But yeah I do understand where you are coming from, but like in real life, there are your ashats and then there are your helpful people, then there is everyone in between.
It is easy to quickly type something on the internet, video game, e-mail, forum, facebook, without giving it much thought, and that is what the edit button is for (if you are lucky enough to have one).
I have on many occassions posted in the heat of the moment and said things I regret or did not mean 100%, in which I later apologized or edited out.
On the other hand people do purposely post things in order to "Troll" "Make People Mad" or "generate controversy" and those people are the ones who tend to get the biggest reaction, so they think to themselves, (I got to keep doing this) to gain some kind of satisfaction out of it, whether it is "for the lols" "to make themselves feel better" or "for the attention".
Some people do like to generate controversy to get people engaged in a topic, but in my opinion most people who post or say things that are downright rude, hateful, or plain stupid do so purposely to fullfil some kind of void in their life.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
I agree with the OP. Personally, I did not run into his list of complaints until I started playing WOW. (Not blaming the game at all. I just didn't see the things he mentions until then.)
I never thought of how much the community helps with immersion until then. In UO and EQ, I took this for granted. Maybe I just got lucky? In the guilds I joined, the groups I was affiliated with were much tighter. Hell, even the occaisional random groups I picked up were friendlier.
I'm not exactly sure what changed. I can definitely relate to the "love 'em and leave 'em" mentality for grouping. That's all I seem to experience.
I have gone back to EQ recently, and the community is STILL friendly and helpful.
One could probably argue that, that is because the only people playing EQ now are the people who played it originally .
For the most part...but surprisingly there are a lot of people playing who have never played it too. just nto near the amount who have been playing forever.
Okay, maybe not "you people" specifically, meaning MMORPG.com members. Maybe not even the silent majority of game-players going about their day fulfilling their in-game objectives and interacting in their closed circle of players.
We subject ourselves to these communities rife with players who are jaded, expletive, retaliatory, childish, and a slew of other adjectives, and not only do we subject ourselves to them, but when we feel a game lacks enough of this community involvement - WE portray a number of those adjectives as well voicing our displeasure.
Whether they're incessantly babbling about WoW being the first MMO in the newest up and coming title or sending you 3 voice messages after a Gears of War 3 match to tell you how much skill you -don't- have because you used a sawed off shotgun to kill them, this kind of community is prevalent everywhere. Is this the kind of community we're complaining we need more of?
While combating this, we also have a predominent selfish tendancy in online gaming now. Even when being forced to be completely reliant on other players to accomplish certain tasks, a great majority of the community employs the "love'em and leave'em" strategy. Join the group, converse as little as possible, and leave as soon as you get the reward. How does this breed any kind of good community?
I'm not saying you have to be social, I'm not even saying you have to stick around for a few quests... but when you group it would be great to acknowledge that other players exist... maybe coordinate with them, or work as a team.
So at the end of the day, I don't want to play with you people. I want a community, but not if I'm stuck with players like you - random online gamer. You make me happy single player games still exist.
Am I alone in this?
no i flat out hate most gamers and i don't hate most people i interact with online or i meet in real life, spoiled entitled cry babies that all they do is complain about everything and they don't wanna put in a shred of work in game and want everything handed to them on a silver platter.
When i group i always try to start a conversation but most seem like they are in a rush.I have even tried to help some players who didn't understand how to make a macro and the rest of the group was yelling and threatening to leave,really pethetic people.They would rather wait till the healer lets them die then complain about the crappy healer instead of taking the time to make sure everything is on the good to go.
What i have noticed is my guess is about another 5-10% really do lieke to group or converse in social gaming,but when the games don't call for it ,nobody does it.
The big problem perhaps is this so called "We listen to feedback from our players" bull .The players that are happy grouping and playing are not going to give any feedback,why would they?So all the feedback is from the whiners that have a novel sized book full of excuses.....12 kids,no time to feed my goldfish ,the BEST one "I HAVE a REAL life",too much like work and not fun,yet they will run back n forth from npc to npc.Perhaps the biggst whining i hear is "TOO SLOW" everything is too slow,combat too slow,xp too slow,leveling too slow ,crafting too slow,travel is to oslow ect ect.
SO since the predominant whining is everything is too slow,you can see quite easily why they don't like to relax and have a conversation.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I agree with the OP. Personally, I did not run into his list of complaints until I started playing WOW. (Not blaming the game at all. I just didn't see the things he mentions until then.)
I never thought of how much the community helps with immersion until then. In UO and EQ, I took this for granted. Maybe I just got lucky? In the guilds I joined, the groups I was affiliated with were much tighter. Hell, even the occaisional random groups I picked up were friendlier.
I'm not exactly sure what changed. I can definitely relate to the "love 'em and leave 'em" mentality for grouping. That's all I seem to experience.
I have gone back to EQ recently, and the community is STILL friendly and helpful.
That is basically because EQ is from the 'pre-solo-centric' era of MMOs. This is also the root of the issue. In the early years of MMOs all games were group and community centric... meaning that you needed other players to get anywhere in the game. This prevailed in all aspects of game play from crafting, buying and selling to leveling, questing and character progression. This forced the communities of those games to adopt a more friendly and helpful atmosphere because although there were still a few asshats they usually didn't last very long as they found it very difficult to progress with a bad reputation. Friendly and helpful players found that this attitude made the whole game experience better as you could get groups easily and you always knew someone who could help when you needed a special item, piece of gear or help with a quest. Also without Auction houses players actually had to interact with one another to buy and sell. This affected the whole community and made it more unified.
Now you have mostly games you can play all the way to max level and beyond without the need to interact with another player for any reason. This makes most players think about themselves first and others become more of a hinderence than a possible boon. Why should I share my experience and loot when I can just as easily have it all for myself? This is the type of attitude that prevails in today's MMOs. Solocentric gameplay has killed the helpful communities we all knew and loved.
I agree with the OP. Personally, I did not run into his list of complaints until I started playing WOW. (Not blaming the game at all. I just didn't see the things he mentions until then.)
I never thought of how much the community helps with immersion until then. In UO and EQ, I took this for granted. Maybe I just got lucky? In the guilds I joined, the groups I was affiliated with were much tighter. Hell, even the occaisional random groups I picked up were friendlier.
I'm not exactly sure what changed. I can definitely relate to the "love 'em and leave 'em" mentality for grouping. That's all I seem to experience.
I have gone back to EQ recently, and the community is STILL friendly and helpful.
That is basically because EQ is from the 'pre-solo-centric' era of MMOs. This is also the root of the issue. In the early years of MMOs all games were group and community centric... meaning that you needed other players to get anywhere in the game. This prevailed in all aspects of game play from crafting, buying and selling to leveling, questing and character progression. This forced the communities of those games to adopt a more friendly and helpful atmosphere because although there were still a few asshats they usually didn't last very long as they found it very difficult to progress with a bad reputation. Friendly and helpful players found that this attitude made the whole game experience better as you could get groups easily and you always knew someone who could help when you needed a special item, piece of gear or help with a quest. Also without Auction houses players actually had to interact with one another to buy and sell. This affected the whole community and made it more unified.
Now you have mostly games you can play all the way to max level and beyond withount the need to interact with another player for any reason. This makes most players think about themselves first and others become more of a hinderence than a possible boon. Why should I share my experience and loot when I can just as easily have it all for myself? This is the type of attitude that prevails in today's MMOs. Solocentric gameplay has killed the helpful communities we all knew and loved.
Bren
TRUE TRUE TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And seriously sad. >:(
Okay, maybe not "you people" specifically, meaning MMORPG.com members. Maybe not even the silent majority of game-players going about their day fulfilling their in-game objectives and interacting in their closed circle of players.
We subject ourselves to these communities rife with players who are jaded, expletive, retaliatory, childish, and a slew of other adjectives, and not only do we subject ourselves to them, but when we feel a game lacks enough of this community involvement - WE portray a number of those adjectives as well voicing our displeasure.
Whether they're incessantly babbling about WoW being the first MMO in the newest up and coming title or sending you 3 voice messages after a Gears of War 3 match to tell you how much skill you -don't- have because you used a sawed off shotgun to kill them, this kind of community is prevalent everywhere. Is this the kind of community we're complaining we need more of?
While combating this, we also have a predominent selfish tendancy in online gaming now. Even when being forced to be completely reliant on other players to accomplish certain tasks, a great majority of the community employs the "love'em and leave'em" strategy. Join the group, converse as little as possible, and leave as soon as you get the reward. How does this breed any kind of good community?
I'm not saying you have to be social, I'm not even saying you have to stick around for a few quests... but when you group it would be great to acknowledge that other players exist... maybe coordinate with them, or work as a team.
So at the end of the day, I don't want to play with you people. I want a community, but not if I'm stuck with players like you - random online gamer. You make me happy single player games still exist.
Am I alone in this?
Hence the reason I have stayed with the same guild now for nearly 9 years, who have played various MMO's and still manage to find new ones that excite us.
Three attitudes that I feel are killing social gaming:
1.People think a game is going to come along and fix the problem or even help it. 2.Too many people start new mmos because they are bored. 3.Complaining an mmo has no soul (think about that for a min)
Get rid of these three mentalities and you will see a huge improvement to the social landscape.
Heres the thing though, sure, there are ways around dealing with people like I mention in the OP, but that has its own set of problems.
For example:
1) Turn off General / Region chat: I'm always hesitant to do this, as it makes me feel like I AM missing out on something, such as LFG messages. I still want to group and help people, and receive help, so I feel like I have to take the very bad, with the good.
2) Join a Guild: I do join guilds from time to time, but its tough finding a good one, with good people, who aren't sticklers about forcing vent or forcing raids, or... well.. forcing anything. I'm usually very active and helpful, but I don't like being forced into anything. I will join vent if I enjoy the conversations in guild chat.
3) Don't group: Well.. not really an option... I like to play online games for the competition and social aspects (even if I don't socialize all the time). I don't believe that MMOs HAVE to FORCE grouping, but I do feel like you miss out on a lot of you aren't a team player.
4) It shouldn't be this way: I shouldn't be forced to cut out parts of the game or community because the same 3 people want to be jerks in general chat, or the group you joined kicked you because they feel you don't do enough DPS. Those kind of people should be the ones segregated from others, not the helpful players forcing themselves to segregate so they don't have to deal with them.
Okay, maybe not "you people" specifically, meaning MMORPG.com members. Maybe not even the silent majority of game-players going about their day fulfilling their in-game objectives and interacting in their closed circle of players.
We subject ourselves to these communities rife with players who are jaded, expletive, retaliatory, childish, and a slew of other adjectives, and not only do we subject ourselves to them, but when we feel a game lacks enough of this community involvement - WE portray a number of those adjectives as well voicing our displeasure.
Whether they're incessantly babbling about WoW being the first MMO in the newest up and coming title or sending you 3 voice messages after a Gears of War 3 match to tell you how much skill you -don't- have because you used a sawed off shotgun to kill them, this kind of community is prevalent everywhere. Is this the kind of community we're complaining we need more of?
While combating this, we also have a predominent selfish tendancy in online gaming now. Even when being forced to be completely reliant on other players to accomplish certain tasks, a great majority of the community employs the "love'em and leave'em" strategy. Join the group, converse as little as possible, and leave as soon as you get the reward. How does this breed any kind of good community?
I'm not saying you have to be social, I'm not even saying you have to stick around for a few quests... but when you group it would be great to acknowledge that other players exist... maybe coordinate with them, or work as a team.
So at the end of the day, I don't want to play with you people. I want a community, but not if I'm stuck with players like you - random online gamer. You make me happy single player games still exist.
Am I alone in this?
Alone?
Aren't you one of the top offenders of your own critique?
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Aren't you one of the top offenders of your own critique?
In some peoples eyes I could be (I've been around here a long time). I definitely have opinions that I share here, some of which get heated and people sometimes lable me a fanboy or hater (even when arguing over the same game).
I have also been retaliatory more than a handful of times on the forums here, but I'm a rather docile animal in all, and always helpful in-game. I've never kicked anyone due to their DPS, or heals unless of course, they didn't at least work with the team, I've never sent anyone rude messages because they beat me in PvP (if I send them any message its to compliment them) and I definitely don't troll for the sake of trolling.
4) It shouldn't be this way: I shouldn't be forced to cut out parts of the game or community because the same 3 people want to be jerks in general chat, or the group you joined kicked you because they feel you don't do enough DPS. Those kind of people should be the ones segregated from others, not the helpful players forcing themselves to segregate so they don't have to deal with them.
What YOU think should or shouldn't be is not particularly important, is it? What market says is important. And the majority of players want fast, fast, fast paced content and not much communications; so developers give it to them. You've said for yourself that that's what the majority wants, only 5-7% are different.
So go play 10-years old games with small player bases and wonderful communities. You will not meet jerks like us there. And modern mmorpgs can't afford to not target the game to us, casual/no time/not looking for friends players.
4) It shouldn't be this way: I shouldn't be forced to cut out parts of the game or community because the same 3 people want to be jerks in general chat, or the group you joined kicked you because they feel you don't do enough DPS. Those kind of people should be the ones segregated from others, not the helpful players forcing themselves to segregate so they don't have to deal with them.
What YOU think should or shouldn't be is not particularly important, is it? What market says is important. And the majority of players want fast, fast, fast paced content and not much communications; so developers give it to them. You've said for yourself that that's what the majority wants, only 5-7% are different.
So go play 10-years old games with small player bases and wonderful communities. You will not meet jerks like us there. And modern mmorpgs can't afford to not target the game to us, casual/no time/not looking for friends players.
Or ... I can continue playing the games I want to play and just deal with the aforementioned jerks by utilizing the ignore feature, and the other functions I've mentioned above.
Lets not pretend that I don't have a job, or wife or other priorities, or even other games to play. Nor am I looking forward to making a slew of new friends when I play. All I'm looking for is a little courtesy, for people to drop the childish act. Either they take things too seriously, or they care too little to provide any lasting impression or appeal. Is it really fun to play like that?
Think about it next time you wig out on some guy for not putting out enough heals, or while you're verbally attacking them for killing you too many times, or saying something stupid in chat just to piss people off.
All I'm looking for is a little courtesy, for people to drop the childish act. Either they take things too seriously, or they care too little to provide any lasting impression or appeal. Is it really fun to play like that?
Think about it next time you wig out on some guy for not putting out enough heals, or while you're verbally attacking them for killing you too many times, or saying something stupid in chat just to piss people off.
I honestly care very little, I don't take games seriously at all. And yeah, it's fun for me.
I don't, however, do any of the things you've mentioned here. Why should I do that? I don't care if I'm dead - I know that a healer did the best he could, for example, so what if his best was not good enoug? So I died; big deal; we'll try again. I never get angry when killed in pvp, at all - the most I'll say is "that was a good one. gg, have a nice time". As for chat, ignore, indeed, is my friend; why, on this very forum half of threads consist of blocked messages, for me!
Okay, maybe not "you people" specifically, meaning MMORPG.com members. Maybe not even the silent majority of game-players going about their day fulfilling their in-game objectives and interacting in their closed circle of players.
We subject ourselves to these communities rife with players who are jaded, expletive, retaliatory, childish, and a slew of other adjectives, and not only do we subject ourselves to them, but when we feel a game lacks enough of this community involvement - WE portray a number of those adjectives as well voicing our displeasure.
Whether they're incessantly babbling about WoW being the first MMO in the newest up and coming title or sending you 3 voice messages after a Gears of War 3 match to tell you how much skill you -don't- have because you used a sawed off shotgun to kill them, this kind of community is prevalent everywhere. Is this the kind of community we're complaining we need more of?
While combating this, we also have a predominent selfish tendancy in online gaming now. Even when being forced to be completely reliant on other players to accomplish certain tasks, a great majority of the community employs the "love'em and leave'em" strategy. Join the group, converse as little as possible, and leave as soon as you get the reward. How does this breed any kind of good community?
I'm not saying you have to be social, I'm not even saying you have to stick around for a few quests... but when you group it would be great to acknowledge that other players exist... maybe coordinate with them, or work as a team.
So at the end of the day, I don't want to play with you people. I want a community, but not if I'm stuck with players like you - random online gamer. You make me happy single player games still exist.
Am I alone in this?
I understand your impression and I very much share it.
But, though I guess most people don't like to hear that, I TRULY think it is also a flaw of our times. I guess never before have people been so self centered, so much absorbed in "doing their own thing" in life generally. People have no sense for a "we", for investing in communities anymore as much as in the past. Our society as a whole has shifted towards instant (and low quality) gratification (McDonaldization of society) and being as "free" as possible. People measure even relationships only in profitability. "Is my effort put into this relationship bring profitable output?" It is the total materialization of all human relations, and the question only is "what do I gain for this" and "how do I gain the most with a minimum of effort?"
Sad times to live in that all that wonderful freedom only created egocentric "kidults". (Kidult = adult who prefers to act like a self centered, spoilt child.)
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
So in regard to the OP - you do not like certain groups of players (completely understandable, imo) - thus, you do not want to play with them. You ask if you are alone in this, though . . . how could you be? Generally speaking, you're one of those people you do not want to play with... how do you think many of them came about?
No doubt there are the people that if we saw them dying on the street - we might step over them, step around them, or if nobody was looking even step on them . . . but most of them are just somewhere along the same jaded path that I see in what you have said.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Well, games are different now....With more convienence and 'now'....Comes more of the lvoe em and leave em as you say....Solo/quest railing, with minimal need for grouping, except for a maybe a couple 'elite/group' type quests that people do as you say...
Even though people complain about the old style, like old EQ, where peoples reps mattered, and groups were needed to get most things done...I had much more interaction with people in it, than I do now.
It's just the way things are, guilds still exist and such, but outside of that, it is what it is....Just as instances have turned a lot of games pretty much into non-mmo mmorpgs imo.
its hard to develop a community when the games themselves maike it so easy to avoid others.
WoWs LFG tools started the downfall tehre. then the xfers and lastly the cross faction xfers totally killed any semblence of community the game once had.
Rifts weekly server xfers killed them there.
sorry, those are the only 2 games i've played for any extended period of time since SWG. SWG had great communities. WoW was pretty good at tyhe start.
nowadays there is no reason to get to know, or even be nice to people you game with. outside of your own guild that is.
the players were given tons of rope and then hung themselves with it rather quickly
How can WoW's LFG tool be the cause of a bad community, when you same people were saying WoW had a bad community before they added that to the game....
its hard to develop a community when the games themselves maike it so easy to avoid others.
WoWs LFG tools started the downfall tehre. then the xfers and lastly the cross faction xfers totally killed any semblence of community the game once had.
Rifts weekly server xfers killed them there.
sorry, those are the only 2 games i've played for any extended period of time since SWG. SWG had great communities. WoW was pretty good at tyhe start.
nowadays there is no reason to get to know, or even be nice to people you game with. outside of your own guild that is.
the players were given tons of rope and then hung themselves with it rather quickly
How can WoW's LFG tool be the cause of a bad community, when you same people were saying WoW had a bad community before they added that to the game....
If I'm not mistaken, the cross-server dungeon finder was implemented after cross-faction transfers.
I do love all the rose colored glasses people are looking through when referencing old school WoW, partially because I was around MMORPGs enough at the time to know how it really was. WoW was never hard. WoW was always the MMO for toddlers. WoW always had a crappy community full of kids.
its hard to develop a community when the games themselves maike it so easy to avoid others.
WoWs LFG tools started the downfall tehre. then the xfers and lastly the cross faction xfers totally killed any semblence of community the game once had.
Rifts weekly server xfers killed them there.
sorry, those are the only 2 games i've played for any extended period of time since SWG. SWG had great communities. WoW was pretty good at tyhe start.
nowadays there is no reason to get to know, or even be nice to people you game with. outside of your own guild that is.
the players were given tons of rope and then hung themselves with it rather quickly
How can WoW's LFG tool be the cause of a bad community, when you same people were saying WoW had a bad community before they added that to the game....
Quite simple, it went from bad to worse.
The Dungeon Finder shattered communties that were already fragmented to begin with. Allowed people to act callously and arrogantly without ever worrying about dealing with those players again, transformed ninja looting from a relatively rare occurence into one that is now commonplace, and generally left a bad taste in the mouthes of anyone that had experienced the glory that was Vanilla.
You need to consider the big picture, not just one aspect.
Comments
</3
But yeah I do understand where you are coming from, but like in real life, there are your ashats and then there are your helpful people, then there is everyone in between.
It is easy to quickly type something on the internet, video game, e-mail, forum, facebook, without giving it much thought, and that is what the edit button is for (if you are lucky enough to have one).
I have on many occassions posted in the heat of the moment and said things I regret or did not mean 100%, in which I later apologized or edited out.
On the other hand people do purposely post things in order to "Troll" "Make People Mad" or "generate controversy" and those people are the ones who tend to get the biggest reaction, so they think to themselves, (I got to keep doing this) to gain some kind of satisfaction out of it, whether it is "for the lols" "to make themselves feel better" or "for the attention".
Some people do like to generate controversy to get people engaged in a topic, but in my opinion most people who post or say things that are downright rude, hateful, or plain stupid do so purposely to fullfil some kind of void in their life.
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
+1
all i have to say is bravo. I choked on my cup of coffee. Serves me right for reading + drinking in these forums...
For the most part...but surprisingly there are a lot of people playing who have never played it too. just nto near the amount who have been playing forever.
When i group i always try to start a conversation but most seem like they are in a rush.I have even tried to help some players who didn't understand how to make a macro and the rest of the group was yelling and threatening to leave,really pethetic people.They would rather wait till the healer lets them die then complain about the crappy healer instead of taking the time to make sure everything is on the good to go.
What i have noticed is my guess is about another 5-10% really do lieke to group or converse in social gaming,but when the games don't call for it ,nobody does it.
The big problem perhaps is this so called "We listen to feedback from our players" bull .The players that are happy grouping and playing are not going to give any feedback,why would they?So all the feedback is from the whiners that have a novel sized book full of excuses.....12 kids,no time to feed my goldfish ,the BEST one "I HAVE a REAL life",too much like work and not fun,yet they will run back n forth from npc to npc.Perhaps the biggst whining i hear is "TOO SLOW" everything is too slow,combat too slow,xp too slow,leveling too slow ,crafting too slow,travel is to oslow ect ect.
SO since the predominant whining is everything is too slow,you can see quite easily why they don't like to relax and have a conversation.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
That is basically because EQ is from the 'pre-solo-centric' era of MMOs. This is also the root of the issue. In the early years of MMOs all games were group and community centric... meaning that you needed other players to get anywhere in the game. This prevailed in all aspects of game play from crafting, buying and selling to leveling, questing and character progression. This forced the communities of those games to adopt a more friendly and helpful atmosphere because although there were still a few asshats they usually didn't last very long as they found it very difficult to progress with a bad reputation. Friendly and helpful players found that this attitude made the whole game experience better as you could get groups easily and you always knew someone who could help when you needed a special item, piece of gear or help with a quest. Also without Auction houses players actually had to interact with one another to buy and sell. This affected the whole community and made it more unified.
Now you have mostly games you can play all the way to max level and beyond without the need to interact with another player for any reason. This makes most players think about themselves first and others become more of a hinderence than a possible boon. Why should I share my experience and loot when I can just as easily have it all for myself? This is the type of attitude that prevails in today's MMOs. Solocentric gameplay has killed the helpful communities we all knew and loved.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
TRUE TRUE TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And seriously sad. >:(
Hence the reason I have stayed with the same guild now for nearly 9 years, who have played various MMO's and still manage to find new ones that excite us.
I'm gonna sit here and keep saying MMOs are shitty until the devs finally get it and stop making shitty MMOs
Three attitudes that I feel are killing social gaming:
1.People think a game is going to come along and fix the problem or even help it.
2.Too many people start new mmos because they are bored.
3.Complaining an mmo has no soul (think about that for a min)
Get rid of these three mentalities and you will see a huge improvement to the social landscape.
If we weren't given wonderful functions like Ignore and mute buttons I would have left online gaming a very long time ago.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
Heres the thing though, sure, there are ways around dealing with people like I mention in the OP, but that has its own set of problems.
For example:
1) Turn off General / Region chat: I'm always hesitant to do this, as it makes me feel like I AM missing out on something, such as LFG messages. I still want to group and help people, and receive help, so I feel like I have to take the very bad, with the good.
2) Join a Guild: I do join guilds from time to time, but its tough finding a good one, with good people, who aren't sticklers about forcing vent or forcing raids, or... well.. forcing anything. I'm usually very active and helpful, but I don't like being forced into anything. I will join vent if I enjoy the conversations in guild chat.
3) Don't group: Well.. not really an option... I like to play online games for the competition and social aspects (even if I don't socialize all the time). I don't believe that MMOs HAVE to FORCE grouping, but I do feel like you miss out on a lot of you aren't a team player.
4) It shouldn't be this way: I shouldn't be forced to cut out parts of the game or community because the same 3 people want to be jerks in general chat, or the group you joined kicked you because they feel you don't do enough DPS. Those kind of people should be the ones segregated from others, not the helpful players forcing themselves to segregate so they don't have to deal with them.
Alone?
Aren't you one of the top offenders of your own critique?
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
In some peoples eyes I could be (I've been around here a long time). I definitely have opinions that I share here, some of which get heated and people sometimes lable me a fanboy or hater (even when arguing over the same game).
I have also been retaliatory more than a handful of times on the forums here, but I'm a rather docile animal in all, and always helpful in-game. I've never kicked anyone due to their DPS, or heals unless of course, they didn't at least work with the team, I've never sent anyone rude messages because they beat me in PvP (if I send them any message its to compliment them) and I definitely don't troll for the sake of trolling.
What YOU think should or shouldn't be is not particularly important, is it? What market says is important. And the majority of players want fast, fast, fast paced content and not much communications; so developers give it to them. You've said for yourself that that's what the majority wants, only 5-7% are different.
So go play 10-years old games with small player bases and wonderful communities. You will not meet jerks like us there. And modern mmorpgs can't afford to not target the game to us, casual/no time/not looking for friends players.
Or ... I can continue playing the games I want to play and just deal with the aforementioned jerks by utilizing the ignore feature, and the other functions I've mentioned above.
Lets not pretend that I don't have a job, or wife or other priorities, or even other games to play. Nor am I looking forward to making a slew of new friends when I play. All I'm looking for is a little courtesy, for people to drop the childish act. Either they take things too seriously, or they care too little to provide any lasting impression or appeal. Is it really fun to play like that?
Think about it next time you wig out on some guy for not putting out enough heals, or while you're verbally attacking them for killing you too many times, or saying something stupid in chat just to piss people off.
I honestly care very little, I don't take games seriously at all. And yeah, it's fun for me.
I don't, however, do any of the things you've mentioned here. Why should I do that? I don't care if I'm dead - I know that a healer did the best he could, for example, so what if his best was not good enoug? So I died; big deal; we'll try again. I never get angry when killed in pvp, at all - the most I'll say is "that was a good one. gg, have a nice time". As for chat, ignore, indeed, is my friend; why, on this very forum half of threads consist of blocked messages, for me!
I understand your impression and I very much share it.
But, though I guess most people don't like to hear that, I TRULY think it is also a flaw of our times. I guess never before have people been so self centered, so much absorbed in "doing their own thing" in life generally. People have no sense for a "we", for investing in communities anymore as much as in the past. Our society as a whole has shifted towards instant (and low quality) gratification (McDonaldization of society) and being as "free" as possible. People measure even relationships only in profitability. "Is my effort put into this relationship bring profitable output?" It is the total materialization of all human relations, and the question only is "what do I gain for this" and "how do I gain the most with a minimum of effort?"
Sad times to live in that all that wonderful freedom only created egocentric "kidults". (Kidult = adult who prefers to act like a self centered, spoilt child.)
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
So in regard to the OP - you do not like certain groups of players (completely understandable, imo) - thus, you do not want to play with them. You ask if you are alone in this, though . . . how could you be? Generally speaking, you're one of those people you do not want to play with... how do you think many of them came about?
No doubt there are the people that if we saw them dying on the street - we might step over them, step around them, or if nobody was looking even step on them . . . but most of them are just somewhere along the same jaded path that I see in what you have said.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Well, games are different now....With more convienence and 'now'....Comes more of the lvoe em and leave em as you say....Solo/quest railing, with minimal need for grouping, except for a maybe a couple 'elite/group' type quests that people do as you say...
Even though people complain about the old style, like old EQ, where peoples reps mattered, and groups were needed to get most things done...I had much more interaction with people in it, than I do now.
It's just the way things are, guilds still exist and such, but outside of that, it is what it is....Just as instances have turned a lot of games pretty much into non-mmo mmorpgs imo.
HEY ... What do you mean, "You people!"?
you dont really hate us do you {Holds up a big plate of cookies and a glass of milk}
How can WoW's LFG tool be the cause of a bad community, when you same people were saying WoW had a bad community before they added that to the game....
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
If I'm not mistaken, the cross-server dungeon finder was implemented after cross-faction transfers.
I do love all the rose colored glasses people are looking through when referencing old school WoW, partially because I was around MMORPGs enough at the time to know how it really was. WoW was never hard. WoW was always the MMO for toddlers. WoW always had a crappy community full of kids.
Quite simple, it went from bad to worse.
The Dungeon Finder shattered communties that were already fragmented to begin with. Allowed people to act callously and arrogantly without ever worrying about dealing with those players again, transformed ninja looting from a relatively rare occurence into one that is now commonplace, and generally left a bad taste in the mouthes of anyone that had experienced the glory that was Vanilla.
You need to consider the big picture, not just one aspect.