Sadly, I'm at a state of my own opinion; where I think it's nigh-impossible to clean up the community unless months are focused on that specific topic. There are far too many players spread out, hidden, and sleeping. If they were to try to implement a robotic-like ban system, then the same thing will happen as in Runescape; People getting banned or such from rather odd offences, and like RS, the Forums will be used to vent the players anger.
Even if they somehow manage to clean up many parts of the community, the amount of players banned will render some servers even worse. The Alliance on my Battlegroup (Shadowburn US) are outnumbered greatly (With horde members going alli that I've befriended proving it.) If they were banned, our fighting could lessen a bit but we'd be lucky to get an instant 15 players in a BG. I've been in one where Alliance only had 9 against 15 horde players throughout the short game.
I'd go on with my own comments, but I don't wish to be an eyesore to many people so I'll pause here for now.
They should clean it up you are right. 2 problems here though.
1 you posted this here and not on blizzard forums. Granted you get the same trash posting there but I highly doubt blizzard looks at this site or cares whats posted here.
2 its been this way a long time. Getting progressivly worse but its been there. Blizzard has proven over the last year or 2 that they really dont care so long as they get there money.
They should clean it up you are right. 2 problems here though.
1 you posted this here and not on blizzard forums. Granted you get the same trash posting there but I highly doubt blizzard looks at this site or cares whats posted here.
2 its been this way a long time. Getting progressivly worse but its been there. Blizzard has proven over the last year or 2 that they really dont care so long as they get there money.
But this IS a gaming site with forums about GAMES. A subscriber to this site is free to post discussion in appointed forums.
As far as Blizzard not caring...it seems that since the Activision merger they don't care. I'll find a nice quote from the CEO of ActiBlizz: Here's one:
(Activision knows it has a 'hot' game, knows that the market will pay an additional 10 per cent, and has decided to increase price accordingly.)
Another: (Adding gasoline to the fire was a recent comment by Activision Blizzard CEO. During an earnings call last week, Kotick said: "You know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further."
Mr. Kotick made a 15 MILLION dollar salary last year.
So...you might be correct about them not caring....
Ignoring the problem isn't the answer.. I remember my early days in EQ1 and SWG.. If you had people in public chat abusing it......... POOF.. They were silenced quickly.. Rather it's Blizzard or any other gaming company, if you have people exploiting chat filters, or deliberatly dancing on topics that are taboo.. Make an example of them.. It's just that simple.. I have seen topics that talk about physicaly taking care of people that are gay, or this , or that.. I have seen TOS violated hundreds of times in the recent years, especialy on WoW, and nothing happens.. The GM tell you to put the person on ignore or leave chat channel if it bothers you.. I shouldn't have to.. I may have adult filters on, and people still find ways to "exploit" the filters to continue to express their vulgarity.. I have a simple solution.. It's called make an example of them.. Have GM surf the public channels, if you see people typing, "Su. x my Kawk" in general chat.. They know damn well what they are doing.. GM should immedicatly suspend that user, and put a public announcement in RED text that person is suspend and conduct like that is not permitted... I guarantee you.. You do that enough times and the community will get the HINT very fast and hard..
Ignoring the problem isn't the answer.. I remember my early days in EQ1 and SWG.. If you had people in public chat abusing it......... POOF.. They were silenced quickly.. Rather it's Blizzard or any other gaming company, if you have people exploiting chat filters, or deliberatly dancing on topics that are taboo.. Make an example of them.. It's just that simple.. I have seen topics that talk about physicaly taking care of people that are gay, or this , or that.. I have seen TOS violated hundreds of times in the recent years, especialy on WoW, and nothing happens.. The GM tell you to put the person on ignore or leave chat channel if it bothers you.. I shouldn't have to.. I may have adult filters on, and people still find ways to "exploit" the filters to continue to express their vulgarity.. I have a simple solution.. It's called make an example of them.. Have GM surf the public channels, if you see people typing, "Su. x my Kawk" in general chat.. They know damn well what they are doing.. GM should immedicatly suspend that user, and put a public announcement in RED text that person is suspend and conduct like that is not permitted... I guarantee you.. You do that enough times and the community will get the HINT very fast and hard..
I dunno what GMs you have been talking to, but I know ppl who have been banned for racial comments and I have reported someone for doing so and the GM logged the complaint and said it would be dealt with and never told me to ignore it.
This issue however is not rampant on the EU servers it seems I have only really seen this happen like once or twice over a 4 year period, kids throwing random insults lol really?! you get offended by that in a game maybe your over sensitive its still unwanted behaviour and you should report it and ignore the person I mean cmon do you like in the 17th century or something.
Do you really feel traumatized when someone rages in a BG and calls you a retard or something a random guy you dont care about, I just get on with it and dont really give a shit lol or turn off chat.
As much as I hate the discriminatory rhetoric, why don't you just turn off the channel or put the player on ignore? Seriously? If someone wants to be a jerk, is it really your job to police them? or Blizzards? Jerks are ubiquitous. You already have tools to disable them so you don't have to listen to their rants.
I've thought that much of the WoW community consists of kids whose parents have the account on their credit card and don't even notice the auto-pay every month. It surprising how many people don't even want to look at their credit card statements. As long as the brats are home and they're not burning the house down, most of these parents don't care.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II "People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I find it really sad that for all these 6 years, Blizzard has not done one bit to keep out those who damage the game with their flithy mouths and rude behaviour. I think Blizzard secretly prefer to keep the scummy players so they can earn more money.
This is why I don't play this dam game anymore, with these sorts of people about it means you can't make friends with anybody, this just makes me sad.
A few months ago I decided to go back to WOW to see what the game was like now . I was pretty shocked at the amount of racism , homophobia ,anti-semitism and anti muslim sentiment i saw . Which is whats made me want to post this thread because I believe Blizzard should be doing a better job of policing its game . I did tackle a guy who in a battleground was calling everyone jewbags and stinking jews because we were losing . He really did'nt seem to realise what he was doing was wrong . The thing is it may be a faliure of society but Blizzard does have a policey where is says they will not tolerate this kind of behaviour and you only have to be in the game a short time to realise they arn't enforcing this to the proper extent . If the were it would'nt be as rife as it is now . I would suggest a three strikes and your out policey would be a good idea and instead of banning accounts the banning of ip addresses may be a good idea . This would'nt stop it but it would help . Now I'm not the most politcally correct of people but an online game community that attracts children should'nt be like this and Blizzard really do need to clean up its act . I'm sure responsible parents if they saw what went on in this game would be disgusted . Perhaps Blizzard only care about the bottom line but quite frankly thats very irresponsible of them and should it continue it will come back to bite them eventually .Of course this applys to any online game but it seams to be a lot lot worse in Warcraft at the moment than any other mmo that I've played .
DUDE! Why whine about it on MMORPG.com Trust me, Blizzard isn't surfing these forums and reading about your rants.
What you need to do when you see that type of garbage going on in game is get everyone in your BG to report the person. All it takes is five or more people reporting on someone in a 10 man BG and "poof" the problem child normally disappears! If you want to clean up that community, use your report tool! That is what it is there for. Whining about it on MMORPG.com won't fix anything. Trust me, I know, I tried with regards to AoC.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
As i play many different mmos depending on how im feeling that day, i dont agree totally. I think blizzard has just given up becuase its a never ending cycle, just the other day i saw 2 blatant deregards for fellow gamers in the names of their characters both were lvl 80 ( and niether were DK's) which means there were named that for quite some time... the names were (brace yourselves) Hitler and Heyniggers. i mean really if there was any way to track these 2 down i would have done so and then been on trial.
However there are games out there where they do police this kind of stuff and retribution is swift and just. i know becuase i dropped the f bomb once and within 2 min i was speaking to a GM about my languange. The games are DDO and LOTRO and both are actually quite good games even though they are f2p now.
As i play many different mmos depending on how im feeling that day, i dont agree totally. I think blizzard has just given up becuase its a never ending cycle, just the other day i saw 2 blatant deregards for fellow gamers in the names of their characters both were lvl 80 ( and niether were DK's) which means there were named that for quite some time... the names were (brace yourselves) Hitler and Heyniggers. i mean really if there was any way to track these 2 down i would have done so and then been on trial.
However there are games out there where they do police this kind of stuff and retribution is swift and just. i know becuase i dropped the f bomb once and within 2 min i was speaking to a GM about my languange. The games are DDO and LOTRO and both are actually quite good games even though they are f2p now.
Wyrm, with all do respect, I have to disagree. In WoW, all you have to do is pay $10 for a name change. As such, just because you see an 80 with an offensive name, that doesn't mean they went from 1-80 with said name. If you find someone with an offensive name, add them to your friends list, report the name. You'll notice in a few days that offensive name is gone off your friends list. Saying that, Blizzard will never tell you they changed someone's name, they have to protect the privacy of all their customers.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
This was the company that was happy to leave botters, hackers, underground miners, power levellers free to roam on the servers because it boosted subs and sub numbers, with removal coming when most had re-subscribed. I can't see them wanting to ban the influx of ADHD players that WotLK saw because that would hurt their bottom line.
My server used to have a great community, especially amongst the guilds, from Vanilla through TBC to early WotLK. This was pretty much destroyed by the name change, faction change, server change, anonymous dungeon running, easy content, ffa gear from badges - in other words Blizz removed the very things that allowed the community to police itself. Want to be a douchebag? No worries, if your guild complains, change guilds and carry on raiding/pvping as normal. Or don't even bother with a guild, just ninja anything you fancy and if it by chance does start to harm your reputation, pay ActiBlizz some money and get off scot free.
To clean up the community would be to put the emphasis back on social play that has actual in-game consequences.
I agree, the community is pretty bad, they need to do a better job at cleaning the filth.
I had way more problems in EQ1, now that was a bad community! Every mob was contested and you should have heard the 15 year olds cursing everyone out who got in the way of their achievement at any cost of Uber status.
I agree, the community is pretty bad, they need to do a better job at cleaning the filth.
I had way more problems in EQ1, now that was a bad community! Every mob was contested and you should have heard the 15 year olds cursing everyone out who got in the way of their achievement at any cost of Uber status.
Wah? EQ1 community was fantastic. Atleast back in the early days / pre Planes of Power. I very rarely remember there being many young kids at all playing. People checked camps, announced trains, were more then willing to help with questions.
The only server I remember that was full rage was Sullon Zek pvp. Wasn't so much that people were mean, it was just ruthless people but that was my main server and home
Revenue. That's what it's about. Blizzard was merged (purchased) by Activsion. Activision, a known platform gaming company has brought their target demographic with them. Now, instead of dedicated gamers and adults with steady income, the game is full of children. A large portion of which have no idea how to behave socially because they spend all their time online and not interacting with real people face to face. In doing so, they have become desensitized to how their rude comments affect others.
Stockholders and investors expect ActiBlizz to increase their returns by percentages quarter after quarter, year after year.
I'm sorry, but a company like ActiBlizz is NOT going to ban players; mostly children spending their parent's money.
With most companies, lean management probably dictates minimal customer service. Unless it's costing them money, I doubt (my humble opinion) the behavior of their playerbase has much of a priority. GONE are the days of a 10 min GM wait.
Sadly...one must turn off ALL or MOST chat channels in a game they pay to play. That is a HUGE pet peeve of mine, but it's how you must play the game unless you want to listen to juvenile "back of the schoolbus" banter.
In a side note I'd like to add, from my perspective, that Blizz is letting WoW rot from the inside out. Their playerbase and new owners will be their own downfall from the "top of the mmo heap". I myself left the game. I decided to not DEAL with uncontrolled kids. Especially when I paid to log into the mess. LOVED the game, LEFT the playerbase.
Amen, brother.
This is the reason I left as well. Enjoyed the game, but wanted to beat someone to death with their own grisly appendages, everytime I got exposed to the "community". WoW's player base is the cancer that will eventually kill them.
I totally agree that the WoW community is not good in any way. And I am talking about the EU community. I play on both English and German servers. Prefer to play on the German servers.
WoW has become a reflection of American society in general.....
Pretty much this. God I hate being American sometimes...
But it's not just Warcraft that gets asshats, it's all games. They're only getting more popular, and with more players comes more dumbasses. Warcraft isn't the worst though. Call of Duty has to have the worst community of people ever assembled. It really is filled to the brim with racist, homophobic, sexist 12 year olds.
Parents these days just need to sit down with their kids, and beat them.
I don't think they are bothered not when they made $113 million dollars in profits last year 2009. When a company makes that kind of money in profits I don't think they going to start cracking down on players and risk losing revenue. Like so many others things in this world the mighty dollar always comes first and people second.
It's also well documented that blizzard don't listen to their players anyhow, I could just imagine a few of them gathered around their own forums and having a good laugh on a friday afternoon whilst reading all the whiney complaints from hyped up kids with too much time on their hands that shout injustice at their screens.
But yes in an ideal world you are correct, unfortunately we dont live in one.
WoW has become a reflection of American society in general.....
Pretty much this. God I hate being American sometimes...
But it's not just Warcraft that gets asshats, it's all games. They're only getting more popular, and with more players comes more dumbasses. Warcraft isn't the worst though. Call of Duty has to have the worst community of people ever assembled. It really is filled to the brim with racist, homophobic, sexist 12 year olds.
Parents these days just need to sit down with their kids, and beat them.
I would have switched to the Latin American servers and struggled along in my bad spanish if Blizzard would have let me, just to get away from my fellow Americans.
I will pay $20 a month for an enforced Adults Only server or game rating, if a game company ever figures out how to really enforce it.
Any parent who doesn't want to sit down with their kids, and beat them, can pay me $20 to do it!
Oh, and parents, you slobbering morons, don't let your kids watch Southpark! (I happen to love Southpark, but I told my kid long ago that he can't watch it until he's old enough to know when that sort of humor is and is not appropriate. Hint: It almost never is, especially online!)
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
WoW has become a reflection of American society in general.....
Pretty much this. God I hate being American sometimes...
But it's not just Warcraft that gets asshats, it's all games. They're only getting more popular, and with more players comes more dumbasses. Warcraft isn't the worst though. Call of Duty has to have the worst community of people ever assembled. It really is filled to the brim with racist, homophobic, sexist 12 year olds.
Parents these days just need to sit down with their kids, and beat them.
I would have switched to the Latin American servers and struggled along in my bad spanish if Blizzard would have let me, just to get away from my fellow Americans.
I will pay $20 a month for an enforced Adults Only server or game rating, if a game company ever figures out how to really enforce it.
Any parent who doesn't want to sit down with their kids, and beat them, can pay me $20 to do it!
Oh, and parents, you slobbering morons, don't let your kids watch Southpark! (I happen to love Southpark, but I told my kid long ago that he can't watch it until he's old enough to know when that sort of humor is and is not appropriate. Hint: It almost never is, especially online!)
Unfortunately, it isn't *just* the kids that are wrecking the game. There are plenty of adults that are just as racist, homophobic and sexist. One of the bigger headaches running a guild in WoW is dealing with the people and their outright scary ideas of what is and is not acceptable behavior. At least I could rationalize some of the kids behavior (had a couple in my guild)...but some of the worst people I dealt with were well into their 30s (don't worry, plenty of 20-somethings have their issues too).
It's not like 90% of the players have issues. But when the population is 11 million, even 10% means more than a million of them pulling their stunts, poor behavior, or simple rudeness. The problems occur because the 9 well-behaved, quiet ones sit in the background while the 1 problem-child (figurative not literal) goes to town...and guess where your attention will go?
The same problems occur in real life. The difference is that we, as a society, decided to pay for a police force to keep the nonsense down a notch. As several others have pointed out, Blizzard has no such incentive...as long as the money rolls in, who cares how many people get hurt. Hmm, sounds a lot like the tobacco industry, doesn't it?
Comments
Sadly, I'm at a state of my own opinion; where I think it's nigh-impossible to clean up the community unless months are focused on that specific topic. There are far too many players spread out, hidden, and sleeping. If they were to try to implement a robotic-like ban system, then the same thing will happen as in Runescape; People getting banned or such from rather odd offences, and like RS, the Forums will be used to vent the players anger.
Even if they somehow manage to clean up many parts of the community, the amount of players banned will render some servers even worse. The Alliance on my Battlegroup (Shadowburn US) are outnumbered greatly (With horde members going alli that I've befriended proving it.) If they were banned, our fighting could lessen a bit but we'd be lucky to get an instant 15 players in a BG. I've been in one where Alliance only had 9 against 15 horde players throughout the short game.
I'd go on with my own comments, but I don't wish to be an eyesore to many people so I'll pause here for now.
They should clean it up you are right. 2 problems here though.
1 you posted this here and not on blizzard forums. Granted you get the same trash posting there but I highly doubt blizzard looks at this site or cares whats posted here.
2 its been this way a long time. Getting progressivly worse but its been there. Blizzard has proven over the last year or 2 that they really dont care so long as they get there money.
But this IS a gaming site with forums about GAMES. A subscriber to this site is free to post discussion in appointed forums.
As far as Blizzard not caring...it seems that since the Activision merger they don't care. I'll find a nice quote from the CEO of ActiBlizz: Here's one:
(Activision knows it has a 'hot' game, knows that the market will pay an additional 10 per cent, and has decided to increase price accordingly.)
Another: (Adding gasoline to the fire was a recent comment by Activision Blizzard CEO. During an earnings call last week, Kotick said: "You know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further."
Mr. Kotick made a 15 MILLION dollar salary last year.
So...you might be correct about them not caring....
Ignoring the problem isn't the answer.. I remember my early days in EQ1 and SWG.. If you had people in public chat abusing it......... POOF.. They were silenced quickly.. Rather it's Blizzard or any other gaming company, if you have people exploiting chat filters, or deliberatly dancing on topics that are taboo.. Make an example of them.. It's just that simple.. I have seen topics that talk about physicaly taking care of people that are gay, or this , or that.. I have seen TOS violated hundreds of times in the recent years, especialy on WoW, and nothing happens.. The GM tell you to put the person on ignore or leave chat channel if it bothers you.. I shouldn't have to.. I may have adult filters on, and people still find ways to "exploit" the filters to continue to express their vulgarity.. I have a simple solution.. It's called make an example of them.. Have GM surf the public channels, if you see people typing, "Su. x my Kawk" in general chat.. They know damn well what they are doing.. GM should immedicatly suspend that user, and put a public announcement in RED text that person is suspend and conduct like that is not permitted... I guarantee you.. You do that enough times and the community will get the HINT very fast and hard..
I dunno what GMs you have been talking to, but I know ppl who have been banned for racial comments and I have reported someone for doing so and the GM logged the complaint and said it would be dealt with and never told me to ignore it.
This issue however is not rampant on the EU servers it seems I have only really seen this happen like once or twice over a 4 year period, kids throwing random insults lol really?! you get offended by that in a game maybe your over sensitive its still unwanted behaviour and you should report it and ignore the person I mean cmon do you like in the 17th century or something.
Do you really feel traumatized when someone rages in a BG and calls you a retard or something a random guy you dont care about, I just get on with it and dont really give a shit lol or turn off chat.
Rav.. stay on topic.. I said "TOS" violations.. not general childish insults, as you are trying to do right now.. /ignore
If they cleaned up the WoW community, there'd only be a few dozen people per server left.
Part of why WoW is so successful is because it's so tolerant of immature behavior, so the masses of B.net kiddies feel right at home.
As much as I hate the discriminatory rhetoric, why don't you just turn off the channel or put the player on ignore? Seriously? If someone wants to be a jerk, is it really your job to police them? or Blizzards? Jerks are ubiquitous. You already have tools to disable them so you don't have to listen to their rants.
I've thought that much of the WoW community consists of kids whose parents have the account on their credit card and don't even notice the auto-pay every month. It surprising how many people don't even want to look at their credit card statements. As long as the brats are home and they're not burning the house down, most of these parents don't care.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
This is so true, not sure if this applies but recently this happened. - Enforing the Harassment Policy
I find it really sad that for all these 6 years, Blizzard has not done one bit to keep out those who damage the game with their flithy mouths and rude behaviour. I think Blizzard secretly prefer to keep the scummy players so they can earn more money.
This is why I don't play this dam game anymore, with these sorts of people about it means you can't make friends with anybody, this just makes me sad.
/ignore
DUDE! Why whine about it on MMORPG.com Trust me, Blizzard isn't surfing these forums and reading about your rants.
What you need to do when you see that type of garbage going on in game is get everyone in your BG to report the person. All it takes is five or more people reporting on someone in a 10 man BG and "poof" the problem child normally disappears! If you want to clean up that community, use your report tool! That is what it is there for. Whining about it on MMORPG.com won't fix anything. Trust me, I know, I tried with regards to AoC.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
As i play many different mmos depending on how im feeling that day, i dont agree totally. I think blizzard has just given up becuase its a never ending cycle, just the other day i saw 2 blatant deregards for fellow gamers in the names of their characters both were lvl 80 ( and niether were DK's) which means there were named that for quite some time... the names were (brace yourselves) Hitler and Heyniggers. i mean really if there was any way to track these 2 down i would have done so and then been on trial.
However there are games out there where they do police this kind of stuff and retribution is swift and just. i know becuase i dropped the f bomb once and within 2 min i was speaking to a GM about my languange. The games are DDO and LOTRO and both are actually quite good games even though they are f2p now.
Wyrm, with all do respect, I have to disagree. In WoW, all you have to do is pay $10 for a name change. As such, just because you see an 80 with an offensive name, that doesn't mean they went from 1-80 with said name. If you find someone with an offensive name, add them to your friends list, report the name. You'll notice in a few days that offensive name is gone off your friends list. Saying that, Blizzard will never tell you they changed someone's name, they have to protect the privacy of all their customers.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
This was the company that was happy to leave botters, hackers, underground miners, power levellers free to roam on the servers because it boosted subs and sub numbers, with removal coming when most had re-subscribed. I can't see them wanting to ban the influx of ADHD players that WotLK saw because that would hurt their bottom line.
My server used to have a great community, especially amongst the guilds, from Vanilla through TBC to early WotLK. This was pretty much destroyed by the name change, faction change, server change, anonymous dungeon running, easy content, ffa gear from badges - in other words Blizz removed the very things that allowed the community to police itself. Want to be a douchebag? No worries, if your guild complains, change guilds and carry on raiding/pvping as normal. Or don't even bother with a guild, just ninja anything you fancy and if it by chance does start to harm your reputation, pay ActiBlizz some money and get off scot free.
To clean up the community would be to put the emphasis back on social play that has actual in-game consequences.
I had way more problems in EQ1, now that was a bad community! Every mob was contested and you should have heard the 15 year olds cursing everyone out who got in the way of their achievement at any cost of Uber status.
WoW has become a reflection of American society in general.....
Wah? EQ1 community was fantastic. Atleast back in the early days / pre Planes of Power. I very rarely remember there being many young kids at all playing. People checked camps, announced trains, were more then willing to help with questions.
The only server I remember that was full rage was Sullon Zek pvp. Wasn't so much that people were mean, it was just ruthless people but that was my main server and home
Amen, brother.
This is the reason I left as well. Enjoyed the game, but wanted to beat someone to death with their own grisly appendages, everytime I got exposed to the "community". WoW's player base is the cancer that will eventually kill them.
/agree with the OP and most everyone else
I totally agree that the WoW community is not good in any way. And I am talking about the EU community. I play on both English and German servers. Prefer to play on the German servers.
Pretty much this. God I hate being American sometimes...
But it's not just Warcraft that gets asshats, it's all games. They're only getting more popular, and with more players comes more dumbasses. Warcraft isn't the worst though. Call of Duty has to have the worst community of people ever assembled. It really is filled to the brim with racist, homophobic, sexist 12 year olds.
Parents these days just need to sit down with their kids, and beat them.
Blizzard needs to clean up the community?
I don't think they are bothered not when they made $113 million dollars in profits last year 2009. When a company makes that kind of money in profits I don't think they going to start cracking down on players and risk losing revenue. Like so many others things in this world the mighty dollar always comes first and people second.
It's also well documented that blizzard don't listen to their players anyhow, I could just imagine a few of them gathered around their own forums and having a good laugh on a friday afternoon whilst reading all the whiney complaints from hyped up kids with too much time on their hands that shout injustice at their screens.
But yes in an ideal world you are correct, unfortunately we dont live in one.
I would have switched to the Latin American servers and struggled along in my bad spanish if Blizzard would have let me, just to get away from my fellow Americans.
I will pay $20 a month for an enforced Adults Only server or game rating, if a game company ever figures out how to really enforce it.
Any parent who doesn't want to sit down with their kids, and beat them, can pay me $20 to do it!
Oh, and parents, you slobbering morons, don't let your kids watch Southpark! (I happen to love Southpark, but I told my kid long ago that he can't watch it until he's old enough to know when that sort of humor is and is not appropriate. Hint: It almost never is, especially online!)
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
Unfortunately, it isn't *just* the kids that are wrecking the game. There are plenty of adults that are just as racist, homophobic and sexist. One of the bigger headaches running a guild in WoW is dealing with the people and their outright scary ideas of what is and is not acceptable behavior. At least I could rationalize some of the kids behavior (had a couple in my guild)...but some of the worst people I dealt with were well into their 30s (don't worry, plenty of 20-somethings have their issues too).
It's not like 90% of the players have issues. But when the population is 11 million, even 10% means more than a million of them pulling their stunts, poor behavior, or simple rudeness. The problems occur because the 9 well-behaved, quiet ones sit in the background while the 1 problem-child (figurative not literal) goes to town...and guess where your attention will go?
The same problems occur in real life. The difference is that we, as a society, decided to pay for a police force to keep the nonsense down a notch. As several others have pointed out, Blizzard has no such incentive...as long as the money rolls in, who cares how many people get hurt. Hmm, sounds a lot like the tobacco industry, doesn't it?