"It is not the game/company, it is the community itself"-mantra

[Vaelorian]

Well, that's the impression I got from your post. And IF that's true, Blizzard doesn't have a choice IF they want to keep as many players as they can.

Personally, I think that communities are best when people are exited about the game. It means that it has to offer something which stimulates them, often the quest to explore and learn the game. At this stage the developers can be forgiven for certain imbalances, things that don't make sense in story, pacing, over-grinding etc. They will refine the game, but players also get more critical once the exhaust the game and learn it to the core. When players don't think doing "whatever" is fun anymore, the community breaks down. Nobody helps with content if they can't get a shiny reward for themselves at the end of it. And even now in WoW, the challenge is not worth the reward anymore. Time is a big enemy, and I have yet to see a developer that wins the fight against age. There is no hope for this game to blossom or feel like it did in the start. Faction pride/competition? Gone! Recognition of guilds/players? Gone! Admiration for players' feats? Gone! People just don't care. All they can do, is to give the remaining (and bored) players some shiny stuff at a faster/easier pace, so they feel they get something out of the hours the put into it. So I don't think that players are always lazy, greedy dicks with no willpower as a default, but when they're not interested anymore, they are not interested in sacrifices. I think the decline of the WoW community is inevitable, and I don't blame Blizzard for their design decisions.

Why is there no faction pride?
Why is there no recognition of guilds/players?
Why is there no admiration for players feets?
Why don't people care?

This situation started somewhere. And the exact moment has been stated many times by various posters on mmo-c (though you could argue if it didn't start earlier) that this started at the end of WOTLK.
In WOTLK crossrealm tech for LFDungeon was added. First you had server only LFD. Which worked fine. Sure queues were a bit long at times. And that is also why Blizzard put in the crossrealm tech to have quicker queues. With that came anonymity. It was then that I personally felt my reputation as a player diminished. No one cared who I was anymore. No one knew me since they weren't from my server. Meanwhile people from my own server started not caring aswell. They didn't have any contact with me as they did before. They didn't have to remember my name. However helpful or pleasant I was, it didn't matter anymore.

Dungeons were a snoozefest in WOTLK (apart from the last 3 added) and thus communication was also not required anymore. This combination was devastating to the social aspect.
Then we got the decision that we would no longer have 25 man guilds solely. 10 man guilds were also added. The communities people had built were broken as guilds broke apart for the "easier option" of running a 10 man guild instead of a larger 25 man one. Still 25 mans in WOTLK were sort of more prestigious as the fights were generally harder then the 10 man version. Then we get Cataclysm. Cataclysm started out WELL. Dungeons were hard again and people cheered (atleast the community I was a part of) with a sense of TBC and Vanilla nostalgia. After a few weeks to a few months they nerfed them into the ground. They became a snoozefest once again. Communication died again during dungeons. People just seem to have gotten accustomed to easy snoozefests in WOTLK that they didn't have a clue how to play. So they fixed it. Gone social aspect once again. 25 man guilds collapsed en mass. The 10 man was vastly superior now to have vs a 25 man. Easier to manage and more or equal in prestige of difficulty. So the larger communities got a bit hit once again. Fast foward to WoD:

Making friends ingame. I am not the one just handing out my RealID to just anyone. I want to be able to add a friend like before. But adding anyone from a different server is impossible without RealID.
I am not alone with this. So the games social aspect takes another hit
And then you have the fact that you do not need ANYONE in the outside world anymore. Or inside a dungeon for that matter. In the outside world everything is so easy, you can solo everything. In dungeons you can basically have 4 NPC's fighting with you. It wouldn't matter. Maybe it could even turn out to be a more pleasant experience. No one says anything anyway.
You could ofcourse argue that someone (me) can start talking in dungeons or in the outside world. But to what end? Why would I want to say anything?
1. chances are you do not get any response (I have had this experience)
2. chances are they will tell you: "stfu noob and finish the dungeon already so we can get out of here" (which also says something at how much fun a dungeon is really)
3. chances are that you get kicked for just speaking
4. chances are that you actually get a response but my experience is that the "chat" dies right after the response

There is no incentive to talk about anything. Nothing would trickle anyone to speak up about anything fun. "Everyone just want this horrible experience that is the dungeon to be over quick for the reward that it gives." Which is generally valor or something.

Faction pride?
People might still have faction pride but no one can be arsed to go World PvP. It is not rewarding enough. The time we have to game can be spend more efficiently for greater rewards even if the journey of getting those rewards isn't fun. But since we want to get those rewards asap and not have fun doing them, we want them to be over quick! And socializing stands in the way, especially since it is meaningless. You won't see eachother anymore.

Human behavior:
Will you talk to people you do not know in real life if you have nothing to gain from that conversation? Ask this question.
You stand in an elevator and you are the one standing next to the buttons. You probably would ask people in the elevator where they want to go right? That is normal imo. But you don't go ask them about their personal lives.
If you are standing in the middle of the street would you engage in a conversation with a random person? I think not.
If you are in the gym with a person who you've seen now perhaps of the 2nd or more times... chances are that you will end up having a decent conversation at a point. You don't have to ofcourse but you might if the setting/situation is right. You have something in common and you might see this person again next time you are there.

These situations are almost non existant in WoW outside of guilds. There is no reason to talk about anything. If anything people are frustrated about their experience ingame and lash out.

In short: You've got it a little backwards.

I also believe Blizzard fucked up with knowing what is fun or not.
Dailies are fun they thought, so dailies in MoP became mandatory.
Response of players: We don't like dailies!! (but they actually liked dailies, just not the being forced thing.)
Response Blizzard: we'll remove dailies because you don't like dailies

Blizzard: we see everyone and their grandma doing LFR, so LFR is fun!
But actually LFR offers great rewards for very little effort. Like dungeons, players just want LFR to be over and get that reward from boss X they are trying to get.

But that is another story... sorry for the derailment.

[Packing an i5]

Someone name one game franchise that did not stagnate and turn bad because of A. Publisher decisions B. No competition - lack of original and new ideas C. The passing of time and changing interests of the target audience - unable to maintain that former audience or gain a new one. D. makes a flop game shuttered by the publisher. E. All of the Above.

[ls-]

TBH, it's a bit silly to deny that vocal part of community behaves like a piece of shit. Latest failed Alpha raid testing unveiled community's true colours nicely. Doxing blizz employees, spamming, flaming, down-voting reasonable feedback and so on. That's what vocal part of our community likes to do.

We, as WoW community, are responsible for quite much shit in this game.

[Sabever]

I am not going to defend the community at all, because they act like a bunch of children most of the time. But Blizzard created this environment by trying to appease players.

[Glorious Leader]

TBH, it's a bit silly to deny that vocal part of community behaves like a piece of shit. Latest failed Alpha raid testing unveiled community's true colours nicely. Doxing blizz employees, spamming, flaming, down-voting reasonable feedback and so on. That's what vocal part of our community likes to do.

We, as WoW community, are responsible for quite much shit in this game.

No you aren't actually. You literally ha e no responsibility at all. You aren't put in a position of authority, you don't make decisions the final say is never yours or any member of the community. In no way shape or form do you bear any resp9ns8biltiy. Like you really have to believe some sever orwellian bs to have convinces yourselves that you as paying customers are also somehow responsible for the games direction when you've had no ultimate say in its direction
You aren't a developer. I mean are you also willing to take credit for the good things on the game too? Do you also answer to shareholders? Will you be fired or transfered to other games or promoted depending on the success or failure(

[ls-]

No you aren't actually. You literally ha e no responsibility at all. You aren't put in a position of authority, you don't make decisions the final say is never yours or any member of the community. In no way shape or form do you bear any resp9ns8biltiy. Like you really have to believe some sever orwellian bs to have convinces yourselves that you as paying customers are also somehow responsible for the games direction when you've had no ultimate say in its direction
You aren't a developer. I mean are you also willing to take credit for the good things on the game too?

But the way we treat each other is up to us, not developers, they can't force us to be all buddy buddy. That's what I was talking about.

[Pony Soldier]

I don't know about the other stuff you mentioned but as far as the social aspect of the game goes, it's totally the community that is at blame here for the lack of communication between players. I don't get why people think just because LFG/LFR groups you up with random people, it makes the game anti-social. Please explain to me how this is possible? People say it's because the content is so easy. So? Is that really a reason for people not to talk to each other? Because something is super easy? From the battle.net stuff to server merges the game has become so much more social than it EVER has before. It's just now you are not forced to talk to people it's become more of an option and since it's an option now and people are no longer talking how exactly is it WoW's or Blizzard's fault that these people are not talking?

Believe it or not the LFG system added to the social aspect of the game. You may think not but it did. The way to look at it is like a blind date. Some person sets you and your friends up with blind dates and when you meet them no one says a thing. Now is that the host's fault or does the problem lie with you, your friends and the girls you were grouped up with? All the host did was group you guys up. He has nothing to do with the awkward silence that is happening. Don't know how good of an analogy that is but that's how I look at it. What difference does it make if you are grouped with random strangers on your home server and grouping up with random strangers from a different server? They're still strangers no matter what server they come from. The only difference is that they have a server name next to their character name. So stop with LFG/LFR causes people to be anti-social because it doesn't. It should be doing the opposite but because of how bitter the community is these days no one likes to talk to each other and when they do it's either insulting someone or complaining about DPS or the tank is shit or the healer sucks ass. There's hardly ever a pleasant conversation in WoW anymore. Just trolling, elitist douchebags, and just plain miserable people. And that right there is not the game's fault nor is it Blizzard's.

[RoxyBlue]

Yes. Every decision the developers make impacts how we play the game and ultimately how we treat each other. You can implement systems that encourage and reward socially good behavior or you can do the opposite. The game is an exercise in developing and engineering player behavior. The developers do social engineering all the time.

Do you need a reward to act decent? The game is nothing but a game, its fantasy has no bearing on how you choose to behave. If you act like a shit ingame its because you are a shit. Blaming a game company for peoples behavior is a cop out, we are all responsible for our own behavior. Its like saying society is shit so im going to act like a dick too. What logic!

No you aren't actually. You literally ha e no responsibility at all. You aren't put in a position of authority, you don't make decisions the final say is never yours or any member of the community. In no way shape or form do you bear any resp9ns8biltiy. Like you really have to believe some sever orwellian bs to have convinces yourselves that you as paying customers are also somehow responsible for the games direction when you've had no ultimate say in its direction
You aren't a developer. I mean are you also willing to take credit for the good things on the game too? Do you also answer to shareholders? Will you be fired or transfered to other games or promoted depending on the success or failure(

I simply dont have enough facepalms for this.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Blizzard in just about all its games make it really hard to form communities. Almost everything is based around blind que and forget. Chats are so vast that productive communication is next to impossible. They also don't allow user generated anything into their games and demand everything be directly under their very so to respond but heavy fist. Most communities have to form on websites or forms and never anywhere close to the games themselves. That's a problem in my eyes.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Honestly I see this in about every thread these days.
People on these boards.... I find them very inhuman. With that I mean they seem unable to empathise with the way humans work. They look at a problem more like an abstract thing.

<and so on and so forth>

Focusing strictly on forum behavior, if you read some of the meatier threads you'll easily notice folks who:
Just respond to the subject line
Address only certain sentences in a post
In the same vein, quote only certain sentences in a post to fit their narrative.

If you can stomach this whole thread so far: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ional-response
You'll see mankind's descent =).

[Glorious Leader]

But the way we treat each other is up to us, not developers, they can't force us to be all buddy buddy. That's what I was talking about.

Why not? People here love to claim they feel forced to do whatever because of incentives. Why does blizzard suddenly stop being master manipulators when it comes to social interaction? They engineer this game every day of course they engineer a better social interaction.

[Murictavis]

No you aren't actually. You literally ha e no responsibility at all. You aren't put in a position of authority, you don't make decisions the final say is never yours or any member of the community. In no way shape or form do you bear any resp9ns8biltiy. Like you really have to believe some sever orwellian bs to have convinces yourselves that you as paying customers are also somehow responsible for the games direction when you've had no ultimate say in its direction
You aren't a developer. I mean are you also willing to take credit for the good things on the game too? Do you also answer to shareholders? Will you be fired or transfered to other games or promoted depending on the success or failure(

If people act like a child, they will be treated as a child. simple like that.
Do you honestly think by talking shit to blizzard, they will do what you ask them to do? No, they will just ignore you.
People complaining waiting too long to get a group to do dungeon, that's the reason blizzard provide LFD system. Does blizzard told you to not talk to the people you meet in the group? you choose not to talk yourself.
Of course player get credit for good things happened in game, have you heard that blizzard thank community for supporting them? Sending presents for being a loyal supportive community member? Or maybe you are too busy bitching about blizzard so you can't see the reality.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

People need to be forced? I don't think forcing the community "together" because the community doesn't care. You can call me that typical MMOC-Poster, but Blizzard shouldn't be responsible for the attitudes of players. Not only that, but doing so would again cause more negativity to Blizzard in general.

I'm sort of with you... some of the decisions Blizzard has made has clearly allowed players make decisions that are against their own best interest... but I'm pretty sure most of them are things players specifically asked for, and would hate it taken away.

[Shinv]

There is sadly a clear hatred for people in general, those accusing its primarily the communities fault as if everyone just trolls each other. I'm the type of person who will go out of my way to help a new player carry in 2's, etc. I didn't leave under any impression the people of wow suck I left cause of the way ability pruning damaged pvp, general lack of social things to do outside of raiding. I like raiding but its never been enough alone to hold my attention. Logging on with nothing to do but manage garrisons and do immediately obsolete dungeon killed my desire to support the wow devs.

I still like blizzard I know they'll continue to make great games but I'm under no disillusion that I left entirely on the design decisions of WoD. I don't enjoy playing an mmo to have a completely solo experience up until raid night. I will say the community is not blameless in crying for so many quality of life changes over time. I never had a problem making groups back in vanilla. I knew how use the /who system very effectively to find people without hanging out in cities like everyone else. Shame others didn't figure it out also I didn't really frequent the internet then. The LFG system alone would have solved all the problems of dungeon finding before CRZ. It really would have and I wish we could untrain people from just clicking button to find groups and just talk to people it would make everything so much better. Its sadly too late for that. Too many bratty players have gotten there way and there's no going back.

[MoanaLisa]

"Don't force me into behaviors that I don't want to."
I don't understand this comment. If the game rewards good grouping/social behavior, would you not want this?

I think you took my post as a post that doesn't support being social. That's not really the case. Of course I want the game to reward good social behavior. But you won't get that by forcing people into groups and making them be social. I think there has to be another way.

I don't even in the slightest understand how a system can reward good behavior. That's a different thing from rewarding being social. I really see a difference there. Most of my post was about behavior. People choose to be asocial because of what they see around them; in Trade, in the dungeon or raid groups they join. Give them enough bad experiences in those situations--and it doesn't take too many for most people--and they will choose to retreat to friends only or solo. Or leave.

I'm a social player but I don't play any longer with strangers. The odds are just too high that it becomes a waste of time and my time there is precious. I play maybe two or three days a week (when I'm subscribed). I've been there and done that and have chosen to withdraw from activities that require co-operation among strangers. It's a choice and it's based on nearly eight years of experience and seeing far too many people who enjoy tossing profanities and insults at players they deem "not good enough."

You implied that sometimes it's necessary to force people out to dance. One, I don't think it is and two, I don't believe you want those people in your groups if they are forced out. I would much rather look for incentives to make players wish to be more helpful to one another. If you get that, communities follow without anyone being forced to do anything.

I would greatly like to see a system where bad behavior has a consequence. But people game systems like that. I've seen people black-balled from realms simply because they pressed the wrong button in a dungeon run, someone took offense or pleasure in ranting about "the ninja" for nearly two days and I never saw that player again on the realm. It's only different in degree to a public lynching. So care needs to be taken with that. You don't want to install a player-rating system where you get downvoted just because you won a loot roll. And that will happen.

Again, I think that Blizzard really needs to reconsider guilds as something more than a people-box for raid/PVP teams. The entire game's social networking is archaic and needs to change. Social guilds and something like D3's managed communities are a decent place to start. You can't tell people in 2016 that they can only join one guild and expect social guilds to flourish. Then there are the perks which are incentives to join guilds but not an incentive to be social. It's a really difficult problem and simple solutions like forcing people to bang up against one another when they aren't in the mood to do so aren't going to really work. Whatever happens it has to be practical.

There are incentives to join groups to run dungeons and raids. The rewards are better and you can get to those rewards in a much quicker and organized way. If a majority of people still choose to play the game as a solo affair then having options isn't the problem. It's something else. Match-making systems are very convenient but you can get things done in the game without resorting to them. It's more work but building a personal social network is more rewarding.

Edit:

You could ofcourse argue that someone (me) can start talking in dungeons or in the outside world. But to what end? Why would I want to say anything?
1. chances are you do not get any response (I have had this experience)
2. chances are they will tell you: "stfu noob and finish the dungeon already so we can get out of here" (which also says something at how much fun a dungeon is really)
3. chances are that you get kicked for just speaking
4. chances are that you actually get a response but my experience is that the "chat" dies right after the response

This is all true. Why would anyone sign on to a system that does that? Is it any wonder that people want to play solo with those conditions or in pugs which have their own issues. Which is why I think players need to create their own social networks. We have a forum for guild recruiting. It's inundated with raid recruitment. Why is there so little social guild recruiting? All fair questions with few answers.

I think this is a really important topic for what it's worth so thanks for putting it up and thanks for the kindly response.

[SoLoR1]

TBH, it's a bit silly to deny that vocal part of community behaves like a piece of shit. Latest failed Alpha raid testing unveiled community's true colours nicely. Doxing blizz employees, spamming, flaming, down-voting reasonable feedback and so on. That's what vocal part of our community likes to do.

That is "new" generation of players, back in the days noone would even dare to think about something like that, i still remember how we where all excited when we could test black temple and hyal (1st raids that had PTR testing) at like 3am on US servers and yes it was laging like hell. Blizzard is totally the one to blame for this community since he started to develop game in WOTLK for certain type of people (entitled brats) and there are more and more of them and less and less of "old" generation. And then we have "old" generation players bored to death and clinging to something (like me).

[Glorious Leader]

If people act like a child, they will be treated as a child. simple like that.
Do you honestly think by talking shit to blizzard, they will do what you ask them to do? No, they will just ignore you.
People complaining waiting too long to get a group to do dungeon, that's the reason blizzard provide LFD system. Does blizzard told you to not talk to the people you meet in the group? you choose not to talk yourself.
Of course player get credit for good things happened in game, have you heard that blizzard thank community for supporting them? Sending presents for being a loyal supportive community member? Or maybe you are too busy bitching about blizzard so you can't see the reality.

They also make their disdain for the player base clear. What they never come out and do is lay the responsibility for any of the games cldevelopments positive or negative at the feet of the player base. Why? Because it's a fuckong business and you don't go around advising your good paying customers it's their fault they have responsibility for the game. You can apparantly get away with saying all sorts of nasty and derisive shit but you can't shrug your responsibilities and say it's really your guys bad.


No one disputes that individuals or even the community as a whole can be a piece of shit. It does not follow from this that the game is a product of this behavior or that the devs can wash their hands clean. Sorry nobody signs a contract holding them to that. Legally, morally and ethically the player base holds no resp9ns8biltiy for whatever shape the game takes no matter how shitty they are. Sorry blizzard you don't get off that easy and you aren't stupid enough to think that you should.

[Hardkorr]

Video Game communities are products of the video game, much like how sports communities are products of the sport. Changes in the community can only happen from changes in the game. Take that as you will.

[RoxyBlue]

Video Game communities are products of the video game, much like how sports communities are products of the sport. Changes in the community can only happen from changes in the game. Take that as you will.

Im sorry but no, how does a game make you be a dick to fellow players? It dont, what I see in this thread is a lot of people trying to justify players acting badly by blaming a game. What a load of cow dung, people dont want to take responsibility for their actions...oh noes blizzard made me into a jerk!

[Elim Garak]

Being a dick is not related to community, duh. It's a personal thing. But the game defines how many dicks you have in the community.