General Discussion

Nobody talk!!! Every new MMO I play, nobody talk at all. I have seen at least two big MMO where that strange behavior happen. Age of conan and Warhammer online. What the hell is happenning? General chat is always, like ALWAYS, extremely quiet. Even In scenarios, or battlegrounds, or w/e how you call it, nobody talk or try to organise the assaults/defences. Everyone are just very very quiet. The only people I talk to are my old guildies from others MMO that migrated with me to try new games. Even when I ask people a specific question in a private chat, half of the time, never answer back. People form group to kill a boss or to complete a crowded quest and nobody will talk... people will just accept invites, whitout saying anything, then wait to complete the objective and leave. And everybody seems to believe everything is alright.

What the hell is happenning? This behavior is very, very, very disturbing. Its suposed to be a multiplayer game but nobody seems to want to communicate. Its so wierd. Its hard to explain. Anyway I would like to know what you guys and girls think about this. Because, it worry me.

Thanks.

ps: Sorry for the badly formulated sentences and spelling errors. But Im french ( Quebec / Canada ) and Im tired.

I can't really agree with your experience, in every game I've played MMO or otherwise people talk far too much despite never having anything interesting or important to say.

May just be the server you picked. Normally you can't get people to shut the hell up.

I'm a victim of Barrens Chat.  I ignore general chat just because of how annoying people can be.  Sometimes I turn it off completely and go to the forums or google if I have that important of a question..

The truth is... I dont know.

At the beginning it didn't bother me, i thought it didn't matter and after a couple of levels people would stop powerleveling and start speaking.

I do have an idea, and i think what really makes people silent is the rush of the grind.

Its like, even when we are having fun, we are on a tight schedule, because leveling is slow, and we want to be high level to play the most awesome part of the game.

I understand that the levels may be in place to give us time to learn how to play our characters, but i learn how to play my skills a lot faster than i level. And since the level progression is more bassed on time spent than skill (yeah, you can grind faster if you are good but still...)

Also i think that the "RPG" system leaves many people feeling like they are just pressing keys instead of making his character do "something". I mean, you can't push the mobs, or actively block or dodge their attacks, you can't roll into the corner, or duck for cover. So after some time every "Enemy Encounter" is basically the same with a change of background. This feeling leads to an accepted boredom, you are there playing, but you really don't care that much and only play half atention and therefore don't care enough to counicate.

(Please don't flame me starting a conversation on how online game should be, i'm just pointing a behavior that seems to affect, at least, a moderated number of people)

I do speak, since i think it would be nice if we all do it a little more, but even if i say "hi", "goodbye" and "tyvm for the heals" (And sometimes form interesting yet short sentences for special ocations) i rather be playing than typing.

That's because most of the kids that play don't even know how to spell their name, let alone type full sentences.

I've come across this phenomena as well, sort of....

When i played AoC, basically, aside from the two or three people I actually had conversations with, no one really said anything to me at all.  I have a few theories to why this happened, and why it happens a lot of times.

Gone are the days of superb chatting modules.  I hate to break it to everyone, but originally, SWG pretty much had the best non-voice chat system, ever.  It basically allowed you to do anything you wanted to do with a chat interface, and streamlined it to be incredibly accessible, easy on the eyes, and uniformily did not necessarily clutter the screen.

These types of chat interfaces do not exist in MMO's anymore, and I cannot for the life of me figure why the developers don't spend more time on this absolutely necessary game element.  You have to have this, and in some respects, it needs to be the best thing you showcase.  People write off the chat interface as a no brainer, and if something so simple (but likewise very intricate) doesn't work - what does that say about the rest of your game?

Then you have the complexity of the game itself.  AoC is a great example of how a combat system can directly interfere with how social you are in-game.  In this game, if you aren't spamming attacks - you're losing the game!  I imagine WAR is the same.  WoW is also like this, albeit not as bad.

MMO's are becoming heavy on the action, so you have less time to follow instructions during an encounter, much less give them.  WoW introduced something to the MMO realm that hadn't been a major factor - Line of Sight.  Used to, all you had to do was click the target, and then use your Ability Hotbar.  WoW made you first have SoL, and then it required (in some cases) to have positional awareness, such as being behind or to the flank of a target.

Then you have TS and/or Vent.  People have no need to use a chat interface anymore, when everyone they want to talk to, is on the other end of the mic.  This is also in direct correlation to why you see a lot more assholes running about.  They don't know you.  You have nothing they need.  They don't want to know you because you aren't on their TS or Vent server - you aren't in their guild.  And if you aren't int heir guild, then you are by default, inferior to them, because their guild is the best guild ever!

There are a lot of reasons why people don't talk anymore, friend.  Some of it is subconcious psychology - some of it is because the design of the game allows them a reason to not talk to anyone.

Originally posted by Daedrick

Nobody talk!!! Every new MMO I play, nobody talk at all. I have seen at least two big MMO where that strange behavior happen. Age of conan and Warhammer online. What the hell is happenning? General chat is always, like ALWAYS, extremely quiet. Even In scenarios, or battlegrounds, or w/e how you call it, nobody talk or try to organise the assaults/defences. Everyone are just very very quiet. The only people I talk to are my old guildies from others MMO that migrated with me to try new games. Even when I ask people a specific question in a private chat, half of the time, never answer back. People form group to kill a boss or to complete a crowded quest and nobody will talk... people will just accept invites, whitout saying anything, then wait to complete the objective and leave. And everybody seems to believe everything is alright.

What the hell is happenning? This behavior is very, very, very disturbing. Its suposed to be a multiplayer game but nobody seems to want to communicate. Its so wierd. Its hard to explain. Anyway I would like to know what you guys and girls think about this. Because, it worry me.

Thanks.

ps: Sorry for the badly formulated sentences and spelling errors. But Im french ( Quebec / Canada ) and Im tired.

Thats because MMOs are much less dependent on communities now, and everything is focused on letting people solo and instance with as little player interaction as possible. There isn't even any real grouping anymore, just a few people getting together to take out some boss they can't handle themselves. MMOs are less and less about the other people every year. Hell, there isn't even any downtime in games anymore, people used to chat all the time during downtime.

Who's to blame?

When you do socialize in MMOs, how do you socialize? Usually when I'm in a group, I'm chatting with my guild, or in a private chat channel with friends who aren't in the same guild, or otherwise in tells. Then there's voice-chatting.

I don't think people have grown anti-social, it's just that there's so many other mediums splitting our attention and they all take precedence over group and local chat with strangers since they involve communion with friends.

I'm sure in the absence of all the other means to communicate, people would use local and group chat more since there'd be no alternatives.

It's really not the developer's fault, and I wouldn't want to go back to the old days of UO where if a friend of mine moves a screen a way I have no means of communicating 'til we're on the same screen again.