How to play with other people?

I've been doing some missions and got my Monk/mesmer up to level 6. Yet I don't really feel I've been playing an MMO. I like that the missions actually have some story behind them, but I'm not liking using NPC characters to form my party. I want to be partying up with people and making friends and that just doesn't seem to be the way things are done (from what I've witnessed in game and read on various forums).

One of the big reasons I play MMOs is for the social aspect and meeting people. I've been in one group so far, and we never even said anything to each other, we just went through the mission like mindless drones.

Am I missing something? I always check the Mission search and there's usually no groups.

My suggestion is level you character up to lvl 20, generally more people looking for missions once your a higher level in more challenging missions. Im guessing your in prophecies? A lot more people play Nightfall, Eye of The North, and Factions. Gurantee more people will being doing more missions later on in the game, just keep playing. Also join a guild, usually lots of cool people you can meet in guilds.

Well honestly this game can mainly be done on a solo basis with heros and such so you probably wont find many groups anymore while doing missions. Kinda sucks but that is the way this game has gone. My suggestion would be to get to a main town, Kamaden, Kaineng Center or Lions Arch and looks for a decent friendly guild that you can chat with and join up with on different missions. There is also a area here that you can look for guilds called PVE guild recruitment. Hope you find what you are looking for.

Usually there's always groups forming for elite areas in the end of the game.
Join a guild and play hard mode with them.

If you're playing Prophecies, most people get a run through the first half of the game after they've beaten it once. So you won't find many people in the earlier parts.

The game has been out for 4 years, it's easy to buy new character slots, it's easy to level a character to max, and re-specing your character from, say, protection to healing is as simple as it can possibly be. For all of these reasons, few people really make new characters anymore, and most people have a full complement of lvl20 characters (barring the low level mules that many players have and don't play). Once you start getting into later portions of the game, you will see some people grouping up, but many players go with the tried-and-true heroes and henchies to do what they want to do. That's the trade off of not forcing everyone to group up in an MMO by giving the option of playing with the computer: many people will take the trade, especially at this point, when veteran players know how to play and aren't terribly interested in dealing with players who don't.

Sigh, seems I may have jumped into yet another "catch-up" game like most older MMOs. I think I might just start creating PVP characters and see how I fare there (will get owned at first I know). This seems to be a problem that plagues many MMOs. After awhile, the original players are all high level then when new players come around, they don't have anyone to play with so it takes them a long time to reach higher levels and figure things out. Guess I might have to find an MMO that was just released to play so I can play with people from pretty much the beginning.

This game is not called Guild Wars for nothing. Most of the stuff is done with a guild... that's how you find new friends and socialize. That's mainly how new players catch up to old players.
Once you find a good guild, someone up there will have no problem with showing you the ropes.

Look here or post here.

Well to be honest you dont really have much catching up to do , Guild wars has a Level 20 cap and that can be reached with a few days of casual playing, then its just a case of getting a decent weapon and your away,also follow Dmitri3's advice and you wont go far wrong

Dmitri said it go find a guild
If possible play with a few of them first and see if you like each other.

It was probably a lot easier to do in the early days when everyone was learning together.
With a lot of people now just chasing titles its harder to find groups that still have a laid back attitude to doing missions.
Not that many groups said more than 10 words to each other anyway even in the early days.

Guilds chat and socialise and help each other.
Chatting during a mission is also more likely in a guild because they will probably use a voip program which is very unlikely in a random group.

Agreed with gremlin on the voip thing. Most of the chat in GW is on them, so try go download vent or teamspeak, get a mic and join a guild that regularly uses them.

playing with other people? what is this nonsense?

This is the middle of Wintersday festival - every low level wants to make it to Lion's Arch for the finale on January 1st so they can get a hat. They have no time for chat. (And if they are like me, it's hard to fight and type at the same time.)

Chatting is more an in-town occupation, but more likely to happen in major stopping points such as Ascalon City, Yak's Bend, Beacon's Perch and Lion's Arch.

I've just started a new character and pugged a couple of early missions.
However, since I'm experienced the time it takes to wait for other players is high compared to the time it takes me to complete the actual mission.
So if teaming takes too long I might just take some hench and start the mission.

Second, I skipped part of the game. I played myself to Lion's Arch with quests and missions, after that I took the boat to Kaineng (Factions) to get max armor.
After that I fought myself to the desert for the 15 attribute quest. There I also paid a visit to Glint because I didn't want to get a run to Droknar's, where I wanted to be for the other 15 attribute quest.

Switch storyline to Factions, which I want to play first. Done several missions there with some guildies and heroes and had a PUG member on a couple of missions missions.
All I want to say is that experienced players don't always avoid PUGs.

However, if you want to do this regular you might best find a guild (as adviced by others).
However, make sure you get in the right kind of guild. For example, if you would get in my guild you would probably hurt yourself more than you benefit from it.
If you would ask for company in a certain mission you'd probably get help from a level 20 fully maxed player with lots of experience and a couple of heroes to help you.
That's fun, because the mission is like a walk in the park, but you don't learn anything from it. Also people would assume some game knowledge you might not have experienced yet.

And even though I'm chatting a lot when online I don't do it that often in missions.
Even if I'm on auto-attack the foe might die and I should switch target. Or one of my skills is reloaded and needs to be used.
So if you see me chatting a lot in a mission I'm not doing my job (except when playing monk, then it just means the team isn't taking damage/hexes).
Voicechat doesn't have this disadvantage, another reason to find a guild.

One thing that makes a huge difference is which district you are in.

I always used to play in european english district, but now they are generally very quiet. Whereas the American districts are always busy in any area of the game. If you are a german speaker the euro german districts are fairly busy too, but they really do all talk German strangely .

Even in Sardelac Sanitarium people are always looking for groups to explore etc in the ameican districts.

/win

for me, i have a couple of ppl i play with in GuildWars, whom i talk to on vent/skype

just find a guild that uses vent.

vent -> a whole new dimension of gw imo cried a lot of times on vent from laughter lol. even in pve vent owns

There are several aspects to this.

1. In the early days of GW, there was only Prophecies. That meant that you were more likely to meet up with someone doing the same things as you, and PUGs (Pick Up Groups) were easy to find. Now that there is Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North, people are spread over a much broader area and it's harder to find players doing the same thing as you.

2. Also, in the early days, there were no Heroes. Henchmen would work in a pinch, but they were far less effective that real humans, so more people tried to find humans to play with. Heroes, however, work well enough that nearly everything in the game can be done just using H&H (heroes & henchmen), so people have less incentive to try to form PUGs.

3. Typing into chat while playing, is not something that's easy to do, so many people don't. Also, people like myself, who use a voice chat program like Ventrilo or Teamspeak, get so used to simply pressing a 'talk' button, that typing seems like a real chore.

4. The main way to meet people in GW nowadays, is to join a Guild. There are still lots of new guilds being formed and some older guilds still take new members. I would suggest that, if you want to meet people, joining a guild may be the best way. However, you may need to join and leave several guilds before you find one that fits. You should be up front with the leaders/officers of a guild you join, about your intentions - like, what you're looking for and that you may leave. Most will understand (the ones that don't are probably not what you want anyway )

Sounds like the consensus is to join a guild and get vent. I understand the part about chatting now that I think about it. GW seems a lot faster paced than other MMOs and talking on vent would be much easier than chatting. I used TS2 for years with an old clan I played MOH with and used vent when I was on a CS team.