Which MMORPG has the Worst Community ?(Excluding WoW)

VirusDancer

Originally posted by Zarcob

 

Maybe they'd just rather make a friend by asking in chat?

 I suppose I'm being too hard on Eve, because I know exactly what prompts your type of "go find it out for yourself" response.  It's not because Eve fills some "hard-line" niche game market and it's not because the new player is lazy / stupid / republican or any other categorization (although I'm certain the mere thought might annoy you as well).  The issue is that you get tired of seeing the same damn questions day in and day out in chat.

 I'd say it's really about veteran gamers investing ridiculous amounts of time into a game and losing tolerance for simple things.   They remove the individual and all newbies become the same faceless mass of nonsense and repetitive stupidity.  Honestly, would anyone in their right mind tell someone to "Use the damn phonebook noob" if they were stopped on the street and asked directions?  Of course not, because it's harder to dehumanize someone looking right at you and it's unlikely you'll be tired of getting asked that same question unless you work as a toll booth collector.

 So if that explains the behavior, why do I think I'm being too easy on Eve?  Well, this will blow your mind but, I've seen the same exact responses in every MMO I've played where players invest hundreds of days of played time to master every aspect of the content.  Veteran players just get bored and tired of the reptition of human interaction - a mystifying stance given their addiction to an MMO.  It's a sad state of affairs and happens most often with the older games, but I suppose it doesn't really reveal anything specific about Eve's community as much as it does Eve's age.

To an extent, it is about the same questions being asked over and over again - CCP having invested time and effort to make the answers to those questions available - yet people do not want to bother.

My statements very short versions of what would normally take place, but it is true that it will wear on you.  Usually at that point, you either leave Help or you find that you have developed blinders to it.

JoeBuckRodgers:  Hey, I've got a question.

Veteran:  Go ahead and ask.

JorgeJetson:  Hey, I've got a question.

JoeBuckRodgers:  How do I mine...?

Veteran:  JBR, have you run the tutorial for that?  It provides a great answer to your question, provides you with some good starting stuff to get you going, and will probably answer questions you have not even thought about yet.

JoeBuckRodgers:  Oh, cool.  Thanks.

Veteran:  No problem.  If you have any questions after that, go ahead and ask.  There are some good guides we can point you to on mining as well.  Fly safe.

JorgeJetson:  Is this the Help channel?  I've got a question.

Veteran:  Yes, Jorge.  Go ahead and ask.

JorgeJetson:  How do I mine...?

JorgeJetson:  Anybody there?  I've got a question.

Veteran:  Jorge, scroll up, I just answered that for JBR.

JorgeJetson:  Is this the Help channel?  How do I mine?

Oh, if only that were not so true I might laugh about it...

AgtSmith

Originally posted by negentropy

Originally posted by elocke

 

 

Age of Conan, worst chat ever.

Followed by Darkfall Online.

Followed by Warhammer Online.

hmm, notice the trend here? PVP centric games....

Yes, PvP-centric games seem to be cesspools for social misfits, don't they.

Agree on AoC - agree on it being par for the PvP centric MMO course, seemingly.  I used to dig PvP back in SWG way back when, but anymore it seems MMO PvP is just about a bunch of l33t kiddies who want their level and gear to ensure they can trash talk without any real skill (such being the case in MMOs where so much is about level/gear and less about player actions).

Qazz

Originally posted by Comnitus

Originally posted by Qazz

EVE.  There are far  too many EVE that have no tolerance for new players.  CCP is trying to change this, but they are getting ripped for being 'carebears'.  You even sneeze next to the wrong asteroid, you and your corporation are toast.  The game is fantastic, but it breeds the kind of player that would burn down your house and laugh at your screaming children.

First part (red) - nope.

Middle part (yellow) - possible.

Last part (green) - yup.

Your first response (orange) - Uh, yep. I said TOO MANY, I didn't say ALL. 

Your second response (lavendar) - agreed.

Last part (teal) - agreed.

negentropy

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Originally posted by negentropy

 

And you, sir, are the exact reason people don't like the Eve community (if you can call it that).

If a person puts in the least bit of effort in EVE, they will find more people than they could dream of that are willing to help them.

If they are lazy, stupid, do not give a rat's ass... well, how exactly is that a loss to the EVE community if they leave?

Everything that I said, was helpful.  Have a question that can be answered by the tutorials?  Do the tutorials.  Have a questiont hat can be answered by looking at the market?  Look at the market.  Suggesting that folks spend their spare time watching what is being said in Help is a bad thing?  Not sure how to do something that can be done by right-clicking?  Try right-clicking.  Asking something that somebody has taken a lot of time to write out a guide for to answer?  Check out the guide.  Have something else not answered by any of that?  Ask away...

So...where exactly is that not helpful?

Do you see how you and others that complain about the EVE community...uh...look?

Go play WoW...

You know, if you see something in chat that is too "noob" for you, where in the rule book does is say you MUST respond to that person? If it bothers you that much, why don't you just STFU and go play the game instead of making yourself out to be a caustic little jerk to the rest of the players?

No one is forcing you to respond. That's all on you. Don't try and claim other players make your gameplay unpleasant. It's more likely YOU are making other people's gameplay unpleasant.

Kuatosune

Originally posted by Rohn

Darkfall has them all beat by a mile.  Really terrible community, both in-game, and in the forums.

 

You ain't kiddin there heh

junzo316

Originally posted by VirusDancer

I was not arguing that CoH never had a community nor that PvE games never had a community.  Heck, I did beta with CoH - preordered from CUSA - and enjoyed the game until they deployed /boombox and suddenly the game became about standing around and dancing instead of doing anything.  I figured that would wear off, and it did.  CoH is one of the games in my rotation that I generally sub to for a month or two each year.

It was more a case of stating that as game's stand today, there is very little community in PvE games - none in some.  There may be cliques running around, but that is not community.

Also, but not to put too fine a point on it... but you do realize what you have said about yourself with your statements and what you have quoted that I said...eh?

My prejudice?  My prejudice was that PvP games have bad communities, PvE games have no communities, P2P games have players that do not want to be bothered by anybody else (which translates into PvP games having bad communities and PvE games having no communities), and F2P games have communities one probably does not want to be bothered with...

The only prejudice there might be with the Fool2Play games...but generally speaking, aside from games that converted from P2P to F2P... F2P games tend to attract pretty bad communities.

You just contradicted yourself.  I believe PvE games (some not all) have pretty good communities. 

f1seb

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Originally posted by Zarcob

Originally posted by negentropy

Eve Online.

Sadly I will have to agree.  I've probably asked more than my share of stupid questions in games but I've never gotten anywhere near the acidic responses I have from Eve, or seen the same responses for others.  The smallest things usually get the average newbie lambasted with a generous helping of "go back to WoW" retorts as the nicest responses.  I'm also no stranger to reading nerd rage after getting ganked, but I typically expect that type of childish arguing in an FPS title or on XBox live, it's destructive to read so much of the vitrol in public channels.

 

I'm fairly sure anyone left in the game that isn't a total a** long ago stopped reading local chat in favor of just scanning it for pirates.  That, or they carefully avoid the newbie regions - and apparently for good reason.

Hrmm, I lost patience answering stupid questions in EVE years ago.  I lost patience wth other people answering stupid questions in EVE not long after that.

Perhaps it is because of how the game was when I started.  You could not make the craptastic character I had when I started if you tried now.  You did not land on gates while warping.  Things were slower.  Perhaps with that, I had more time and I put that time to good use.  I read through descriptions in the market (descriptions that are better now).  I paid attention in Rookie Help for those first 30 days that I was in there to what other people were asking so I did not ask the same questions.  When I got into regular Help, I did the same thing.  I tried to figure out things on my own.  I put in some effort.

There were not the tutorials they have today - not the great beginning experience that CCP offers compared to so many other games.

So yeah, when somebody asks a question that would have been answered had they done the tutorials - they are going to be asked if they did the tutorials.  They will say no.  They will be told to go do them - becasue so many of their questions will be answered there.  If they ask a question that could be answered by looking at the market and doing a little reading, they will be told to do so - cause knowledge is power.

EVE is not some cupcake game where you should expect everything to be handed to you.  Players offer a lot of help, and a lot of new people bitch about that help - cause it is not being handed to them on a silver platter.  The number of players that ask how to do something - that are asked if they have right clicked - and they say no... you know?  Screw them, if they are going to put in zero effort - literally, screw them - let them go back to WoW - go play Maple Story - or just sit in front of the TV to watch Spongebob - cause EVE is going to be too hard for them.

There are plenty of questions that are not answered by the tutorials, the market, etc... and for many of them, guess what - somebody has put a guide out there somewhere - so they will be directed to that guide.  The players you want to stay in the game say thanks and go read it - when somebody else asks - they direct them to the same guide.

The players that cry about it...screw them....

Oh I got one question for yah! Are you tired also of the noobie bashing or do you think you will never get tired of that like most of the elitists in that game?

A1x2e3l

What quantitative “parameters” and “units” are you using for communities comparison? I guess the judgment is very subjective, emotional and could be based just on few nasty episodes. I left a couple of games because of “bad” communities but in the reality that was one or two players. However, that was enough for me: I value my free time. But is that sufficient to designate an in-game/game forum community as a bad one? I dont think so.

Unknown

Originally posted by girlgeek

Originally posted by negentropy

Originally posted by elocke

 

 

Age of Conan, worst chat ever.

Followed by Darkfall Online.

Followed by Warhammer Online.

hmm, notice the trend here? PVP centric games....

Yes, PvP-centric games seem to be cesspools for social misfits, don't they.

 

I concur.

You are just not familiar with their modes of communication.  PvP centric people socialize by humping your face.  Kind of like how dogs smell each others asses ...

pauly6478

Porn talk bad hmm this is interesting.  I find the worst part of GW chat is all the horrble sins talking badly about all the other horrible sins

Atak

all the pve centric games like lotro, etc. Carebear's paradise.

negentropy

Originally posted by gestalt11

You are just not familiar with their modes of communication.  PvP centric people socialize by humping your face.  Kind of like how dogs smell each others asses ...

Can I have permission to use this as my signature? ;-)

EDIT: Dogs also learn about the strengths and weaknesses of other dogs my smelling and eating their poop. I wonder if that's how Eve and Darkfall players figure out who to pwn. 

VirusDancer

Originally posted by negentropy

 

You know, if you see something in chat that is too "noob" for you, where in the rule book does is say you MUST respond to that person? If it bothers you that much, why don't you just STFU and go play the game instead of making yourself out to be a caustic little jerk to the rest of the players?

No one is forcing you to respond. That's all on you. Don't try and claim other players make your gameplay unpleasant. It's more likely YOU are making other people's gameplay unpleasant.

Lol, you are too funny.  Ignore the fact the the people are being helped, that folks are trying to help them - that they are being caustic lil' retards in return; and instead run to their defense?  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense....not.

Seriously, it is too funny.  All the people defending the person that does not want to do anything on their own, all the people defending the person that wants to be told everything even with the answers right there in front of them, and all the people defending that person from the mean ol' elitist person that tried to help them...

...go play WoW.  Stay under the covers, whatever...  cause life is too hard for you.

negentropy

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Originally posted by negentropy

 

You know, if you see something in chat that is too "noob" for you, where in the rule book does is say you MUST respond to that person? If it bothers you that much, why don't you just STFU and go play the game instead of making yourself out to be a caustic little jerk to the rest of the players?

No one is forcing you to respond. That's all on you. Don't try and claim other players make your gameplay unpleasant. It's more likely YOU are making other people's gameplay unpleasant.

Lol, you are too funny.  Ignore the fact the the people are being helped, that folks are trying to help them - that they are being caustic lil' retards in return; and instead run to their defense?  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense....not.

Seriously, it is too funny.  All the people defending the person that does not want to do anything on their own, all the people defending the person that wants to be told everything even with the answers right there in front of them, and all the people defending that person from the mean ol' elitist person that tried to help them...

...go play WoW.  Stay under the covers, whatever...  cause life is too hard for you.

Oh, damn! I should have known. Your profile picture should have given it away.

I'm troll-bait! I can't believe I fell for it twice this week.

 

Kordesh

Darkfall followed by Eve.

I would say Eve straight out, but they have the "best/worst" community. They have some legitimately good and helpful people, beyond what you see in most games, but the vast majority are beyond the term "fanboy" and straight into "cultist". That same group pretty much garners their enjoyment from the game purely by how much grief they can cause others (which is different than PvP!) and when the core motivating force in a game is to be as deliberately obnoxious as possible, yeah, not the best community there.

Darkfall however is just packed to the rafters with glorious manchildren leading the major clans and your usual jackbags who run around griefing newbie towns and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

VirusDancer

Originally posted by A1x2e3l

What quantitative “parameters” and “units” are you using for communities comparison? I guess the judgment is very subjective, emotional and could be based just on few nasty episodes. I left a couple of games because of “bad” communities but in the reality that was one or two players. However, that was enough for me: I value my free time. But is that sufficient to designate an in-game/game forum community as a bad one? I dont think so.

Tsk, tsk - trying to bring logic into this discussion?  You are not going to get anybody to qualitate their terms in any fashion, because it would show the weakness of their arguments.  People are not interested that sort of thing for the most part (from those that post as opposed to those that may not bother posting because they know there is no point).  I like people to think about what they are saying... it generally does not work.

Yep, a single person could create a bad experience for somebody - yet again, that one person does not the whole community make.  Somebody may not have people flocking to them, and thus they may think one thing.  It goes on and on.  Many simply have different ideas of what a community might be...

VirusDancer

Originally posted by negentropy

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Originally posted by negentropy

 

You know, if you see something in chat that is too "noob" for you, where in the rule book does is say you MUST respond to that person? If it bothers you that much, why don't you just STFU and go play the game instead of making yourself out to be a caustic little jerk to the rest of the players?

No one is forcing you to respond. That's all on you. Don't try and claim other players make your gameplay unpleasant. It's more likely YOU are making other people's gameplay unpleasant.

Lol, you are too funny.  Ignore the fact the the people are being helped, that folks are trying to help them - that they are being caustic lil' retards in return; and instead run to their defense?  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense....not.

Seriously, it is too funny.  All the people defending the person that does not want to do anything on their own, all the people defending the person that wants to be told everything even with the answers right there in front of them, and all the people defending that person from the mean ol' elitist person that tried to help them...

...go play WoW.  Stay under the covers, whatever...  cause life is too hard for you.

Oh, damn! I should have known. Your profile picture should have given it away.

I'm troll-bait! I can't believe I fell for it twice this week.

 

See Tarka...wherever you might be... like I said, about the avatar - yep, when they have nothing intelligent to say, the fanbois will go with the avatar.

someforumguy

Global chat channels attracts loud idiots, no matter what game.

Help channel in Fallen Earth is an example on how idiots can be effectively muted.

VirusDancer

Originally posted by junzo316

Originally posted by VirusDancer

I was not arguing that CoH never had a community nor that PvE games never had a community.  Heck, I did beta with CoH - preordered from CUSA - and enjoyed the game until they deployed /boombox and suddenly the game became about standing around and dancing instead of doing anything.  I figured that would wear off, and it did.  CoH is one of the games in my rotation that I generally sub to for a month or two each year.

It was more a case of stating that as game's stand today, there is very little community in PvE games - none in some.  There may be cliques running around, but that is not community.

Also, but not to put too fine a point on it... but you do realize what you have said about yourself with your statements and what you have quoted that I said...eh?

My prejudice?  My prejudice was that PvP games have bad communities, PvE games have no communities, P2P games have players that do not want to be bothered by anybody else (which translates into PvP games having bad communities and PvE games having no communities), and F2P games have communities one probably does not want to be bothered with...

The only prejudice there might be with the Fool2Play games...but generally speaking, aside from games that converted from P2P to F2P... F2P games tend to attract pretty bad communities.

You just contradicted yourself.  I believe PvE games (some not all) have pretty good communities. 

How exactly are the two items a contradiction?

First - historically, they did.  Second - currently, they do not.

It is just a sad statement on how the subscription base has shifted...

kakasaki

Oh, hands-down, Darkfall has the worst community I've ever experienced. Word of advice, stay far, FAR away...

Emeraq

What constitutes a bad community? 

Insane chat channels?   Someone mentioned Guild Wars, and spam..... Really, the spam? What are you doing standing around Lions Arch or Ascalon in the first place, play the darn game.

 

Lack of parties/help?  This one I can understand, if no one is willing to offer advice, or actual help completing tasks when it's needed, I'd likely go play something else too.

VirusDancer

Originally posted by Emeraq

What constitutes a bad community? 

Insane chat channels?   Someone mentioned Guild Wars, and spam..... Really, the spam? What are you doing standing around Lions Arch or Ascalon in the first place, play the darn game.

 Lack of parties/help?  This one I can understand, if no one is willing to offer advice, or actual help completing tasks when it's needed, I'd likely go play something else too.

Yes, insane chat channels can definitely be a problem in a game.  If you feel like you have walked in on a tween circlejerk, you might be offended.  If you find that you are filling up your ignore list pretty quick, things are not going to bode well for you.  Yet would that be the only facet of community?

Now getting into lack of parties/help, would this mainly be in the case of games with forced partying to complete certain tasks?  Would this actually fall into the failure of the community or the failure of the designers/developers?

There are games where there are groups of people that are passionate about the game, they create guides to help folks out, they write tutorials on the forums, and they try to work toward the game world being a better place.

There will be a lot of sub-communities in games - guilds, corporations, etc.  Somebody that gets into one of those, may develop the opinion that the game has a great community.  Somebody that does, may find that the game has a horrible community...yet, it is the same game.

The OP of this thread wanted to exclude WoW in the discussion... look at elitistjerks, all the stickies in the forums, etc - WoW actually has one of the better communities out there in that sense, no?

So much comes down to what a person considers to be a good community... and how much of it is a case of somebody just wanting to troll some hate on a game they may have had a bad experience with at some point.

Pynda

I suppose chance can effect a lot of this, and of course your own personal preferences do as well. But I'll give you my impressions of the communities in the MMORPGs that I've played.

AC1 - The best by a long shot. Lots of very smart, dedicated people, and lots of friendly people too. I don't think that internet assholism had quite come of age yet back then. I got involved with a great guild in AC, and also got hooked on MMORPGs for the rest of my life here.

DAoC - No opinion, didn't play long enough.

Anarchy Online - Pretty good community, although I came to the game well after launch. I remember people helping me out several times, forgiving me once when as a newb I accidentally attacked some player towers (they could have cut me down in an instant), and I don't have a single recollection of any truly bad behavior by the players - although there must have been some. I think if I were to draw the line between 'Old School' and 'New School' players, it would be here after AO.

Pre-CU SWG - The depth of play that SWG involved probably brought back a lot of the old school players. But I also got a taste of the future here too.

<An Old School Player Kills You> /tell "Good fight man, here are the coords to your body. Etc.."

<A Roving Zerg of New School Players Ganks You in SWG> /tell "we wtf pwned u dood cuz ur soo lame. Etc.."

But anyway, I still do think that the community in Pre-CU SWG was overall a far better than average one. And that thankfully lots of the new school'ers are good folk too.

WoW - Surprisingly perhaps, I'm not all down on this community - although I did only play one character to max level immediately after the release (the repetitive raid grind eventually bored me in WoW). Lots of "Uberwang spits on you" emotes and seeing what is to me just plain harassment of female(?) characters. But no real problems or cause for praise either. Just a good, active, 'average' community doing its thing.

CoH - No Opinion. Played a little in beta, and accordingly the released game is still in its shrink wrap somewhere around here.

EVE - I agree with some of the previous posters. This community rates way above average on my 'smart' player meter, above average on my 'involved' meter, and a little less than average on my 'empathy' meter. But that last observation is probably related more to the game design itself than to anything else.

Vanguard - Slightly better than WoW (I also played VG only at release). Not much else to say.

WAR - Okay, this game is my personal 'Worst Community' candidate. A huge proportion of the player base in WAR seemed almost entirely self involved to me (for example the chat channels were almost barren of conversation). And because the game was supposedly going to be PvP centric, I also made the poor decision to become a member of an 'Elite' guild. What a mistake that was. I've never seen so many teenage Napoleons strutting their stuff, or endless backstabbing and drama in my gaming life. So lesson learned - never again will I join any guild whose stated goals are anything other than having fun and good fellowship - Everyone Welcome.

Thebozz

I got to agree with virus on this one.  If people are asking questions and they are being pointed to where they can get the answers they are looking for and many more, that should be enough.  It saves them from asking more questions or asking to be talked through the whole process.  Now I have never played EvE, but just saying if the resources are out there and newbs are being pointed to where to find the answers, that is a perfectly reasonable response.  Now if the person goes and checks the site or tutorial or whatever and still has a question then yes someone, I would guess, would answer.

I heard someone say you don't have to answer earlier.  While this is true if no one took the time to answer, then newbs would really have a reason to complain about a community not being helpful.  What people have to realize is that those people you are expecting to answer your questions are trying to play a game as well.  If they know there is a place for you to get your question answered and many other questions answered, they are going to point you there.  It saves them and others from having to answer your next 15 questions.  This lets them actually play the game they are trying to play.

Personally I have played quite a few MMOs and the game where the community as a whole annoyed me the most was WAR.  Not saying it was horrible, I just found myself getting annoyed with it.  I think it is because I don't really like global chat, and most of the other games that I played didn't really have global chat.  I also did not like constantly having to add new gold seller spammers to my /ignore list.

What I dislike most about games is when a player just stands in town and asks for handouts.  It is particularly annoying when you are ignoring them and not answering, but happen to run by them so they send you a tell.  "Can I have some gold".  I usually follow this by telling them how they can make gold on their own.  Then they say "Can I have some gold".  So I say just go kill stuff you will get gold.  Then they complain about me not being helpful till I add them to my /ignore list.

Orthelian

The worst in my experience was the community of Shadowbane. I like to refer to it as Shadow/b/ane.

The best, for me, has been EVE's. Whilst often overly defensive of the game itself, I've always found the community the most intelligent, mature, and able to discuss any topic, low brow or high, without the thread or channel regressing to under a sixth-grade level, unless it started that way.

Runner up for the best would be Lord of the Rings Online, although it is extremely quick to cringe and curl into a corner at the sight of a topic of conversation that's anything other than completely G-rated.