Yep, when I have to sit looking at the chat window for an hour just to maybe get lucky and find a group.That is a dealbreaker for me. Maybe they will realize just how important that LFG tool really is. I've read some good points from all of the posters here. I am lazy and there are a lot like me that just don't want to deal with trying to sift through the elitists looking for a group. Three weeks over 80 hrs played and done,maybe next time.
Yep, when I have to sit looking at the chat window for an hour just to maybe get lucky and find a group.That is a dealbreaker for me. Maybe they will realize just how important that LFG tool really is. I've read some good points from all of the posters here. I am lazy and there are a lot like me that just don't want to deal with trying to sift through the elitists looking for a group. Three weeks over 80 hrs played and done,maybe next time.
You can't stop playing 3 days before the first content update manne..
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
My advice,go to the desired instance zone and ask there for a group,or form one yourself,i'm sure there are lots of people to join you.Agartha is just like you described so it isn't worth it to try there.
I've been in groups where the leader didn't know anything about the dungeon we were about to run through and nobody had anything to object.
This'll be in every game. Even in GW2 I predict that people will refuse a Ranger if they have something like lots of condition damage but the elitists want them to have more precision instead. Removing the trinity won't change anything. I experienced what the OP is talking about early on in TSW. From day one people were stating the QL of their gear and that they knew the dungeon design.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Believe it or not it was around even in beta. Always have those types of dicks in this genre of gaming.
Just do your own lfg and be honest on your build. You'll find plenty that aren't that dickish. Many friendly types around but the gear and spec hounds will always be prevalent regardless the mmo
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
It's just the these modern PvE instance/gear/token grind games that are like that. The only way I have found to avoid it is to find a nice group/guild/cabal or whatever and group with them. I realize me not knowing the fight or having 'all purps and 2800 AR' might ruin someone elses fun...but I think me and that person I have different idea of fun. In TSW that attitude seemed very prevelant, however I never made into a cabal unfortunately and gave up before I gave the game a full chance.
I play a lot of Eve and you really don't see that attitude too much, at least not in the corps/alliances I associate with. You know what is funny though? When they introduced incursions, which are basically dungeons, and these incursions became the best way to make money in hi-sec, you saw the same elitism shit. It was pretty disgusting and I never once joined a random group for incursions because I don't support that attitude. The incursions do require a certain ship or you are toast, but it got pretty bad at times. It's just PvE themeparks that have trained some people to act like douches.
I really never care how much times is wasted or how many times we wipe on a boss....all that really matters for me is that myself and the people I am with are having fun I guess I am a weirdo.
So, so far my experience with the community has been good, but this kinda put me off a bit, so I am curious, what have your group experiences in TSW been like ?
Thanks !
It's been very much the same (one of the main reasons I stopped playing).
Instead of Gearscore, you have (attack rating, heal rating, & max hp). Most groups (not just speed runs, but regular elite groups) are asking for people already decked out in full epics (nightmare gear, AR/HR 2800+). The funny part is I ran a bunch of guildies through all the elites (before I had even began to farm for nightmare gear), and many of them still had QL2-4 gear on. Guess what? We still managed to clear every instance.
Speed runs (usually AP farming) tends to involve clearing slaughterhouse as quickly as possible. Aside from the golem boss (that spawns a bunch of adds), the entire instance is a joke when it comes to difficulty. You can clear it w/ out a single piece of QL10 gear without much trouble. Still, people want full epics to do the runs (most of them are actually pretty awful, though. They just rely on better than average gear to make up for their lack of skill).
My advice would be (if you still want to play the game). Make friends, form your own groups (so you can pick the people YOU want to group with). As long as you can get a decent healer & tank, the rest of the slots are insanely easy to fill.
I'd also recommend trying to get into a decent cabal. Not necessarily the most geared, but an active, and reasonably skilled one that is at endgame. Seriously, the dungeons in this game just aren't that hard once you understand the mechanics (most of which being pretty basic). As long as you know how to avoid glowing AoE circles, you're already good enough to beat most of the dungeons on that alone.
I find the forums far worse than the reality of the game.
The forums are full of theorycrafters, many of who simply read what they want to read from the intelligent technical threads, take it as gospel then try and impose that flawed logic on the community.
In-game i have found TSW's community to be second to none, loads of fun, really engaging, extremely helpful and I for one look forward to loggin in just to have a chat with the other Templars.
As regards grouping, I have indeed seen the elitist groups spamming for certain builds, but equally i have found I have been able to group with a non-fotm build loads and have never been discriminated against because im not the fotm build. From my experience those who get the boot from groups are those who complain or tell the healer/tank they can do a better job because they are a better spec. Such players are a small minority and exist in all mmo's. Oddly enough I find most of these players are actually quite well meaning and often do not have English as their main language (or just speak poor English) and much gets lost in the translation. An offer is seen as a criticism and a complaint when it's really not meant that way.
I laugh at players who want tanks with blade/chaos only or healers who are blood/fist only with set QL and specific abilities on their QB's. Such players will never experience the true fun of TSW, which is virtually ANY build can be viable and grouping with players who have unique and odd builds is as much fun as it is a challenge. I also feel sorry for those elitist pricks who refer to dps as "scrubs", again it's the minority, but that mentality still exists.
As for the speed runs, well, don't worry, these players will all be gone once GW2 launches.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
This is the reason I don't log back in anymore. Admittedly I was never the biggest fanboy, I should've liked the game, it had everything I think I wanted from a game but it never did hook me in (fighting for a name for 3 hours was a bad start I guess). Still, I almost got into the story and the system but it got to the point that I had to turn off both general chat and looking for group, it was already filled with elite jerks being rude to people for no reason that I could see other than to just be rude.
If this is a sign of how the community is going to be y'all can keep this game.
Sadly there are elitist wan***s in every MMO now. Personally the worst ones I've met were in Rift (played WoW only for a month, didn't like it and mostly soloed). In TSW I've grouped mostly with nice people but I have to admit that I've met some bad apples as well. Think that some people just get high on drama, cannot think of any other reason.
For every elitist jerk there are also people smart enough to realise that the most rewarding way to run an instance is to do so while teaching it to someone else.
I ran Inferno with a first time tank a few hours ago and there was a real sense of achievement at the end. Thats always my preferred way of playing.
I think TSW is the sort of game that will attract its fair share of "good" people.
Savour the good groups, move on quickly from the poor ones and just have fun.
If you like the people you grouped with add them to your friends list, if you really hated them then add them to your ignore.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76) Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
When end game revolves around purple loot grind this is bound to happen. One has to just sit in Agartha for gew minutes and read chat. People are being jerks and really rude.
Most of the groups won't even invite you till you let them inspect your gear and tell them your stats. And if you are in green stuff..god luck.
So I have been having a blast with TSW, despite the detractors but have mainly been playing it as a solo game, with occasional team ups for world quests, in which I have found random people to be very friendly and almost always willing to help.
The chat channels, have also been atypically friendly. Requests for help, generally met with positive responses.
Now I do have plans to get into groups, and try PVP, but first i was toying around farming AP and trying the first rings of different weapons to get an idea of what I wanted to stick with.
SO the point of this, I was going to look for some group action , when I noticed that LFG was being spammed with people looking for SPEED GROUPS 6/6 Experienced & geared only , must know fights inside and out ..etc..
This made me step back, this was the kind of annoying crap that I remembered from the end of my WoW days. People so elitist they wouldnt even group with you unless you totally out-geared the instance already. And had shit-fits for any misstep, and usually even blamed thier own mistakes on other people.
Now I am using AR healing builds and want to try the healing role, but I would like to group for fun and learn the ropes a bit since I have no experience healing in TSW, but none of the groups seemed friendly enough for me to want to try.
So, so far my experience with the community has been good, but this kinda put me off a bit, so I am curious, what have your group experiences in TSW been like ?
Thanks !
Yes, I have noticed this also...It is likely the reason I won't be subscribing to this game. I had a lot of fun throughout the first month but now at end game and just being a casual player myself (i work a ton) I am usually unable to find groups for dungeon runs because my gear isn't elite enough or I don't have the required knowledge.
I have never understood the mentality of the power gamers, the one's who only join groups if there is absolute certainitly they can do the dungeon in one single run, no mistakes...
I've never understood where these elite groupers come from, if they don't have families or jobs? I dunno, but yea, it sucks.
This happens in every game, content locust, I hate them. They come to the game, get everything done in a few weeks, ignore all the side stuff, get straight to the end and get the best gear as fast as possible, then complain that there is nothing to do. Kinda like a fat kid who eats a dozen donuts then complains he is hungry.
Sometimes the devs will listen to their cries that it was too easy, that can cause a huge blow to the playerbase of a game, those elite types are a very vocal minority. http://morgaren.hubpages.com/hub/World-of-Warcraft-How-WoW-Learned-What-Casual-Gamers-Want I talk about how elitist gamers can change a game in this article and the link in my sig is about content locust. Nest thing you can do is ignore them. Also send feedback to the company if you are happy with the game, cause if all they hear is bad comments, they will start changing stuff.
Don't blame the players, blame the game dynamic.. good social games should promote casual grouping and not reward 'geared' groups. Sadly this shows the hole in the secret world.. its still the same old game dynamic mixed well.
Guild Wars 2, thankfully addresses these issues, TSW is not the MMORPG you were looking for.
Don't blame the players, blame the game dynamic.. good social games should promote casual grouping and not reward 'geared' groups. Sadly this shows the hole in the secret world.. its still the same old game dynamic mixed well.
Guild Wars 2, thankfully addresses these issues, TSW is not the MMORPG you were looking for.
No, requesting speed groups this early in the game is a sign of locust. Even in GW2 after a few weeks you will have people at max level doing whatever special thing max level players can do. It's the people, you can't blame a game for being a game. Use my donut analogy above, can you blame the donuts for being a sweet bread? No, it's the fat kids fault for gorging. To push it further, after he is done eating and wants more he refusees to waste his time with people who don't want to go find more donuts, and even if they do if they are not ready right now, he doesn't want to thelp them get ready.
It's the players, they want to push progression, and only want to play with people who want to push progression. They don't want to help the community, they want to feel superior to it. Which is completely laughable to someone like me honestly.
When end game revolves around purple loot grind this is bound to happen. One has to just sit in Agartha for gew minutes and read chat. People are being jerks and really rude.
Most of the groups won't even invite you till you let them inspect your gear and tell them your stats. And if you are in green stuff..god luck.
There's absolutely no reason why you can't start your own group. If you're going to let other players dictate how you play the game, then you must accept their terms.
Every MMO I've ever played has had it's "elite" groups, guilds, etc.. Those are the alpha players, but they are always a small section of the community. They usually put in more time and effort than casual players, so their playstyle earns them the right to demand that you measure up to their "standards" if you want to play with them. I consider that completely fair.
But any game is what YOU make of it. If you want to be a passenger, you have to accept wherever the bus goes. But if you're the driver, YOU get to decide where it goes.
I'm completely sure that the majority of players are not running around in QL10.3 gear. The average player in QL10 gear is probably wearing a lot of greens. And complaining that they "can't get into groups"...
When end game revolves around purple loot grind this is bound to happen. One has to just sit in Agartha for gew minutes and read chat. People are being jerks and really rude.
Most of the groups won't even invite you till you let them inspect your gear and tell them your stats. And if you are in green stuff..god luck.
"most of the groups" - total bullshit. Minority of the groups. If you are doing nightmare dungeons yes - those are not doable in greens. But then again nightmare dungeons - less then 5% of the playerbase meets the reqs to be even be eligible to enter one.
Learn to read FFS before replying. I am talking about end game i even mentioned in beginning of the post. Which means Nightmare and Elite dungeons.
The problem is a two way street in my opinion. Having a purple gear grind at the end only appeals to these sort of players. At the same time there is this group that flocks to every new game and burns through the content in the quickest possible fashion, ignoring evey single aspect of the game except for the most necessary and then dominates end game raids and gear and also complains a lot.
It's hard for devs to control this population that seemingly has no life outside of the games and has the amount of time necessary to do this sort of thing.
I feel like by 'elite' or 'hardcore' players what we really mean are players with no life outside of the game world, because that is what they essentially are. They are people that dedicate insane amounts of time to the game in a very short period of time.
When you make the content about grinding the content for gear/points - people are going to want to get through it as fast as possible.
Hence why every WoW expansion the dungeon runs got shorter and shorter and easier and easier.
And when they tried to modify that a bit with Cata, go back to more of the "old school" flare, people QQ'd that they took too long and were too difficult...
Bad design = bad design.
Bad design brings out the worst in players.
I'm not so sure that this a symptom of bad design but I think you're right that WOW does have something to do with it: you can't get 10,000,000 people playing an MMO and expect that the good community from previous smaller scale MMOs would continue.
The fact is that WOW brought a lot of different people to the MMO scene: the real MMO fans, some RPers, some real nice people, many people wondering just what this MMO thing is all about... but even more griefers, trolls and assorted asshats. Some of this later group will try all kinds of new MMOs, zip through content finding the quickets ways to level and run dungeons the same way... "content locust" some people call them.
They exists in Rift, SWTOR, Terra... any themepark you care to mention. They will be there in GW2 as well. The good news is that they have short attention spans and hardly ever play more than 1 or 2 months, troll MMO discussion boards and go back to their prescious WOW.
It should get noticeably better by month 2 since many of them have maxed out their gear and are getting bored already and won't subscribe.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Would you want to group with players that can't get through a dungeon because they can not stand in aoe's and special effects? Or because they can't follow a script? With 16 hour lockouts, and not being able to get people to join because no one wants to miss tokens from bosses the answer is simple. Elitism is needed. I for one have regretted time and time again grouping with people that plain out suck. So before you hop on your soap box take a second and think before you speak.
Would you want to group with players that can't get through a dungeon because they can not stand in aoe's and special effects? Or because they can't follow a script? With 16 hour lockouts, and not being able to get people to join because no one wants to miss tokens from bosses the answer is simple. Elitism is needed. I for one have regretted time and time again grouping with people that plain out suck. So before you hop on your soap box take a second and think before you speak.
Yes i would. I'd much rather group with a normal fellow player-- even if they're not the best and need help, than an obnoxious hyper-achiever ... any time.
I'd be happy to teach the 1st guy whatever I can to help him but would not even want to talk to #2.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
It's easy to say that now but after being in a dungeon that should have taken 1 hour to clear, "NM Polaris" and failing on the 3rd boss for 3 hours then your opinion would change i'm sure. Most people here have been gaming for a long time and it does get rather annoying playing with people who have been carried for years. My character is in all 10.2-10.1 gear, and 1 10.3 wep. The fact is that without a static group, or group of competent players this is not possible in TSW. Hence the barriers to access.
Comments
Yep, when I have to sit looking at the chat window for an hour just to maybe get lucky and find a group.That is a dealbreaker for me. Maybe they will realize just how important that LFG tool really is. I've read some good points from all of the posters here. I am lazy and there are a lot like me that just don't want to deal with trying to sift through the elitists looking for a group. Three weeks over 80 hrs played and done,maybe next time.
You can't stop playing 3 days before the first content update manne..
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
Server: Grim
Always looking looking for fun runs....look new up fist/chaos build
My advice,go to the desired instance zone and ask there for a group,or form one yourself,i'm sure there are lots of people to join you.Agartha is just like you described so it isn't worth it to try there.
I've been in groups where the leader didn't know anything about the dungeon we were about to run through and nobody had anything to object.
This'll be in every game. Even in GW2 I predict that people will refuse a Ranger if they have something like lots of condition damage but the elitists want them to have more precision instead. Removing the trinity won't change anything. I experienced what the OP is talking about early on in TSW. From day one people were stating the QL of their gear and that they knew the dungeon design.
Believe it or not it was around even in beta. Always have those types of dicks in this genre of gaming.
Just do your own lfg and be honest on your build. You'll find plenty that aren't that dickish. Many friendly types around but the gear and spec hounds will always be prevalent regardless the mmo
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
It's just the these modern PvE instance/gear/token grind games that are like that. The only way I have found to avoid it is to find a nice group/guild/cabal or whatever and group with them. I realize me not knowing the fight or having 'all purps and 2800 AR' might ruin someone elses fun...but I think me and that person I have different idea of fun. In TSW that attitude seemed very prevelant, however I never made into a cabal unfortunately and gave up before I gave the game a full chance.
I play a lot of Eve and you really don't see that attitude too much, at least not in the corps/alliances I associate with. You know what is funny though? When they introduced incursions, which are basically dungeons, and these incursions became the best way to make money in hi-sec, you saw the same elitism shit. It was pretty disgusting and I never once joined a random group for incursions because I don't support that attitude. The incursions do require a certain ship or you are toast, but it got pretty bad at times. It's just PvE themeparks that have trained some people to act like douches.
I really never care how much times is wasted or how many times we wipe on a boss....all that really matters for me is that myself and the people I am with are having fun
I guess I am a weirdo.
It's been very much the same (one of the main reasons I stopped playing).
Instead of Gearscore, you have (attack rating, heal rating, & max hp). Most groups (not just speed runs, but regular elite groups) are asking for people already decked out in full epics (nightmare gear, AR/HR 2800+). The funny part is I ran a bunch of guildies through all the elites (before I had even began to farm for nightmare gear), and many of them still had QL2-4 gear on. Guess what? We still managed to clear every instance.
Speed runs (usually AP farming) tends to involve clearing slaughterhouse as quickly as possible. Aside from the golem boss (that spawns a bunch of adds), the entire instance is a joke when it comes to difficulty. You can clear it w/ out a single piece of QL10 gear without much trouble. Still, people want full epics to do the runs (most of them are actually pretty awful, though. They just rely on better than average gear to make up for their lack of skill).
My advice would be (if you still want to play the game). Make friends, form your own groups (so you can pick the people YOU want to group with). As long as you can get a decent healer & tank, the rest of the slots are insanely easy to fill.
I'd also recommend trying to get into a decent cabal. Not necessarily the most geared, but an active, and reasonably skilled one that is at endgame. Seriously, the dungeons in this game just aren't that hard once you understand the mechanics (most of which being pretty basic). As long as you know how to avoid glowing AoE circles, you're already good enough to beat most of the dungeons on that alone.
I find the forums far worse than the reality of the game.
The forums are full of theorycrafters, many of who simply read what they want to read from the intelligent technical threads, take it as gospel then try and impose that flawed logic on the community.
In-game i have found TSW's community to be second to none, loads of fun, really engaging, extremely helpful and I for one look forward to loggin in just to have a chat with the other Templars.
As regards grouping, I have indeed seen the elitist groups spamming for certain builds, but equally i have found I have been able to group with a non-fotm build loads and have never been discriminated against because im not the fotm build. From my experience those who get the boot from groups are those who complain or tell the healer/tank they can do a better job because they are a better spec. Such players are a small minority and exist in all mmo's. Oddly enough I find most of these players are actually quite well meaning and often do not have English as their main language (or just speak poor English) and much gets lost in the translation. An offer is seen as a criticism and a complaint when it's really not meant that way.
I laugh at players who want tanks with blade/chaos only or healers who are blood/fist only with set QL and specific abilities on their QB's. Such players will never experience the true fun of TSW, which is virtually ANY build can be viable and grouping with players who have unique and odd builds is as much fun as it is a challenge. I also feel sorry for those elitist pricks who refer to dps as "scrubs", again it's the minority, but that mentality still exists.
As for the speed runs, well, don't worry, these players will all be gone once GW2 launches.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
This is the reason I don't log back in anymore. Admittedly I was never the biggest fanboy, I should've liked the game, it had everything I think I wanted from a game but it never did hook me in (fighting for a name for 3 hours was a bad start I guess). Still, I almost got into the story and the system but it got to the point that I had to turn off both general chat and looking for group, it was already filled with elite jerks being rude to people for no reason that I could see other than to just be rude.
If this is a sign of how the community is going to be y'all can keep this game.
Sadly there are elitist wan***s in every MMO now. Personally the worst ones I've met were in Rift (played WoW only for a month, didn't like it and mostly soloed). In TSW I've grouped mostly with nice people but I have to admit that I've met some bad apples as well. Think that some people just get high on drama, cannot think of any other reason.
For every elitist jerk there are also people smart enough to realise that the most rewarding way to run an instance is to do so while teaching it to someone else.
I ran Inferno with a first time tank a few hours ago and there was a real sense of achievement at the end. Thats always my preferred way of playing.
I think TSW is the sort of game that will attract its fair share of "good" people.
Savour the good groups, move on quickly from the poor ones and just have fun.
If you like the people you grouped with add them to your friends list, if you really hated them then add them to your ignore.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
When end game revolves around purple loot grind this is bound to happen. One has to just sit in Agartha for gew minutes and read chat. People are being jerks and really rude.
Most of the groups won't even invite you till you let them inspect your gear and tell them your stats. And if you are in green stuff..god luck.
Yes, I have noticed this also...It is likely the reason I won't be subscribing to this game. I had a lot of fun throughout the first month but now at end game and just being a casual player myself (i work a ton) I am usually unable to find groups for dungeon runs because my gear isn't elite enough or I don't have the required knowledge.
I have never understood the mentality of the power gamers, the one's who only join groups if there is absolute certainitly they can do the dungeon in one single run, no mistakes...
I've never understood where these elite groupers come from, if they don't have families or jobs? I dunno, but yea, it sucks.
This happens in every game, content locust, I hate them. They come to the game, get everything done in a few weeks, ignore all the side stuff, get straight to the end and get the best gear as fast as possible, then complain that there is nothing to do. Kinda like a fat kid who eats a dozen donuts then complains he is hungry.
Sometimes the devs will listen to their cries that it was too easy, that can cause a huge blow to the playerbase of a game, those elite types are a very vocal minority. http://morgaren.hubpages.com/hub/World-of-Warcraft-How-WoW-Learned-What-Casual-Gamers-Want I talk about how elitist gamers can change a game in this article and the link in my sig is about content locust. Nest thing you can do is ignore them. Also send feedback to the company if you are happy with the game, cause if all they hear is bad comments, they will start changing stuff.
My Thoughts on Content Locust
Don't blame the players, blame the game dynamic.. good social games should promote casual grouping and not reward 'geared' groups. Sadly this shows the hole in the secret world.. its still the same old game dynamic mixed well.
Guild Wars 2, thankfully addresses these issues, TSW is not the MMORPG you were looking for.
No, requesting speed groups this early in the game is a sign of locust. Even in GW2 after a few weeks you will have people at max level doing whatever special thing max level players can do. It's the people, you can't blame a game for being a game. Use my donut analogy above, can you blame the donuts for being a sweet bread? No, it's the fat kids fault for gorging. To push it further, after he is done eating and wants more he refusees to waste his time with people who don't want to go find more donuts, and even if they do if they are not ready right now, he doesn't want to thelp them get ready.
It's the players, they want to push progression, and only want to play with people who want to push progression. They don't want to help the community, they want to feel superior to it. Which is completely laughable to someone like me honestly.
My Thoughts on Content Locust
There's absolutely no reason why you can't start your own group. If you're going to let other players dictate how you play the game, then you must accept their terms.
Every MMO I've ever played has had it's "elite" groups, guilds, etc.. Those are the alpha players, but they are always a small section of the community. They usually put in more time and effort than casual players, so their playstyle earns them the right to demand that you measure up to their "standards" if you want to play with them. I consider that completely fair.
But any game is what YOU make of it. If you want to be a passenger, you have to accept wherever the bus goes. But if you're the driver, YOU get to decide where it goes.
I'm completely sure that the majority of players are not running around in QL10.3 gear. The average player in QL10 gear is probably wearing a lot of greens. And complaining that they "can't get into groups"...
Learn to read FFS before replying. I am talking about end game i even mentioned in beginning of the post. Which means Nightmare and Elite dungeons.
Also, from where did you pull that 5% from?
The problem is a two way street in my opinion. Having a purple gear grind at the end only appeals to these sort of players. At the same time there is this group that flocks to every new game and burns through the content in the quickest possible fashion, ignoring evey single aspect of the game except for the most necessary and then dominates end game raids and gear and also complains a lot.
It's hard for devs to control this population that seemingly has no life outside of the games and has the amount of time necessary to do this sort of thing.
I feel like by 'elite' or 'hardcore' players what we really mean are players with no life outside of the game world, because that is what they essentially are. They are people that dedicate insane amounts of time to the game in a very short period of time.
I'm not so sure that this a symptom of bad design but I think you're right that WOW does have something to do with it: you can't get 10,000,000 people playing an MMO and expect that the good community from previous smaller scale MMOs would continue.
The fact is that WOW brought a lot of different people to the MMO scene: the real MMO fans, some RPers, some real nice people, many people wondering just what this MMO thing is all about... but even more griefers, trolls and assorted asshats. Some of this later group will try all kinds of new MMOs, zip through content finding the quickets ways to level and run dungeons the same way... "content locust" some people call them.
They exists in Rift, SWTOR, Terra... any themepark you care to mention. They will be there in GW2 as well. The good news is that they have short attention spans and hardly ever play more than 1 or 2 months, troll MMO discussion boards and go back to their prescious WOW.
It should get noticeably better by month 2 since many of them have maxed out their gear and are getting bored already and won't subscribe.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Would you want to group with players that can't get through a dungeon because they can not stand in aoe's and special effects? Or because they can't follow a script? With 16 hour lockouts, and not being able to get people to join because no one wants to miss tokens from bosses the answer is simple. Elitism is needed. I for one have regretted time and time again grouping with people that plain out suck. So before you hop on your soap box take a second and think before you speak.
Yes i would. I'd much rather group with a normal fellow player-- even if they're not the best and need help, than an obnoxious hyper-achiever ... any time.
I'd be happy to teach the 1st guy whatever I can to help him but would not even want to talk to #2.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
It's easy to say that now but after being in a dungeon that should have taken 1 hour to clear, "NM Polaris" and failing on the 3rd boss for 3 hours then your opinion would change i'm sure. Most people here have been gaming for a long time and it does get rather annoying playing with people who have been carried for years. My character is in all 10.2-10.1 gear, and 1 10.3 wep. The fact is that without a static group, or group of competent players this is not possible in TSW. Hence the barriers to access.
That works well and all, but the problem comes into play when the 1st guy doesn't accept help.
Instead, they think their super speshul snowflake build is good because it works.
Already detailed this subject extensively. Take a read. Lockouts mean that every first guy who refuses to listen to advice (because they think providing advice, DESPITE BEING ONE OF THE TOP PLAYERS IN THE WORLD, is an attack on them) wastes our time.