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The theory that World of Warcraft has a bad community.
Varny
Member Posts: 765
I've played every mmorpg under the sun and I'm not playing any of them anymore apart from the WoW 7 day come back trial. Now I've never had a problem with the community of WoW because I've always found people very friendly and more importantly, I've always FOUND people lol. I've been using the new LFG too to join PUGS and I've been leveling around the world and doing some PVP. The thing is I haven't met a single person who has been rude so far. I've met quite a few people who're new to the game, that's ok you teach them how to do the instance but never any problems.
If you visit the forums then yeah they're horrible but there hasn't been one mmorpg out there that has good forums, always full of people throwing insults. In game however the WoW community is perfect and I love actually being able to group and find people. I mean it could be a different story in America, but for the EU servers everyone has been kind and polite.... might be because they don't speak much English lol.
Now I've joined many mmorpgs where people say they have great communities on these forums and I have no evidence of that.
Everquest 2 for example where is the comminity? All the servers I seem to join are dead and no one talks to each other. Everyone seems to stick to their own tight guilds and ignores everyone else. You say hi to people and they just run straight past and the world is the most depressing place in that game. Standing alone leveling for all of my time in it and people call WoW and solo mmorpg but EQ2 you're truly forced to solo cause theres no one playing.
EVE Online the only interaction you have with other people again is only from your own corp. No one trusts each other in that game and well that is because of how it is designed and how easily you can get scammed. You think people are being friendly to you and you're gonna have a fun time with people you meet up and oh look they kill you and then insult you over and over. All I ever seem to see on local is insults being thrown between noobs and I hate the starter corp you get thrown in cause they're the worst. Sorry but I don't find a community filled with hate where everyones out to scam you good. People say get into a corp but no people are still on edge and arguing in there cause the game is too stressful or something. I get accused of being a spy joining and corp and it's like I've only just gotten in... give me a break.
SWG just filled with people now who stand around Mos Eisley trying to show off everything they bought with TCG and all you see are the bots spamming their advertising. I woulda hope they removed macros a long time ago, theres no need for them other than to exploit the game. You can't get a group for anything and all people ever seem to speak about in game is how it sucks compared to what it used to be. I mean there hasn't been one person I've met in game that says they want the profession system back... SOE says everyone is happy?
etc etc.
If anything since I've been playing mmorpgs from around 2000, World of Warcraft has one of the best communities I have ever been a part of. It's obviously the most active so you're never short of people to group with, especially with the new LFG tool. Also people are more likely to PUG in WoW, I can meet and we'll group for a couple hours doing the content and then part ways. Where in most other mmorpgs you have to join their guilds and it just takes too long. Also WoW has an active creative community outside of the game which are constantly making videos and just really kool things that are being posted on the internet all the time. Most importantly I have never met a person who has been a problem in WoW. I've had a few funny moments of a guy following me for two hours, that was just funny and I've had moments where people had to go when we're in a dungeon. However I have never had all these crazy rude kids that people always go on about.
Comments
The problem with WoW's community isnt quality, but quantity. And thats what most people mistake.
In other words, the moron/normal players ratio is mostly equal across all games, but with a community over the 10m you are likely to find god damn jerks faster. If games like DarkFall taugh us something, is that even really really niche communities of equally closeminded players are still filled with morons.
In a nutshell, saying that WoW's community is quantitatively worse than most other MMOs is true, but saying its qualitatively worse than any other MMO is beyond cynicism.
Im still hoping for a genius to invent a foolproof device to stop bloody idiots from using internet. Such achievement should deserve a Nobel.
I've played WoW for years on different servers, and in my experience there are plenty of rude, obnoxious, vulgar, etc. types of people -but- that is to be expected of any game or any aspect of life I guess.
From my experience some servers are worse than others. Tichondrius was always my home, but out of all the other servers I have tried (including normal servers, RP servers, and less populated PvP servers ) Tich definitely had the largest group of elistist jerk types I guess lol, or just plain jerks. It was pretty brutal and if you were considered weak you were cast aside or eaten by the big dogs, and anytime I actually encountered anyone nice, friendly, or polite on there it was like a rare event that should be cherished (although the server celebrity on alliance side steelballa, seemed to be a pretty nice guy, but his attitude definitely didn't reflect the majority). Chat is usually full of vulgarity and rudeness, I've encountered many ninjas and all around jerks there. Any newbie that politely asks a question on Tichondrius is usually given the warm response of "TICH IS NOT FOR YOU". But I still love you tich
One of the normal servers I tried a long time ago and revisited once, Eitrigg seemed to have an abundance of friendly, nice people... one RP server I tried seemed to have a very friendly mature community, but another RP server I tried had one of the foulest communities I think I've ever seen.. let's just say what I saw at goldshire inn cannot be unseen.
TLDR: Every community is different depending on the server, and despite some of the bad eggs in WoW I think a lot of the trade/general chat is usually hilarious, so I'm probably a bit immature I guess.
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Playing:
FFXIV, TERA, LoL, and HoTS
My Rig:
GPU: GeForce GTX 770, CPU: i7-4790K, Memory: 16 GB RAM
wow's community is like any other online community.
It's not a Theroy
It's a fact
In my experience, for the most part, guilds make the server communities. If there are enough large scale guilds run by decent people, the server will have a relatively pleasant community.
My server in WOW back when it was launched had quite a few guilds with the right kind of leadership - mature, morally responsible, serious but by no means elitist. Those guilds were generally made up of people who prioritized a good reputation and actively sought to gain an maintain it. My guild was one of these. Any ninjaing, griefing and even name-calling, you could just chat with us and you'd probably get an apology, we could even outright kick the offender if it turned out he or she had indeed been a complete jackass. "Oh, you were roleplaying a jerk? Sorry, we're roleplaying a guild that has no tolerance for jerks."
It takes some effort and you may lose quite a few players you've invested time and effort into, but in the end it pays off, both on a guild scale and on a community scale. Enough guilds do this kind of thing, that'll be a good server, or at least one where people can find a good home easily. I've met quite some mature, intelligent, levelheaded, knowledgable and funny people in WOW. Some of the best I've seen in my 15+ online gaming years. Believe me, you can make excellent players out of such people, but you can't make decent people out of epicced-out jerks.
The trick is going with the people instead of characters.
I guess the main problem right now is that WOW has become an "on again, off again" type of game, one people step in and out of for a couple of months, instead of its initial incarnation where players were in for the long haul... So now it's become really hard to maintain a sense of community or consequence. But there are still some decent guilds out there. You just have to find the right one where being a jerk doesn't pay off.
Like other people have said, it depends on the servers and depends on the group (guild) of people you are with. When i first started playing wow i was in a casual guild, we werent by no means 'good' at raiding, this meant that when some hardcore players join the guild they would see us no raiding often and throw some hurtful words at us and leave.
However after i changed realm i was in anotehr 'casual' guild but this was when wotlk came out. (the other guild was the start of tbc) However this guild would raid regualrly, had a dkp system a website a vent.. well the whole sha-bang. And the people in this guild were really nice and they are all good at the game and can clear through raids in one night.
and the difference in guild communit was the first casual guild has most of the same players that had in tbc, but in this new guild people come and go.
...
I think ive strayed from the point..
but in my experience i have only met a couple of jerks in wow (only a couple and ive played since vanilla), and that was on my old realm. The new realm has pro players who are willing to help out. So i do think the community in wow is good, as most people want to be liked by everyone around them and the ones that dont care are only liked as they have good gear/skills.
the eu community is more mature than the US community ... guess why ?
op!wow new lfg as some nice feature ,like if you join random group for instance you get a prize and that my friend will make anybody smile,before everybody faught for loot very often now ,nope not a single fight .they get pab reward ,good reward
but in the end its always valuable enought to pay for repair.its a good system.war had one good system but by the time it was put in place it was already too late player had left .
in my view vanilla wow was one of the best if blizzard had kept most of what is missing now to what is there today every player would be happy .or at least the vast majority.
There's two sides to the community. There's plenty of great people playing WoW, and you get the most amazing bunch of fiction writers, event organisers and modders you're ever likely to encounter. Sadly, maybe not the majority but a very significant part of that community are complete and utter dickheads. It's not something about WoW itself, it's just that it attracts a lot of teens, and I challenge anybody reading this to say they were not utter dickheads when teenagers :P.
The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Compared to other mmos i have played WoW easily the worst community. From the trade channel being flooded with rude and profane talk to people being generally rude. After this latest patch with the new dungeon tool it has actually improved i don't run into the jerks nearly as often in pugs.
Ops, I think that was me.
WOW's community is no better or worse than most other games created today where players really don't need the help of others to survive.
In the older, group based games like DAOC the community was leaps and bounds better than any game out there today and until someone makes a new game (FFXIV perhaps) where players are forced to rely on each other to level up it won't be returning.
One big difference, WOW has far more younger players in it which seems to really provoke some folks but never was an issue for me when I played.
Disclaimer - I haven't played in a long time (3 years now) perhaps things are worse.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Does anyone remember the trade chat phase people went through..
/2 ANAL [Fishling]
/2 DIRGE
Why? Has the EU banned childhood?
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Went through? I saw about 30mins of that last night.
Does Wow have a bad community?
Exhibit A <- click
Exhibit B <- click
WoW has a great community.
Problem is, the Internet has changed in recent years. When you were playing the game you loved, the Internet was new and occupied by mostly early adopter types, eg nerds. Now the community is as diverse as a real community. That means there are lot of kids. Unsupervised kids.
If you want to get rid of the kids, make a boring game.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
WoW is featured on South Park.
WoW's moron rate rises exponentially.
Discuss.
In my opinion I would say it's no worse and perhaps a little better. In the first year or 2 of it's existence WoW attracted a large crowd of people that were just there to cause trouble mainly because it was so popular and there were a lot of folks to cause trouble with. 3 years later most of the people left playing really do enjoy the game and are busy playing, there are very few that are there primarily to cause grief. Every expansion and some of the patches brings a few back, but they don't usually last long and are gone again once the excitement wears off. Plus Blizzard has figured out a lot of the ways that players caused grief in the past and aren't making those same mistakes with new patches and expansions. It's gotten easier to avoid those you would like to avoid which has caused those to be avoided to be fewer in numbers.
It has changed to a more elitist community. Which is created by the enivornment of WoW and not necessarily by the playerbase. I would agree that the overall community has the same ratio of jerks as any other game but just that there are a lot more of them due to the huge population of the game. And we all know that loudmouths, jerks, and troublemakers are often the most vocal in society and that is no different in an online game.
Why? Has the EU banned childhood?
Nope, but we tend to do to our kids something called "raising 'em". It's like telling them that being a jerk is not going to get you far in life.
Aside of that, I have to give that comment a nod. I tried both communities and I have to admit, the EU servers (at least the English, German and French servers I played) consist of fairly level headed people. Of course you have the asshats, but it's a given that they exist. In every heterogenous group of people, you're prone to getting your share of morons. Morons tend to be loud and obnoxious, and much more memorable than people who are just friendly. Simply because we consider friendly "normal", so it doesn't stick as much in your memory. So it seems that WoW has more morons than any other game. Which is probably true. But mostly because the basic population is bigger.
Another reason is that WoW is a forgiving game. You won't get far in games like old time EQ when you're a sociopathic ass. First, you didn't get big, because it was highly group dependent. Second, the top was quite thin, everyone knew everyone (ok, to some degree) and word got around very quickly. Being a Ninja was a quickfire way to make sure you won't find any new groups, thus pretty much ending your game. If you got that far in the first place if you're a greedy, selfish prick.
WoW rewards selfish behaviour. Getting a group is trivial, especially now that server spanning LFG is implemented. You may be on 1000s of ignore lists, yet you'll still find groups to play with (and to rip off).
So what the quality of a community comes down to is how many people actually act like that. And, bluntly, aside of a few servers (that curiously seem to attract this kind of person) the EU servers are filled with fairly mature, group-oriented and team-minded people.
Their enhanced ability to say clever, trolling shit like this? Or an ability to see beyond rampant fallacy into the truly ridiculous?
Oh, you could get quite far in EQ being a 'sociopathic ass'. These are the guys who gave 'elitist raider' a bad name.
The problem EQs setup had was that while it might have been better at weeding out 'undesirable', it would also weed out a lot of really nice people who could not play the game wanted them to. So ultimatley it is a question of how many jerks are you willing to put up with in order to attract one extra nice person to the game.
I have never played on a US server so i dont really know what their like - but i would like to say that i agree, that on the most part, the EU servers do have good players, though as also pointed out, it also has its 'idiots' same as any other game, though with the larger population base of WoW obviously their far more visible.. overall, i would say that i am quite happy with the community on the particular server i play on, and i like the new lfg tool, admittedly, sometimes the dungeon run is a disaster, but, more often than not, its fun, and the players i've so far encountered from the cross server groupings have been friendly, its a shame that cross server communication is limited to this particular form, though i can imagine implementing that kind of thing would be a bit of a headache! imo, WoW is still one of the 2 best games out there.
I liken the WOW comparision to kids who use Myspace and adults who prefer Facebook. WoW was never in a position to develop community like pre-WOW mmo'. Thats the thing about games like World of Warcraft in that you don't need a guild or community to be successful playing the game.
Communities generally progress out of necessity not simple want. When i played my entire guild came from a previous game to a short stint with WOW. Our community per say was developed in another MMO and not WOW.
For many WOW is all then know from a MMO perspective. They never saw the more mature old school communities of EQ, DAOC etc etc. One of my first negatives was when kids started flooding WOW with Barren's spew trash talk. I can honestly say in general i didn't see immaturity and poor behavior flourish until WoW was released.
You simply can't use numbers of subscribers as a basis for good or bad. In older games it was not tolerated to act like alot of WOW players did. Guilds wouldn't allow it and if you didnt manage your kids behavior you got kicked from the Guild. Generally speaking behavior was no problem at all.
All in all bigger is not necessarily better and its not that WOW has some bad communities it generally doesn't have much of a community at all. I remember in DAOC hoping to find a duo or group because leveling was so much faster grouped. It was a much harder game and we actually had to rest and during rest we got to know people.
I met alot of strangers in DAOC that today are my RL friends. I can't say that about WoW or every other title i've bought. I didnt need anybody in WOW to progress at all. Thats a huge part of the problem. EQ had a nice community as well. World of Warcraft is a dated game. I like many would never start playing a game with such age today. I played it the first 2 years off and on.
This is always a hard thing to measure fairly.
Most of the players know that moved from Wow to EQ2 or LOTRO say that they have better communities than Wow but how do we know that for sure? Maybe are they just partial to the new game.
My personal experience is that EQ2 have the best community while Wow and Guildwars have the worst but I can't really prove that, I might just have been unlucky.
But that the Us servers should be worse than the EU servers, that is rubbish. I play on a US EQ2 server now (I am Swedish), played on a EU server before. People are at least as nice there as on the EU server. the whole idea sounds like utter bull (Europeans often thinks Americans are stupid because they are bad on history and geography, Americans thinks Europeans are stupid because Europeans sucks at math, it is just different priorities).
One of the reason many people can think that Wows community is bad is because Wows population have a very high percentage of teens, and teens have their culture and are often considered rude by olderr persons.
Of course Wows community might very well suck totally but it is very hard to prove that one way or another.