I haven’t done a shared topic in a while but I saw this one come up over at Blog Azeroth and thought I’d throw in my 2c worth of opinion.

“While there are some quests that specifically call for grouping, most don’t… but do you group anyway? How many of you pick up a friend or guildie to quest with and how many grind the lonely roads alone?”

To me this questions is part of why I have always found it hard to level an alt, simply because in part I don’t have the time to devote to it that I did my main, and as such I don’t have time to devote to those I meet along the way.

How many of you can remember questing through Arathi Highlands or Strangelthorn and having to tackle a bunch of elite mobs?  I levelled my main just after the launch of TBC and at that stage none of the XP Boosts had been introduced nor the reductions in XP needed per level, it was stil the old grind as experienced by those in Classic and in truth I had cleared all but 2 zones of quests before I made it to outland .. and during that time I made a number of friends through group questing, and dungeoning that even to this day some 5 years later I still play and talk with.

I remember spending hours in Arathi, Alterac and other zones with these people doing group quests or helping them when they came across a quest that they personally couldnt handle well. It was a lot of fun. Even when we wern’t helping each other out we became people to talk with and to commisserate with, even to curse when we all ended up hunting for that damned gorilla sinew at the same time.

At any rate this continued as a pattern through Outland and Northrend and I kept finding new people through group quests who I clicked well with, and I enjoyed it when you could find someone who with a “Hey mate you have a moment to lend a hand” would drop what he was doing to do so. For my main the first 3 portions of WoW were all about socialising.

Then came Cataclysm,and barring the blip that is the Cruciable of Carnage,  noone wanted to group, things became to easy, to streamlined and for the first time getting to the top level was purley a solo game. Was I dissapointed? Hell yes. It could have been because there were only 5 levels of new quests but that abated by doing all the revamped zones. The problem for me was there was no need to reach out and help or call for help. If you healed up somene dieing or rezzed someone you’d get a wave and that was it.

Between the ease of quests, heavy phasing, lack of group quests, the need to reach out and meet people has dissipated, and with it, sadly in my opinion, one of the last frontiers for meeting and getting to know people online has dissapreared.I realise phasing  in Wrath put a gimp in group quests and that lower level players were having trouble with alts when tryin to do them but I miss them none the same.

I am not going to bemoan how so much of the new advances have made this a game where truly socialising is becoming irrelevant, but for me I am longing probably with rose coloured glasses, for the days when I would be able to meet people online and level with and around them. I don’t like to be tied to someone as I level, after all sometimes its just so much easier to do yourself, but I do enjoy the occasional quest where we need to hold hands and help out.

So unless something is done to bring us together occasionally, personal desires aside, I will probably solo everything from here out simply to make things easier for me and to not feel the need to put someone else out by having to level with me.

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