Is finding a clan/team necessary in order to enjoy this game?

[TheGamingBluejay 1]

Hi, I am a prospective buyer of Arma 3 (potential). I played the Arma 2 free version and have been keeping my eyes on Arma 3. So far I like what I see, but from what I've seen it seems that to enjoy an Arma game on the multiplayer (and singleplayer in the long run) properly, you would need to find friends to play with and hook up on Teamspeak or something. It doesn't seem doable if you just jump into the multiplayer with a mic. I assume many of you have played the multiplayer side of things a lot-what do you think: is the game doable without seeking a specific community to play with and arrange times/deal with timezone differences?

In Arma 2 it is hit and miss-about a third of the time I find a server in which I am not lagging (I take it most servers are European) and some strange event isn't taking place (despite reading the server info and notes page). I assume BI has smoothed this out, and the free to play version of Arma 2 might just be wonky, but regardless..

When I do see people who clearly have met up outside of the game playing together it looks like a very engaging experience though.

[CptCubano 1]

I am in a clan but sometimes you will see a couple players getting together in a squad and talking over side chat and they do pretty well. When I first bought Arma 2 I just played in public servers and didn't get into any of the clans out there, but being a part of clan really adds a whole other side of the game.

[Binkowski 26]

Not necessarily. But it does help.