Well they do come out because again most of those MMOs are ghost towns that feel like your small rural hillbilly town that is unwelcoming to outsiders. Sadly that is the best way I can compare the way these Hardcore Elitists treat other people.
They are in WoW but most operate guilds and live in dungeons. When this game first game out and all the SWG members flooded the servers with their small numbers they were in shock to see how much people changed. For example it was a shock that DKP a loot system in the horrid Everquest game is now a type of Guild and people expect the guild to announce or claim whether they carry and show that scarlet letter.
We had creepy people in the game who would follow members and spy on them to make sure they didn't use in-game titles because only leaders of said Guild could use titles like "Lord" or "Darth" it was quite weird and said. World of Warcraft players are generally very friendly and social but they do not like being ruled over like cattle as your people might see them.
I would argue that the Hardcore Elitists (Hardcore Minority) has degenerated into a hateful group of men and women who hate people who are different or outsiders.
HK, before f2p went live I saw some of the saddos you speak of getting all excited in general chat about how they were dreading all of these noobs coming into the game and how chat was going to be a nightmare because it would be filled with inane questions....I did fear the worst and even commented a couple of times about how we should welcome new players and not get all elitist on them.
Since f2p went live I've not really seen too much flaming of new players on the fleet, in the last few days I created a new character and saw a bit of it on Tython (obviously there was a greater number of new players there) but as one guy has already said the flaming was quickly doused by helpful comments with the flamer getting berated by other players.
Overall on my server it is definitely there but I don't think it has been too bad, some of the more sensitive new players will have been put off but most will be able to brush it off by realising it is only a small group of idiots.
I agree with you that a small minority of elitist players get on their high horses and look down on the rest of the community with a condescending attitude, but that happens in a walks of life.
However, to claim that WoW has a very social friendly community is a joke. WoW has got to be, by far, the most immature hate filled community I have seen in my time playing MMOs.
One of the main reasons I quit WoW was the nearly continuous rants of what one adolescent idiot had done to another player's mother.
I disagree about the WoW part.
WoW community, while it does have some nice people in it, however if you look at /2, a lot of them are not even hardcore elitist, some didn't even clear MV first few boss normal, yet, they will still treat people like shit regardless. The community in WoW I find to be generally bad. The best community I have found is actually from FFXI and FFXIV, where the game is pure PvE only, and everything you do require you to group up (you are pretty much fucked if you try to solo), and somehow people are much nicer to each other. Not saying there is a link between the style of the game and the community, but that definitely seems like a relationship between them.
I blame bad community in MMORPG's and games in general on the huge influx of new gamers, kids, or whatever you'd want to call them. Bad parenting, no respect for others and a general misconseption that they are royal, holy beings is also a negative factor in this particular group of players. As soon as WoW started getting alot of this crowd in and more and more veteran players quit the game went downhill. As has SWTOR.
I'm afraid game companies will have to let you, the player, choose what age group you want to play with to have a good social time in games these days. The kids like this kind of behaviour and they will not let it go. As a veteran, I hate it and believe that while internet grants me anonymousity, I should still be polite and helpful to others around me, not call them names when they do a mistake. This only leads to bad times.
I read that with TESO's server system the first thing you do is choose which player group you want to be paired with. This is a step in the right direction in my opinion. ;y choices would be: "the 25+ Casual hardcore PVE with a bit of PVP on the side" Crowd.
Maybe something for WoW, SWTOR and other games currently without this tech??
While I agree that the mmo community in general has gone downhill I don't think that kids are entirely to blame. A significant amount of the people who troll and abuse people in trade chat etc are not kids at all. One of the most notorious on my server was in his mid 20's and just that type of person who enjoyed putting other people down. You get these type of people at all ages and often the older people tend to be more agressive in their approach.
I've played in a gaming community of people strictly 25+ in SWTOR (I am getting close to 30 myself) and it was simply terrible. Players who believed they were better simply because they were older and looked down on other players. These players also bickered and argued worse than any guild I had ever been in before. It reminded me of a bunch of politicians and it's not a community I would like to go back to ever.
Personally I think there needs to be accountability for those who do abuse and troll other players. Removing the annonimity of players would also help I think.
Honestly, it's not really a gaming community thing. I think it's a world in general thing. People today are raised with much less discipline or respect for other people. It's no surprise that the mmo community is a reflection of that because they're just a subset of a larger shitty community: the world.
Humans are the only species on the planet smart enough to be this stupid.
I'm only visiting the official forum when I'm looking for references for similar things happened (bugs in warzones etc.). Apart from this, there are so many people having 0 idea what they are talking about but selling it like they know everything that it's not even funny anymore.