i might be one of the few people out there that is, or I should say was, a fan of MMO's that never played WoW. I had nothing against it other than at the time it was released i was in "mmo rehab" after basically devoting many many years to DAOC and Anarchy Online previous to it.
No offense to you personally of course but I feel like MMO's are actually quite damaging to someone's social life or at least that was the case with me. I do sometimes feel the pull of an MMO from time to time, but I haven't booted one up in years.
Does WoW still have a massive userbase?
Thats really interesting! I've never heard of DAOC and Anarchy Online, those must have been pre 2000s? Wow's user base is pretty large, despite the ongoing fees that must be paid in order to play beyond buying the game. However, I do think there is a very dedicated player base, regarding class identity, lore and and the game itself. I do agree with you about the social aspect, it can be quite damaging. On the other hand, you can also make some really good friends in the game! If you've never played but would like to give it a try you can play for free up to lvl 20, beyond that you have to be paying for the subscription. It's nice because you can try out the different classes to see what you prefer to play.
Both DAOC and Anarchy Online were late 90's MMO's. They had a lot of issues back then but most of it was because of the internet infrastructure not being anything like it is today. Anarchy Online was particularly notorious for lag and members of your group simply going LD (link dead) mid-battle and as you know, when you have a party of carefully selected members, every person has a special role in the fight or you get wiped. We did a lot of running away in those days because all of a sudden our tank or healer would just stop responding.
Haha! that sounds about right. I remember in the first World of Warcraft running the same dungeons over and over again because the tank would leave mid fight. Sometimes having to 4 man it or search the /who function to whisper random people to join us. Fun times!
in Anarchy Online and DAOC there was no /who or LFG system, you had to literally stand outside of dungeons and shout what your qualifications were. This is why I started playing healer classes because they could ALWAYS find groups. DPS guys were a dime a dozen and normally had to wait a while.