I agree with aseenus to many kids are playing games that we wanna play they think they run everything we should make some more teen and adult games so kids cant play them.
man kids tick me off and im only 15 the mmorpg game i play is runescape file name gundomlova1.
I think around half of WoW are 20+ or something. But yeah know the problem and I've got aggravated a few times. Even worse, is a server which is catered for 18+ wouldn't go ahead as its thought as ageist.
WoW is a pandemic plague in the world of video games and there's no cure in sight.
I think the good news is certain game makers see niche markets opening up for their titles. I'm not sure if we'll ever see a all grown ups gaming service with 6 million people and 100+ servers....but a couple servers with a couple hundred thousand players is quite likely.
Whats even more scary then teenies playing WoW en masse is the fact for each teenie there is a parent and a credit card.
I am 35 and play WoW after work/family time. I had almost given up on it due to the lack of maturity shown by the populace in general. Then when the Draka server came out I went there for one last try. Day 2 of the server I saw someone in Elwynn Forest asking in General Chat "Looking for mature(25+ yrs),no drama people for "Guildname"
I spoke to this person. I was interviewed on ventrillo for near 30 min. Asked my age,family or no? Playstyle and playtimes, what I did in RL for $$$ etc. This person wanted to ensure that I was as old as I said I was (you can say your 30+ years old but your 15 year old voice will give it away) etc. Now I am guilded with a large group of folks and their average age is 31 (youngest is 22 oldest is 54) and we raid 3 days a week (on average) and just downed Rag last night. I have not seen any real drama. No namecalling or any slurs of any kind thrown around. We login,have fun and when I log off I'm stress free
Sadly /ignore and /leave 1 are your best choices. Shouldn't be that way, but it is. Personally I can't understand half of the leet phrases, my eyes just glaze over if I see a long stream of it. Hey I'm 27 and play mmogs because they are bloody good fun sometimes; most console players are 25-35, possibly about the same for PC too.
I'd imagine a good percentage of WoW players are actually 20-25, which is worrying if anything. The fact they are deemed kids is in my opinion a stereotype, largely deserved though. Shall I throw in some more: such as they are usually failed illiterate students who scrounge off the state with no real responsibilities which is why they are able to play all day long, just don't ask how they can afford to keep playing.
I haven't found why people type like asses. It takes me much longer to type in this "shorthand" than it does to type normally. I haven't really practiced, or tried that hard, but still does this type of text just spew out?
I find the insults kind of funny in most games, but it is usually in a joking matter. I don't get offended easy, but shitty typing does annoy me. Most people in WoW type "you" as "u" and I just find that puzzling. Other games were never this bad, maybe you would meet a few that did, but atleast their sentences made sense.
Im 32 , I have a wife, 2 kids at home, and 2 dogs. And I support this post.
...
Now to add further thought to it - one thing to consider is we are the post 30s crowd;playing video games.
No, I do not think games are for kids anymore, after all it is a bigger market than movies as of 2005 (10 billion in revenues for the gamining industry, 9 billion movie revenues in '05 iirc), interactive entertainment has taken over as the children of the 60s/70s have shown a tendency to grow WITH technology as opposed to resisting it as their parents often have.
However, until a company produces a MMO genre of some sort whose target audience is those of us in this demographic, we are not going to see anything change - kids like these games as much as we do. We either can ignore, adapt or move on. Sadly off the top of my head I personally cannot think of a premise for an MMO that I as a 32 year old gamer would like which a 12-15 year old would not. But its not just about age, as many have pointed out. I have met some darn good kids online. Its about maturity. Some games draw the spastic considerably more than others.Certainly the more complex the game the less likely you will find the ADHD crowds in it. WoW vs EQ2 by way of comparison is entirely different. I played WoW for a year and hated every minute of it because of the population. I play EQ2 now, and that is about 90% reduced.
The more involved the game the less likely that the l337 or crude influence will be as great. I see vanguard as a good possibility of being relatively safe from the hyper active, verbal diarrhea prone as well, but for now, I would say avoid WoW for certain.
A recent Newsweek article on MMORPGs has showed that the average age for MMORPG players has risen from the 18-25 group some years ago to the 30+ age group currently.
Adults have discovered the availability of at-home, online entertainment for a reasonable monthly fee (Example: $15 will get you a large pizza and that pizza won't give you unlimited access for a full month), and this should lead the market toward the production of more M-rated "Mature" games.
As for the kiddies, I once posted:
--- 1) They have keyboards, but can't type.... 2) They go to school, but can't spell.... 3) They try to be cool (or "coo" or "kool" or "kewl" or whatever) and fail...."
After reading all of these posts I am glad to find others that agree with me. Kiddies do ruin the enjoyment of the game, I am sick of the "leet" speak, chuck norris worship, etc. I play these games to relax and get away from the frustrations of my day not to become more agitated. Yet nearly every time I log on I find general chat full of idiots talking about Chuck Norris or asking questions that I can't even understand due to the use of "txt". I suppose as a late arrival to the MMORPG scene I should have expected the juvenile behavior; but now it has become rampant. At this point my two options are to turn off 90% of the chat channels or quit playing the game. And I am leaning toward quitting the game.
Perhaps I will find a place online when LOTRO and Age of Conan debut, but I am not going to hold my breath.
Btw I am also a member of the old fogey club (30 years old and counting)
why do the 30 something gamers (which dont get me wrong, i like to see the older guys out there still in the mix) seem to play WoW, one of the most ragged on games of all mmorpgs. Its actually got a reputation of housing hoards of immature whiney children and the rest, aggravated players. If you dont like "Kiddies" dont play a "kiddies" game. WoW has very little depth compared to alot of other games out there. Play Dark Ages of Camelot, or Eve or even L2 (which is horrible imo, but its freaking better than WoW). So my advice to avoid kiddies, avoid the games they play like Guild Wars and WoW
Originally posted by Ecksphive1 why do the 30 something gamers (which dont get me wrong, i like to see the older guys out there still in the mix) seem to play WoW, one of the most ragged on games of all mmorpgs. Its actually got a reputation of housing hoards of immature whiney children and the rest, aggravated players. If you dont like "Kiddies" dont play a "kiddies" game. WoW has very little depth compared to alot of other games out there. Play Dark Ages of Camelot, or Eve or even L2 (which is horrible imo, but its freaking better than WoW). So my advice to avoid kiddies, avoid the games they play like Guild Wars and WoW
When I made the switch from EQ2 to WoW they tried to warn me. I play (ed) WoW because it was a decent game. I'm not going to get into the merits of that decision here....but leaving the aforementioned playerbase aside, its a more then a decent and modern EQ1 clone.
But yes, any game that I pick up in the future needs to have aspects that both appeal to me and don't appeal to the txt speaking kiddie crowd. I guess the lesson learned here is:
too casual, too simple content fosters the wrong kind of crowd.
There COULD be an easy cure to everyone's kiddie problems.....
Every game should have servers with different age limits.
When a player signs up, he is asked his birthdate and from there is given a list of servers full of players in his age range. Yes, I see one downfall could be people who lie about their age, but what would they gain from that? I can't see a 12 year old really wanting to run around and play with a 35 year old. Any one who does lie, and is caught could be reported and placedon the correct server.
This would be more difficult to initiate in the games that are already being played- but not impossible, and It would be an easy feature to add to the new up-and-coming games in production.
I dont think its a valid direction to solution, because age doesnt always = maturity. So it may just leave some of the mature younger players with a bunch of goofs and older players would still have to deal with others that arnt mature enough or have a different personality. IMO age limit servers wouldnt really help the situation, just alienate the gamers from each other
Originally posted by Ecksphive1 I dont think its a valid direction to solution, because age doesnt always = maturity. So it may just leave some of the mature younger players with a bunch of goofs and older players would still have to deal with others that arnt mature enough or have a different personality. IMO age limit servers wouldnt really help the situation, just alienate the gamers from each other
I disagree. I believe it would cause gamers to become closer-being that they will (more than likely) have a lot in common with each other and they will be more on the same wave length.
For gamers who would rather play on an open-age server that would also be an option.
Age Of Conan is going to be an 18 + mmorpg, maybe that will please some of you. If you catch anyone in chat's saying they're under 18 you could probably report them to GM. Owned. im 21 by the way and i also agree with the original poster. We're slowly fading away. :-(
Originally posted by Ecksphive1 I dont think its a valid direction to solution, because age doesnt always = maturity. So it may just leave some of the mature younger players with a bunch of goofs and older players would still have to deal with others that arnt mature enough or have a different personality. IMO age limit servers wouldnt really help the situation, just alienate the gamers from each other
While I somewhat agree with you, don't you believe (statistically speaking) that younger players on the average are less mature than older ones? I'd rather deal with 5-10 jerks around my age than a flood of kiddies asking me for money in "1337 speak" or /shout "ur a homo" etc etc
What we really need is a server which requires the user to pass an intelligence test to create a character on it. But even then, rich kiddies will have their parents buy them an account on said server with Ebay. I too am tired of stupid people who can't spell or use grammar, however, unlike you, I am 17.
Textspeak is no indication of age. When I get texts from my Mum or Dad they use the worst text speak ever. Ok yeah its text speak, but it could easily translate to games where you just can't tell their age by the language they choose.
That`s why i like eve online so much. It`s community is very mature. There`s flaming on forums ofc as in any other MMO but the gamers are older then in most MMO`s i`ve played. Most ppl in my corporation are between 25 and 35 years old and lots of them are a lot older than that. Sure we have the occational 15 year old player but it`s not just kids and there is absolutely no leet speak.
I don`t know why eve attracts older players but i guess it`s the sheer complexity of the game. I`ve played WOW before and met many nice people there too but the constant leet speak drove me insane. I feel offended when i gotta read that crap.
Originally posted by AzRaell33 I don't see it that way. All I see is someone trying to make a argument form nothing so dont speak to me of immaturity.
argument? i just thought it was funny
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I'm really hoping Age of Conan becomes somewhat of a bastion for more mature minded gamers and role-players. Anarchy Online had an aspect of erudition to it that seemed to drive off some of the less mature or intelligent players. Maybe game makers might want to look at raising the intellectual bar of their worlds.
Most game developers main priority sadly is money. Limiting a game in whatever manner to "Mature Adults" or any genre of people is potentially drastically cutting into the final revenue of that product. As such I don't expect to see much done about this issue in that manner. To sit here and even discuss the possibility of any game releasing to a limited audience would be pointless.
A more plausable solution in my opinion is to do away with the global chat features (including trade, map, regional, national, city wide, whatever they are called) that many of these newer games have. Or in some way limit them to specific people/areas/events or make them difficult to acheive ranks that require much thought/questing/brains/etc. to obtain. Anything would improve on free for all chat like it exists now.
I find these open regional chats to be the main problem and I usually filter them out but I often feel I might miss the 1 thing out of 100 lines that might be important. All other forms of communication can be dealt with on a personal level. Join/Create a mature guild with a screening process and block anyone who annoys you in personal IM chat.
I also agree that the easier games like WoW and free games like GW breed this type of childish behavior. They are also the same games that I myself have tried and found myself not lasting very long because they are easy or very limiting in options. But in teh same light childish behavior is not limited to these games and you will find it everywhere in some form no matter what you do.
I just think the elimination of global chat is the easiest and most practical first step to solve some of this problem. If they cant say it, you cant see it and in the end thats most of what matters whether they are in the game or not.
On a side note but similier issue I beleive global chats create other bad issues in games such as less reason to make friends and less reason to actually communicate 1 on 1 with other members of the community when you can simply outburst to everyone for anything you need or any questions you may have instead of working together with someone like rpg are supposed to be to acomplish goals. It annoys me to no end when I constantly see global shout asking "where is x mob located I need for y quest" when I myself have been running around looking for that mob having fun exploring and bam the answer was just given to me and ruined my fun. Also WTS WTT WTB chat annoys me to no end either, use the damn auctions, thats why they exist.
Comments
I agree with aseenus to many kids are playing games that we wanna play they think they run everything
we should make some more teen and adult games so kids cant play them.
man kids tick me off and im only 15 the mmorpg game i play is runescape file name gundomlova1.
thats all i gotta say peace out!
lol, i don't think so, but using a phrase that you don't know the origin of makes for an ironic defense of immaturity
I don't see it that way. All I see is someone trying to make a argument form nothing so dont speak to me of immaturity.
I think around half of WoW are 20+ or something. But yeah know the problem and I've got aggravated a few times. Even worse, is a server which is catered for 18+ wouldn't go ahead as its thought as ageist.
I think the good news is certain game makers see niche markets opening up for their titles. I'm not sure if we'll ever see a all grown ups gaming service with 6 million people and 100+ servers....but a couple servers with a couple hundred thousand players is quite likely.
Whats even more scary then teenies playing WoW en masse is the fact for each teenie there is a parent and a credit card.
Things fall apart, the center can not hold.
Loved your post KaptainZerg
I am 35 and play WoW after work/family time. I had almost given up on it due to the lack of maturity shown by the populace in general. Then when the Draka server came out I went there for one last try. Day 2 of the server I saw someone in Elwynn Forest asking in General Chat "Looking for mature(25+ yrs),no drama people for "Guildname"
I spoke to this person. I was interviewed on ventrillo for near 30 min. Asked my age,family or no? Playstyle and playtimes, what I did in RL for $$$ etc. This person wanted to ensure that I was as old as I said I was (you can say your 30+ years old but your 15 year old voice will give it away) etc. Now I am guilded with a large group of folks and their average age is 31 (youngest is 22 oldest is 54) and we raid 3 days a week (on average) and just downed Rag last night. I have not seen any real drama. No namecalling or any slurs of any kind thrown around. We login,have fun and when I log off I'm stress free
Sadly /ignore and /leave 1 are your best choices. Shouldn't be that way, but it is. Personally I can't understand half of the leet phrases, my eyes just glaze over if I see a long stream of it. Hey I'm 27 and play mmogs because they are bloody good fun sometimes; most console players are 25-35, possibly about the same for PC too.
I'd imagine a good percentage of WoW players are actually 20-25, which is worrying if anything. The fact they are deemed kids is in my opinion a stereotype, largely deserved though. Shall I throw in some more: such as they are usually failed illiterate students who scrounge off the state with no real responsibilities which is why they are able to play all day long, just don't ask how they can afford to keep playing.
I haven't found why people type like asses. It takes me much longer to type in this "shorthand" than it does to type normally. I haven't really practiced, or tried that hard, but still does this type of text just spew out?
I find the insults kind of funny in most games, but it is usually in a joking matter. I don't get offended easy, but shitty typing does annoy me. Most people in WoW type "you" as "u" and I just find that puzzling. Other games were never this bad, maybe you would meet a few that did, but atleast their sentences made sense.
Im 32 , I have a wife, 2 kids at home, and 2 dogs. And I support this post.
...
Now to add further thought to it - one thing to consider is we are the post 30s crowd;playing video games.
No, I do not think games are for kids anymore, after all it is a bigger market than movies as of 2005 (10 billion in revenues for the gamining industry, 9 billion movie revenues in '05 iirc), interactive entertainment has taken over as the children of the 60s/70s have shown a tendency to grow WITH technology as opposed to resisting it as their parents often have.
However, until a company produces a MMO genre of some sort whose target audience is those of us in this demographic, we are not going to see anything change - kids like these games as much as we do. We either can ignore, adapt or move on. Sadly off the top of my head I personally cannot think of a premise for an MMO that I as a 32 year old gamer would like which a 12-15 year old would not. But its not just about age, as many have pointed out. I have met some darn good kids online. Its about maturity. Some games draw the spastic considerably more than others.Certainly the more complex the game the less likely you will find the ADHD crowds in it. WoW vs EQ2 by way of comparison is entirely different. I played WoW for a year and hated every minute of it because of the population. I play EQ2 now, and that is about 90% reduced.
The more involved the game the less likely that the l337 or crude influence will be as great. I see vanguard as a good possibility of being relatively safe from the hyper active, verbal diarrhea prone as well, but for now, I would say avoid WoW for certain.
Sign me up for the club
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
A recent Newsweek article on MMORPGs has showed that the average age for MMORPG players has risen from the 18-25 group some years ago to the 30+ age group currently.
Adults have discovered the availability of at-home, online entertainment for a reasonable monthly fee (Example: $15 will get you a large pizza and that pizza won't give you unlimited access for a full month), and this should lead the market toward the production of more M-rated "Mature" games.
As for the kiddies, I once posted:
--- 1) They have keyboards, but can't type.... 2) They go to school, but can't spell.... 3) They try to be cool (or "coo" or "kool" or "kewl" or whatever) and fail...."
~ Ancient Membership ~
After reading all of these posts I am glad to find others that agree with me. Kiddies do ruin the enjoyment of the game, I am sick of the "leet" speak, chuck norris worship, etc.
I play these games to relax and get away from the frustrations of my day not to become more agitated. Yet nearly every time I log on I find general chat full of idiots talking about Chuck Norris or asking questions that I can't even understand due to the use of "txt". I suppose as a late arrival to the MMORPG scene I should have expected the juvenile behavior; but now it has become rampant. At this point my two options are to turn off 90% of the chat channels or quit playing the game. And I am leaning toward quitting the game.
Perhaps I will find a place online when LOTRO and Age of Conan debut, but I am not going to hold my breath.
Btw I am also a member of the old fogey club (30 years old and counting)
=Dan
why do the 30 something gamers (which dont get me wrong, i like to see the older guys out there still in the mix) seem to play WoW, one of the most ragged on games of all mmorpgs. Its actually got a reputation of housing hoards of immature whiney children and the rest, aggravated players. If you dont like "Kiddies" dont play a "kiddies" game. WoW has very little depth compared to alot of other games out there. Play Dark Ages of Camelot, or Eve or even L2 (which is horrible imo, but its freaking better than WoW).
So my advice to avoid kiddies, avoid the games they play like Guild Wars and WoW
When I made the switch from EQ2 to WoW they tried to warn me. I play (ed) WoW because it was a decent game. I'm not going to get into the merits of that decision here....but leaving the aforementioned playerbase aside, its a more then a decent and modern EQ1 clone.
But yes, any game that I pick up in the future needs to have aspects that both appeal to me and don't appeal to the txt speaking kiddie crowd. I guess the lesson learned here is:
too casual, too simple content fosters the wrong kind of crowd.
Maybe its time to go back to EvE online
There COULD be an easy cure to everyone's kiddie problems.....
Every game should have servers with different age limits.
When a player signs up, he is asked his birthdate and from there is given a list of servers full of players in his age range. Yes, I see one downfall could be people who lie about their age, but what would they gain from that? I can't see a 12 year old really wanting to run around and play with a 35 year old. Any one who does lie, and is caught could be reported and placedon the correct server.
This would be more difficult to initiate in the games that are already being played- but not impossible, and It would be an easy feature to add to the new up-and-coming games in production.
Anyone think this could work?
I dont think its a valid direction to solution, because age doesnt always = maturity. So it may just leave some of the mature younger players with a bunch of goofs and older players would still have to deal with others that arnt mature enough or have a different personality. IMO age limit servers wouldnt really help the situation, just alienate the gamers from each other
I disagree. I believe it would cause gamers to become closer-being that they will (more than likely) have a lot in common with each other and they will be more on the same wave length.
For gamers who would rather play on an open-age server that would also be an option.
lol, i don't think so, but using a phrase that you don't know the origin of makes for an ironic defense of immaturity
I don't see it that way. All I see is someone trying to make a argument form nothing so dont speak to me of immaturity.
Haha, burned! Nice counterattack!
Age Of Conan is going to be an 18 + mmorpg, maybe that will please some of you. If you catch anyone in chat's saying they're under 18 you could probably report them to GM. Owned. im 21 by the way and i also agree with the original poster. We're slowly fading away. :-(
What we really need is a server which requires the user to pass an intelligence test to create a character on it. But even then, rich kiddies will have their parents buy them an account on said server with Ebay. I too am tired of stupid people who can't spell or use grammar, however, unlike you, I am 17.
Textspeak is no indication of age. When I get texts from my Mum or Dad they use the worst text speak ever. Ok yeah its text speak, but it could easily translate to games where you just can't tell their age by the language they choose.
That`s why i like eve online so much. It`s community is very mature. There`s flaming on forums ofc as in any other MMO but the gamers are older then in most MMO`s i`ve played. Most ppl in my corporation are between 25 and 35 years old and lots of them are a lot older than that. Sure we have the occational 15 year old player but it`s not just kids and there is absolutely no leet speak.
I don`t know why eve attracts older players but i guess it`s the sheer complexity of the game.
I`ve played WOW before and met many nice people there too but the constant leet speak drove me insane.
I feel offended when i gotta read that crap.
argument? i just thought it was funny
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Most game developers main priority sadly is money. Limiting a game in whatever manner to "Mature Adults" or any genre of people is potentially drastically cutting into the final revenue of that product. As such I don't expect to see much done about this issue in that manner. To sit here and even discuss the possibility of any game releasing to a limited audience would be pointless.
A more plausable solution in my opinion is to do away with the global chat features (including trade, map, regional, national, city wide, whatever they are called) that many of these newer games have. Or in some way limit them to specific people/areas/events or make them difficult to acheive ranks that require much thought/questing/brains/etc. to obtain. Anything would improve on free for all chat like it exists now.
I find these open regional chats to be the main problem and I usually filter them out but I often feel I might miss the 1 thing out of 100 lines that might be important. All other forms of communication can be dealt with on a personal level. Join/Create a mature guild with a screening process and block anyone who annoys you in personal IM chat.
I also agree that the easier games like WoW and free games like GW breed this type of childish behavior. They are also the same games that I myself have tried and found myself not lasting very long because they are easy or very limiting in options. But in teh same light childish behavior is not limited to these games and you will find it everywhere in some form no matter what you do.
I just think the elimination of global chat is the easiest and most practical first step to solve some of this problem. If they cant say it, you cant see it and in the end thats most of what matters whether they are in the game or not.
On a side note but similier issue I beleive global chats create other bad issues in games such as less reason to make friends and less reason to actually communicate 1 on 1 with other members of the community when you can simply outburst to everyone for anything you need or any questions you may have instead of working together with someone like rpg are supposed to be to acomplish goals. It annoys me to no end when I constantly see global shout asking "where is x mob located I need for y quest" when I myself have been running around looking for that mob having fun exploring and bam the answer was just given to me and ruined my fun. Also WTS WTT WTB chat annoys me to no end either, use the damn auctions, thats why they exist.
/end rant