Your point about socializing happening also outside grouping (and in such, a decline in grouping doesnt mean that MMOs are less social) is very valid. The argument however was stirred by the fact that very often the game dont give incentives for me (or you) to group up with the very friends that you would otherwise socialize with.

I loathe PUGs because my interaction with strangers is going to be limited to the social tools provided by WoW. Yes. There are all the usual gripes about PUGs (don’t want to wipe due to nubs, don’t want to be told what to do by a know-it-all 16 year old, etc.); but, for me, the overriding “problem” with PUGs is that I am not gaming with my friends. Specifically, gaming with my friends in Vent. Good voice chat is critical for those of us for whom texting is a relative novelty belonging to a younger generation; and very few PUGs use WoW’s voice chat feature. Thus hanging with friends and effective communication only exist on our guild’s (or allied guilds’) vent server.

So. Am I grouped when in-game? Almost all the time. The sort of exclusivity associated with my grouping seems to be in agreement with a part of your analysis in point #1. I prefer to group with RL friends and family. Absent that, I group in-guild. Absent that, I group with allied guilds. Am I available to group with strangers? Almost never. Were it not for daily dungeon quests, never.

Which brings me to your second point. I regard “in the same Vent channel” as grouping. In-game, I may or may not be engaged in the same quest or in the same dungeon as the other folk I’m in Vent with. It goes without saying that I am often not even in a Party with the others in Vent. Thus, in-game content is irrelevant! Is this style of play an outlier? I doubt it. Almost all of the age 30+ WoW players in my RL acquaintance play this way. We didn’t always play this way; but, certainly by the end of TBC, this is how we play.

Regarding your third point, WoW’s LFG tool fails because so many experienced players play as I do. Therefore, every negative PUG experience inflicted by LFG is written off as futher “proof” that LFG is the haven of nubs and social outcasts. Why use a public channel when you need to group? Because you can check gear level, guild, and reputation before agreeing to the group. (In guild chat, “Anyone ever group with ‘EatMyGritz’ before?” “Yeah. He is OK. Just don’t let him lead, and he doesn’t use Omen so save a Taunt early.”).

Incidentally, we use LFG to fill-out a largely in-guild dungeon run. We provide the tank and healer, and allow LFG to fill any vacant DPS slots. As time in an expansion goes on, there are fewer of these free DPS slots as we can incorporate alts to fill just about any slot. Therefore, any vacant slots are exclusively due to a complete lack of in-guild interest in running an instance.

BTW, the ability to group with RL friends and family is what sets WoW apart from all the other MMOs. It has achieved sufficient “mass” for you to reliably play in the manner I describe.

I think you are pointing to another important factor, that I foolishly enough didnt bring up in my OP: That the players are not the same.

The MMO playerbase have matured (for lack of a better word, some will say it has gotten more infantile) and is more experienced. This means that a) They expect more from their games and b) They expect more from other players

AoC is a good example of that. It was a pretty good game, but it wasnt good enough. Why? Cause most players had seen better implementation of similar features in other games. They demanded to have those features in AoC too, cause they saw it as vital to their game experience. I was reading the AoC forums quite alot at the time and there was lots of complaints regarding problems with tradeskills, lacking economy, lack of end game content, problem with scaling armor etc. They werent asking for something new and different, they were asking for the things that for them were the hallmarks of MMOs. The playerbase wasnt going to spend their time on a game they felt were substandard, when they knew from other games how it could work.

New games are not given a grace period anymore where people just go around saying “oh, this is new and fun, i am sure they will get to the problems eventually”. New games have to deliver it all from day one if they want to get a foot in and keep its players. In relation to making gamedesigns that support grouping, this is ofcourse a huge challenge. Cause even if you are able to make a game with amazing features that support solo as well as group play (no idea how, but let just presume it happens) – if other parts of the game are lacking, you will have another flop on your hands.

As you were saying, we also have different expectations of other players. Its a very important point, but wont go too much into it now – still getting my head around how players go from noob to pro and what it has to say for playstyle. Might have some answers later though:)