That’s really sad. I’m glad to say my experience has been a little different with Retail, at least. It may be because I came back from GW2, where the game is largely designed to allow you to finish most content solo, save for the big world bosses and dungeon content. The community is still tight knit and welcoming, and there’s always something fun going on. Interacting with map chat is just a big part of the social scene there, and I brought that attitude back with me to WoW.

I don’t have any friends that play, and I’ve never been much for joining guilds full of people I don’t know, so randomly running into people in the overworld and running the same quests for a little while or map chat is the core of my MMO social experience.