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Theres no good reason to blame the community
i00x00i
Member Posts: 243
The average age of the World of Warcraft player is about 28 years old. If you don't believe me, google your own research. Until then, looks like WoW's "bad community" can't be blamed on age. Now that age is out of the equation we can reasonably assume that most people in World of Warcraft act out because they like to abuse their anonymity.
However, since this is the case with, oh I dunno the vast majority of the internet, I guess there's really not a whole lot to complain about since the likelyhood of some asshat ruining your good time on the good ole' interwebz in general is statistically inevitable.
"But back in the day when I played EQ and UO the community was friendly and everybody got along and sang kum ba aww". Well nice try but unfourtunately this statement fails to account for the fact that 2 people played EQ and UO (yes it was a smartass exaggeration) compared to the massive subcription base of games like WoW, plus the internet in general wasn't nearly as popular as it is now. It's funny though because despite statements like these asshatery was still around even "back in the day", like that time the creator of UO was assaulted and tourched to death in-game while players watched and laughed.
Either way I think we can stop blaming game developers and coming up with rediculous excuses for the lack of quality in community and start pointing the finger where it deserves to be pointed, at the people themselves. There's a reason the Darwin Awards exist. There will always be stupid people and statistically they will outnumber you. So the next time you have a joyful little "encounter" with that annoying "28 year old" who won't leave you alone during your busy and eventful boar killing quest, lets try hitting the ignore button or handling the situation by yourself before heading straight on over to MMORPG.COM to post a "new" thread and complain about WoW's "awful community".
P.S. No community is bad but there is the occasional douche bag that makes it seem that way.
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
Comments
Your thread title says there are no good reasons to blame the community, but you say that we're blaming developers for poor communities yet we should blame the people themselves (community). Derailed train of thought? :P
I don't completely disagree with you, though, because I believe the percentage of childish people is a constant and we just see a larger sample size in WoW than other games. Still yet, with online communities getting larger and more popular, you're more prone to running into the cretins.
However, I think it's perfectly valid to say that communities are getting worse and games like WoW may even be a hotbed for it just because Blizzard doesn't/cannot properly regulate them. With smaller userbases, companies were able to take care of standout characters and even make examples of them (jail system in UO, for example). Blizzard would have to hire a ridiculous amount of moderators and GMs to keep their game clean.
I think if Blizzard (and all MMOs) had a better system of reporting where you didn't have to file each case seperatley and could just right click and check a few things off and sumbit it then it'd be a much easier system for what moderators and GMs they do have to see repeat offenders or generally offensive players and deal with it. Sometimes you get deja vu from reporting because the cases are so damn similar.
Of course, that only deals with players who are already breaking the ToS. You've got a much larger problem with the players who are just unpleasant or disruptive to a point where it'd be unreasonable to ask Blizzard to monitor; a common one that I'd say falls under that category are the elitists. Since there are enough of these people around now to riff off of each other without needing to associate with those who ignore them, it's an increasingly uphill battle for players to just move along; it's sort of at a point where you can't avoid them in some cases. You don't need Blizzard fixing those players because no matter how snoody or hardheaded they might be, they're still operating within the ToS most of the time - they're a tough nut to crack, though; not really sure what I'd consider doing about them.
I used Blizzard as an example. Pretty much every game has it's share of the same type so I don't want it to come across as me picking on Blizzard exclusively - they're just an easy example for this case, I feel.
Agreed, but a better reporting system won't mean much if Acti-Blizzard refuse to punish those players in fear of losing money.
Oh definitely. That's where I think the blame sort of falls into a company's lap as well. If they're unwilling to take care of what the players are reporting, then maybe it's an unfixable problem.
edit: i'm such a chronic post editor. it seems my grammar and punctuation are more tired than I am.
This topic hinges on the idea that "WoW's community is bad", which I don't agree with -- but as a long term player of the game you might expect me to say that. I also say it as an MMORPG veteran though, and generally a coder geek who has spent far too much time in online communities and I feel that I generally have good experience in this area.
World of Warcraft is made up of literally hundreds of different realms far more than any other game, this is not an indication of quality merely a fact that we can't quantify WoW's community as "bad" or worse than another MMORPG. An EU Alliance PvP community has an entirely different feel to a US Horde Roleplaying community. There are so many factors that to say that "WoW has a bad community", is as accurate as saying all black people behave like Barack Obama or that all white people behave like Eminem.
It's quite ridiculous when you actually think of it that way.
WoW's community can not be measurably different to other MMORPGs. I see the same personalities in WoW than I did in EVE a few years ago, and Everquest a few years before that. Sure people are unique, but I swear I can categorize most people into several different personality types.
I've met some of the most intelligent, friendly and caring people in WoW and other games too. There is no justifiable evidence to support that WoW has a bigger proportion of asshats than any other game. The majority of my friends in WoW are late 20s or far, far older. Married, kids, without kids. Young, old. Doctors, programers, unemployed, lawers, actors, muscians... the lot.
Does MMORPG.com have a bad community, because it chooses to offer itself as a site for games alterative to WoW - as opposed to most other MMOsites that acknowledge and serve WoW content proportionally based on it being the most popular?
I don't think so, but it does lend itself (and has done for a long time) to the idea that WoW has a bad community - an idea that can make no logical sense and is propagated by people with various different anti-WoW motivations instead of having any basis in fact.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
One advantage to a huge player base is diversity. I've seen the absolute best and worst in WoW's player base. I have also seen considerably worse in other games (Guild Wars, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan and Champions spring to mind) as well as better (in DDO and Vanguard). That doesn't mean any one of these games have a corner on asshattery or sainthood in their player base....it has a lot to do with choice of server, time and date played, luck of the draw, you name it.
The best advice I can offer is to learn to take internet personalities with a grain of salt, make judicious use of the ignore/squelch feature, and cultivate good relations with players of like mind and interest. Any MMO will prove considerably more tolerable if you approach it carefully. And if you're in WoW, I strongly advise shopping around in different server realms. I've found that some realms seem to attract asshats like magnets, and other realms are surprisingly friendly and old-school in their approach, genuinely open to friendly interaction.
Remember, in its heyday Everquest had about 200,000 regular subscribers. With Wow at around 12 million, that means that in terms of raw population EQ had 1 player for every 120 WoW players. Take any random segment of the population, and its inevitable that your going to see more asshats in a bigger population. In the example, if we sample from 100 EQ players and find out that 10% of them back in the day (10 players) were asshats, and look at the same equivalent sample from WoW (12,000 players) and find that WoW also has a 10% group of asshats, for EQ that's 10 people out of 100, but for WoW that's 1,200 asshats out of the 12,000.
1,200 braying donkeys in a field of 12,000 will still look and sound louder than the 10 donkeys in the other corral of 100, even though they are precisely the same ratios. Just remember to keep that in mind when you see a few jackasses wandering around in your favorite MMO.
Current MMOs: Rift, GW2, Defiance
Blog: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com (old school tabletop gaming and more)
Change that to "...most people who act out in World of Warcraft do it because they like to abuse their anonymity."
Your sentence implies that all WoW players act out, which is clearly not true. It's a subset of the player base, just like in every other MMO.
I think many of the game's mechanics allow and even encourage players to behave poorly, moreso than in past MMORPGs. Unfortunately, because of WoW's popularity, those mechanics, and thus the bad behavior, is expected. Yes, there were asshats in those older games too, and it would be impossible to accurately tell the proportions of each compared to current games. But you can look at things such as light death penalties, super soloability, name changes, and server transfers and they just scream: "Do whatever you want, there are no consequences!" to me.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Point being there is only so much a gaming company can do to "keep its players in line" while still providing the freedoms that anonymity offer. Blizzard already tried taking this away and the community threw a riot. There is absolutely no way to police this game in a way that will please each and every cutomer, same goes for every website and every online game that allows its users the freedoms of anonymity. The occasional asshat is the sacrifice that we must all understand. It has nothing to do with "the system" and everything to do with it's people.
However, do we accept the freedoms that our "system" offers us in exchange for the few that abuse it or do we crack down and run every online game as if it were North Korea.
Keep complaining about "bad communities" and I guess we'll see what happens.
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
The RealID crap has no bearing on how they police the community. Blizzard knows who you are by your account info. They know every character on your account(s). You are not anonymous to them. Players can not and have never been really able to police each other. The only thing you can do is report someone to Blizzard or put someone on ignore. So, it has always been in the hands of Blizzard from the start. Even the old blacklisting of someone has no real influence now. It's too easy to level a new character or move to a new realm now. You can't post their name on the forums. You can't talk about what they did half the time as Blizzad will delete all related topics to keep people from knowing their perfect game has exploits. Look how long bots persist before a ban. They are back with a new bot and stick around for long periods of times again.
Blizzard has only been getting softer and softer on people who openly and willingly break the rules. What will happen to the people abusing realm changing to reset raid lockouts? What will happen to the people abusing the paladin bug to get HUGE criticals(post already deleted)? Probably very little. And that's not getting into the more legacy stuff that people have done. GCD exploit anyone? Body spammers for how long? Flying bots? It's not that exploits exist. It's how long they exist, how often they return after a supposed fix, and what really happens to the people doing it.
the WOW community is toxic, you have only to logon to any server and just sit and read the channel chat to realise it. This however is a symptom not the cause, Blizzard have entirely failed to manage the culture through the emphasis they put over number of subscriptions over quality. Their attitude is that there is enough population on this planet that they can not give a shit of the quality of the game for existing players as long as they can atttract more new player's than what leaves. Its a nasty approach, but it does give big profit.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
It only takes 1 person/encounter to spoil something fun. OR... multiple morons spamming trade chat with Anal this or Anal that, or your mom this or your mom that. Oh how I miss the lovely community in WOW.... I miss DAOC's community, they were so much different.
Looking forward to: Camelot Unchained
Playing: None
Played: DAOC, WAR, FFXIV, WOW, Vanguard, GW, GW2, LORTO,
one thing is sure a lot of player will be busy unlocking the new content either through the daily way or unlocking trough raid way!
And how many of those are truely excited about the new content and enjoying the experience of slowly playing through it and enjoying/savoring every moment, and how many are grinding as quick as they can to get back to where they were 2 weeks ago, grinding boss x to gear up to kill boss y as fast as possible - addiction for addiction sake maybe
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I for one, did enjoy the slower travel through the progression. I enjoyed having a good time with some folks that weren't all the elite caliber that the hardcore raiding guild looked for. I enjoyed my time in WOW, the community did kill it for me, not the content.
Looking forward to: Camelot Unchained
Playing: None
Played: DAOC, WAR, FFXIV, WOW, Vanguard, GW, GW2, LORTO,
I don't see how this thread holds any remote amount of truth in it. I will not only blame the ignorant, blatantly rude and animalistic "community" (if you can even call it that), but I will blame the damned moderators for doing absolutely nothing to stop them from their constant reign of trolling.
Mods cant solve the root cause which is that a huge portion of the community play a game they do not actually enjoy anymore. Humans are tribal, and when we are unhappy we attack and blame other 'tribes' or in otherwords people outside their guild. Hence the toxic atmosphere in the game. Blizz get hundreds of millions of pounds (for 1 game!) and fail to invest enough of that in either content or analysis and adjustments to make it a community based game - it is in conflict with their simple profit goals.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Lol. Really, is that what we do when we're unhappy? Sorry, but no. Sounds like something a misguided psychiatrist would say. There is absolutely no excuse for people like them and their behavior. There's no use trying to understand rude or mean-spirited people as they are such people who take some kind of joy in putting others down.
Mods CAN and HAVE solved this issue before by actually punishing or banning their abusive playerbase. If you call someone a racial slur and INITIATE an argument / fight, the most you get from a mod from Blizzard now, is a slap on the wrist. Blizzard (-cough- Activision) love money way too much and they aren't willing to get rid of their abusive playerbase because, as it happens, those players as a whole make up quite an income for them. At the cost of their supposed "community", but, like I'm sure you've heard it said: Money talks.
Take a look at the country you were born in. Now look at it's history and current events. These "rude" and "mean-spirited" people you speak of make up a very large percentage of your countries population and always have since its birth. My point is that no matter where you go these people will always exist because human nature is statistically "mean-spirited" and you cannot argue this. Although this may seem highly pessimistic I assure you that I am very positive when it comes to my fellow people but unfourtunately our past and present tells a very ugly and a very different story.
Now let me give you a scenario, you take a large group of people and you mask them, then you slap them all into a virtual world and tell them that they are allowed to say and do whatever they want and the consequences of their actions will have absolutely no effect on their real lives. I gaurantee that at least some if not a majority of these people would abuse this system and test the limits of their very own morality.
This system is also known as the World of Warcraft along with every other MMORPG on the face of this earth. Or more simply put, the internet.
But your right, there is no excuse for these people but that doesn't give you the right to ignore the fact that there is only so much a developer can do to control these people and police it's virtual world. If WoW was ran like North Korea maybe we could keep these people in line but then we're taking away freedoms and besides wheres the fun in that. Which brings me to my next point. Since this is all just a big virtual fantasy world one would think that you as the player could handle a negative situation yourself without the help of big daddy or at least adapt or deal with it and realize that it's not the games fault or the developers fault, it's just human nature.
Most people go through life pretending to be a boss. I go through life pretending I'm not.
I was going to write something mean-spirited, but the internet is ugly enough already. If you like the WoW community, that's just peachy. I hope you two will be very happy together.
^^This.
The guy in UO that torched Lord British immediatly got booted and his account banned. Players don't jack around when they know all their hard work could be on the line. Dev companies today don't have the stones to stand up for anything anymore so players walk all over them and in turn all over each other.
I'm sorry, I'm not buying this whole 'it's not the players fault' crap. If you know there is a problem on the east side of town, where the people there LOVE to murder, rape, and rob anyone that comes in thier 'hood well then, do you just blame the cops for not keeping them under control? Sure, they could bring in the guard to help them shoot every one of the asshats carrying AKs, but is it THIER fault they are the way they are? At which point in time do you hold the people accountable for acting the way they do? Is it now the acceptable norm, that since the interweb allows it, that its ok to do it? At which point in time did we as human beings give up morallity?
No, I'm not going to buy this one at all. You can if you like, but in my mind, if you act like an ass in public (which the interweb and MMO games are) then you should expect the same punishment as if you acted like an ass in your local supermarket. You should be kicked out and told never to come back, or dragged out back and beaten to an inch of death and left in the alley, whichever is most appropriate for your level of asshattery.
There is EVERY reason to blame the community, the community does NOT need to act like they do, even if it is possible to do so. Do you kidnap 7 year old little girls and rape them just because you could?? Seriously, the excuse that 'well it can happen anyway so its all cool' is not a good enough reason. Human beings, adults, should be responsible enough to police themselves no matter where they are. And if these adults chose NOT to police themselves....well then it is up to the rest of us that actually are adults to deal with them for the sake of the 'community'.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
That's why some of us have been trying to explain that both are to blame. But, Blizzard is the only one of the two that has the power to do anything about it. The fact that they are unwilling or don't care enough to clean up their forums, as the only ones with any power on the forums, puts the ball completely in their court. By not enforcing their own rules and ignoring those who break the rules almost hourly, they are passively saying it's ok. Allowing people who act like that to continue to do it.
In fact, the only time Blizzard enforces anything on the forums is when you openly criticize or blame Blizzard or one of their employees. Those posts disappear in a flash.
Everytime a hot topic hits the forums, they mass delete tons of threads because there is already a thread about it. Which, just angers people more. They will continue to do this, but most often won't put up a sticky thread for people to talk about it. A thread that's more visible and less work for them. How often do they delete thread without explanation? Even the moderators take "pot shots" at players instead of being professional. And my personal favorite, tons and tons of "QQ", "Umadbro", and other meme posts that never get deleted.
Either they need to send all of their forum staff to customer service training, or they need to hire someone that knows it. Just like their PR people need to be professional as they are one of the many faces of the company, their forum staff is another face of the company. Lastly, they need to stop writing off everything they don't want to tackle as the ramblings of "the vocal minority". If they really gave a damn they'd promote the forums in game and/or actually promote it to get more discussion from "the majority". But, that won't happen with Blizzard as they are probably scared of what that would entail.
Well, here comes a test for Blizzard. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, a guild abused a faction change to get a raid reset and into heroic mode before they should have. They even got a first achievement for downing a boss. They were supposedly asked to leave the instance and heroic mode is now locked out for all.
"Firelands
Firelands Heroic difficulty has been turned off in all regions until the following week's realm maintenance."
Ok. So, what will they do to the guild who knowingly exploited it. Can't really argue they didn't know when they all did it at once(people in that raid) and all got into something they shouldn't have been allowed into yet.