Topic: Mario Kart 7 - playing against friends online?

Question, folks. How do you play against just friends online in MK7? Me and a friend have been sat on the Friends/Opponents screen for a while, unable to join each other. So far as we can tell, it'll only let us join if one of us goes into a worldwide race and it happens to have enough empty spaces in for them to join too. But nearly all the games I've joined so far have had the full compliment of seven other racers... so it's not exactly a reliable way of going about it.
We could build a community for ourselves, but that seems wasteful and other people can't join us that way with faffing around sharing --Friend-- Community Codes (which I thought the 3DS was beyond doing).

All we want to do is both of us get into a worldwide race together, or just play vs each other, and I can't figure out how.

You can create a community and play in it. Then your friend(s) can join you from his/her friends list.

You can make your own community. And only have just your friends join it.

Unfortunately, you have to create a community. My friend and I had the same problem as you, and the only thing we could do was create our own community. At least your 3DS friends can join you in the community without needing to input any codes; just connect to your community and your friends can hit "Join Friend" on their 3DSes to add the community to their lists,

You have to do it through communities? That seems like a step backward. What if we want to play against worldwide? That's still the full group problem. Only one of us can race if it puts us into a group with 7 other racers, lol (which it usually does)

@Raylax: if you play Worldwide long enough, you'll wind up playing together with your friend(s). it usually takes a couple races for everyone to join up together as others drop out or quit, give it time. :3

If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask them in the main thread. Thank you!