I mentioned the other day that I was going to try and level my priest without using the dungeon finder, but doing it the old fashioned way – by making friends.

Well, so far it ain’t going that well. First of all, there aren’t that many players around. Second of all, the way I made friends in the past was by asking players to help me with a quest. But the fact of the matter is that the game has been nerfed so much that I don’t need to ask for any help. I could pretend to need help, but that’s rather pointless as any decent player of whom I would like to be my friend will rightfully come to the conclusion that I am a moron for not being able to complete such and such quest on my own. So until I find a hard quest, this avenue seems closed to me.

How about just walking up to players and saying hello? Well, you try and do that and see where it gets you. Here is a rough look at how my last effort went:

Me: Hi, are you a new player or is this an alt for you? (I am really feeling like a moron already here).
Other Person: Why do you want to know this?
Me: I’m looking for some players to add to my friends list and level with.

[This player is ignoring you]

It’s not going well at all. You don’t make friends with people by walking up to them and saying, ‘do you want to be my friend?’ while drooling out the side of your mouth. You make friends by having shared experiences and mutually realising that each of you would like to play further with the other player. This way of making friends is very easy:

“Great run, do you mind if I add you to my friends list?”
“No problem, I’ll add you too.”

And then the next time you log in, they whisper you and you’re off running something else together. This works, this is socially acceptable. Stalking around Silverpine Forest and accosting other players is not, and it will quickly get you a reputation for being a freak of fucking nature. I could make it easy for myself by cheating and macroing something like this:

“Hi, I’m doing a project to see if you can run instances in WoW now without using the dungeon finder. I’m looking for players to add to my friends list that I can call on to do dungeon runs. Would you like to be a part of this?”

That might work, but I’m not sure how I woud react if somebody came up to me and did this.

Last week Tobold had a post expounding the virtues of a game in beta called Mytheon. I decided to give it a shot, downloaded it, and realised after about 30 seconds that I hated it, (you can’t adjust the view around your toon which did my head in, and the combat system involves you putting up some form of stone and then doing nothing, which is about as exciting as chicks from Brisbane). But in the hour of gameplay that I managed to endure, what I did notice was the social aspect. Somebody asked in general chat if anyone could help them kill such and such. They immediately got a few helpful offers. Then other people suggested doing it together and then going and also killing that other bigger thingy. And they all did. And I was left looking at the screen with a vague feeling of sadness. Because this was how WoW used to be.

But it’s not anymore.