How would you re-socialize MMOs?

Asherah_sl said:

Yeah, but most people are still unwilling to chat with strangers over voice com even if it's built into the game. And this means that you would either need slow paced combat or important cooperative non-combat activities to promote socialization between people that are not already friends. Since I'm not sure if the current generation of players would be able to accept slow paced combat I think the non-combat option is more realistic.

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A) Because most in game VOIP sucks
B) Everyone and their mother has some 3rd party VOIP program, if not 2 or more and they use that instead.

VOIP with complete strangers happens all the time in MMOs. I've joined random servers for groups, talked to complete strangers and even formed lasting gaming friendships through those. The issue comes from someone says hey get on x VOIP program to talk to us and they say "No" , then complain there is no socialization.

cinge_sl said:

A) Because most in game VOIP sucks
B) Everyone and their mother has some 3rd party VOIP program, if not 2 or more and they use that instead.

VOIP with complete strangers happens all the time in MMOs. I've joined random servers for groups, talked to complete strangers and even formed lasting gaming friendships through those. The issue comes from someone says hey get on x VOIP program to talk to us and they say "No" , then complain there is no socialization.

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If you're talking semi-organized PuG raids it certainly happens now and then. But outside of that the only game I remember people using VOIP with any frequency in random groups was DDO. However, I have mostly been playing on European servers since the WoW release and I guess that it doesn't help that a significant portion of the players speak poor English.

Not sure, but for me, I've joined random VOIP servers for everything from Tera to FFXVI back to WoW and I'd say 75% of those time the strangers offer the information themselves before I even ask or think about it. And this is dungeons or asking in the zone chat if anyone wants to group up to level. Off the top of my head I remember Tera and SWTOR, when I first started the game(level 1) I asked if anyone wanted to group up, got responses and level'd with those people to max while using some form of VOIP(including skype). I think again its I make the effort to socialize because I enjoy it, I don't require the game to force people to talk to me to get that interaction, which is a good thing as I don't always want to group up, sometimes I just want to go do my thing alone.