"You aren't finding friends in MMOs anymore. You're bringing friends to MMOs." Yeah, this feels about right. Well said!

MMOs back in the day were like going to school. You're not there specifically to make friends, but since you're constantly around people in the same situation as you, doing the same stuff together, you end up forming those connections naturally. MMOs now are like going to a convention. Sure you CAN make friends if you specifically seek that out, but mostly everyone is doing their own thing already with their own friends. You can maybe have some superficial interactions with them but generally they're not really looking to get to know other people there. If you want to make friends you kind of have to go out of your way to join or set up some kind of club. Maybe there's some groups you can join in the convention where you can make friends, but you have to make that decision for yourself, it doesn't just happen naturally. I don't think there is any way back to the old days, just like how you can't go back to school. The nature of online social interaction has changed. But who knows, maybe one day someone will figure it out and there will be a game like that again.

I feel the loneliness more keenly year by year. I find myself leaving and coming back to MMOs al the time. Firstly because i have no one to play with, so i leave, and then nostalgia of better days bring me back. I miss my older days in everquest, i had a great group of people that was always there for each other, not just for in game stuff but also supportive of irl things as well. It was like having a chosen family, and it was nice. But as it is, everyone drifts apart over time. Through the years I've come across people i came to call friends only to have them leave me or betray me in some way. As this has happened more and more over the years I've found i started to develop social anxiety online and irl. Maybe I'm just extremely unlucky, or something is wrong with me that i can't see I've told myself many times. Even writing this is hard because i don't know how or even if anyone will respond to it or sympathize because they do or have felt the same way. But playing online i feel so disconnected from people now, I've even thought of just stopping playing MMOs all together, but part of me still wants to have hope i can find a home again like i had in my EQ days. Will i ever find it? Who knows, but one thing is for sure, while MMOs are fun i know i really play them for the people not the game. With a good group of friends to have fun with you can play the jankiest trash game and still have fun.

The worst feeling I've had playing MMOs was feeling utterly alone as hundreds of people run past me. Could go on days before anyone would notice or say anything to me. Kinda reminds me of real life and its depressing AF.

The short, short version of the MMORPGs problem is: Socialization is the biggest strength of MMORPGs and it's also their biggest weakness. Or put another way: The players will screw the game up more than the developers ever could.

The primary turning point for gaming was the prevalence of social media in the 2011+ era. It changed how we socialize, it changed how we compete, its changed first impressions of games and it drastically affects the success and community building that makes so many games important also.

I’ve talked about this a few times with my friends. I started playing WoW late 2005, it was the first online game I’d ever played.. I could not wait to play every day. On my journey to level cap I met so many people! Had this fun adventure with 3 of us Druid’s stealthing through lower Blackrock spire to this specific boss because I wanted the mini pet he dropped. One of the druids we’d met during our group run, they just agreed to do it on a whim. So many years later it’s still something I think about on occasion, there were so many fun moments like that back then. I met so many people just organically playing the game. Now playing it’s mostly a ghost land and any people you do see ignore you. Even in groups, nobody talks anymore.. in fact, it’s considered weird to be friendly. I tried to come back for WoW classic and that’s when I realized the people have changed, even if there’s a lot of players online. I was in my 20’s when I started playing WoW, so it’s not rose tinted glasses for me as far as being a kid that some people have.. It’s that online culture has just shifted and won’t ever be the same. So depressing lol

Gatekeeping, pay to win, lonely servers, but why do i always come back? Theres something i like to call the fridge effect. When you keep opening your fridge door hoping something will be there the next time you open it

Asheron's Call is a major exception to your argument, due to its vassal & patron system. High level players with more resources had a major incentive to interact with low level and newbie players, as they could be rewarded with a steady stream of passive XP and money by becoming their patron. Some of the best social moments in any MMO I played were when a friend and I would meet up with our patron, someone we met in game, who actively want to gear us up, give us advice, tell us where to go grind for XP and materials, then offer to help us craft awesome quest items when we were done. All the while, that player gained XP and money proportional to what we earned ourselves. Really started to lose me at, "Please don't call people, it's awful. Just text them." I grew up on MMO's too, but you can connect on a completely different level by hearing someone on a call and being heard. On top of that, half the video is about feeling lonely and lack of connection, then you are opposing a really basic method of stemming loneliness - talking to other human beings. If anything text exacerbates loneliness as it is cold and distant, is difficult to convey tone and sarcasm and emotion in text, and honestly shows a lack of effort to connect to someone. Showing that you are WILLING to give a phone call in itself conveys a sense of desire to connect which text doesn't.

Also a huge part of being social in MMOs back in the day was to learn from others experiences... There wasn't 200 different guides on everything. There wasn't data-mining about the next patch that is coming out in 2months. There weren't people that made it their job to play PTRs to make videos about. The biggest part of being social was also learning. If I had a secret mount I found, and someone asked me where I got it, I could show them. Now they can just look it up on KZfaq and find 10videos how to get it. MMOs have no secrets anymore Another example would be raiding, there were no boss guides, so you would have to join a guide to raid. That each raid team would have a different boss strategy from what they have tried and learned from.

This video is a social case study in itself. Well done.

I feel like people used to get excited when a random person in the game engaged with them. Now, not so much. Your point regarding everyone communicating outside of the game via discord could be it. I also think it's because the intrigue of meeting new people in an online game is no longer interesting because it's no longer new and exciting. Half the fun years ago was experiencing the ability to be connected to people around the world for the first time.

It's everywhere. The Michaels near me went to all self-checkout, and especially during the Christmas season it was one of the most depressing experiences of my life.

Mike Morhaime once talked about it in an interview shortly after leaving Blizzard: Once Social Media took off people were less "dependent" on MMO chats to get social interaction. And he probably knew this not just at the time of the interview but also 10 years before.

I always thought the instance dungeons, fast leveling killed the mmo. I found friends and groups going into the dungeons where all the good xp and loot was. The whole rare spawning 'named mob' that always dropped 1 of 2 gear items. This lead to camping which was a huge plus encouraging people to group up and be social. After EQ those mechanics were dropped and new mmorgs actually bragged and used those missing elements as marketing devices; no more "camping' you do quests for your gear, no more corpse runs, you dont needs friends to rez you, every group gets its own instance dungeon so you dont have to share drops or xp. Im curious if reintroducing these mechanics that we both hated and loved would change things for the better, then again the say, "you can never go home"

Games like Rust and Lethal Company continuously remind you that proximity voice contributes to atmospheric immersion in games.

Yea, MMOs have had elements of their social backbone replaced, and have toned down on the social aspects themselves. But a big part of the problem is the modern playerbase too. Modern gamers are more anti-social than ever. And games are designed to cater to that type of player now. When I talk to people about EQ, and they give the inevitable "that game is too hard" response, in say to losing exp when you die... I have to explain that its not at bad as it sounds. 99% of the time you can get a rez for 90-97% of your lost exp. You just have to get a cleric to help you. That. That right there is what baffles and annoys modern players. "What? I have t ask for help? F that!". They can't fathom the concept of relying on others like that. To them, losing 10% of your level of exp might as well be permanent exp loss. They think getting a res is an odd exception. Sure, when you are low level it is like that. But at a lower level you lose less exp, and make back exp faster. Anyway. These are people that are so anti-social that they do not even want the chance of having to rely on someone for non-endgame raiding/grouping. They are selfish. They don't want people asking them for anything, and don't want to ask others. They want to progress 100% on their own until they have no other option. Look at popular gaming genre. FPS's specifically. Back when MMOs were first starting out, the FPS genre was just one among many genres. Since then, (disgustingly) it has become the most popular to many default gaming genre. Even when you play on a team, you are out for yourself. You want to be mr big shot. Other people help is invisible to you having your dopamine hit from a moment in the sun. And its players from these type of games that make their way over to MMOs now, and demand to be catered to. To them, teams and friends only exist to flex in front of. They are not bonds to form and rely on.

I feel this deeply but I will say I just started playing hardcore classic wow and found it different. Since you die and start over and people invite you for even basic content just to make sure everyone doesn't die. The early zones feel alive and social. I joined a guild and died at lvl 12 and they said "go start over and we'll see you soon." The chat was filled with RIP. I had some stranger make me a wand. I spent time fishing with random people talking about how important fishing actually is. It's the first time in years I feel like an important player in a group.

One of the biggest things I find in my 20 plus years of mmo play that attributed to the antisocial feel in mmo games were the players themselve. That toxic mentality of telling players to get good or excluding people for some reason or another.

So very many points you make hit the mark, not only about the truncated levelling that keeps us glued to Twitter and Reddit - but your take on the many different ways we connect and socialize outside of the in-Game chatroom (even though we are setting up content to do in-Game) was absolutely on point! Great summary on the How, the What and the Why of MMOs as well. (point of irony: this video was linked in my Discord!)

I also thought JSH's video review of Everquest was very poignant and impacted me greatly. At first it made me angry because I was defensive, but the more I thought about it the more I realized he was correct, not just about old MMORPG's but about everything I'm nostalgic about. For example, when he used Elvis as an example to point out how something can be great in its time when you're a part of the cultural moment, but if you weren't there you can appreciate something without feeling that magic. It made me realize how we deceive ourselves in order to protect the choices and investments we've made in our lives and why we can't ever truly recapture the feeling, even if we can recreate facsimiles of what we once loved. I hope the creators of MnM watch that video and take some of his points into consideration because I absolutely love the game they're working on but I would hate for it to fail due to making the same mistakes which are causing Everquest to slowly erode into obscurity. It also made me reflect on how lonely I am these days now that I no longer have friends I play MMORPG's with, and why that may be the reason none of the games stick with me in the same way as they used to.

Nothing gets me quit guild faster than reading/hearing "Get on the guild discord." I want to play the game, when i have time, with those who are online. I don't want to hear from my guildies and their issues about real life when i'm not even playing.

I'm one of those blithering idiots who love mmo's but remain unfailingly antisocial. I spent years and years playing EQ and I even started a guild (Alternate Reality) - but most of that time was spent solo or multi-boxing lol. I just love being by myself in a giant world, slowly chipping away at levels or AA's or tradeskills. It's so relaxing.

Well there are a lot of factors in this that need to be adressed I think. 1: First of all we already had players in Vanilla WoW that did bearly, if not at all, use the ingame chat after joining a guild and talking to everyone in TeamSpeak. Once they find a social gruop they are less likly to interact with strangers in an MMORPG. Something that I have observed many times. 2: Since a lot of us have friends from the old days we are often trying to play with them again. In many cases that is more convinient after all. I noticed many palayers I play with try to get a group together before they start playing an MMO and if that group falls apart they struggel, since they do not want to play with "randoms". That in turn has to do with the alreaady established comfort zone with the perexisting group, but also the mentalety that random groups have these days. 3: Of cause there are a lot more ways to get information about something within the game these days. So a lot of the time if someone asks something, they will simply get a guide oder a "Just google it!" as an answer. That of cause also limits the social interaction. After all the best way to get information back in the day was talking to other players ;) 4: Coming back to my second point and combining it with the third, is the way MMORPG's are played today. Many only care for the loot or other progress like achivements and they want to get it with as little effort as possible. So they exclude players that do not know the content already, they expect everyone to have addons to make the game easy mode, they expect everyone to play the best build possible with BIS gear, they want everyone to have better gear than themselfs so they get all the loot and they want to rush as farst as possible skipping everything you can skip within the dungeon or raid. And it is called playing the META. What they do not realise, is that this is taking out the fun for many others. And it leads to players not wanting to team up with "randoms", since that is the norm they are expecting. 5: Many MMORPG's do not reward social behavior or group play. For example in it's early days WoW did try to balance the progress everyone makes in a group by reducing the expirience point each member got for killing an enemy and making many quests impossible to do in a bigger group/raid. 6: Also the distrebution of loot has always been a problem in MMORPG's like WoW. It has always felt more devicive that only a few members of the raid get some loot. It is often sparking conflict within the group. Locking back to point 4, if you pass on an item for someone else, it can come back to haunt you later on, if that item does not drop again and you are missing an important BIS Item. Something I personally love about TESO is that everyone gets his or her reward for participating in a given raid! You normally get an Item from each raidboss, that is not yet in your collection. That way it is garanteed that bad luck will not hold you back forever. And if you get something that you already have or do not want/need, you can give it to another member of the group! That is far more social than anything loot regared I have ever seen in WoW and many other MMORPG's! It also serves as a catchup mecanic for someone new joining a raid! I LOVE that about TESO! 7: Professions are supposed to make the game a social expirience. Many MMORPG's limit the professions you can learn to force the playerbace into interacting with one another. However many MMO's do a poor job when it comes to this. The reason is that many professions are only needed for one time item crafting, like a smith or leatherworker for example. Other professions like alchemie on the other hand provide consumabels that are needed regularly/daily. Since one party can provide less than the other, MMO's that limit the professions one can learn, tend to be a onesided economy. That is no fun for the relyent party that can not provide as much as it is dependent. And the party that is providing might also not be willing to provide without limits if they get nothing in return. That ends up in one party is selling daily consumabels on the auction house while the other grinds there ass of to afford it. I saw many players quitting over the grind that is required to get prepared for raids. And if they simply fail to come prepaird for the raid, it again sparks conflict. In TESO this problem is solved by letting everyone do every profession. Everyone has the consumabels needed and everyone can share if someone falls short on any specific consume once in a while, without causing longterm onesided dependence. However that also makes the professions less of of a social interaction. Especially since TESO does not provide special craftebel stuff that requires rare recepies that provide a big benefit in regards to gear or otherwise. 8: Many MMORPG's have forced us into groups in order to play the game and make progress. They provided an enviroment that made the abuse of dependencys a Problem. They also made strict groups of X players mandatory. So instead of forming natural social groups that did fit good together, where also someone that was unable to attend to every raid is able to find a place, it made taking in members that did not nessecarily fit mandatory to do the content. That has in some cases destroyed entire guilds. If you kicked that problematic player without a replacement, well you cannot do the content. You want player X to join the raid? Well sorry if you are working shifts that do not allow for weekly attendence! Unless you have someone to fit exactly into that attendence gap. Otherwise it can spark conflict. In my oppinion there are a lot of things that a dev can do to prevent conflict and toxic behavior! For example not forcing group play but reward it whenever it naturally occures. Rewarding everyone particepating in group activetys equally. Making the game systems ajustebel to variing group sizes, so you are not depending a somepne that does not fit your group. If dependencys exist in the crafting systems make the equel! One sided (over) dependencys are toxic and no fun! And yes writing can take to long. Why not have a local voice chat for a local area like the tavern you are visiting, that is regulated by range. Why not offering everything the RP players need to do there thing? I personally do not rp but having those players around, totally enriches the world you are visiting. Well that is my cute little textwall on that topic^^ Thanks for reading ;) TLDR as I said: In my oppinion there are a lot of things that a dev can do to prevent conflict and toxic behavior! For example not forcing group play but reward it whenever it naturally occures.

This is the exact way i feel when playing some of my favorite MMOs of all time - Everquest 2, Age of Conan and LOTRO. I'm always happy to dive back in and gain a couple of levels and pour some hours in them, but they're always so much empty. And this is very, very sad, because to see them in their best moments i gotta find a time machine and return to 2000-2006. So damn sad.

This was enlightening & sad at the same time. I recently had those social feels around this time last year when the most recent classic FFXI server launched. Ultimately, I ended up joining a Discord group, or bubble. Same thing happened with WoW Classic's launch. It is, what it is I guess.

Asmongold gave a great explanation. He said that people who play MMOs aren’t there to socialize anymore and so the games need to adapt. They need to prioritize making a good single-player game with other people in the world with you and making advantageous and easier to work with others but not strictly necessary. Harder and more time and effort to play solo, but perfectly viable and with the gameplay designed around single-player as a shared world with the other players. Because most people spend their time in MMOs playing solo and not really interacting with others much since there is no reason to outside of a instances/raids, which is both just a small part of the playerbase and only a small part of the time you spend in the game even for diehard raiders compared to the time the spent and will spend outside of dungeons.

I stopped playing EQ2 because I couldn't solo mobs past ~20ish and couldn't find groups to grind XP with. That was basically the only reason I switched to wow a few months after EQ2 came out - I wanted to be able to level. Game developers were somewhat forced to make games work better for a solo player...

I really feel like the reason the social aspect of mmos died is because of toxicity. Over the past two decades people have become so angry and toxic, with any slipup or mistake leading to being ejected from a group. I don't reach out to people in mmos because half the time they are assholes, and i don't need that in my life. Early classic wow, and now SOD has a much higher population of 'nice people' but there is still that reeking elitism and toxic mindset of optimization over all.

This video definitely hits home. I have 3k hours in New World and finally called it quits because yeah, I was lonely. I had 3 separate times that I had a tight knit group of friends that we did everything together. Time after time they would all quit the game. Back to sad solo play. Make new good friends, they quit, back to sad solo. Just got tired of putting the effort into making new friends only to have them quit and bring lonely again.

I've been playing MMOs since 1995 with the first iteration of The Realm. I never played EQ, but I did play EQ2, and all the other major ones of the time period. I played WoW from beta and then quit after Wrath to sample all the other new MMOs coming out. Went back to WoW with Legion, got tired of the crap, then left again. Last year I finally got over my cat girl revulsion and tried FFXIV. And that's where I'll stay. I've had very bad experiences with other people in MMOs, and so I play them as single player games. For me, it's not about competition, it's about a never ending story. And when I say "bad experiences", I mean that I once had to contact the police because I was being stalked by a dev of one of these games. But I will say that folks in FFXIV are great, and I love that the game makes it very easy to team up with others when you absolutely have to.

Great topic! I think it is kind of what you are willing to make of it, when it comes to socializing in mmo's. Not every social interaction needs to result in a new best friend, and I think maybe that's kind of where some of us old timer's miss the plot. I can remember the days of Shadowbane where you made friends with the first person who didn't try to kill you instantly lol. Fast forward to WoW or EQ2 and the social interactions became much more fleeting (I need a temporary buddy to help me through this quest). Guilds... kind of hit or miss. They usually just end up being a room full of strangers who agree to play the game together for mutual benefit. But those interactions are still social, and I think they are worth having. Not sure I fully agree with the competition angle. That sounds a bit more like elitism on one end and fomo anxiety on the other. Competition in an mmo to me would be more like, "we were the first guild to beat this raid" etc. Bottom line, don't go into an mmo expecting it to replace your normal day to day social interactions with a close group of friends. If you want that, take your friends with you and play the game together.

Yeah ... 😢 I knew something had changed in the MMORPG genre when Asherons Call got pulled offline. I started playing AC when I was 16, back in 1998/1999. Played it for close to a decade. I went through a really terrible breakup and found some semblance of peace in the world of Dereth. Made friends, made enemies, lived a whole other life online ... Then IRL caught up and I moved on. Like 10 years later, I heard they were dropping service to the game. It made me feel like someone I knew had died. Or my favorite childhood playground was now just a Starbucks. It... Hurt. But it showed me, and many other GenX, Boomer, and Millennial gamers who were involved in all the early MMO days that things could end. That those worlds would someday no longer be available. I think once this happens to WoW a bit more of the population will understand, but I don't wish the feeling upon them. Great video man! Earned a sub ❤

I grew up on Everquest. I even give it credit for teaching me to type, and type fast! When you are in danger and need to call for help, you learn to be quick - haha.

I think gaming culture has a lot to do with MMO's not being fun anymore as well. Back in the day, people were more open to figuring stuff out themselves and to just live in the world. Now, everyone is looking for add ons, or the newest "meta" - feeling the need to min-max and to obsess over what's OP. It really takes the fun out of the game. Removes any RP or story enjoyment that you can have along the way. Trying things, risking your character being gimped a little bit, but charming in a way. I miss the old days of that feeling of wonder, where people just wanted to log in and have a good time. People weren't so toxic and enjoyed helping each other. When it was Okay to be a noob, and you enjoyed the journey of reaching max level... Instead of the whole game being a race to get to max level, because there was an aura of the game not being enjoyable unless you had all the best gear, the best spec and were rolling around at max level.

Warhammer online return of reckoning largely solves this with their large scale war-bands and City sieges. Super easy to meet people and join a guild.

The social disfunction of mmo's is just a reflection of the social disfunction of modern "just text me" culture.

I would suggest there is a caveat to what you're saying, and it's something I never considered till the Quarm server launched. If there are GM ran events in game you can pull the population of a server to a location and you will get social interaction. The mere suggestion of a GM ran event in a zone will gather flocks of players. Honestly think that's how you force people to interact. Drop a GM controlled dragon in East Commons and see what happens...

The deep thinking is inspiring, love it! Maybe a lot of people don’t care enough to make the games social or not lonely. Maybe a lot also are somewhat like you claim you used to be, awkward and don’t know how to social necessarily and it’s definitely easier to avoid dealing with that. I personally miss how it used to be, not being the most social person myself.

I've been playing the FFXI private server HorizonXI. It has been a lot fun! I think largely because it's starting from the original expansion much like a TLP on Everquest. So the starting zones are full of players and in that game you have to group up to get anywhere. New MMORPGs are great but you basically solo until end game. It's very depressing 😅

the more we spend together the lonelier the days they are away get.

There was a time when the quests involved encounters with NPCs which were difficult enough to require groups of 2 to 5 players to complete. These days, any competent player can solo almost any content - and some classes actually can solo all but 10+ player raids.

My crew may be outliers; We’ve stuck together through multiple universes after EQ. I haven’t been lonely in decades, which is pretty freakin’ sweet as a reclusive extrovert 😎

This is why people should embrace RP stuff. In UO Outlands I became a part of a community of ~100 or 200 people because they're focused on RPing various things in the game (Brigands / Knights / Undead / Vampires) and we work together to create our own interesting stuff. You hop on to see what people are up to. Who's having interesting encounters. Who's creating some chaos. Who's developing a story. Stuff like that is interesting. We've already played all these games. The games are just the platforms. Now ***YOU*** need to be interesting, or find interesting people and play along. That's the hard part. That's why these games are suffering. It's a lot harder to be an interesting person as a boring developed adult than it was as a naive and inexperienced kid.

You're right on the money with this. Mmos have become antisocial, and most of it is down to a shifting social culture. The rest of it is shitty engagement metrics and monetisation practises. I learned how to be social on wow. I was. Finally able to meet people who would not judge me for my adhd before getting to know me, I was able to learn to take a step back and not feel like I had to always be in the centre of everything to feel like I matter or exist. I learned how not to be selfish, how to work for group goals, how politics happen in any size groups and how drama always seems to find communities. These lessons stuck with me, helped me make irl friends and build decades long online friendships. But all I feel when I log on now is like that awkward kid. Because no one wants to be social, worse, they judge you as a weirdo for wanting to make that connection.

I am mostly a solo player in MMOs like New World and even in Fractured Online. Then I started playing Embers Adrift and I keep grouping with random people and even joined a guild after 2 days. Everyone is chatting and friendly. Haven’t experienced this since years and I highly recommend checking it out if you are looking for a socializing MMO experience.

So, my relationship to MMOs is decidedly different than most. I never played WoW (got stood up for a date because of a guild raid, kinda put me off the whole thing), so I never touched anything even resembling an MMO until ESO. I bounced off that one, too. The world was beautiful and the campaign was interesting, but some of the MMOish things kinda put me off (I'm a digital hoarder in Elder Scrolls games, and the inventory thing put me off in a big way), like the voice chat I had to turn off every screen (I don't know if it was a setting I screwed up, or if it was a bug at the time I played), unless I wanted to hear someone's child screaming in the background, or some poor person having a coughing fit in my ear. Then the roomie got me to play Fallout 76 with him. This was after they'd done a big overhaul and added in NPCs and such. We had fun, and I've played it a little bit on my own, but I can't say I find myself drawn to pop on solo very often. And neither he nor I have had a chance to play together in probably a year, due to our work schedules. So I'm not sure I'm qualified to speak on the overall state of MMOs, but I thought tossing my experience out as a data point couldn't hurt!

My problem is, none of my irl friends would ever consider joining me in an MMO. So what the heck do I do? I HAVE to find people IN GAME because THAT is where the people like me are. Other bubbles who have no one else to play with. So the question I am asking all of you is... How do we merge these bubbles together?

Okay, I'm usually not this bad with words but right now I'm having trouble finding them. Let me try this though. I love playing MMOs because there are people in the world. I've played LOTRO for 14 years because I love the world and I love seeing people running around doing their thing while I play. When I started playing it, I had a lot more time to invest in the game. As a result, playing with groups was easier and I found myself playing with others often. The older I've gotten, the less time I have to dedicate to any single game. Knowing that most kinships, guilds, whatever usually want someone that will be around more than that, I just ... well, I avoid grouping. I guess I feel it's only fair that the limited group spots go to people that have more time? Also, most kinships require discord now and I rarely ever use it. I actually went from being sad having to solo gameplay to enjoying the challenge of it, wherever I could find challenge. Because I've noticed over the years that a lot of the older games are being redesigned with solo players in mind. There are things in LOTRO that we could have never done solo, things that I can easily do on my own now. I even wrote a blog post on MMOs and being a solo player. I just feel like MMOs have been going in this direction for a while now. I don't know. I think if I were to find the right group that were fine with my limited play time, then I would join them. But I accept that that group may not exist and enjoy the journey for what it is. And as a final note, I'm finding survival games are starting to fill in that space that MMOs used to fill. Okay I'm going to stop rambling now. Great video! I may just have to write a follow-up on my MMO post, keeping this in mind.

This is an issue you are correct. That is why when I recruit newbs for my guild on WoW, I keep people talking and it rubs off on people and they start getting friendly and then everyone starts to bond. That being said I am 40 and have been in charge of guilds my whole life and had some fail and a lot of work just the same. But the one thing I found out that makes a guild successful is chatting and shooting the sh1t with everyone and joking around and being goofy. I will even drop by and tank w/e anyone needs cause, I love doing it. The thing is this... If you find yourself lonely and do not at least try to find a way around that then it does come back to you. The issue to me is more along the lines of even though people find themselves lonely doing w/e content they are doing if there is no fear of the world then what is the reason to join a guild in the first place if you have no real need to outside of chatting or making friends. This is the downside of FFXIV and WoW... Both games while in the leveling stage add no fear to a player to really even care about joining a guild yet whereas WoW classic and EQ def add that fear to the player to join others so they do not die all the time which forced people to chat and that would lead to friendships. That being said though I have found that getting new players in WoW to join my guild and having talks and just shooting the sh1t with them and the fun they have in the guild and the friends they make are what make people want to play more than the game itself. So as a WoW guild leader of many, many years I do think good guilds can lead to a fix for this issue of loneliness inside these massive game worlds. It just comes down to players looking for that kind of guild instead of a hardcore raid guild or a hardcore pvp guild or w/e.

I tried to go back to WoW at the start of Dragonflight, but without a guild and friends to play with, it was impossible to get into any endgame content and really do anything. I tried for a couple of weeks, but it became clear that it was not feasible to pug, and it was impossible to make new friends because everyone is in a clique already and they are just hanging out on guild discords.

I will definitely be making this feedback a core principle of my game's design, I think the solution is reducing micro engagement (the current cookie cutter quest system is outdated, static and needs revamping, the rewards are trivial) and breaking people out of the loop frequently through randomized events that bring people together naturally out of curiousity as well as making sure guilds in games are a core focus... guild leaderboards, expanding guild collaborations and spaces, guild influences over the world dynamics (increasing randomized events or causing faction wars that influence NPC behavior and the world layout, etc). We got to grow up in a pretty sweet era for gaming, it was rapid innovation through the 90's-early 2000's and then things kind of plateaued. Nobody growing up these days has got to experience that "lightning in a bottle" experience we got with these old games in their heyday.

Spoken true facts! Thats why I've taken a hiatus from the genre unless I play with friends. Discord took away that magic of walking past someone and just typing hey. Text chat is dead. I think because everyone has social media, discord, phones, etc. that once you get on an MMO you kinda want to be anti-social because there's so much socialization at all times. Back then MMOs were the social medias for us. My best moments in MMOs were the games were I didn't even get halfway to cap.

I think reality is lonely, and new things momentarily break that rather hard rule of life. People use to gather around to tell stories for entertainment then we got the written word, people use to gather for musical events then we got downloads, people use to watch TVs all at the same time then we got streaming and yes people use to have to find connections solely in game then came forums and icq and aim and vent and now discord. Every advancement pushes to being able to do it in your own time and pace, and a byproduct of that is loneliness. ALL THAT BEING SAID we still have story hour at the library, we have huge musical events full of fans, we have people gathering for the big game or the new episode of some mad man in a box, and so on and so on. I'm a VERY antisocial person by and large, and dont see another person besides family for several days many times, but i have folks that do chat with me on discord or other methods most days. Sometimes its too much sometimes its not enough, we are all alone, lonely, and connected all at the same time and in some ways always have been; we just might be more acutely aware of it now.

Yes, it's true story. I experienced it in New World. On top of the initial launch problems, queques to log into servers, running everywhere on foot cause the payment for teleports was too expensive - you were left alone with your problems once it came to the location that was too hard for you or had a boss, or was a dungeon where you had to have a group. I never had any friends playing this, so I was left with meeting someone online and hoping they won't stop playing a week after I meet them. Then you're stuck in a loop - you can't progress past what you get in the missions, cause next good gear is from dungeons, where nobody takes you, cause you're too weak and don't know the routes and behaviors to cross it the most optimal way. So you spend time gathering materials and trying to sell them in hope to earn money to buy gear. If you persist and don't quit, maybe you will finally earn it in the end. Meanwhile you're the same "forever alone" online as you ever were in real world. (Then there's an update and your new shiny gear is trash.)

I tried to talk in mmorpgs but it don't always work then anxiety kicks in 😢 so I gave up I miss when it was basically required to communicate with people in game to do things 😂 helped me break my social anxiety barrier

Honestly not having that experience at all in RuneScape, but I can see how someone could have that experience. I chat a lot, and often I get no response, but I don’t let that get me down or stop doing it. I think part of the problem is people giving up trying to talk to someone after getting ignored a few times in a row. I believe if you persevere, you find the people who like to talk and meet others, and it’s worth it.

I've been solo for 5 years because most if not all of my social interactions have sucked and have in one way or another hindered me rather than bolster me. It would always be me having to engage them. There would be people who were selfish and never help me after I helped them. I have yet to find a single worthwhile person that isn't in it for themselves.

I don't think this is just MMO's, I think this is life in general unfortunately.

My friends used to be the dopamine hit in an MMO. Now its just meaningless bread crumbs on a pointless grind that is replaced with new content at the drop of a hat. A huge reason I played MMOs was because my friends were online in the friends list of that MMO not because the content was exactly fun. It was fun because my friends were there. Now they on discord and it feels like im bothering them by asking them to log in to do stuff.

Well, I think there is a huge difference between making friends and being social, and for me personally (and I think most people), making a friend is nice and all, but not necessarily a goal. I just like interacting with people in friendly, cooperative ways. Modern MMOs have gutted this from their core design, and they are very lonely as a result. But when I played p99, I wasn't lonely. I had moments of being alone, but then I had moments of being with people - talking, grouping, and having a great time. There's no such thing as never being lonely, in a game or in real life. Sometimes we just have to be by ourselves. The problem with modern MMOs is that we're always by ourselves, even in a crowded room. Even with "friends" who join the adventure. ESO, LOTRO, New World, etc - I played all of those games and I brought my friends with me too, and it was no more interesting with them along for the ride than without. Primarily because playing solo and with a group always feels the same in modern MMOs, but it was not at all the same in EQ. So, I don't think Discord is the reason MMOs don't feel like social places anymore. I think the problem is how we are engaging with one another in the game, AKA the game design itself. It always comes back to game design. Always. Which is why I do think developers are to blame in this situation. They are releasing the same game design over and over and over again, so there's been no change and everyone is feeling tired and lonely, claiming the genre is dead, and panicking when they go back to a game that's over 20 years old and find it's no longer the game they remember... But try to keep in mind, that's all that's happening here. If someone made a game like EQ today, I believe it would do well - and don't give me Embers Adrift, that game has missed the point in every conceivable way. And I think Josh missed the point too, because instead of contributing to the dialogue in a positive way, he took an hour to make an obvious point about a problem of the genre as a whole. I think the question we should maybe be asking going forward is, what are players' expectations when it comes to being social and making friends?

Star Wars Galaxies was the only MMO I've played that actively fostered social interaction in a way that was not only natural like EQ, but also sustainable. At least in the older version of the game.

I had some of the strangest loneliest dark nights soloing in Rappelz like 20 years ago, and i remember thinking then how bleak it all was but now my memory treasures those times when i was truly 'out there' and so high of level almost no one could even get to me. Its a strange blend in my head.

Its because teamwork doesnt work anymore, everyone is accustomed to be the main character

When MMO’s first blew up, they were the most convenient way to be part of an online community. With social media dominating every facet of our lives these days, the social element of MMOs has lost all novelty. PS2 was the best selling console of all time… because it was the most accessible DVD player on the market. Saying MMOs need to lean back into community is like saying the PS5 should sell more because it can play Netflix. No… there are easier ways to watch Netflix these days and there are easier ways to be part of an online community than playing an MMO. For most people these days, MMOs are appealing because they have a living world and ongoing content where your time investment doesn’t feel wasted. Those are the pillars to build upon if the genre is ever to return to the heights of its popularity. Games don’t exist in a bubble. As the world changes, so too do the standards by which we judge our entertainment. I like this video. I’ve been saying this stuff for a decade.

Always so good Redbeard. No idea why you don't have a million subs. I'm looking forward to farming you for content when my studio is built =D I have so many questions!

I have slowly seen the MMOs get more and more lonely every year, though around the COVID incident and also during the "WoW exodus" to FF14 there was, for at least a year or two, a moment to where it did not feel as lonely and you could find people to talk with, play with, or RP with (if you are into that). Around the time of Dragonflight though it started going back to being lonely again. People who have had their circles went back to being only in them. A lot became less welcoming and friendly to people and it started to be lonely again, only that this time when it happened it happened very fast and was worse than before. I would say the last 6 or so months for me have been the worse I have ever had since I started a MMO 20+ years ago with a couple of friends and I do agree. It isn't playing a MMO and finding people to play with or socialize with anymore, but more like you find people and socialize with them and have them go play a MMO with you.

So glad someone is finally talking about Josh's video. As sad as parts of that video were (I loved the video, don't get me wrong), it was the main reason I actually bit the bullet and decided to get into Everquest - weirdly enough. Also, I'll be honest, I think since sinking about 200 hours into Project 1999 (I tried retail EQ, didn't take to it), I can confirm that the experience has been ANYTHING BUT lonely. If anything, I feel more social and connected to others than I have in any other MMO before. The lack of a dungeon finder and any real help from the game really forces you to group and interact with other players. I'm not saying Josh's video was inaccurate - I'm not always in a group - but at least when it comes to Project 1999, I am completely inundated with people wanting to group up and chat.

Everyone has this nostalgia for these old games. The fact is you and all the people your age range have changed. They have kids. They have jobs and chronic meetings. These games are a job in and of themselves that people just don't have time for.

An aspect of this has lead to me playing much less Embers Adrift. There are a number of dedicated groups that appear to be having fun, gaining levels, and being first when new content drops. Because these groups are so efficient, they have quickly widened the level gap between them and mere mortals like myself. In a game that requires grouping to do anything significant, this a real problem. Now that I hear you say, "lonely", I realize I have also been lonely.

Great points! As a hypersocial person, I've never had issues making friends ingame and out, even now. But those friendships I made in EQ 20 years ago are still going strong. Heck, there's a 7 year old boy walking around with my character's name (yes, this one). Little Remi dreams of one day becoming a professional Fortnite player. We still talk about our shared experiences ingame, mostly revolving around wipes. Also how everyone called in sick to work/school so we could clear Vex Thal for the first time (it took 15 hours!). Saving up vacation days so you could burn them the week of an expansion's launch. We even had a couple meetups where we had a LAN party in a hotel conference room and raided over a weekend. Those things could probably never happen today.

The connectivity we have with each other is no longer novel, the avatarisation of the relevant parts of ourselves, our opinions and our priorities is no longer an exciting frontier but rather it is an ever present pressure in our daily lives through social media. We cannot go backwards without undoing the impact of dealing with each other online for the last 20 - 30 years.

Just because you're surrounded by people doesn't mean you can't feel alone. I don't have that issue a lot playing MMOs because I have a buddy who always goes on the journey with me. One of those bubbles. That said, playing WoW SOD recently has been a lot more lively. A lot of MMOs game design their way to a socially isolated community. There's little friction, no reason to communicate.

The most fun i've ever had in an MMO was Everquest. camping mobs in Highpass Hold. Just sitting there in one of many groups just pulling and getting XP talking about random nonsense. no other MMO has ever replicated that ...

MMOs are lonely. Back in the day ALL my friends played EQ. We played together and separately but we all talked about the game the next day via calls, or in person or at work etc. now, no one plays so even if you get the best in slot item, and you tell your friends, they don't care. they don't play anymore. so MMOs are now a single player online RPG. lonely

honestly, you hit the nail on the head! i iremember being SO nostalgic for WOW, but going back to it - it felt so lonely ._. the onyl time i actuallyhad a good time ironically, wasjumping on an RP classic server, and people ACTUALLY interacted with one another! it was the most fun id had in wow since... like wow actually released

As time goes on these older MMOs are going to become more and more like virtual museums that you can try to explore as best you can before the limitations of being solo prevent you going further A little off topic, but I would be interested to hear your opinion about Darkpaw's reaction (or lack thereof) over the most recent plat dupe that has hit basically every live EQ server and has decimated the gamewide economy.

I'm very much a latecomer to MMOs, so all the golden nostalgia about Everquest/Galaxies/ElderScrolls/etc. barely gets a polite nod from me. In my experience, the problem with trying to find friends in MMOs is that so many players will judge you - sometimes politely, but often harshly - if your performance isn't up to what they think necessary. They aren't there to make friends, they are there to compare parses, and that is not what I look for in a friend. I've found a few folks I am friendly with in the MMOs I've played, but for real friends, I look to the ones I've found in face-to-face life. That said, I agree completely that the potential of finding friends in MMOs is rather a fool's errand with all the other social channels available. The guild I've stuck with for years has always used out-of-game channels to organize, from guild procedures to raids, and it works much better than anything in-game.

I mostly quit MMOs - everybody is playing for another reason than me. I love to explore the world and get my hands on lore items as in EQ2. That was why i was hooked on EQ2 when I got my hands on it. I didn't care about the empty world or social connections. I wanted to explore the world, every hook and nook - and see my house growing with selfmade home furnishings, trinkets, books and lore items. And when I was contemplating in my house it was not the feeling of achieving something, but to remember what great storytelling EQ2 has. It's like remembering a good book.

Man, I wish I got to experience old MMOs but my connection was never stable enough back then.

When WoW Classic was released I realised that we can no longer have what we had before. We just have access to too many guides. Sure, progression is fun for many people, but it's sad that things like blind runs are frowned upon because people want the optimal value out of their time. I'd rather jump in and try things out instead of reading a guide to win on the first try.

The closest I have got to recapturing the social magic are EQ TLP's. They are amazing for a short while however, such a rush is created to max a character before the next expansion is out. 12 weeks before the next expansion is too quick for a player like me. It might be an idea to have a TLP that is actually starting over again and release expansions at the original rate or at least 6 months between expansions so everything just slows down for a minute - reduce XP rates so it is less easy to plough ahead and keeps the bunch closer together to open up more grouping and interaction opportunities. I have often met some great people on one evening, and thought, yeah, I'll look you up the next day when I am online and only to find they are now 10 levels ahead, which simply would not have happened originally (took me months to hit 20!). So I end up saying "Wow, you've been busy" and lose contact rather than "Nice job getting your next level, any chance I can tag along?" and further strengthen those initial bonds. If it took people significantly longer to do the usual Unrest -> Guk -> Hole monotony in the rush to get to 50, perhaps people would have to find other places in the content to explore and complete more of the high end quests. No idea what the solution is, but it is true - too many bubble players - but also too much of a rush. Slow it down a little!

I want to end my life on my deathbed with a playlist of Redbeardflynn going over videogame meta system playing

Something I feel is missing is meaningfull content in the world it self. Most content is instanced based forcing people to either be putting together a static grp to run the content with all the time or join a guild. Now there are down sides to content in world becoming so mindnumbingly pointless that it just comes down to numbers to mitigate difficulty ( train runs in New World etc ) but there are ways that this could be remedied. That being said tho I my self is somewhat of a solo player when in MMO as well but I still want the world to feel alive when I run throught cities and having that one random encounter with someone struggling with a quest and assist them just creates a more organic feel and honeslty gives me personal a reason to feel like continueing playing, WoW Classic HC is a perfect example of these encounters happening on a somewhat regular basis, So I hope that more of the upcoming MMOs takes this into mind when they design their content 👌

This is basically why I am a solo MMO player. I'm not a big fan of large Discord groups and I have been a part of one too guilds where almost no social activity happens in Game and everything is on discord. I had two options, because joining Discord was not one of them. Option a, play solo games, option b, play MMOs alone.

Well it's not just MMO's ... Just getting out of the house feels the same, most people are scared of interactions now, most of us are brainwashed by all kind of media and most of the time when you just say ''Hi'' to someone who crossed eyes with you , they just look like you did something to them and often if you get na answer it's feels like they felt like they had to... Now it's not everyone and everywhere, but it surely feels like it.

You make valid points. I've been playing WoW for 16 years with a couple of breaks in between. I haven't had any problem with socializing, joining guilds/online communities, and grouping up with other players to participate in end game content. The only reason I can think of after viewing your video is my history in WoW and knowing the ins and outs of the game. Often I hear from new players in an online New Player chat channel I'm a part of to provide answers to questions and on the official WoW forums how difficult it is for new players to get into the game as WoW is vast. Sometimes if not most often, new players looking to join a raiding guild is out of the question and often resort to seeking out social/leveling guilds with 200+ members to only find out 2 players are logged in at one time or another and aren't much help. Seasoned WoW players vs new players is kinda like the haves and have nots.

I really wanted New World to work, spent like 700 hours in it. Led a company, first to max for tool crafting, one of the richest and most social folks on my server. Then the bugs and poor communication, duping, exploits, etc. It all crashed and burned so fast

My most recent experience of not feeling lonely in an mmo was on the release of classic wow. Forming groups and conversing in chat was commonplace. Being a cleric definitely helped as well.

Oh MMORPG was MapleStory and it came out 2 days before my 15th birthday and I found out about it because I was playing a game card starcraft and people were talking about the different classes in the lobby and I got curious and asked him what game they were talking about. And the only reason I was on starcraft is because my freshman year of high school i had a crush on this Vietnamese guy and I saw him playing it went to GameStop after school that day. Found the game box who's pictures looked like his screen bought. The game brought it the class. The next day he saw me playing it and then we proceeded to skip the same class every day to go play starcraft together 😂 He knew I had a crush on him and that's why he always asked me to skip class with him to go to the computer lab and play starcraft. We bonded over skipping and starcraft. We never dated. I was a boy at the time (trans) but he was really kind to me and we enjoyed each other's company in video games. I think he has a wife and kid now. It's been a long time, but anyways so my introduction to MMORPGs was MapleStory and my pretty much my I had played computer games before then, but I wasn't really interested in computer gaming until I gained the crush on that guy. And I've been hooked ever since I've played almost every MMO you can name every free MMO from China, Korea, Japan, USA, Europe. I tried them all subscription non-subscription and I was already a hardcore gamer but PC just opened up a whole new world of access for me and it allowed me to connect with people all over the world. That was like the biggest perk to MMORPGs for me was meeting a large amount of different people and sometimes people from other parts of the world. Heck, I almost learned tagalog, just a play some old game that had a massive Filipino population. That is how much video games and MMOs have shaped my life.

We aren't kids anymore. I want to feel like I did when I was grinding runescape or starting wow for the first time. We as adults our perspective is much different.

I don't think I will ever get the feeling of the heyday of EQ back. I knew and talked to about 100 players, had about 20 or so that I would group with regularly. Did the raid guild thing in PoP and we were 2nd guild to kill Quarm. I did grind out AAs by myself however.

I have been playing the same MMO for over 16 years, and have always played on RP realms. RP allows for a lot more opportunities to make friends and have fun memories. Yet, I find myself playing solo and feeling lonely all the time. My original guild from the first 10 years I played with have either quit playing that game and moved on to other MMO's I'm not interested in, and some stopped playing MMO's altogether. In the MMO I play, only two RP realms are active with enough players to actually hold RP events, but both servers are West Coast based. I live on the East Coast and have a job that requires me to be in bed early. So I haven't been to a server RP function in over 3 years because I'm in bed before server events even start. It's really rough and really lonely, as even finding a guild that is active from 4-8pm EST has been nearly impossible.

I still look for friends in it. I love joining a guild and working towards a goal with others. Hard to find in established games/servers though

I've actually experienced something akin to this recently. I was going through an intense period of isolation in 2021, much like most of us were due to COVID, and I joined an Arma 3 starsim unit to have SOMETHING social going on that was also gaming related. I get in the Discord, I start playing, and bam! 2 years pass and I'm having a ball. In a strange inverse of the core point of this video, Discord enabled the socialization which isn't too strange as that is what its for. The majority of the people I was playing with (myself included) have left that unit for various reason, and now we're all in a Discord server together, but we talk fairly infrequently. Some of my best online friends have started drifting now that we don't have that shared core pulling us together. Now, Arma 3 isn't an MMO, but I've felt this with EvE Online or other social games, especially fresh off leaving that unit. The struggle of rebuilding from a point where I knew most everyone from 0 again just led me to withdraw.

This is just a reflection of normal adult life. As a child, you go places and meet new friends. As an adult you go places and bring your friends.

I never feel lonely when playing an MMO without social interaction, so it's not a problem for me in the slightest. I have the opposite problem because I just want to make progress on my own terms without having to group up with anyone else, and feel frustrated when MMOs constantly try to force social interaction for every last thing.

My experience is that MMO players are much more terrified of socially initiating than in the past but largely enjoy having social interactions if someone's willing to break the ice for them. Have had some extremely nostalgic and warm interactions in places like my FC's housing district in FFXIV and the Dragon's End meta in GW2.

good vid man, its a good theory. I think back in the day when you was always LFG in X dungeon or X appropriate zone as you ground, you would meet the same players over and over, whether in group or in ooc chat. Ooc chat used to be rather tame and friendly in ages past. So you had familiarity and you made friends with people you leveled up with as the journey from 1-whatever was long, hitting a zone would be like youre norm walking into Cheers. Now its kind of antagonistic and childish and ooc chat rarely has any substance. There is also just so many zones typically in mmos to grind in now and the grind is so fast that you dont make those intimate connections in game anymore. Its like you went to your favorite restaurant back in the 70's with your family , you knew the owner, the waitress, the regulars...everyone and it was always a great experience and now no one goes there and you are going to mcdonalds, where ok the food may not be the greatest but its fast and convenient but way less emotionally satisfying.

What game is that with the dwarf with the torch running around near 18 mins of the vid.