I was going to post similar but, you nailed it. OP needs to figure out what they do online and find the places where people connect doing those things.

You may also want to check some of the online Asian food stores / distributors. Sometimes you can find things like that. I know Boksu Market (not affiliated or promoting, just mentioning) has a lot of interesting snacks. Not sure they have exactly what you are looking for though.

I’m actually a new’ish gamer. I did a little Final Fantasy 14 but didn’t get into it. I read about this a little and decided to give it a try (it helped it was on a massive sale on the PlayStation store). This will be the game I will probably be playing for a really long time.

The random quests and wandering around are the best parts IMO. It amazes me how much time I can waste walking around going "what’s behind that building (or rock, or hill, etc.).

Top three are: The First Descendant, Elder Scrolls Online, and just started Lords Of The Fallen (which is pretty tough TBH).

go-go-go mentality that everything must be achieved as fast as possible the video linked above talked about that relative to WoW. it seems like a pretty common thing… getting through the game backlog as fast as possible to say you “completed X number of games” in week / month / etc.

a lot of toxicity or other people you I think that’s probably the biggest barrier to being social. not wanting to deal with toxic players is a huge thing from what I have read (Lemmy, Reddit, etc.)

fair, but I’d argue no one can go back in time with out any consequences. even OPs first bullet could have consequences through “meet the man and musicians”. did we not learn anything from Back To The Future 😀

I’d go back to “old enough to understand but still young enough to do something about it” me and have a nice long conversation 🙂

ohhhh, that makes even more sense. that would reduce the annoyances for sure. advice taken!

looks like i’m biting the bullet on Discord, haha! although i get where you are coming from, people flock to the thing everyone else uses.

MMO games turned into a singleplayer game sort of the vibe i get now but, your other advice makes sense. again, i think the guild thing is interesting but, didn’t want it to turn into a job. the free vs. played is an interesting comment. as i progress, i’ll see how that turns out.

the thing with voice chat, TBH, is i’m not sure if i’m hearing people or if it’s “in game stuff”. in TFD the other night i hear “i need help” but i had no way of knowing if it was a person saying it or some in game thing. i’ll have to pay more attention to that.

appreciate your perspective as a long time MMORGP player, this was helpful.

appreciate the advice on getting conversations started. i think i’ll work up the nerve to give that a try in the near future. also, thank you for you can’t out-weirdo… that makes it easier to handle 😀

also, solid advice, i think i’ll keep this one in mind as well!

thank you for this, simple but sounds effective. i’ll have to go find the player in T&L that was running around as turkey and asked they pulled that off 🤣

They just rarely come find you yeah, that makes sense, the onus is on me to find people. agreed on the chat thing. again, still trying to figure it all out but some of the zone / game wide chat is… interesting, to say the least.

i think when a get a little further along, i may look into guilds. my only concern is that it becomes a second full time job. however, as one person mentioned, “leave if you’re not happy” (to paraphrase that posters comment).

will do on the take the thoughts out of your head advice!

solid advice right here. thank you so much, i’ll experiment a little and see how it goes… i’m probably over thinking some of this as well 😆

thank you for the link! i will set aside some time tonight to check it out. i can only imagine the number of different mindsets / attitudes and such in a single game, let alone different games.

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 😀

Pocky Sticks… so many Pocky Sticks!!