Quote Originally Posted by Boblawblah View Post
I think it's more that social media took away the need/importance of organic socializing in mmos. It used to be you HAD to chat with people in game to find a group of friends. Now, you can find a discord for a hobby, and you're instantly in a group of like minded individuals. For some, it's incredible. For others that enjoyed the old school style, it feels like something has been lost. I think people are still generally just as social as they've always been in mmos, now it's just connected to 3rd party tools like you said.
The better third party communication tools do impact it but I think it's more than just that.

Back in the older days of MMORPGs, you were limited to playing with those on your character's home server and there were no group matchmaking tools. There was more need to make friends to get group content done so you'd socialize more, get to know other players on your server, help out others with gearing and clearing content because that would expand the pool of players to draw from when someone couldn't make it to raid night, etc.

Social media wasn't going to help you out much if those like minded people you found weren't also playing on your home server. Even today we see a little bit of that with the region restrictions.

Now there's no need to make friends. Just let the game match you to other players who want to do the same content. PF lets party leaders be more selective when that's needed but it's still basically getting matched to the random player to fill your party.

If you get lucky enough to run into the same players on repeat occasions, you might still end up becoming friends but those repeat encounters aren't that common in standard group content.

Quote Originally Posted by TBerry View Post
Maybe it's just me coming from those Open World PvP MMOs, but whenever I hear "social" from anyone I immediately become suspicious and question the motive.
Now that I think of it, my first "MMO" experience probably gave me trust issues.
That could be. I had generally good encounters before I ran into my first bad one.