Give all of those things a try. None of them are “wrong”. Experiment and see what works best with the type of people you want to spend time with. Just don’t get discouraged if your success rate is low (some people just won’t be interested) and respect people’s decisions if they choose to ignore you.

I would avoid zone-wide chats. They end up in pissing contests about who’s cooler, edgier, better, etc. Local or proxy chat let’s you talk to a party directly in front of you, like you are actually addressing the person instead of the name in a chat box.

As to what you should say, say the first thing that comes to mind, short of “want to buy GF”. Find similar minded people. Additionally, join guilds or discords. Check the game sub for guild finder stuff, join medium sized guilds that are doing content you like. Be prepared to leave if you don’t feel like you fit or it doesn’t mesh well. The beauty of MMOs is they generally have a decent sized player base, you’ll find community somewhere. They just rarely come find you.

What I’d say regarding anxiety…everyone has usually been where you are. On ESO, I help run a 1k+ person guild, where most groups are doing hard mode content or trifecta content (speed run, hard mode, no deaths). I don’t want to do the horribly sweaty stuff, but I’ve done some hard modes and such. Decent parse numbers are 110-120k just about, and I hit that. But when I started, I was at like…50k. I joined a group, talked to people, and bit the bullet and let people critique my gameplay. More often than not, if you are asking for help, people will give it and help you along, and that’s a big reason why we grew. We encouraged people to post parses, to show gameplay, so that it could be reviewed and advice given. It wasn’t public, but a fair few of us could see it and give pointers and suggestions.

Everyone starts somewhere. Just take the thoughts out of your head and put it in the chat box, and see who vibes with you!

I am an ultimate raider in FFXIV. If I am traveling around, ask away. One of the greatest things about our community is there a bunch of people that love to help and teach. But you have to be honest about where you are at. If you don’t know, say something. But if you pretend to be further ahead and people are expecting to beat something, it will be awkward. But that’s raiding. The rest is just finding what you like about it. There are usually tons of discord channels that helps you find what you are interested in.

im not social but once I got my chats under control I would joke and clown around on them. Well as well as give advice or do actualy game related talk. To me its sorta like a party and I was more likely to engage socially when I was just hanging for one reason or another and more likely to talk business when the action took place. Like champions had these whole zone super enemies called cosmics that popped every four hours and if you came last minute you would likely get locked out of the full zone and they were impossible to beat below a certain threshold of players. so like you would hang out ten or twenty minutes before and screw around. talk and emotes and whatnot.

I’ve had random people whisper me to compliment my character’s hat and ask where did I get the cosmetic in Elder Scrolls Online. To be fair, it was a pretty silly hat.

For FFXIV, specifically, if you are looking to add some friends I’d say start by hanging out one of the three starting cities (Gridania, Limsa, Ul’Dah) near the Aetherytes. Often people are just hanging and chatting some there. Limsa, on my server at least, seems to just be filled with people all the time hanging out. And you may even see some open calls for people to join Free Companies (Guilds). Those people are actively looking for new blood, so you could start up a discussion with them and see if their group is something you’d like to join. By doing so you may be able to get several friends pretty quick that way. Just remember that you owe nothing to those folks, and if the free company vibe doesn’t feel right once you get in, then bounce.

But commenting on someone’s look is fine, too! People work hard to collect or craft certain pieces of gear and dye them to make their character the way they want so if you notice something cool chances are they will be happy to talk about it.

There was one time last year during a Live Letter (this is a live streamed event the producers of the game do a few times a year) I went to Limsa and said to anyone who could hear it that I’d be “over by [a specific bench] to discuss the Live Letter” and lots of people I didn’t know gathered around and we all had a fun chat about the event as it streamed.

Or even if you have questions, say them out loud in a crowded space and chances are someone will help. FF14 is notorious for people NOT being trash, so most often you’ll find helpers before finding jerks.

And I promise that you can’t out-weirdo the weirdos that run around pretty much any game, so try to not worry about that.

You should take a look at this YouTube documentary by Folding Ideas which addresses the shift in behaviours regarding MMORPGs: https://youtu.be/BKP1I7IocYU?si=ed6-L2QZf40GbEwA

I’ve played WoW basically since it ever came out like 19/20 years ago, just after Guild Wars 1 and among many other MMOs for shorter times. And communication in MMORPGs has definitely been a lot better back in the days, or at least felt more engaged than it does now. Now it’s often been difficult to get people to talk, even after like a good dungeon run people will often just leave without having said an entire word the entire dungeon. It’s not as chatty as it used to be back in the days, and a lot of people are the toxic type that only respond when something goes wrong.

I think your best bet would be to join guilds in these games. I used to be in great guilds as well, where everyone could talk to each other in guild chat, but it kinda devolved into an alternative looking-for-group chat over the years since most guilds just invite anyone to get the guild bonusses and have easier access to people wanting to do raids and dungeons and stuff.

Guilds often don’t feel like the band of friends they used to be, and more like a collection of people doing the same type of content. It’s like most players just treat MMO games like a second job, they log in, do their chores, and log off again. But you can get lucky and run into a great guild that’s more casual, it heavily depends on the game and servers though.

In the past years I found that local chat is mostly used by roleplayers, WoW has a few servers where a lot of roleplayers flock to, and it really helped make the world feel alive as well. As for everyday non-RP chat, it just feels like most MMO games turned into a singleplayer game where you run around doing your own thing, with a lot of other people that are also playing their own game.

I do think that free-to-play games are worse when it comes to communication though, since anyone can hop in, and it often attracts the most toxic entitled people. The paywall with games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy Online definitely help filter out the majority of them though.

On a side note, I often play shooters as well. And I really hated voice chat in basically all of them, since most of them were just kids screaming vile things about mothers and what not, so I just ended up turning it off. Eventually I started playing Squad, which is a more serious Battlefield type of game with voice chat that attracts a more mature audience. At first I was a bit hesitant to use voice chat at all, but now I absolutely love talking with random players and couldn’t imagine the game without voice chat, most fun I’ve had with complete strangers in any game.

Sometimes it’s just a step to get over, and it gets easier. It’s worth giving it a shot in the games you play, but I would say it’s more likely to have a better experience outside of free-to-play games since there’s a lower chance of running into toxic players ruining the vibe.