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I enjoy the ability to do things solo in these games. I greatly enjoy SWTOR, and have played much of it solo. I just think that these games lack in the group and community experiences that some of the older games had when grouping was forced. I'm not sure you'll ever really see that kind of thing again, as it's not quite a viable market to target.
You will see more of a community once endgame picks up more, as long as they don't implement cross-server LFG.
The LFG tool was really the death of the WoW community (more firmly substantiated by the raid finder tool). Before then, despite the solo-friendliness, there's was definitely a distinct social sphere per server. True, you could choose not to take part, but only if you weren't interested in dungeons or endgame. Even if you only occasionally ran dungeons while leveling, there was a really good chance you'd be seeing a fair number of people you knew. That would certainly be the case if you engaged in endgame content at all.
Once they created the LFG tool, though, they nearly destroyed any reason to meet people while leveling. There wasn't actually any good reason to group with people from your server until you started raiding, and even then you were only going to meet the people in your guild.
I think it was less significant with PVP, because arenas demanded you form local teams, and premades always worked better than randoms. It still faced the same issues, but battlegrounds are vastly less social environments--if you have time to chat (assuming typed), you are SO not doing it right.
I
never want to see that in any other MMO I play.
To be fair, the devs realized the beast they created and tried to remedy it by heavily glamorizing guilds with the advent of perks. But that doesn't help repair the broken server community, and most people just joined MASSIVE guilds that made forming a meaningful community impossible. You were there for the perks, not for anything else.
TOR has a decent community, but it's biggest issue right now is how thinly the population has been spread. In order to accommodate launch, they opened up a ton of servers. Which definitely helped a ton, because they were all standard to very heavy in population for the first month. But now that people aren't playing every day, or for as many hours, the density is way down. Makes it much harder to find groups, and there's a lot less conversation in the general channels.
It's unclear whether or not they'll be merging servers, but I wouldn't expect that decision to be made until at least 1-2+ months after they release 1.2, which will be the first really significant update to endgame. It will also add a lot of incentive to level alt characters, which should help increase population levels in lower zones. Crew Skills are being revamped and, finally, it's fixing some of the issues with endgame dungeons, with regards to drops. Overall should buff population density, but perhaps not enough.
It's also adding some important features to guilds, giving players greater reason to join one beyond the social aspects.
As long as they don't add cross-server dungeons, I think we should be fine. Especially if they merge servers so that the lowest pop ones start around standard density. Because they implemented reason to quest in groups (for social points), as well as regular Heroic areas on top of regular dungeons, you have plenty of reason to make friends while leveling.
They really should consider expanding the social system, perhaps in conjunction with the legacy one. If social points aren't simply aesthetic, there would be reason to group while you level. Right now, they pretty much just give you armor skins. But if the character's social level had influence on your legacy, it would encourage group activity across levels. I don't think it should have an obvious influence on endgame, but I'm sure they can come up with something sufficiently attractive that won't destabilize balance. The Legacy system can already get you a mailbox and vendor on your ship, but things like that would be worth unlocking earlier rather than waiting for endgame. Maybe have social-based bag or bank upgrades. Etc.