hi folks, hope all are well today. new’ish gamer and i have a question about etiquette in MMORPGs.

are there proper ways to engage people in game? it seems strange to me to randomly ask someone to be friends. i also don’t see many ways to strike up conversations (if that’s the proper way to refer to it).

for additional context, in a game like Throne & Liberty or FFXIV, there are tons of people running around doing their thing. do you just whisper to someone and say hi? do you comment on their character or if you saw them do something interesting / cool?

or, for something like The First Descendant you may run a mission with a bunch of random people and then everyone goes their separate ways. but, if that group was cool (and good) do you quickly try to friend everyone?

personal context (if it helps / matters), console gamer (PlayStation don’t judge please, haha), really introverted / anxious around strangers IRL, older play (mid 50s) and ultimately… afraid of looking like a weirdo 😀

apologies in advance if this topic was already discussed (happy to check another post if some can point me to it). also, apologies if i don’t directly respond to every message, although i will read them all.

edit - 2024/11/16 - i just wanted to say thank you to everyone for your advice and taking the time to reply / provide your insights. this has really been helpful!! happy gaming to you all 🎮 🕹️ 😄

  • HubertManne
    5•1 month ago

    im not social but once I got my chats under control I would joke and clown around on them. Well as well as give advice or do actualy game related talk. To me its sorta like a party and I was more likely to engage socially when I was just hanging for one reason or another and more likely to talk business when the action took place. Like champions had these whole zone super enemies called cosmics that popped every four hours and if you came last minute you would likely get locked out of the full zone and they were impossible to beat below a certain threshold of players. so like you would hang out ten or twenty minutes before and screw around. talk and emotes and whatnot.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•1 month ago

      when you say got my chats under control does that mean the different types: party vs. world. vs whispers, etc.? that is an area that’s still a little confusing. plus i need to get better at using a controller to chat. thanks for the comments around not being a last minute type player for big events, i’ll keep that in mind.

      when i see others doing missions (especially in TFD), i usualy get right in an start helping, even if i did the mission already. i figure worst case, it’s just more practice for me 😀