General Discussion

Originally posted by Seeker728

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

So "no" I don't want to just shoot the shit with just anyone. I will continue to get to know people slowly and find people who fit my playstyle or at least my temperment. It doesn't take a huge amount of time to meet people but it does take time to learn a person's true quality.

 

Forgive me for largely snipping your reply, I mean no disrespect by that, as I quite understand what you're saying and in large part I agree.   I too am mostly a solo player, but at the same time, I will strike up a conversation with just about anyone that doesn't involve current politics, sex, real life religion, or sports. 

But my point was that while some make use of such forums to scout out a guild,  or move as a guild en-masse from one game to the next, quite a few people don't.  I won't make grand assumptions or quote statistics that I have no way of proving, but it seems like a lot of people do it the way I do it, by initially joining up with a randomly encountered person for a quick quest solution, then repeated sharing of goals leads to more formal efforts to work together later on as compatability shows itself.

Certainly, scouting out boards beforehand is a more efficient approach to determine if the stated goals and temprament of a guild being researched is a good fit, but honestly, I do that after I've encountered some individuals from a guild who it looks like there might be a possible future, and again, I get that from initial casual conversation.  Likewise, I learn whom to avoid from reading such chatter, you can usually tell if there is a personality conflict by the way someone responds to casual questions.  

All the things you mentioned as taking time, for me at least, have thier seeds in casual chatter of wide area channels, and when people adopt a mentality of bothering only with fellow guild/clan members, whether they mean to or not, they shut out the good with the bad as well as projecting a attitude of elitism, again whether intentional or not, that's whats picked up in the subcontext of non response to people asking directed questions.

Well, first off you never have to apologize too me for taking a portion of a post.

Secondly, we are not really talking about different things and I think we are of like mine when it comes to how we meet people. However, my guess is that you are more gregarious and more open to approaching people "right off the bat" than I am.

In the end, it's who we meet in game and how we work together.

I however, can't stand the OOC chat for the most part and usually have it turned off. I think part of this "could" be generational. It seems that people today are very comfortable with the whole IM, facebook, online networking type of thing.

I however am not and avoid it like the plague.

So I am less inclined (or just "not" inclined) to go to chat rooms or approach people on line and assume that they are "ok". Especially since there is no actual person there, just their words.

And again, I'm from the east coast and an older player (read "41") so it doesn't realy work for me to just approach people and talk with them.

Originally posted by Waterlily

Since playing Everquest, my experience talking to people and amount of contacts has gone down each time.

 

Everquest had loads of people chatting in general chat, guilds, and /say.

Then I played Vanguard which had a bit less and only region chat and no central hub.

Then I played Guild wars where very few people talked, only in guild.

Then I played WoW, where absolutely no one talks almost, and where I can't access a general chat, just a region chat.

 

I play MMO to talk to other players and to play with them.  If you don't have a general chat in your MMO, but just region chat, and no central hubs, I might as well go play single player games.

Do you talk in new MMO?

maybe they're on vent.

Originally posted by Sovrath

I however, can't stand the OOC chat for the most part and usually have it turned off. I think part of this "could" be generational. It seems that people today are very comfortable with the whole IM, facebook, online networking type of thing.

I however am not and avoid it like the plague.

So I am less inclined (or just "not" inclined) to go to chat rooms or approach people on line and assume that they are "ok". Especially since there is no actual person there, just their words.

Interesting how that works.  I hate the whole Facebook, Myspace, and generally any networking site and I steer clear of all of them.  But when I get into a game it's different.  I end up chatting with someone for no other reason than to distract me from the grindy aspects of the game.  Another reason I chat people up is because some of the people I've met came from all sorts of different backgrounds.  This allows me to experience some different cultures by way of dialogue since I can't travel to some of these places... not yet anyways.

Originally posted by Illius

 I hate the whole Facebook, Myspace, and generally any networking site and I steer clear of all of them.  But when I get into a game it's different.  I end up chatting with someone for no other reason than to distract me from the grindy aspects of the game. 

Same. I don't understand the need for MySpace, Facebook..and twitler?..at all. But I love to chat with random people online to exchange idea's and to enrich my knowledge.

Originally posted by Waterlily

Originally posted by Illius

 I hate the whole Facebook, Myspace, and generally any networking site and I steer clear of all of them.  But when I get into a game it's different.  I end up chatting with someone for no other reason than to distract me from the grindy aspects of the game. 

Same. I don't understand the need for MySpace, Facebook..and twitler?..at all. But I love to chat with random people online to exchange idea's and to enrich my knowledge.

Exactly.  It's kind of like these boards without the waiting time between posts and I have something else to do while I wait for responses.

There are lots of busy peopler now mindin their own business.

Gamers are focusing to make their characters strong and sometimes they just don't feel like to talk to others because they are busy reading their quest logs.

I guess everyone has a different experience in MMOs, for example you stated WoW, yet when I played WoW, the community (on my server) was great, very chatty.

 I have a lot of conversations, anywhere. Even in the 'isolated" Guild Wars, where there are way more conversations then in.. lotro for example. Anyway, what I miss however, are cobversations without people spamming caps. When I'm in a conversation, it's usually because I like the topic. Which ususually is something like WoW vs GW, religion, etc. And when I do have a good conversation with some people, we might not agree, but we don't start spamming. Untill somebody else starts spamming, in caps, 10x the same sentence...    The should be something like a chatroom, the usual IM, with multiple people. And when 2/3 of the participants thinks he's just irritating, or spamming, etc. they can kick him out.   That would get some conversations going, pretty sure of it.