(02-08-2016, 08:39 AM)Valence Wrote:(02-07-2016, 10:20 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: If you have a social anxiety disorder which makes it difficult for you to interact with new people and you have had difficulties breaking into RP groups in the past as a result of this, Balmung's high population and extensive community is not a magical cure for your disorder. Plenty of people who have such conditions have come to Balmung looking for RP and still have felt unable to become involved. That said, if that's a condition which is applicable to you, the higher population does at least increase the likelihood of encountering players with similar struggles or who will be willing to work with yours.
I'm not going to strike out the possibility of extended shyness and serious social issues (a lot have those on MMOs), but I also think it stems a bit from the game itself. It's really hard to build a network of contacts when you start. It's when it's the hardest. How to contact people when the ingame tools are absolute crap for that (adding offline people as friends, etc?).
Most contacts that you build, you have to keep contacting them to RP with them, and keep the synergy up and alive. Due to the lack of social tools and more importantly, windows on what happens around you besides in your own FC, you get the feeling to be half blind most of the time.
So, it makes reaching out to people twice as important, and it often starts to feel like insisting. Especially when people don't answer, or go into duty where... guess what. Can't /tell anymore.
My wife suffers from extreme S.A.D, she can barely talk to her own mom over the phone without going into a panic attack. I tried to get her to RP with me on Gilgamesh, even tried to get her to join The Adventurer's Guild LS that Adolar Stone gave me, but she was unable to and ended up just focusing on crafting. She plays healer classes (WHM mainly) and we can barely do dungeons together as I'd have to tank otherwise she zones out and misses boss timers, big pulls. Which ends up getting her yelled at by impatient people, which in turn causes her to go into a panic attack.
So when I tried to get her to join me in an RP event at the Quicksand or one of the Taverns in the Goblet she'd panic because she gets it into her head that the other people involved thinks she is stupid or says something stupid. She has an easier time if the game just came out and the community isn't as established as a game that would be out for 4 years or more.
