Blizzard please fix for launch. Exploit for levelling 1-30 in 2 hours. 1-60 in 5 hours.

[u/Old_Yesterday332]

[u/gubigubi]

Unironically if you had everyone leveling up by turning in apples the game would be vastly more social than it is now.

Runescape is incredibly social because you will have people standing in the same spot doing the same task as each other for dozens of hours.

Though in runescape a lot of players usually have "Home Worlds" Which are servers they usually choose to play on or if no there are also servers for specific skills so you will see the same people for extended periods of time.

[u/Myriadower → u/gubigubi]

As someone who played UO and EQ, WoW will simply never be meaningfully social because its design is antisocial.

UO’s roots in MUD’s and its infancy of MMO design and lack of (player) direction and relatively small map focused on few important areas which never changed resulted in a player interaction centered world.

EQ moved away from those roots, but was so laborious that people already accustomed and expecting to socialize in MMO’s socialized even more, despite now having a linear world you progressed through while leveling.

WoW very specifically designed away the exact conditions which facilitated meaningful socializing in UO and EQ.

It gives player’s crystal clear directions with questing purposefully designed to be fundamental to play and easy to follow, creating hyperfocus on individualistic gameplay systems.

A majority of content is soloable, whereas EQ’s meaningful content required long form groups to clear, and even higher level trash could be unapproachable for many solo players due to the interaction of unsympathetic systems. Groups spent hours together, socializing during long, required downtimes you don’t see at all in WoW because it designed away from that.

Progression in WoW is very linear and purposed towards reaching and engaging in an end-game. That becomes more social because…you require other players, you spend more time with them, the content and locations become constant, etc. The things we saw in UO and EQ.

Modern MMO design, that I know of anyway, made specific design choices to eliminate mechanics that were unfriendly to players. But it was those unfriendly mechanics which forced players to make friends of each other. WoW is designed to be easy to play, which negates most of the need for surrounding yourself with real community.

[u/helpamonkpls → u/gubigubi]

Oh come on Runescape was social 20 years ago. Today it is practically a single player game.

[u/MistSecurity → u/helpamonkpls]

You get out what you put in.

You can be completely mum and never speak to anyone and have minimal issues, yes. You can also join a clan, talk to the people around you, and socialize basically constantly if you want.

Go to GotR or another densely populated activity. Tons of talk going on. Some of it is inane gamer nonsense, but there are conversations that happen pretty often. GotR it's basically every mining phase.

[u/DimmyJeans → u/helpamonkpls]

Arguably the only thing that's made it less social was the introduction of the grand exchange. Other than that it's pretty much always been up to you to socially interact with other players.