The Daily Grind: How important are friends to MMO gaming?

Over the last week or so we've been asking you how you've managed to decide between the big releases hitting the MMO genre these days. Last week's Lich King launch, followed by this week's launches of EverQuest 2: The Shadow Odyssey and Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria seem like challenging decisions for the fan of the MMO genre. We're not going to ask you how you picked, though, because we think we know how you decided which game to play. Like Codex and Zaboo up there, you hang out online where your friends are. At least, we think you do.

So our question this morning is, first, do you decide which MMO to play based on where your friends are? Second, how important are other people to your continued MMO gaming? If your friends weren't playing the game they are, would you be? How much does the directly social nature of massively multiplayer games affect your gameplay? Let us know, and good luck making those hard choices!