WoW speaks for itself. When I played VG everyone thought they were an expert on everything from how much every other mmo sucked to politics and law. If you dared speak up about any bug in the game people would literally put you on ignore.
In EQ2 I was always able to find help and advice, and the people were very friendly. I just don't like that game's style, otherwise I'd still play it.
Good points. However you make it sound like it's a bloodbath in darkfall - it is not. Most people are good respectable people that are willing and do help you. The main people you have to watch out for is the opposite alignment. In that case, they are allowed to exhibit wanton behaviour without any backlash. The general person that is your alignment won't run up to you and pvp you so let's not make this sound like you walk out of the city and get backstabbed immediately.. it is far from that.
Fair enough... And full disclosure, I never bothered signing up for DF. I followed the communities online for a while, saw the warning signs I look out for with PVP games, and decided to save myself the frustration.
I'd give it a shot, but I'm 99% sure I'm going to end up disappointed. Just looking at this thread, it is at the top of a heck of a lot of "worst community" lists which is impressive given the amount of hate floating around these forums for WoW.
I do find it unlikely that "most" of the people are good and respectable though. The threads I was following just a few months back were far too strong. And they were all around how to exploit game mechanics to safely massacre newbies of your own faction. That can't be a good sign.
In any game there will be some good folks with good intentions. Especially in an open PVP sandbox game - you get the activist types trying to save the world and convince people like me to "please come play! its really not so bad!" But the problem with PVP is that the 80/20 rule is deadly. In PVE, if 80% of the people are good and 20% are asshats, I can filter chat and never PVP. Join a guild in the 80%, etc. In PVP, if 20% are asshats and are exploiting the game, killing wantonly, making life miserable for everyone... That gets old fast. And to compound it, from what I've seen, in PVP games its the *reverse* 80/20. Normally 80% asshats, 20% good folks.
Ill keep an eye on DF and if it looks like either the game designers made great (and revolutionary) strides in implementing repercussions and/or the community somehow actually matured, I may give it a shot.
Best Community : EVE Not because they're nice. they're NOT nice. But they ARE smart. Very. and they speak in complete sentences(caldari noob chat notwithstanding).
Worst: WOW. Now, I know it's the cool thing to hate. I don't hate the game. the game is fine. it's, actually from a gaming company's perspective perfect. It has just enough graphics to not look bad, just enough content, plays on damn near any computer, and makes a metric fuckton of money. It's the Carson Daly of games, bland, OK if you don't want to think, and just have a fun, rather shallow experience and get on with life. The community it draws, and I fully acknowledge there are some awesome, helpful, smart people scattered throughout, are some of the most bottom-feeding, shit-splattered, useless wastes of scum I've ever seen(I haven't played darkfall, BTW, but if I ever do, they may take this spot based on what I've gotten from informed sources). I can't..it's just..*shakes head and walks away from computer..
I don't quite remember which would be the best. Maybe Horizons? The game crashed and burned, but not due to lack of trying by the community.
Worse was LoTRO. I can't think of a more elitist, insulting group of people than what I encountered there. While I don't remember which server it was I do recall that it was in Monster Play. I don't know if that's an excuse or not, but I gave it several futile days to find out.
Best Community : EVE Not because they're nice. they're NOT nice. But they ARE smart. Very. and they speak in complete sentences(caldari noob chat notwithstanding).
Worst: WOW. Now, I know it's the cool thing to hate. I don't hate the game. the game is fine. it's, actually from a gaming company's perspective perfect. It has just enough graphics to not look bad, just enough content, plays on damn near any computer, and makes a metric fuckton of money. It's the Carson Daly of games, bland, OK if you don't want to think, and just have a fun, rather shallow experience and get on with life. The community it draws, and I fully acknowledge there are some awesome, helpful, smart people scattered throughout, are some of the most bottom-feeding, shit-splattered, useless wastes of scum I've ever seen(I haven't played darkfall, BTW, but if I ever do, they may take this spot based on what I've gotten from informed sources). I can't..it's just..*shakes head and walks away from computer..
Well, we all know about people t-bagging in Halo and acting incredibly immature. I'm not saying Halo has a bad community. Halo has a great community now. Why is that, do you think? I think it is because wherever the hype is, the trolls move in. For instance, now we have another awesome game on the X-Box, it's called COD:MW2. Of corse, these games aren't MMO material yet, but they illustrate my point. Now, when I play Halo, I can get a game with good players who greet you with understandable words. Where I can't in COD.
Another point, is Global Agenda. WTF is up with the TF2 arguments? That game, until it launches, has the worst community. Once it launches, I bet most of the trolls with leave.
If you keep the hype up, like in WoW, you are going to get people like that. It's awful.
Best: Shadowbane,FFXI,EQ, WOW(when your in a server dominating guild)
Shadowbane was probably one of the best communities because the game was wide open and no instances. The total pvp environment made it so every group had to be on guard at all times because gankers were everywhere. It was always great when out of nowhere a max level scout would pop out of stealth next to your lowbie group and inform everyone that there was a theif stealthed in the area, a few mins later the scout would pop out and destroy the theif that was trying to steal everything from your group without anyones knowledge.
FFXI, the fact that half the userbase spoke no english at all, but the game included a chat system that allowed people to piece together sentences, and that groups were able to communicate with this and actually put together skill chains was amazing. When you play wow its hard enough to get a group of 100% english speakers to get out of the dragons fire, imagine if you had to try to get a rogue to backstab and within 2 seconds a mage had to hit the mob with a frost bolt followed by a hunters aimed shot to maximize damage? That would never happen in a million years.
EQ, honestly the last of the hardcore mmo games. It seemed like almost everyone knew what they were doing and would also help other people. I played on tunare, and i dont know other servers worked but up untill the first expansion raiding was almost 100% pug. People would go to the server forums, post that they wanted to lead a raid at x time on y day and said to meet at location z. Somehow people would then show up, said raid leader would then form a group, and they would go and everything in the zone would be alive because for whatever unexplainable reason, nobody went and killed the zone before the raid got there. What was even more amazing was that gear for certain classes dropped in certain zones but people would go to eachothers raid and spend hours killing stuff even though nothing they could even use drop at all. Could anyone imagine WoW if in molten core, no healer gear dropped at all, but in BWL no dps gear dropped but all healer gear dropped? The entire server would be running around in greens.
WOW in a good guild, the game was honestly only fun for me when i had the time to raid 7 days a week and play with the best players on the server. We got things done, we cleared everything fairly easily, after trying to play casually i quickly quit the game because a lot of casual players suck and cant figure out why their guild cant kill anything.
Worst : Wow
The majority of the people who play it are horrible and spam/TALK IN CAPS/act like they are awesome. They are the people who run around in CoD with a 0 -20 score, always had their entire family die in the oregon trail before getting across the great plains and die over and over to the first goomba in super mario brothers. It is not anyones place to tell them off, but it is sure as hell frustrating when your 20 man raid consists of 3 people who are just good at video games and 17 people who have some unexplainable attractions to clouds of green gas, the dragons tail, flames, lava, black holes, un-pulled mobs ect. If this is the future of online gaming im going to throw my cat 5 in the trash and just stick to playing with NPCs.
Best and Worst Community for me was Ultima Online.
Worst because it was the first MMORPG and had no idea what the human psyche was capable of. LOL The griefers and PK battles were awful. Anytime the developer has to have a mass banning of guilds because they are only concerned about griefing the community, you know you've got some rotten apples. I remember my first week playing that game (or any MMORPG for that matter) and just assuming people on cyberspace were civil. I spent an hour mining, and was putting resources on the ground to allow me to craft. Some random guy just walks up, takes my ore that I had spent the last hour macroing and tells me "tough luck" and walks away. LOL That's a minor example because the PK griefing was just downright evil. I remember playing with my real-life brother who was much higher level and experienced and him yelling "Ruuuuuunnnnnn!" when we would be patrolling the forest and he would see a high level PKer coming. I think it was my experiences with griefers that made me start to try some of the PVE-oriented games at the time such as Asheron's Call or Everquest.
It could also bring out the best in a community because there were genuinely good people who would try and fight that behavior I just listed. It was a quasi-RPG community at first because again, it was the first of its kind and people didn't know how to act. So it was probably the only MMORPG I ever played where I could have a conversation with one guy who would only say things such as "Nay.." or "I see thy blade is..." and then turn around and find someone who would tell me "Dude!! Please, buy this from me!!" It looks like today's MMORPGs mostly have roleplay only servers. The online funerals and stuff that are now everywhere, they all started in Ultima Online. Someone in my guild died and the mods even put up a permanent memorial to the guy. We would all hang around the guild's castle and talk about anything from how to try out new exploits, to the hottest chicks on TV, to just asking about our families and jobs.
For me, the best community I've ever experienced is in Dream of Mirror Online. The people there were extremely friendly; we would break out in random conversations at least half the time, and I would always be able to find a group everytime I log on, and have to accomplish a mission in a dungeon. I have yet to play a game with a community as nice as the DOMO community; I had so many friends there. In fact, I think it was the only game where I actually had to scroll down my friends list to find someone.
Worst community was Redcliff. Typical Chinese MMO, probably no one has ever heard of it before. Though I admit that I do like the game mechanics, I have yet to actually talk to people there. Moreover, the frequent use of Singlish there really irks me. I've stopped using Singlish ever since I played there, because I had never realised just how ugly it sounded.
Comments
Worst communities: WoW and Vanguard.
Best Community: EQ2.
WoW speaks for itself. When I played VG everyone thought they were an expert on everything from how much every other mmo sucked to politics and law. If you dared speak up about any bug in the game people would literally put you on ignore.
In EQ2 I was always able to find help and advice, and the people were very friendly. I just don't like that game's style, otherwise I'd still play it.
Fair enough... And full disclosure, I never bothered signing up for DF. I followed the communities online for a while, saw the warning signs I look out for with PVP games, and decided to save myself the frustration.
I'd give it a shot, but I'm 99% sure I'm going to end up disappointed. Just looking at this thread, it is at the top of a heck of a lot of "worst community" lists which is impressive given the amount of hate floating around these forums for WoW.
I do find it unlikely that "most" of the people are good and respectable though. The threads I was following just a few months back were far too strong. And they were all around how to exploit game mechanics to safely massacre newbies of your own faction. That can't be a good sign.
In any game there will be some good folks with good intentions. Especially in an open PVP sandbox game - you get the activist types trying to save the world and convince people like me to "please come play! its really not so bad!" But the problem with PVP is that the 80/20 rule is deadly. In PVE, if 80% of the people are good and 20% are asshats, I can filter chat and never PVP. Join a guild in the 80%, etc. In PVP, if 20% are asshats and are exploiting the game, killing wantonly, making life miserable for everyone... That gets old fast. And to compound it, from what I've seen, in PVP games its the *reverse* 80/20. Normally 80% asshats, 20% good folks.
Ill keep an eye on DF and if it looks like either the game designers made great (and revolutionary) strides in implementing repercussions and/or the community somehow actually matured, I may give it a shot.
Best Community : EVE Not because they're nice. they're NOT nice. But they ARE smart. Very. and they speak in complete sentences(caldari noob chat notwithstanding).
Worst: WOW. Now, I know it's the cool thing to hate. I don't hate the game. the game is fine. it's, actually from a gaming company's perspective perfect. It has just enough graphics to not look bad, just enough content, plays on damn near any computer, and makes a metric fuckton of money. It's the Carson Daly of games, bland, OK if you don't want to think, and just have a fun, rather shallow experience and get on with life. The community it draws, and I fully acknowledge there are some awesome, helpful, smart people scattered throughout, are some of the most bottom-feeding, shit-splattered, useless wastes of scum I've ever seen(I haven't played darkfall, BTW, but if I ever do, they may take this spot based on what I've gotten from informed sources). I can't..it's just..*shakes head and walks away from computer..
I don't quite remember which would be the best. Maybe Horizons? The game crashed and burned, but not due to lack of trying by the community.
Worse was LoTRO. I can't think of a more elitist, insulting group of people than what I encountered there. While I don't remember which server it was I do recall that it was in Monster Play. I don't know if that's an excuse or not, but I gave it several futile days to find out.
Best: Scorn: Land of Strife
Worst: LOTRO
Truer words were never spoken sir!
Well, we all know about people t-bagging in Halo and acting incredibly immature. I'm not saying Halo has a bad community. Halo has a great community now. Why is that, do you think? I think it is because wherever the hype is, the trolls move in. For instance, now we have another awesome game on the X-Box, it's called COD:MW2. Of corse, these games aren't MMO material yet, but they illustrate my point. Now, when I play Halo, I can get a game with good players who greet you with understandable words. Where I can't in COD.
Another point, is Global Agenda. WTF is up with the TF2 arguments? That game, until it launches, has the worst community. Once it launches, I bet most of the trolls with leave.
If you keep the hype up, like in WoW, you are going to get people like that. It's awful.
Best: Shadowbane,FFXI,EQ, WOW(when your in a server dominating guild)
Shadowbane was probably one of the best communities because the game was wide open and no instances. The total pvp environment made it so every group had to be on guard at all times because gankers were everywhere. It was always great when out of nowhere a max level scout would pop out of stealth next to your lowbie group and inform everyone that there was a theif stealthed in the area, a few mins later the scout would pop out and destroy the theif that was trying to steal everything from your group without anyones knowledge.
FFXI, the fact that half the userbase spoke no english at all, but the game included a chat system that allowed people to piece together sentences, and that groups were able to communicate with this and actually put together skill chains was amazing. When you play wow its hard enough to get a group of 100% english speakers to get out of the dragons fire, imagine if you had to try to get a rogue to backstab and within 2 seconds a mage had to hit the mob with a frost bolt followed by a hunters aimed shot to maximize damage? That would never happen in a million years.
EQ, honestly the last of the hardcore mmo games. It seemed like almost everyone knew what they were doing and would also help other people. I played on tunare, and i dont know other servers worked but up untill the first expansion raiding was almost 100% pug. People would go to the server forums, post that they wanted to lead a raid at x time on y day and said to meet at location z. Somehow people would then show up, said raid leader would then form a group, and they would go and everything in the zone would be alive because for whatever unexplainable reason, nobody went and killed the zone before the raid got there. What was even more amazing was that gear for certain classes dropped in certain zones but people would go to eachothers raid and spend hours killing stuff even though nothing they could even use drop at all. Could anyone imagine WoW if in molten core, no healer gear dropped at all, but in BWL no dps gear dropped but all healer gear dropped? The entire server would be running around in greens.
WOW in a good guild, the game was honestly only fun for me when i had the time to raid 7 days a week and play with the best players on the server. We got things done, we cleared everything fairly easily, after trying to play casually i quickly quit the game because a lot of casual players suck and cant figure out why their guild cant kill anything.
Worst : Wow
The majority of the people who play it are horrible and spam/TALK IN CAPS/act like they are awesome. They are the people who run around in CoD with a 0 -20 score, always had their entire family die in the oregon trail before getting across the great plains and die over and over to the first goomba in super mario brothers. It is not anyones place to tell them off, but it is sure as hell frustrating when your 20 man raid consists of 3 people who are just good at video games and 17 people who have some unexplainable attractions to clouds of green gas, the dragons tail, flames, lava, black holes, un-pulled mobs ect. If this is the future of online gaming im going to throw my cat 5 in the trash and just stick to playing with NPCs.
Best and Worst Community for me was Ultima Online.
Worst because it was the first MMORPG and had no idea what the human psyche was capable of. LOL The griefers and PK battles were awful. Anytime the developer has to have a mass banning of guilds because they are only concerned about griefing the community, you know you've got some rotten apples. I remember my first week playing that game (or any MMORPG for that matter) and just assuming people on cyberspace were civil. I spent an hour mining, and was putting resources on the ground to allow me to craft. Some random guy just walks up, takes my ore that I had spent the last hour macroing and tells me "tough luck" and walks away. LOL That's a minor example because the PK griefing was just downright evil. I remember playing with my real-life brother who was much higher level and experienced and him yelling "Ruuuuuunnnnnn!" when we would be patrolling the forest and he would see a high level PKer coming. I think it was my experiences with griefers that made me start to try some of the PVE-oriented games at the time such as Asheron's Call or Everquest.
It could also bring out the best in a community because there were genuinely good people who would try and fight that behavior I just listed. It was a quasi-RPG community at first because again, it was the first of its kind and people didn't know how to act. So it was probably the only MMORPG I ever played where I could have a conversation with one guy who would only say things such as "Nay.." or "I see thy blade is..." and then turn around and find someone who would tell me "Dude!! Please, buy this from me!!" It looks like today's MMORPGs mostly have roleplay only servers. The online funerals and stuff that are now everywhere, they all started in Ultima Online. Someone in my guild died and the mods even put up a permanent memorial to the guy. We would all hang around the guild's castle and talk about anything from how to try out new exploits, to the hottest chicks on TV, to just asking about our families and jobs.
Best i would say Ryzom.
The worst is LOTR. What a bunch of arrogant elitist jerks.
For me, the best community I've ever experienced is in Dream of Mirror Online. The people there were extremely friendly; we would break out in random conversations at least half the time, and I would always be able to find a group everytime I log on, and have to accomplish a mission in a dungeon. I have yet to play a game with a community as nice as the DOMO community; I had so many friends there. In fact, I think it was the only game where I actually had to scroll down my friends list to find someone.
Worst community was Redcliff. Typical Chinese MMO, probably no one has ever heard of it before. Though I admit that I do like the game mechanics, I have yet to actually talk to people there. Moreover, the frequent use of Singlish there really irks me. I've stopped using Singlish ever since I played there, because I had never realised just how ugly it sounded.
Main characters:
Jinn Gone Quiet (Guild Wars)
Princess Pudding (Guild Wars)