mmo friction was mostly waiting with extra steps
Old MMO players call everything friction when they mean I had free time.
Walking for fifteen minutes was not community. Waiting for a rare spawn was not immersion. Losing an evening because the group healer left was definitely not a meaningful social system.
Yes, I talked to more strangers. Usually the conversation was invite, where are you, hurry up, and who pulled. We are remembering the one funny guild night and deleting twenty boring ones.
I tried going back to that style of game. My bags were full, the quest NPC gave useless directions, and I had a video open on the second monitor within an hour. So much for mystery.
Nostalgia is doing unpaid labor here. We miss being younger, having fewer games and seeing the same guild names every night. The slow travel gets credit because it was standing nearby.
Modern convenience can make worlds feel disposable, sure. But old design also treated boredom like a subscription feature.
Give me reasons to cooperate, not reasons to stare at a road. Those are not the same thing.
Maybe the old world was special. The corpse run wasn't.