wait times in queues for practically anything PUG-related. In other words – the social community wasn’t being social enough.

If you think the social atmosphere in WoW is so grand, have a sit in any major city and just watch trade chat at prime time. There’s half the community right there, and brother it ain’t grand.

Look, MMO’s on a whole have changed. They’ve migrated to a form of entertainment. When WoW first came out the only game it really had to compare with was EQ. WoW was new and fresh and something a lot of people had yet to experience.

Leveling in WoW early on also took ages. You had to spend quite a lot of time to level a toon then – how long does it take in WoW now, eh? GW2 allows you to level quickly, granted, and that could have something to do with your feel for lack of community. Still, you get out of an MMO what you put into it. Seek out a guild or group of like-minded folk and then see how the game feels. Don’t expect the game to make friends for you!

is there something wrong with your guild, OP?

are they not social with you?

if so, you might want to consider looking for a social guild instead

if you are expecting random players to be social with you, then you are setting yourself up for failure

do you expect random people to be social with you when you go to wal-mart?

most people dont go to Wal-Mart to be social unless they are part of a group who are meeting there for a social reason – they go to Wal-Mart to shop and are usually only social with people at Wal-Mart they know

same thing for MMO’s

most people dont play an MMO to be social unless they are part of a social guild – they play an MMO to play the game and are usually only social with players in their guild that they play with all the time

I have a nice list of friends of people who I have run dungeons with. There’s also a few people on the list that I’ve helped with stuff, and then there’s some real life friends.

I started reading expecting to agree, but with the inspect and duel I ended up disagreeing. Inspect is only useful to say to people, no we don’t want you for this dungeon, your gear ain’t no good. Dueling is a nice ‘could have’ but I don’t see how this is the big thing that would change the community.

The only problem is that you don’t need a guild, there are no activities you have to do with the guild and so people are not put in a situation where they ll actually meet. No shared activities that need social interaction, no ice breakers. In this game you probably play more with RL friends and friends from other games.

Did not have time to read all this, but I agree – there is no server community. We need server community and feeling as that is no 1 reason to play mmo’s.
@beren: guild is the only working social structure in this game – thank gods for that!

I do not think any duel or inspect would help much but whatabout server forums or server wide chat channel? Map chat is only used to create dungeon groups nowadays and has no impact on server unity.

This has rapidly turned into “add the things I want or the game will die!!!”

Personally I joined a thing called a “guild”. I have a group of people who I am familiar with and who greet each other when we log on.

Why would I want some random person on my server to greet me every time I logon? o.O

Its not that much that people doens t want to play together…

Is more than traveling to meet people does cost too much -.-

I bet all you say would cease to be if TP were free…

Just find another money sinking method, but actually paying to get to tp is bad.

I remember well how many times i read “champion XXX here need help” or “can anyone show me YYY”, or help needed ofr story etc etc etc and i don t go because travel costs so much :|

This get even worse when you have to play with lower levels, were they happily teleport everywhere and you walk a lot

Actually I’ve made more friends in 35 days of GW2 than in all my years of WoW.

@Cathaona what other social structure this game has that could encourage people to meet? Dungeons perhaps. But in most games the guild is the best way and here lays the problem. Influence is mostly collected by playing solo and there are no dungeons or RBs that real need a guild event.

WoW was terrible for me as far as meeting new people. Had I not gone there with a group of friends that I made in an ACTUAL server community (eq2 befallen server) I would not have known anyone. This is the same in this game. I have not made any friends outside of my guild. The only other game where I had made an actual friends list of people outside of my guild that I played with regularly was in Aion, I accredit that to the server wide chat and with the way groups were formed via that chat with a link of your group that showed the people/classes/levels in it in the channel and people would just have to click the link to apply to the group. I made SOO many friends through pugs that way in Aion, in EQ2 it was the same, There were lvl specific chat channels that EVERYONE was in and LFG in and they chatted regularly, there were always convo’s going on, an ACTUAL conversation, not the bullkitten you see in chats now due to the “wow generation” ..what was it called? “Commons chat”? or some crap like that?
At max lvl in the max lvl chat channel you had very, very few spam bots and they were easy enough to ignore shrug Of course, it wasn’t NEARLY as easy to lvl there so farmers and gold sellers had a rough time of it. sigh I miss those days. Yay domino effect.

I just don’t understand why in this game it was made so easy to level? I mean, PvP auto levels you to max and gives you gear…what was the point in making it so easy?

done rambling, sorry.

got to 97% world completion been trough all dungeons and pvp maps and most random events i feel like its Game over. you have only like 5 sets of weapon skills and you don’t need friends for anything but dungeons and I’m starting to realize that loosing the holy trinity was a horrible idea guild chat is just a chat room everyone just roam around the map without troubles. they are to busy to join you in dungeons most of the time. just my opinion.

The MMO’s with the best communities have sandbox elements that require players to help one another in order to get a full understanding of the game. They also have deep and intricate crafting that contributes to a player driven economy (I’m not even a fan of crafting, but I recognize how important it is to community). You’ll also find player housing in most MMO’s with an exceptional community. That’s what I have noticed, and I’m not saying that Guild Wars 2 necessarily needs these things as I think they already have a good start and the framework is already fairly stable.

tom.7468:

got to 97% world completion been trough all dungeons and pvp maps and most random events i feel like its Game over. you have only like 5 sets of weapon skills and you don’t need friends for anything but dungeons and I’m starting to realize that loosing the holy trinity was a horrible idea guild chat is just a chat room everyone just roam around the map without troubles. they are to busy to join you in dungeons most of the time. just my opinion.

Well, you ran through the game and didn’t experience any of the content. Of course the game is gonna feel over when you’ve burned yourself out in two months. Besides that, this game is WvWvW and PvP focused at endgame. Just like it’s predecessor GW1.. Which only had 20 levels! Should have done a little research before coming here and expecting a cookie cutter MMO. LoTRO should fulfill your undying need to consume content faster than the speed of light.

I don’t agree on having a inspect gear command or a duel command… well, the duel command might be fun for one-on-one battles with no consequence (i.e. the defeated player immediately gets back up from defeated status with no repair bill). Okay, so the second one might be nice, but have that in city only, not on the playing field or in WvW.

Also, these two have nothing to do with server community stuff. What we do need is the ability to make our own channels, like in City of Heroes. Then people can talk to each other regardless of guilds they’re representing. :o

I understand what you mean. I made best friends from running ST back in the days.

When lfg tool came in, I knew it would destroy community… and it did. People jump in and out from dungeons a lot. Hell, when they added cross server BGs I felt too cause our enemies became unknown people.

But you still need to have good people added to your friendlist for gw2. Some explorers path need to avoid pugging.

That sense of community you got in wow back then isnt something new people experience, now, as in gw2, you need to join a guild.

Well, to ease some of your complaints, the reason you dont know about your enemy name ar wvwvw is to prevent harrassement ( you can whisper cross server), duels is something they could add, but it seems on next path, due to monday, they will give you tournement options to allow guilds and friends organize closed and custom pvp battles, even one v one.

And thats very cool.

I’m not sure if inspect and duel will fix the community. I just for see someone following me and duel spamming me. However, I do agree. There is a lack of community yet there is a community. The lack is you never feel connected to another player, even if they are there playing with you. You still feel alone. In fact I think I’ve talked to one person in the last week of playing GW2. And they said thank you for helping them do an event and sticking through it and the following event. I thought it odd to thank me, but I did /cheer and said “Anytime! Happy hunting!” Now I’m not the most social MMO-er these days. WoW, kinda killed that part of me. But this seems silly. I haven’t even really found a guild either. There’s few ways other than the forums and watching spam to find one. And I don’t trust guilds in spam. I try to watch when I do WvW for repeating names or groups, but I never see more than a few of each name so far. Making finding a casual, but good WvW guild difficult. And I don’t stand out in the zerg.

I think this turned into a mini-rant. But in short, yes we need more community. Sure there is a feeling of sharing and helping, but it’s still falls short of real community. Perhaps this will change when I finally find a guild that suits me and I suit them.

I’ve made friends and have a great guild.

The keyword being made.

The people in this game are some of the most helpful people I’ve ever met. I’ve -never- met a griefer and I’ve been in a position for many.

A user above pointed out that tagging, rezzing, etc, reducing community feeling? Sarcasm?

Having shared loot and exp on mobs makes people -want- to help one another. Incentives for rezzing makes people not just run by your corpse.

If people -choose- to run through the game completely on their own without anyone else, that is their choice. But they can’t say this game, which stresses cooperation over anything else, lacks the ability to build community.

Just because you haven’t tried to build it doesn’t mean the ability isn’t there.

In my case, status of friends i made ingame so far, went to constant Offline.

I agree with what the op said. I’ve never seen an mmo with less sever community and its not that the server community is bad, it literally is non existent outside of wvw. There aren’t even server specific forums. Everything about the game feels so unsocial, which is a shame as the social aspect is a huge part of mmos for a lot of people.

Also i see a lot of people not understanding what server community is in this thread and saying things like ‘join a social guild’. Joining a guild can make you friends and can make you a part of their community, but it won’t suddenly create a community beyond that of the server as a whole.

So you only make friends when you need people to help you complete challenging content? What is wrong with you OP? Can’t you just make friends without expecting something from them?

WoW also has like 6-7 (?) years for players to build a strong foundation. This is game is still new.

I dunno, people just look at the most irrelevant stuff to criticize. If you want to make friends do so without Arenanet holding your hand!

LordByron.8369:

Its not that much that people doens t want to play together…

Is more than traveling to meet people does cost too much -.-

I bet all you say would cease to be if TP were free…

Just find another money sinking method, but actually paying to get to tp is bad.

I remember well how many times i read “champion XXX here need help” or “can anyone show me YYY”, or help needed ofr story etc etc etc and i don t go because travel costs so much :|

This get even worse when you have to play with lower levels, were they happily teleport everywhere and you walk a lot

Its not just this, there are maps (lv 50 and higher) with no one but dragon campers, world boss campers, or bots, and I can’t get help on events or skill points that require parties to complete (when they are guarded by champions or tougher veterans). These cost me time and money and give me a lot of frustration to try to fight the boss or mob alone tooth and nail breaking my armor over and over.

I get smart kitten remarks that its a solo game in my very own guild or people say res yourself at a way point (and waste more money). Or change your build/l2p remarks.

I’m about to create my own guild and quit playing in high level areas until I form my own little community that will follow me to the ends of Tyria on values of friendship and trust. As I’m sure there are some people on here that will appreciate my help and my play style.

I did not buy this kittening game to play alone from 1 to 80 (I’m already 80 on my ele and have only 60-70/70-80 maps left)

Traveling doesn’t bother me as much as armor repair costs. I can run to you at 25% speed or more with air magic and 10 in its trait line.

The game is definitely socially challenging. You can make friends in any game certainly, but there are mechanics which the early MMO’s understood which made it much easier and more satisfying to make friends. The era of casual MMO’s, where everything is easy, everything can be soloed, everything takes 5 minutes to do has pushed MMO’s to this point, it’s not just GW2, it’s just that GW2 took this loneliness and multiplied it by perfecting the casual MMO.

Personally I miss the days of true socializing, but those MMO’s took TIME, forming up groups took time, defeating a dungeon took time, doing raids took time, doing overland quests which required grouping took time. This is the achilles heel of a truly socially trended MMO, and is the arch enemy of people who don’t have the luxury of time. I used to love MMO’s which forced me to be social and gave me lots of friends as a result, but a wife, baby and job later I don’t enjoy that as much and like casual MMO’s like GW2, but I still miss having friends in game. GW2 can be an extremely lonely place, no zone chat, zero none, no one in my guild ever on even though it’s a pretty huge guild, lots of the mid level zones you have to solo the DE’s and even when people help you it’s completely in silence, kill and move on.

I’m not sure what to make of it yet. As a single player game that I paid $60 for I’m greatly loving GW2, just a phenomenal single player game. As a MMO I’m kind of having a hard time with it, but I’m ok with that as there is no sub fee.

It’s not only the social aspect but also the lack of people in alot of zones. Yesterday i went to Queensdale and there was noone.

Divinity’s Reach used to be packed full with people, now i barely see any.

LOL …. Some of you guys should be in politics…..what a spin job.

/sarcasm…The game makes it too easy to group, it’s like I’m always in a team so my friends list stays empty, because it’s like everyone around me is my friend and trying to help me ……I don’t like that can you please fix that? …./sarcasm off……LOL

Come on guys 9 out of 10 MMO’s today give players a single player path to level cap and WoW was the game that virtually popularized that. There are a crap ton of Group encounters in the game and I bet all of you have been saved by another player coming to your rescue after you got one too many mobs on you…you don’t see that in most MMO’s.

The fact that there’s no kill stealing in the game inspires other players to hit the mobs that are on you and I’ve seen players countless times work their way to my “face down in the mud” body to give me a rez.

The social mechanics ANet implemented in this game basically emulate being in a group with every players near you. You share in the kill and rewards mutually.

I’ve been playing MMO’s since the beta days of UO and this thread reminds me of the arguments back in the day when some thought adding a mini-map was dumbing down the genre, or how instancing was going to be the ruination of the MMO as we know it.

Vanila WoW was cut throat, and the community was horrible. You had all kinds of people wanting to be your friend so long as you could give them a leg up, but once they found a better home and a guild of level 60 players starting to raid you were yesterday’s news. Guilds fractured on a daily bases as the level capped players ran off to join bigger guilds and or drama over loot drops fractured so called friendships …. Yes please lets have more of that, some of you guys really look back at vanilla WoW with rose colored glasses.

About the only thing I’ll agree with is they need to tune up the difficulty on a few encounters so people are really challenged into taking advantage of the cross profession combo mechanics.

^^
Logun said it all, and beautifully!

I am in a guild that I have been in for 5 years and we play multiple games together and it started in GW1 and went to LOTRO, then ToR. We have people that play other games too. There are communities within communities in our Alliance. This game TOTALLY promotes community. You can join multiple guild for multiple things. Find a group of people you like playing with. Find guild that do things you like to do. Join people on other servers.

I don’t see how /inspect or /duel has anything to do with server community feeling. /Inspect is as anonymous as you can get. You are basically a peeping tom and in many games you can do it without the other noticing. /duel without asking first is as obnoxious as you can get. I experienced this in every MMO that had the ability.

Just be active in trying to find like minded ppl in this game. This works in every MMO.

Logun.2349:

LOL …. Some of you guys should be in politics…..what a spin job.

/sarcasm…The game makes it too easy to group, it’s like I’m always in a team so my friends list stays empty, because it’s like everyone around me is my friend and trying to help me ……I don’t like that can you please fix that? …./sarcasm off……LOL

Come on guys 9 out of 10 MMO’s today give players a single player path to level cap and WoW was the game that virtually popularized that. There are a crap ton of Group encounters in the game and I bet all of you have been saved by another player coming to your rescue after you got one too many mobs on you…you don’t see that in most MMO’s.

The fact that there’s no kill stealing in the game inspires other players to hit the mobs that are on you and I’ve seen players countless times work their way to my “face down in the mud” body to give me a rez.

The social mechanics ANet implemented in this game basically emulate being in a group with every players near you. You share in the kill and rewards mutually.

I’ve been playing MMO’s since the beta days of UO and this thread reminds me of the arguments back in the day when some thought adding a mini-map was dumbing down the genre, or how instancing was going to be the ruination of the MMO as we know it.

Vanila WoW was cut throat, and the community was horrible. You had all kinds of people wanting to be your friend so long as you could give them a leg up, but once they found a better home and a guild of level 60 players starting to raid you were yesterday’s news. Guilds fractured on a daily bases as the level capped players ran off to join bigger guilds and or drama over loot drops fractured so called friendships …. Yes please lets have more of that, some of you guys really look back at vanilla WoW with rose colored glasses.

About the only thing I’ll agree with is they need to tune up the difficulty on a few encounters so people are really challenged into taking advantage of the cross profession combo mechanics.

I think, as many others are, you are mixing up socializing with socializing. One one hand there is socializing as in making friends that you keep in contact with, you contact to form groups up, you form a trust that they know how to play the game, maybe there is some true socializing in there like general banter and such, maybe even something deeper like “how are the kids”. This is what has disappeared over the years of playing MMO’s, it’s still there but I have found it’s more in the raiding scene where you get that camaraderie between players and a familiarity where you can look someone up, GW2 doesn’t quite have that most of the time.

On the other hand you have what GW2 calls socializing, and as you correctly pointed out most other MMO’s today, this has been changing in the industry for some time. You can call what GW2 has as “social”, but it’s really not IMO. Do I have to exchange some chat with someone every single time I do an activity? No of course not, that would be too much. But at the same time I’ve got a level 80 who’s done most of the dungeons, 2 level 70 somethings, and a couple of lower level alts. I’ve done all the maps, most of the DE’s and events, I belong to a large guild, I’m the type of person who likes to chat in world chat and zone chat. I’m a very very social person in MMO’s, you know what I have zero friends in my friend list. DE’s require zero communication, zero strategy, zero reason to figure out the best way to fight something. Dungeons are the same way, just put on your zerg gear and get to it, maybe you will get lucky and some of the players will play some support roles, but it’s still something they do on their own usually with no input from anyone else.

I’m not trying to pass judgement because I enjoy both sides of the coin and I think the more “social” a MMO becomes the less “casual” it becomes, and vice versa. But it is just amusing to me that anyone denies that in maximizing casualness the game has certainly lost quite a bit of the social aspect of MMOs.