Is the World of Warcraft community bad? And should we feel bad?

[Frozenbeef]

That's the point of RPGS....to play a role to live in a vast exciting world and do things you would never do irl...

[Mawnix]

Every person in any community is at fault for what it becomes, and like the first poster to this thread said, every Online Community is shit.

It's just a measure of how shit they truly are, and WoW's is at the bottom of the barrel.

The entire issue is the amount of players, old AND new.

If you add them together, that amount of players may be larger than WoW's subscriber base ever truly was.

Because so many players became emotionally invested in WoW, some who quit and some who still play, any argue is taken escalated 10 fold, and results in the showcases we see on the forums.

Former players who somehow feel scorned by Blizzard for changing the game who argue against players who still play the game and love it are the best example. Everytime we see a dispute between two of these types of people on the forums, either side is convinced they're right and the other is wrong.

I can't say I'm not at fault either, because I do slip up too and make mistakes on this forum as well making myself look like an assuming ass.

Regardless, I don't think anything can be done.

Hell would freeze over sooner than the entire WoW community unites for the game WoW has become and will continue evolve into so it can stay in the market.

[The Madgod]

In retrospect, should I feel bad for doing that? Is it our responsibility as gamers to help out our fellow gamer just looking to escape the doldrums of real life? After all, we were all noobs once.

Yes, you should feel bad. It's a dick move.

No it's not NECESSARILY our responsibility to help those who are less experienced, but that doesn't mean we should laugh when they fail when they didn't know better. And just because it isn't our responsibility to help people doesn't mean we shouldn't do it anyway.

The Wow community is horrible, and no you shouldn't feel bad about that because its expected.

It's this sort of attitude that will just continue the degradation of the community. It's bad. Do you want that to change? If yes (and you should really say yes because you're a part of that community), then do something about it. Just saying "well it's bad, so I can be bad too!" is just lazy.

Is the wow community bad? For the most part yes. Should we feel bad? No, it's blizzard's fault that the community is the way it is.

Haaaaa no.

In part Blizzard is to blame. They do nothing to police disruptive players. Even players who blatantly abuse the TOS. I know of a player who has been harrassed for years, threatened with real life assault, and when following the Blizzard guidelines to get this taken care of got everything from "we do not feel that this is harrassment" to " you have not reported him enough".

Blizzard has roughly 6000 employees (IIRC) to about 10,000,000 subscribers (give or take, I don't remember where it's at now.)

To say that it's blizzard's fault that they can't keep track of so many people to the degree you're looking for is asinine.

[Mawnix]

Is the wow community bad? For the most part yes. Should we feel bad? No, it's blizzard's fault that the community is the way it is.

This has to be one of the funniest things I've seen all day, but it does have some truth to it.

Blizzard changing the game is what makes certain players feel scorned.

No one truly likes change, and because of that, no matter the circumstance nor what it involves, people will always blame the maker of what changed, which in this case is Blizzard.

[isadorr]

Every person in any community is at fault for what it becomes, and like the first poster to this thread said, every Online Community is shit.

It's just a measure of how shit they truly are, and WoW's is at the bottom of the barrel.

The entire issue is the amount of players, old AND new.

If you add them together, that amount of players may be larger than WoW's subscriber base ever truly was.

Because so many players became emotionally invested in WoW, some who quit and some who still play, any argue is taken escalated 10 fold, and results in the showcases we see on the forums.

Former players who somehow feel scorned by Blizzard for changing the game who argue against players who still play the game and love it are the best example. Everytime we see a dispute between two of these types of people on the forums, either side is convinced they're right and the other is wrong.

I can't say I'm not at fault either, because I do slip up too and make mistakes on this forum as well making myself look like an assuming ass.

Regardless, I don't think anything can be done.

The world would freeze over sooner than the entire WoW community unites over the game WoW has become and will continue evolve into so it can stay in the market.

My greatest hope for Wow is that Wow will be for the more casual and left that way. The new game they are working on is hopefully a much harder and fast paced game more designed for people wanting to push progression. No nerfing, no LFR, with difficult content in normal let alone heroic mode. The last mention of the new game was that it would resemble the old Wow and the challenges would be great. One could take that anyway they would like but my post is what im hoping it means.

[melodramocracy]

I'd have to say yes it is, and yes it should. I'm completely used to it by now, but I do recall my first visits to official forums after starting to play this game... and the contrast to prior MMO's I'd been involved with was unbelievable.

[Deleted]

Well i stopped WoW about one years ago, then i played to LoL since, and now i restarted to play WoW...

and ...

NO, the World of Warcraft community is not that bad.

[Mawnix]

My greatest hope for Wow is that Wow will be for the more casual and left that way. The new game they are working on is hopefully a much harder and fast paced game more designed for people wanting to push progression. No nerfing, no LFR, with difficult content in normal let alone heroic mode. The last mention of the new game was that it would resemble the old Wow and the challenges would be great.

Blizzard has done something that no other company, as far as my knowledge and I could be mistaken, has done:

Make a very good balance between Casual and Hardcore players.

If it weren't for LFR and Heroic modes, raids would be either toward the Casual or Hardcore end.

Due to those features, they appease both crowds and are there for them, regardless if they're done right or wrong.

[Itisamuh]

Yeah it's pathetic. Almost all online communities are, and I don't really understand why. I've never had any inclination to talk to people online any differently than I would in person, so I don't think the fact that it's online is an excuse to troll or be a jerk in general. If anything, it's showing how people would really behave if there weren't consequences. As far as in game, I'll slaughter anyone from the opposing faction I come across since it's the whole point of the game for me, but I'm never rude to anyone in chat unless they're deserving of it, and I don't think I've ever called out anyone for not being as good as I am with the exception of people blaming everyone but themselves, nor have I kicked anyone from a group that wasn't being a prick. I don't think population has much to do with it, either. It's just people showing their true colors.

[bionics]

Yeah it's pathetic. Almost all online communities are, and I don't really understand why. I've never had any inclination to talk to people online any differently than I would in person, so I don't think the fact that it's online is an excuse to troll or be a jerk in general. If anything, it's showing how people would really behave if there weren't consequences. As far as in game, I'll slaughter anyone from the opposing faction I come across since it's the whole point of the game for me, but I'm never rude to anyone in chat unless they're deserving of it, and I don't think I've ever called out anyone for not being as good as I am with the exception of people blaming everyone but themselves, nor have I kicked anyone from a group that wasn't being a prick. I don't think population has much to do with it, either. It's just people showing their true colors.

I think impunity has a lot to do with it. A lot of the people playing WoW could be kids just getting home from school, logging onto WoW, and playing unsupervised before their parents get home from work. Think of what little turds kids can be in school when a substitute teacher arrives. Now take that plus even more unmitigated freedom and you get plenty of jerks whose actions are only accentuated because you're often stuck with them for at least 20 minutes at a time.

[Merie]

It's not really a WoW thing. It's a real world thing. Whether it's a business focus to work more and eat less or a hot shot ceo attempting to cut costs by kicking half the hampsters off the treadmill and asking the ones that remain to pedal twice as hard to pick up the slack, everything has all boiled down to efficieny. We are obsesed with efficiency. That is a toxic shift in our society and culture, it is not limited to WoW. Also, LOL @ at the people that are all like "I'm not responsible for my actions and it's XYZ company or government that is at fault, they didn't lay out explicitly stated laws or rules on every topic concievable to tell me the thing that I figured was probably wrong was actually illegal."

[Dole4011]

I don't feel bad for the actions of a collective.

As with most communities, there are helpful contributors and there are antagonistic douches.

That all said, to anybody who is new to the Internet (Blizzard is not unique in this regard), if you are easily offended, grow some thicker skin. The help is there for those who want to learn.

[Deatheryn]

Online communities are awful in general.

Online communities can be bad but in my experience WoW has the worst. It is the worst I have come across as of late and it isn't getting any better. The only way it will get fixed is if Blizz themselves decides to try to clean it up and that isn't even a sure thing.

[Azutael]

Yes the community is bad, and it has been for a very long time already. Tbh more or less every online game these days, involving more people have shit communities.
If only they had went with the real, real id system, would help quite a bit.

[Deleted]

Some of you don't realize the most important thing, it is not like community in real life, it is completely different. Internet gaming society is very specific sort of people who mostly stays a lot in home don't have vast life. Such people got their sort of relations, even tho Internet Games seem to be for modern people, in fact they act very wild, not impressive real life is a cause of acting mean etc etc on the Internet, where spoilt children can say everything they feel. Real life is the opposite, and the fact IMO is that if someone got normal real life, he or she acts way way better in MMOs, more mature, more kind, with some distance, don't treat things too serious.


What i so far seen in life, i'd never let my Son or Daughter play games too long, it is completely screwed up path for free time.

This guy below is the perfect example for what i just said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZXNMs8D-Ow

PS: I used to play WoW alot during BC and Wotlk, then i was slowing down, cus simply other activities are way way better and more enjoyable, OUTDOORS ftw ! MoP is bad totally for me, plus its an expansion where casual playin is pointless because of massive grind on dailies, i left wow, and it is so great, now i see that 12.99eur was so damn wasted money, worse then drugs in some way.

[Crym]

I've never had any inclination to talk to people online any differently than I would in person, so I don't think the fact that it's online is an excuse to troll or be a jerk in general.

The thing most people don't seem to realize is most of these people are jerks in real life to. There are just more social expectations in the real world that these people adhere to out of reflex and conditioning that keep them almost civil in the loosest definition of the word. Those expectations are largely ignored on the internet, so they're free to act as they are.

Edit: I guess my point is that "exposing them" by giving their real name, disallowing name changes so people remember your character as being a jerk, etc... won't change their personality.

[kennyisnotdead]

I would say 80% of the community consists of kids from 13-20 who are sarcastic, narcissistic, know it all, elitist, power hungry, opinionated, manchild, mean hearted people who only care about themselves and not others due to poor family life, poor living conditions, no job, the type of public school that they went to, outcasts, anti-social, out of shape and with no vision of there future to better themselves. Just plain and simple... losers. ( and believe me, I've come across many of them since I started playing in 2007-- even real life ex-friends )

The other 20% is the exact opposite.

Ha sweet summary!

I can back this up by saying, I have wowcensus going the entire time I play to just because I'm love analytics. Well last night with school vacation at 1:30am EST there was 1007 people online. Typically there is about 600 at this time.. Peak is 1700. During the week morning hours about 10am there is under 500.

[ro9ue]

I still have a hard time calling online communities "communities", but I guess there's no better word. The dynamic is so much different when you throw in anonymity.

[Sj]

There are never going to be simple answers for those two questions. Online communities in general (not just gaming) have always been pretty terrible. When you mix anonymity, lack of accountability, diversity, and an environment that blurs the line between introvert and extrovert, you're going to see a lot of awful behavior.

The WoW community is pretty bad or pretty good, depending on what you're doing, "where" you're at, and what social channels you have enabled. Some people play on tame servers and don't PUG outside their guild or server, and they think the game community is great. You have others that pretty much do nothing but queue for dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds, and they think the community is shit. You also have people that basically solo everything, so their view depends on whether or not somebody tags their daily mobs. The community is so large, it's impossible to say whether it's good or bad without making an unfair and sweeping generalization.

On the question of should we feel bad, personally I think that answer falls on the individuals that make up the community. If you're being an asshole, or a ninja, or a troll, yes, you should probably feel bad; acting like that is selfish and destructive, but ultimately how you feel is up to you. If you're a "model citizen" in the community, and you're nice and polite, you probably won't feel bad. Is there more you could do to help the community? Probably, but are you going to feel guilt for not doing more? Again, it's up to you.

The hardest thing to answer is whether or not it's Blizzard's fault. The easy answer: no, it's not Blizzard's fault people act the way they do. The long answer: it's possible that changes to the game have facilitated this behavior. I don't think LFD and LFR caused changes in the community (there were already a ton of bad apples out there), but they did make it easier for the bad part of the community to be bad. This is where I agree with "The thirst for adventure has been replaced with a demand for efficiency." However, I disagree with the notion that pre-BC WoW was some sort of gaming Utopia. I've played this game since mid-beta phase; I thoroughly disagree that the game is somehow worse now than it was back then. We've seen vast improvements and there's no way I would still play if they were for some reason reverted. Sure, there are a lot of things done to the game that make me scratch my head, but I'm not game designer and the sub numbers staying pretty damn high means they're doing something right.

tl;dr: community is good or bad depending on individual opinion, Blizzard isn't at fault but hasn't helped either.

[twinkleblur]

i would say yes we are bad..but it starts with communication..and communication starts in wow with /2......and in /2 we have grammar police..all im saying is...you can understand the word..why care if i can.."Type a very good statement." or "type how ever i freak'n feel". never ignore the little things they cause bigger ripples.