Why was everyone so sociable in MMOs back then?

Why was everyone so sociable in MMOs back then?
Nowadays hardly anyone wants to chat in game.

From my experience modern MMOs move way too fast. You're constantly on the move, going somewhere new, doing something new. Socialization came about from the slow pace of older games.

You had to be if you wanted to progress.

Because we were fuckin kids

No:
Trade Chat
Instance Finder
Raid Finder
World instances
Instanced dungeons
Obscurity of 3rd party group chat software

discord killed social interaction in every video game

>Why was everyone so sociable in MMOs back then?
Because you had to be

I played a few MUDs and some nights we just shot the shit in guild chat all night drinking and hanging out.

Literally just 6-8 hours of talking.

Tfw you will never play Lands of Aethar again and be a bad ass dps Vampire/cleric/blade singer

>Instanced dungeons
>bad
Enjoy getting cock blocked at every turn by poopsockers.

>implying spending time playing an MMO but in your own little space isn't cancer

>hey bro can we party up?
>yeah sure
HOLY SHIT, SOCIALIZING
>fuck off i was here first
>start kill stealing
>bitter rivalry
>smug sense of self satisfaction
or
>go somewhere else because the game would should be fucking large enough to not force you to grind only one specific area it tells you to

RO really was too good for us.

Outside communication.
No one writes anymore.

Old mmos required a lot of grinding, and usually parties were better for it. Or at least sharing a map was better in some games. So to pass the time you'd socialize, and people actually actually hang out in towns and shit instead of logging in for dailies. Now mmos all focus on the single player aspect and letting you solo til endgame with your own instances, channels and maps so you never have to share or encounter another living being.

people were less faggoty back then. Now it's become a case where an mmo is literally more fun solo than with random pugs. go in the game with premade friends lad

or be good enough that you can take that shit back from them, competition on maps was fun as fuck in games like RO and Maplestory

fighting over map spawns in MS was the best kind of PvP you could get out of that bullshit game, it fucking kicked ass and by the end of it you'd come out with a ton of experience and not even realize it because you were so focused on putting some faggot BR/pinoy/singlish fuck in his place

Because now it Ieads to faggotry Iike this

1/5

cc i report lah liao

A combination of two things:

MMOs all gradually streamlined themselves with QoL shit that make it so you don't need to actually socialize to progress anymore

Group chat programs like Discord became more prevalent so everyone just chats to each other there instead of talking in-game

When I was playing this in '05 I was literally talking to the friends I was playing with on a phone. If not that, I pretty much had to communicate in game.

2/5

tl;dr: Modern games are designed against sociability.
Combination of QoL and obsession over getting rid of downtime means there is no time left in-game for socialization - hell, socialization gets in the way of the game even.

3/5

I talk to my weeb friends on discord and also shit talk in game chat

It's like music to my ears

or eyes because I'm reading it, whatthefuckever

Pretty much this. Also less tutorialization and hand-holding overall, meaning discussion was a great way to get familiar with the game beyond the first few steps.
It worked well.

4/5

This and how every game has an easy to find and updated guide online. Half of the talking used to stem from "can someone help me with x" because the wikis were all outdated, incomplete, and not very good.

I just wanted those faggots playing as the new class and had their max level bishop friend babying them to CC

AND BEHOLD, THE CUTTlNG EDGE lN MODERN FAGGOTRY

The design philosophy was different, because what the players wanted/expected out of the games was different too.
These days even making an MMO sub based is a controversial decision.

i don't really know what the fuck you just posted or why you think it's a big deal but it looks like you wasted your fucking time, whatever you were trying to do

A bit of an odd example, but Planetside 2 even after all these years is still a very sociable game. There's a lot of ways that communicating helps get shit done. Now, this is in the scope of it being an FPS, but it does reflect the principle of having communication be a amorphous contributer to the gameplay experience.

Nobody gives a shit about how you stalk autist kids.

yum

there's simply lots of normies online now who never experienced the golden age of the internet and think being autistc is the best way to act

what was the point of posting this

I think the point was that there's pathetic white knight fags all over the internet like this now whose sole objective is to E date

Always were. Hell you could find the lot in Everquest.

I hate to say it, but this is true, at least in the games I play.

Every time a female character shows up now, you can

>"Add them as friend"
>Use an-game "search" function to see where they are and what they're up to
>Use a teIeport function to get to them
>Look them up on the forums
>Flood their inbox
>"Like" all their comments
>"White knight" for them
>Watch their streams
>Post on their social sites
>Get their Kick, Skipe, and 50 other communication options

It's way too much and it's no longer about gaming, it's about taking a pathetic shot at showering someone with affection, not realizing you're a humongous moron who never had a chance.

Although,

>tfw have been making female characters since MS and then transferring all the kawaii desu gear to my male characters, right after admitting it to them

It's nice being a "girl"

Because MMOs has so many tools that bypasses any sort of forced socialization to get anything done.

>They're stronger than you, demand you cc Iiao
>You stay anyway, getting the Iast hits in for exp
>WrangIe them away after they've done aII the damage
>Keep taking exp
>They caII their guiId members to come heIp
>You caII yours with a wrangIe-grouping-KS strategy
>u Iike KS u Iike repot maybe Iiao
>Your guiId now hates their guiId
>Other guiIds hear about it
>EngIish speaking guiIds band together against the FIipipinos

WiII l ever experience the wonder again in this Iifetime?

What is the most popuIated/best MS private currentIy out?

Which has the most recent updates with non-grinding exp rates?

WouId it be a fucking stupid use of time to even try these days?

What are some good MMOs nowadays which are very, very social?

>play modern MMO
>see tons of people running around town doing quests or crafting
>nobody talks
>eerie silence in chat except for the gold seller spammers
>go into LFG
>get matched with a few other people for whatever dungeon/raid
>people already know what they need to do
>[hello]
>[let's do this]
>[I need healing]
>[let's attack!]
>nobody actually types anything
>party leader just calls [1] [2] [3] targets on enemies
>finish dungeon
>'gg'
>[Bye!]
>repeat

It's so fucking sad, I just want a nice community to play with and hang out while also enjoying the game. Instanced content ruined MMOs for me. I remember shit like Flyff and Maplestory and they were just so good. I just want to go back.

Mapleroyals is the most popular server, whether its the best is entirely debatable, although all popular servers suffer from their own problems, usually including a fucked up economy or elitist secret clubs.
I suggest just picking a high rate server to get your nostalgia in, and if you actually enjoy it, try all the different semi popular servers and see which one fits.

Russian roulette.

VRChat

Yeah, its something that will never come back and we just have to suffer through the pain whenever the nostalgia kicks in.

l reaIIy can't think of any outside of 2nd Iife.

FF Xl if you find a good group. Being sociaI is there is fun after aII the grind and there's some neat things to do.

>Pre ninja servers

CarefuI which one you choose, though. The grind can be a fucking nightmare if you're too cIose to vaniIIa.

Fuck off SEAnigger

entire western society is desocialising hard

Do people even still play FFXI?

I play FFXIV and it's fairly social if you find a good FC or linkshell but finding one is basically impossible. All FC are filled with drama kids and linkshells are basically a dime a dozen and hard to find.

who is this woman and does she get nude

that's not even it. Socializing has moved to mobile, the west just refuses to do it on mobile

And by west, I mean the 20-30+ somethings that have a special hate for mobile gaming. All the kids are gaming regardless of how you like to define mobile gaming

>tfw we live in the dystopia without all the cool parts

This can't be fucking real.
How does someone even bend over far enough to suck their own dick this hard? Refusing to believe this person really exists.

>Flyff

Dammit user, why did you have to bring that up?
What I thought was the gayest shit to hit gaming turned out to be easily the nicest community I've ever played on. The fact that everyone split once 2-3 new "flavors of the month" came out will always bother me. It sucks people don't stick to one enjoyable game/community and hop to grind some game for a month before getting stuck in a regrettable "pay to win" situation.

XI is pretty broken up now. You have major groups that are incredibly active, but basically all new players, then much smaller groups which are the veterans/returning players/elitists.

It's so massively divided that if you're just starting now, you really have to be ready to invest time into your start. Be prepared to be alone and working like it's a real job for the first 2 weeks if you're lucky.

I wish it were better, but if you wanted honesty, there it is.

No it's just a pic from the "TRICK ANGLE WARNING" post hook-up threads

where are the good mobile games then smart guy
the only mobile game I like is FEH

You're the cutting edge in modern faggotry, even more than the OP

cyberpunk dystopias have fallen out of popularity because we're living in one

are you kidding, society is so fucking insular now, everyone just pays attention to their screen and the tiny group of people they are already involved with
every community is closed

I should mention, grind spots became much quicker if you're a traditional player who knows where to go. If you have someone guiding you, getting to 30 shouldn't be hard on the official/current servers.

The private ones have players acting in similar behavior though in regards to how divided they are, but the 4 major private servers for XI are pretty much asshole-driven and no one sticks around. It's been pretty much the same salty people shooing off new players for the past 10+ years.

>What I thought was the gayest shit to hit gaming turned out to be easily the nicest community I've ever played on. The fact that everyone split once 2-3 new "flavors of the month" came out will always bother me. It sucks people don't stick to one enjoyable game/community and hop to grind some game for a month before getting stuck in a regrettable "pay to win" situation.

Flyff was genuinely my favorite MMO and the best time I ever spent MMO gaming. Tons of builds and interesting approaches to levelling (FS RM, Full Sta RM with Merkaba, full DEX cookie cutter BP with stonehand, full dex blade, Crucio Psy, etc), nice community, really smooth gameplay and super fucking addicting, the PVP was fun even though it was dictated heavily by levels, builds and gear (which actually gave you a good reason to try and level up, so you could dick on everybody in the PvP arena), the weekly massive guild fights in the guild arena... It was just fucking perfect, if your guild came out victor in the weekly pvp you knew you were good. I was in the lawolf top guild and holy shit how much fun it was, and the whole battle was a chaotic mess of spamming food + asaal dicking everybody while your guild master was a full sta knight tank or a full sta RM tank running around. It was crazy shit with multiple waves of full str/MP asaal BPs trying to take down the opponent's full STA guild leader for the extra points. Fuck I want to play it again.

The problem is that the game got ruined by whales inflating the economy and cash shop literally dictating the pace of the game down the gutter.

I still play maplestory. It's aight.

the good games are on QooApp

Hope you can read korean and japanese though. They have whole MMOs to play on theyre phones

>everyone just pays attention to their screen
that's people socializing, anime poster

Every morning I commute while reading shit on my tablet (40 minutes commute). Sometimes I raise my head and look around me. 90% of the people are attached to a phone looking up stuff. The other 10% are usually sleeping. It's eerie as fuck when you start noticing that. Literally everybody in their own little bubble world. I do that too because fuck interacting with people and if I don't read/study while commuting, I'd be basically just wasting precious time every day that I can't afford to lose. But still, it feels fucking bad, it's scary.

This is why nobody talks anymore. They're afraid that if they're not complete dicks to everyone they meet online and express a positive about something they'll end up on a cringe compilation

>that's people socializing
not necessarily
a lot of people just spend their time browsing, reading twitter, reddit, Sup Forums not talking to anyone
a lot of people play online games completely by themselves, and shit i certainly haven't run into any mobile games that highly encourage socialization
maybe i'd personally be compelled to if we could get some mobile MMOs over here, that FFXI mobile version is years overdue at this point

exactly, when I get on public transport to go to work I just stare at my tablet and read and that's what everyone around me is doing, too
the only time i talk to people on the train is when i go with my friends

>Tfw Wakfu was good enough, despite some great flaws
>Then the population of the game went to shit
>Then they made multiboxing into a service killing the social aspect even further
It was so nice while it lasted

I have an mmo itch now and I need a new mmo game to play any new good ones?

FFXIV and GW2 are pretty good

MMOs used to be populated by social outcasts starving for human interaction.
Now it's edgy kids that use video games to feed their superiority complex.

R>PQ HAVE TRACK@@@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@@@@@@

society has changed. Why talk to random people these days? You can just see what everyone post on their phones.

>They accidentally forget to put an extra 0 in the price
>Buy it
>They follow you and try to force you to give it back
>no
>You now have one of the best items in the game for next to nothing

I've been able to find these accidental deals over a dozen times and the salt they gave me in exchange is unmatchable to this day.

>the "TRICK ANGLE WARNING" post hook-up threads
This sounds interesting.

>I accidentally did this once.

I miss city of heroes. :(

Never played maplestory, but this doesn't sound too bad. A factor of 10 seems laughable when it's comparing "one of the best items" and "next to nothing".

I remember on flyff there was this food called Star Candies. They were used by everybody while levelling and you'd normally buy something like 99 of them for 250 penya (I think?) which was basically nothing. You'd normally go through multiple stacks for every levelling session and then go back to town and restock, it was part of the job.

A friend of mine and I just bought multiple stacks and opened player shops in town next to the NPC with '99 Star Candies only 240!". People would see that 240 < 250 so it was cheaper, they would get in the shop, doubleclick on the item and leave. The problem is that it wasn't 240 for a stack of 99, it was 240 each. So many people fell for it and we made a shitload of money that way.

15 years later and I still feel bad for these kids, but free money is free money...

RO or Flyff? I kinda want to play one of them again I think

That's just smart business. When FFXIV 2.0 launched I remember people doing something similar with Orange Juice (to unlock the ability to dye gear).
People would buy them from the city, go out to the neighboring town where the quest was at, and sell it to people for a slightly higher price since everyone was new and didn't want to waste money on teleportation or to spend a short while running back to town.

The chat was hilarious as people were getting buttmad that they were taking advantage of something so simple, but it was clear that they were doing something right since they were gloating about their profits.

ls Ragnarok stiII going on officiaI?

l'd honestIy rather go with a popuIated private. l feeI the pIayers couId've done a ton more with it than they way the dev+IocaIization teams couId've.

because back then, internet was new and exciting. it was something unusual to talk to people all over the world. nowadays it has become a standard to be that connected.

imagine walking in the streets, you do your thing, not paying attention nor talking to anyone you walk by. mmo's has become that phenomena

>started playing a brand new MS server
>already bored
idk anymore

One of the better parts of RO was the way things spawned. The default for mob respawning was a random position on the map. Very few enemies spawned in set positions/areas which encourages people to wander instead of AoE camping.

MMO's are now designed to be playable all by yourself with the help of microtransactions. Also, you no longer need to ask other players for info because of how readily available info is.

discord
skype

fpbp

Idunno. I was gonna play a private server

>>go somewhere else because the game would should be fucking large enough to not force you to grind only one specific area it tells you to
>Can;t grind anywhere because an army 100 Hyper efficient bots already kills every monster in the map as soon as they spawn

>Switch to the last channels rather than the first ones
>Recently placed bots
>They are attacking from distance on a separate platform
>Have enemies following you under the platform
>Bump him into a mob
>He gets rekt
>Leave
>Go out to eat
>Go to respawn point in the city 6 hours later
>His character still macro looping

Used to do this to known elitist groups for fun. The best is you can keep doing it until tipping point when they try to start coming after your guild then just send a ticket to have their account reviewed.

Any review for macros is pretty much the end of the account, legit or not.

The "what if fat girls weren't fat?" threads are better

Warframe, because its kind of a complicated mess for beginners so you either stick with other low mr guys or join a guild and find out. Usually lots of verbally chat talking about how to acquire certain frames/mods/resources, hunting down bosses for drops, etc. Kind of fun and you can either make good or bad friends there. Lots of boring reddit fags and others on there that are on a whole new level of absolute boring people.

>warframe
Oh god I dont think I can bring myself to go back after I heard they added RNG mods that you upgrade with RNG drops

DE is too fucking jewish

the grind though, holy shit

This. These days, MMOs are all about hand-holding, microtransactions, and progression. Immersion is no longer a selling factor. Community is irrelevant as long as you can make a sale.
Early Everquest, Ultima. Asheron's Call, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, and DAoC all had fantastic communities because you needed a community to progress in the game. Experience was slow and difficult to acquire. Gear wasn't handed out like candy. Socialization was required to advance in most cases. It was OK it was slow, too. There wasn't a desire to reach end-game as fast as possible and move on to the next game. You could progress at your own pace without fear of the game dying or your guild-mates moving on to the next best thing.
The Golden age of MMOs is over. I don't see it making a return anytime soon.

>they added RNG mods that you upgrade with RNG drops

And l thought Awakening's "CIassic Iunatic+" was fucking crazy.

l'm sure Warframe is pretty bad, but nothing can take Awakening's pIace in RNG heII

>dropped out of college cause I got hooked and stopped attending classes
>don't even play anymore and hated the last group of players in my guild after the Australians left
>TFW the Australians in my clan stopped playing and chat became boring
JUST FUCK MY SHIT UP
but dam really miss those guys

That's just the way the internet was in general back then. I never talked to IRL friends on the internet but I had like 90 friends on my AIM friends list who I had never met and yet I'd have a million chat boxes open talking to a bunch of literal strangers as I browsed.

These days I it's just basically texting your IRL friends. I never talk to new people via the Internet anymore. Web 2.0 was supposed to be about social networking but to me the internet as a whole feel less social than ever.

Fewer people were playing them, and they were less accessible.

This is also why sandbox MMOs don't work anymore. Too many people play them, they organize and push out anyone who isn't part of some massive blob of people.

>Bringing your maxed character to the new pIayer's first forest area
>BIock aII exits

AND SO lT BEGlNS