I'm a lurker on comms, always have been...Unless my house/flat/wherever im currently playing is empty or we're doing something important (dungeon busting, competitive PvP, or another organised event).
I don't like the idea of my family or flatmates hearing me essentially talk to myself about things in a game, especially when they're not 'gamers'. Also, i come from communities where the voice comm side of it was only used for important and organised events, only a handful of people actually sat on TS/Vent or whatever all the time...I like to talk to everyone in guild, not just those on comms
.
(Quick edit here - I also love music, listen to it almost all the time when im playing games, unless its a super serious event or whatever. If im on comms all the time, my music would have to be off...No thanks :P, i can still type to you)
As for not joining a guild/outfit/whatever in an MMO...I can relate to that...Currently Outfitless in PS as i just don't have the time to invest in it properly, the new one is on the horizon and finding organised squads hasn't been that difficult (i also get hit with outfit invites sometimes, without even a polite /whisper...That's annoying).
As for playing an 'offline mode' instead of multiplayer or an MMO...Just no...Playing against bots is totally different from playing against people. I used to play BF2142 quite a bit, i never got into the whole 'clan' thing, but i used to play religiously on two servers owned by the same clan (=MNKY= just in case haha
) if those servers were down, empty or full i'd maybe play on another but usually i'd just play another game altogether because i loved the rule set up, aswell as the way the admins managed the server. Despite not saying anything in game, not registering on their forums, not using their public TS or whatever, most of the guys in the clan seemed to quite like me and in some instances kicked multiple doofus' who were being prats towards me, after getting their dogtags multiple times
, or people who were convinced i was a hacker and would spam chat with crap like that. (They seemed to like how i was a psychopathic drop ship pilot hahah
...I loved flying those fine ladies
). Don't be too surprised if someone wants to play a online good shooter, just to shoot people. Or a good online RPG, just to stab orcs.