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IS this game on track to have the worst community ever? what can BW do to help this if so?
Vesavius
Member RarePosts: 7,908
What do I mean? well... look at it...
Hardcore ultra defensive BW/ SW fanbois on one side, taking offense at any percieved slight to 'their' game.
Shiny new game casuals attracted by the Star wars brand that are just there for the lulz and to pretty much troll their way through the experience before they quit at the end of the free play, on the other.
Mixed together in a 90% solo based experience, with very little interdependency or need to 'get on', and given a global chat channel to fight in....
What social tools/ mechanisms can BW introduce to help this potentiol situation?
Comments
Bioware, like many MMO deveolpers, will do absolutely nothing to moderate the community due to the possibility of losing out on some money. The best we can do is ignore them and create our own small, civil communities who actually enjoy playing games.
If the game doesn't fail...
It will have a lot of children playing it. Take that as you will.
They've already announced tokens for grouping, while it's hard to say how well this will work. It's obvious they want to bring players together, otherwise why would they add incentives in doing it?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
It will be the same as any other game community. Immature and mature players playing together the same game.
Nothing more, nothing less.
I think that the ingame community will already be a lot better than the forum community for 1 simple fact: you won't have themepark/SWTOR haters and only-sandbox lovers constantly trashing a game they don't even intend to play, with all kinds of sensationalist anti-themepark arguments like you see on forums like here
It's actually the sandbox /SWG vets and jaded, burntout WoW-style themepark haters that come up with all kinds of irrelevant or often completely nonsensical and illogical arguments that trigger debates into unconstructive polarized ones, they are the ones who keep following and posting on a game they don't even like enough to play, often even more than they post on games they do like to play. But that last one is maybe because there's hardly any MMO around that they do like to play, a lot of them aren't playing MMO's atm for nothing, so I give you that.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Pretty much this.
SW:TOR is not their type of game that they like. Like a toy, no one else should be able to play with it and every one should be as miserable as they are. So they declare it a failure before even trying it.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
{mod edit}
If the game is big, of course it will have a "bad community". But as with anything, the more people you add to something, the more asshattery pops out. I don't think for a second that "it's the game". GW has a lot of players, and there are idiots all over. I've ran into some jerks in other games, even lotro and other "Great community games". But the less exposed you are (Your guild of friends, guild raids, guild groups, RP server), the less likely you notice it.
If there are 3 million people in your game....You should expect that. If you have 50,000 people...Well, I doubt you'll see it nearly as much.
Not so much because "random sampling of people = random" but because, the people in such a small game are sold on that game and will fanboi protect it to death.
There really isn't much they can do, except heavily moderate the forums / in game chat. Would be nice if they did do that.
No, it's just these MMORPG forums in particular, especially when people LIE like this.
In Bioware we trust!
Yeah, much ado about nothing....
With some axe grinding thrown in.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Actually the official ToR Forums are a much nicer place than say Wow or League of Legends, although not on a par with tiny games. The only thing Bioware needs to do is NOT introduce cross realm grouping and they will be fine.
As a poster above said there are a lot of anti establishment people on MMORPG.com who will just hate on anything mainstream. Community will be fine, its not Biowares first experience managing a large community, NWN was 4 million strong at its peak
and the DA/ME forums are well moderated (a little heavy handedly but it generally keeps the place civil).
Just the idea alone that the vast majority of players will be running around as either Jedi or Sith, flexing with their lightsabers.... makes me already vommit.
No thanks. This game had great potential.... but having a server full of jedi's and sith's isn't exactly really Star Wars and immersive in my book.
The lore always clearly stated that there were only two sith's in the universe at one time. One master and one apprentice. Never more, never less.
That was always the lore and what made it so mysterious and great.
And now for this game George Lucas throw it all overboard and changed it to that long ago there suddenly were lots of Sith's and them even having their own world.
Doesn't make any sense to me and never will. The moment this game and it's classes were announced, a little star wars died in me.
So we don't even have to talk about a possible worst community. They already potentially created it by the design direction of this game.
Wait because there will be Jedi and Sith players, the community will be horrible?
As for dark side Jedi, and an empire surrounding it. It makes sense, at least this time around it's set at a time period where Jedi (both dark and light) being around at all makes sense.
I guess you also didn't read anything pertaining to the old republic era, the tales of the jedi comics back in the 90's or novels set in this time period, I mostly read post ROTJ novels myself as well.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
So what your saying is "I dont like the lore of the old republic Era so anyone that plays it will be a troll" wow.... fail argument is fail there mate.
PS in the Old republic Era sit aligned Jedi (called the Sith) were common, The sith lords came in pairs (multiple) the rule of two was established some time after this in the sith Golden age.
Apparently you don't know your lore as well as you think you do, I suggest looking up wiki info on the Sith and Star Wars Expanded Universe, which is btw sanctified by G Lucas & co as well and been canon for many many years.
You'll find that Sith hasn't been only 2 during the whole of SW history, in fact for a larger period of SW era there have been more than 2 Sith.
Perfectly fitting with SW canon as the canon has been for quite a lot of years.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Sorry, but you are wrong in your interpretation of the numbers of Sith and Jedi by a long shot. You might want to go and do a little research about WHY there were so few Jedi and Sith in the "Original Trilogy" and then start expanding outwards from there. Force Sensitive people are in the minority true, but they are by no means:
"The lore always clearly stated that there were only two sith's in the universe at one time. One master and one apprentice. Never more, never less."
I think you are going to find talk about all sorts of wars and such. Anyways, enjoy the reading, it really is pretty good stuff.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"
Do you even know the lore yourself for the time period in which the game is set?
Sith were an empire in the era of The Old Republic. It wasn't until much later that the sith became more reclusive ( to protect themself). They always have a master and an apprentice. As do most Jedi Knights...
Sounds like you only know the lore from I-VI ... which is only a small fraction of time approx 30-40 years.
Here's an idea to help fix community problems:
no automatic regional or global channels
What I mean is: build group-finding tools powerful enough that people actually want to use them; build an auction house useful enough people want to use it; and then don't bother with
1. Alderaan - General>
2. Alderaan - Trade>
3. Alderaan - LFG>
and so on. When such channels are present, there's always at least one somewhere that will devolve into barrens chat.
Well I guess I don't know much about that "old" era and for a good reason then.
I like the "new" era better, because both Sith and Jedi were close to extinction, giving a sense of mystery and drama.
The idea that practically everyone on the servers will be running around as either a Sith or a Jedi is an instant turn off for me.
It just turns it into a generic Light saber flexing fest. No thanks.
Server types.
There will be RP servers where all sane, mature and pleasant people will congregate.
Hopefully rp/pvp servers too.
As there is nothing quite like ganking sane, mature and pleasant people just to see how sane, mature and pleasant they really are.
My brand new bloggity blog.
According to many a poll, the class choices seem to be pretty spread out, not as off balanced as you'd think in an Jedi vs other class choice ratio.
I have no plans to be a jedi other than to see some class stories, my main will definitely be a smuggler. Even in KOTOR I use mods that allow me to play as a non jedi, I'm not big on being a Jedi myself.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Please do not call me a liar, unless you have evidenceof it.
What play systems/ design decisions do you see in place in this game that contrdicts anything I have said? are you arguing that this game isnt 90% solo?
I am not sure I buy this...
You are saying that instead of making steps to build play systems that create community the best thing to do is shut people off from communicating with each other as much as possible?
How does this helpme when I am forced into the 10% of the game that requires me to maybe recruit PUGs, like Flashpoints etc?
Maybe its just me, but personally I'll take overly defensive fanbois and casuals over people who only put forth a continuous and pointless litany of bitching about a game they have no intention of ever playing, any day of the week.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Well, for one I have clearly stated on these forums I intend on playing, if your talking about me.
But intending on playing dosent mean I can not take an objective and realistic view of the conseuences of the play systems they have in place.
I guess you think saying anything but crawl up it's arse perfect praise about SWtoR is 'bitching' though.
{mod edit}
Lol. I can tell you exactly what'll happen to those sane, mature and pleasant people on a RP PvP server because I've seen it happen before: drama
(some) roleplayers don't generally do well with the ganking/griefing mindset that hardcore PvP'ers have, so there's a huge level of irritation and annoyance although I think this is more frequent on FFA PvP roleplayer servers than faction PvP roleplay servers. Still, even with that heightened drama I had a blast of a time on the AoC RP PvP servers: drama, roleplay, player run server events, sieges, open world pvp, overall it was a blast
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."