MMO Social Epidemic

[ruinedmirage]

Think back to school days. Remember when there were groups of other people hanging out with others and talking with them without being interrupted by random strangers? Cliques? Groups of friends?

If you haven't established the connection yet, I'm referring to linkshells and FC chat (sorry Teon, had to be that guy XD), and they are far more talkative than open world screaming while weeding out other groups with dissimilar interests.

/shouting is two fold. People are traumatized now by the amount of RMT shouts when the game was launched, and I know some people go as far as blacklisting anyone that spam shouts now (including lfg and recruiting shouts). It's nobody's interest to be blacklisted, but you won't find other people with similar interests if you stay quiet, too. Zone shouting is a thing of the past, in my opinion. If you want everyone to know you are sitting on the toilet while you type something or have a new Chuck Norris joke, that's what facebook is for.

MMO's have evolved into a segregation of interests, like school. You either play to progress or play to have fun. As of yet, I haven't seen someone do both (even if they claim to). If you browse the first page of the forums, do you think you'd really enjoy listening to most of these players in game? It's natural as time goes with this genre. You'll notice that old school MMO's were grind oriented and ended up lasting for months or years to reach level cap. MMO evolution (or rather player evolution) dictates that if you're not running the race to get everything efficiently and as fast as possible, you should stay out of the other group's way.

Hmm.. I think I tend to rant and digress a bit. TL;DR: people in MMOs have become more detached as a whole, and more like a family within their own groups. The "Golden Age" of MMOs is over, just like being able to buy a full game back in the 80's and 90's without expansion packs and DLC.