The Daily Grind: How much of your social life comes from MMOs?

first...to say none. sorry, always wanted to do that. i play with great people, but my game life and real life are separated rather thoroughly, tho i do play with a few rl friends. and i'm also "that guy with the broken mic", while in real life i won't shut the hell up...

Almost nothing, interaction is always so fluid and instrumental.

I don't really get entrenched enough in a game to have any significant relationships. My platimes are erratic and limited, which makes raiding a PuG-only affair. With guilds out of the way, I'll make an occasional friend while questing. But it could never replace anything in RL!

-Birk

Actually, quite a bit.

I hang out with a great group of guys and we're always on vent chatting and playing different games together. We've been playing games together for a long time, know each others real names, occupation, significant others and all sorts of other information. I consider them all my friends.

Not to say I don't have people in RL that I do all of these things as well.

MMO's are very social and many of them truly shine when played with people you like.

Not much to be honest as I am mostly solo player.

Virtually none (all pun intended), I mostly solo and in general the people I game with are people I've known IRL for years.

I would have never thought in a million years it would have happened at the time, but My wife and I actually met playing Everquest some 8 years ago. After picking up everything in a small town in Canada and moving to California, we got married and travelled around while I got my degree.

Now that we have a little guy, neither of us have any time for MMOs, and no other mmo acquaintances developed into rl friendships, but I did get a wife out of it! So all and all, I'd say MMOs played a very significant role!

I play MMOs and other online games mainly with RL friends plus one good online-only friend that I've played many MMOs with over the last 6 years - online chat via MMOs or Steam is my main method of contact with them (cheaper than cellphone), especially now that my best RL friend has moved to another country and some of my RL friends are so busy with their jobs or familial responsibilities that we struggle to get together for social events in RL anymore, even though we live less than a mile apart.

I did my pubbing & clubbing in my late teens, twenties and early thirties - often 3-5 nights per week - my career demanded I socialise to make contacts plus it was one of the ways I shed the stress of the job so I could relax - but I don't miss it and I don't drink as much anymore, so I don't go out as much now - I spend my money and time on gaming instead - it's a far cheaper lifestyle in these economically troubled times and it's not going to kill my liver :p

Easily 80%+ of my day-to-day socialising is done online now and mostly it is with people I've known for years, not with total strangers - we actually spend more time focusing on playing the games than chatting (a lot of the chatting happens on Steam before/after playing games), but I like chatting so I make time for it.

Sure, I sometimes talk to strangers I bump into in MMOs or on public chat channels, but I don't join large guilds much anymore and I don't feel as driven to be socially active in MMO communities as I was 5+ years ago.

How much of your social life comes from MMOs?

Currently zero. I am waiting for Guild Wars 2, then we will see what happens. The current crop of MMO's don't seem to offer anything of interest.

Having said that, I used to use WOW as a way to stay in touch with RL friends who lived on the other side of the state.

I have a very close group of friends that I met playing LotR:O years ago. We've jumped from game to game since them, but most of the time we're all playing something totally different. Despite that, I still meet up and talk with them all almost every single day. More than my local best friends, because we're all getting older, getting married, having kids.

It's amazing what sort of relationships you can foster online, but finding the kind of friends I have playing MMOs was something I never considered might be possible.

I have two good friends that I've made over the years. Now we tend to try out new games together, spend a lot of time talking on MSN/Skype, even though we live all over the globe.

Social interaction is important in an MMO to me, but not on the broad front, more the closer relationships.

I've got a mate I met on WAR at launch, that I've been playing with, through various MMOs, since then. But I don't stick with games long enough to join a guild and really settle in.

I really like the social aspect of MMO's and finding a good group of players to play with. That being said I currently don't have a group like that and it is making MMO's far less enjoyable to play. I feel like many of the newer features in MMO's are taking away the need to interact with others and as a result it is becoming increasingly difficult to try and get to know people in game without seeming like a creep. Its a trend that has been going on for years irl so that now your a weirdo just for saying hello to someone who lives in the same apartment building as you. I really hope it does not become like this in mmo's.

I'm pretty social IRL but none of my friends play MMOs. Up til recently I was pretty un-social in-game. Mostly because the people I saw in chat were being dorks and I played too sporadically to join a guild. The few times I did join a guild it was full of drama and the guild went down in flames.

However, when Massively announced that they were creating a Guild in DDO I joined up. I have met some of the nicest people and we have a great time questing together.

Almost all of my social interaction is online.

And I'm very grateful I can have what I do have, since my health keeps me housebound, so I *can't* go out and party all night. Haven't been able to for over 10 years now. When I go out and spend much time in social settings...I pay for it, sometimes for days after. Imagining how I'd be completely trapped within these walls were it not for the interaction I get online... is terrifying to me.

Even so, I'm no 'party beast' online. That's just not my personality. But even on my bad days when I'm quietly playing something solo...I at least see other people's characters running around, and don't feel quite so alone.

There was a time when the majority of my social interaction DID come from MMOs. I still had friends outside of the game, but knew a lot more people through the guilds I joined while in-game. This was probably because my IRL friends don't really play MMOs. One friend will start one now and then, and we'll play together... But she tends to lose interest after a while.

There's one friend that I made through MMOs that I consider one of my good friends. We've been through many games together and helped each other deal with IRL things. He's like a little brother to me.

Usually I'll make a bunch of friends in one game...and as time goes on I see less and less of some of them. But there are a handful that I regularly keep in contact with... Though they're probably more in the realm of "acquaintance" now than friend.

I have had a few relationships that formed through an MMO...but those didn't last very long due to trust issues and things like just not having the time to maintain a long-distance relationship. While it was fun and sweet while it lasted, I don't really want to go through anything like it again.

Interestingly, that screenshot is from my lotro kin. I've never really considered gaming part of my social life though. Lans or otherwise irl drunken multiplayer affairs aside.

I started gaming with RL friends and over the years I have gone so far as to meet several of my supergroup members when I travel. Thanks to CoH my circle of RL gamer friends has grown to the point we now travel en mass to DragonCon yearly. This past D*C over over 18 of us met up, some that have been gaming with each other since the beginning of CoH finally got to put faces to names.
I've found that gamers enjoy the company of other gamers, they are more tolerant of lifestyles, religions, and all those other real world idiosyncrasies then say those mainstream mundanes. (Just to be clear, my wonderful RL non-gamer friends think that going out and meeting people you game with is really cool.)