I feel fortunate to be a part of ZAMFollow

I noticed this as well. I'm on Ridill running around with my 1.0 character and it is silent. There are a lot of shells on my server though so everyone may be on LS chat and I'm just left out I did run into a few ppl I played with 2 years ago when I quit which was cool. I almost want to just do a shout for all XI Asura players to together for a beer and shoot the sh*t.

While I do like the content finder, this right here is a big reason why I'd hoped they'd start off with it not cross-server.

It's always possible to add cross-server functionality later if queue times are stupid... it isn't really possible to remove it.

I feel that the community so far is very WoW-like.

Not in a bad way, but if any of you played vanilla WoW it was very much like this. At first people are busy leveling and experiencing the game. People talk at quest hubs and are generally looking for groups. Newbies ask questions, people answer.

Once the actual game starts and once the server establishes itself I think you'll see a community more like FFXI. Linkshells and (hopefully) a main city hub, will contribute to a more social experience.

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In my DF groups there were a few people who would talk and ask questions. We'd also say hello, or gj after a completion. However DFs as stated, are business. LSes are where most of your social interaction will come from, as with most MMOs.

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A bit off topic:

Looking back at 15+ years of playing MMOs and other online games, it's difficult to think back at when I first played with other real people over the internet (or even forum posting for that matter). To the uninitiated it's very, very daunting.

Even to this day, I rarely public chat, let alone yell/shout, but am pretty lively in LS or in a group/PT.

This almost sounds like dating advice.

But no really... people will interact with you as long as you interact with them. People tend to be super-serious about THE MISSION above all else.

I used the duty finder all day yesterday. To my surprise, there seemed to be plenty of people that wanted to be social. I also noticed how hard that is when your constantly in battles. If i tried to type a sentence during a fight, my tank probably would have died lol.
I think that communication in FF XIV will happen over a headset during dungeons and stuff. The chat box is fine for open world stuff, but there isn't much time to type when fighting.

Now, for those people that just don't communicate at all, well there isn't much we can do about that. I ran into quite a few of that kind also.

Keep in mind the duty finder was made for people who have trouble finding groups. Yes it would be good to do it within your server to help, build, relationships but if you log in, want a 30min run, finding anyone who wants to do it, regardless of server, is the way to go. Yoshi even said it wasn't intended for socializing, he wanted it to be a means to an end. Breaking the FFXI cycle of /sh Do you need it, /wait 60min, Mover out, only to lose one guy. We don't have time for that, 10years later. He even said, what if you are on night shift and no one is on or wants to play in your server, searching the other servers will yield something. I see the problem but at the same time, I can log in with the intention of playing 45min and be able to do one run, no problem. I like that, FFXI I felt like I wasted so much time and it always made me so sad. As much as I liked watching shouts and people say crazy stuff... I would have rather spent my time farming and not waiting for a party that never developed.

It would be a good idea to add a check box to turn the "any server" on and off.

I imagine on release that Ul'dah will have lots of talk going on, but nothing beyond that. I agree that shells are typically the main reason things are so quiet everywhere, especially when you consider some shells have massive 50+ rosters.

Overall in 1.0, any PUG for end game events or final missions were quite talkative, hoping for the same thing again.

I was worried about this duty finder as well. Last night I was running around Limsa Lominsa for like an hour doing FATE's by myself with no other players to be found. A Free company mate made a great comment. "Well, we are suppose to be testing the duty finder during this period, so maybe a lot of people are just really trying to test the duty finder like they were asked to do."

I ran about 4 duty finder missions, and for the most part they went ok, but my cousin made a good point as well. Duty finder is nice for time's sake, but it will be mainly used for those who don't have many friends, don't have time, late night work shifts, and stuff like that that Yoshi-P stated. I think later on, the majority of the community will run with linkshells, and server players, rather than just rely on the duty finder.

It's cool, but partying with the unknown can become uncool, especially with no real reason to become social for the few minutes you guys see each other, and return to your servers never to see each other again lol. If you remember FFXI had something similar to duty finder, not as good, but similar and no one ended up using that thing from fear of who you might actually get. LOL

I had a friend who kept using Duty finder to do the Ifrit battle resulting in 6 losses. I eventually formed a party to my liking for him, and we went in there and knocked it out getting him the win. Like someone else said, other than saying hi, explaining the battle plan, and asking who's done this before... Other than that with the amount of targeting/pushing combos and such, not much room for talking during the fights. In FFXI we could talk through those auto attack tp building moments.

there is plunty of time to chat in instance runs. I love the DF and I get in there and chat away. Its always better to be lighthearted in the beginning so if things to happen during the run people are less likely to get mad/upset. If players dont wanna talk than I dont mind I will put some music on and get the instance done asap. :)

Wouldn't blame soloists. In fact, I wouldn't blame the duty finder o any iteration of LFG tool for silence. Some may dislike the fact that people simply wish to get in and get out, and quirky as it sounds, not everyone is trying to make a friend at every given moment. For now, since you can't befriend or interact with people cross-server outside of the DF, those particularly yearning for server-specific groups to make friends with still have the option of assembling groups the old fashioned way via shouts and scouring your friend list/guild. It may not be as fast you'd prefer, but again, for some the objective is more imperative. The rest is just sometimes someone actually has to begin the communication, but don't get angry because people would rather focus on the task at hand.

I'd suggest people leave feedback on the OF about a server-specific toggle. Some will use it. Some won't. Should cross-server interactions improve in the future, I'd throw out there it wouldn't be implicitly needed. Large communities aren't a bad thing. Though like most games, I suspect people will eventually largely isolate themselves to their guild for getting things done. I don't agree with that, but I also blame some leaders for fear-mongering loyalty stipulations.

You're honestly the most negative person I've ever had the displeasure of reading posts from.

Edited, Jul 6th 2013 9:24pm by ClydesShadow

That seems pretty unlikely at this point. The two big things that could have done that have happened already.

1: The new datacenter
2: 1.0 character imports

Those two things had a real potential to cause massive problems. While they certainly didn't go flawlessly, they went well enough that we should expect things to work properly at launch.