UberNoggin

I’ve been playing MMORPGs for close to ten years. I’ve been studying them for nearly as long. But recently, I’ve run into something that has me flumoxed.

I can’t figure out just how people make friends in an MMORPG.

Now, I’ve had friends in MMORPGs before. I was the leader of a large guild in Star Wars Galaxies. I joined guilds in World of Warcraft. Part of what kept me coming back to these games over the years was that there were players in them I enjoyed spending time with. But something has changed.

For the last month and a half I’ve been playing Warhammer Online (which rocks, btw) and I have yet to make a single connection with another player. There are a mix of reasons for this:

• I’m a casual player, logging in for 60-90 min at a time and not on a regular schedule
• I tend to want to complete things on my own time, not wanting to wait for other people to figure things out or taking the bother to coordinate with other players
• Warhammer’s scenarios (similar to raids in WoW) and public quests are constructed for casual gamers by assigning you to a group or allowing you to join in when other players are working on a task

All that in mind, I understand why I might not have made any connections just yet but in recent days I’ve decided to try to conduct a small experiment of sorts. I set out with the explicit purpose of making friends. Just to see if I could do it.

I tried to chat with a group in a scenario but folks are too busy trying to stay alive to chat. I spoke up a bit in a public quest, made a few jokes. People joined in but then disapeared as soon as the quest was finished.

I don’t think I’m the only one having this issue with Warhammer. There are loads of guilds but they all seem a bit…well, desperate. I’ve been invited to join countless guilds but no one has ever tried to actually talk to me. Instead, while in town, I just get these random invites to join without any conversation or screening. My guess is that guilds may be the only way to get acquanted with a group of people but it’s sort of like going to a party where you don’t know anyone and hoping for the best. The worst that can happen is that you leave the guild and look for another to join. But what does it say about the game itself that this is only option for making social connections with other players?

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