Isn't WOW kinda social though? Demented and sad, but social. I've been playing it for a week. I don't have a social life, and I don't believe in souls, so I've got nothing to lose.
It is social to a point. It is less social than others because you can solo to level cap and not have to make any friends. My friend Nate soloed to 70 Warrior in 2.5 months and made 1 friend total in WoW. Too many Chuck Norris joke spamming retards. The PvP is pretty hot, but I enjoy world PvP more which is not as great as Lineage II. WoW is ridiculously overrated, it is the Britney Spears of MMOs. I was really into it for a while though. The fact that it tells you exactly where to go and what mobs to kill for drops in quests makes for too much hand holding for me, kinda like Baby's first MMO. You do have to make friends, but with 5 and 15? man instances you can keep your clique or circle pretty tight nit. The bigger instances need more planning, pre-expansion 40 player raids were common. I like instancing and hate it... it destroys the persistent environment feel that can make MMOs so special.. you know the massive part when you have 750 high level players in the zone all one shotted by one monster (FFXI).
WoW is really not as social as FFXI I found. In FFXI you are forced after level 10 pretty much to be in parties of 6 people to get any good leveling done at all. All quests that are worth anything involve 12-18 players of your level. You HAVE to make friends, and since I was at NA launch to get things done I made a good deal of Japanese friends. That game was hardcore as hell when I started, they have reduced xp to level cap by 33% overall since I hit level cap. Fucking noobs lol. At least when I left my LS had killed every end game monster except Absolute Virtue (defeated 5 times across all servers in 2 years of being in the game.... all by using hacks), we have fought it 4 times and lost each time. Nobody on our server has gotten its HP even close to as low as we did, too bad it can use an ability instantly that can take its HP from 1% to 100%.. and there is no way to stop it. The biggest semi-instance in FFXI can fit 64 players, but my LS cleared that a while ago and I have all the drops I need from it. By the end of FFXI, I would say I had made countless friends... partly due to me playing the most in demand class in the game.
Lineage II is also really social, but it is more mean spirited due to the really hardcore completely no limit PvP with a karma system. City of Heroes wasn't that social. Everquest 2 was fucking lame. Star Wars Galaxies was mediocre at best. Dungeons and Dragons Online was barely a MMO at all with all of its instancing.
