Why do people say the community is so bad "these days"?

[whitewing]

Well, there is no community, but that's a topic for another day.

Save to say, it isn't any worse now than it has ever been.

[Deleted]

WoW bad ? Huh?

How bout buy Heroes of Newerth or try dota see what is that community like. WoW community is piece of cake.

[neobahamut20]

I think it's obvious that there were less trolls since there was also less players. The troll % tends to stay the same.

Wrong. Note that GAME forums are worse however, due to a point i'll explain below.

As people get older, the troll % increases through bad support and lack of user control. (ok money too if u know how Internet works)
As more and more people are (already) getting bored with cata, more and more will just go in forums to whine.
Those whiners will bring out the fanbois, everyone hates fanbois, even legit forum-goers.
So what happens next, the once-legit posters find a new game: Annoy the fanbois. Why? Because fanbois don't get banned, ever (ok sometimes they get suspended, but rarely).

Now after the forums: The game itself.
Eventually the same dumb fanbois get boring. Time to find new idiots to annoy. There is a perfect place for that. In game. In trade.
What is the trade channel?
The trade channel is a place where people hope to sell something, now, generally for an equal or higher price shown in the AH. So obviously, due to that crowd, people figured trade had to have another use. That use: LF:Guild/Group/Members/Port. But now the good trolls figure, more audience, more chance of annoying that kid who is still in Awe of WoW. The bad ones see it work, so they start their work with insults on everyone's mom and how people have to walk backwards to get away from something after turning 360 degrees.

Guess who sees that:
The players who would have never thought of trolling. Guess where they go after a month of trolling trade? WoW forums to reach out to people outside their server. (After that its off to find other American run forums [that is important for many trolling reasons, eg: because Americans are far easier to troll, due to American internet presence and a ton of other factors, just mention "republicans suck" and u have a bunch of people trying to convince you that such subject matters] and due to the over-moderation usually found on such boards making the "Good troll" type easy as hell [Good trolls: they only post legit and participate on many threads for 1 reason: To report any and all violations in an attempt to get a user banned.])

The troll that does his trolling seriously:
proxies. So the accounts aren't getting linked by IP connections. Obviously, get banned on a proxy ip.
1 for the Good Troll (every serious troll has such an account)
1 to get banned (gotta make sure the forum is actually moderated)
1 to do borderline trolling.

Serious trolls are rare however as there is always a goal behind such trolling: Attempt to point people to another site.
(Although on these forums there is a lot of bad trolling, most of the serious trolls do so to publicize their addons, not external sites)

[GennGreymane]

because ppl get butt hurt sooooo easy. its sad like i can easily ignore a troll or a rager i dunno why others cant.

btw i troll alot also. if u say u report or are ignoring me (ignore button) i just laugh

[Deleted]

As mentioned before, there were more older people playing in vanilla simply because it did cost you money each month and kids didnt know about it well enough to be a big part of the game community. additionally it was a lot harder to level, it took me atleast 6 months to get lvl 60 (i was really a beginner) and i know a lot of in game friends (you made a lot of friends while leveling since it took longer, and therefore had more time doing instances togeather etc) who leveled even slower than me, up to a year. not many 12 year old British kids have the guts to commit to a game that much.. (i hate them for what they are doing for xbox live, you never know if its girls or 12 year olds on their voice until they start cheating and trolling)
but those days the bad community were beggers at the citys, asking for gold (silver mostly actually) to an enchant etc

Edit: i am amazed how great community Sc2 has though, i have only encountered 1 angry person within around 300 games

[Mad_Murdock]

...
3. It's nice and cool they had a in-game funeral for this girl but they are complete idiots for posting the time and date and not to mention on a pvp realm...did they expect everyone to bring flowers?

I cant fully agree here. I think it is a extremely sad thing to completely disrepect a person\a person's memory like that. In my opinion it speaks terribly about the people and (even to their parents who failed to instill better vaules in them) that they don't have enough human decency to know where to draw the line.

This is a game, yes, I think we all get that. Death is about has real as it gets. Whether I think it's cheesy or not to have an in-game funeral, another topic. If you were on that server, regardless of faction, those involved should have been shunned off the server. The fact that it's tolerated, explains why so much of it happens.

[reemi]

Because the game is too hard and people are not patient.

[GennGreymane]

I cant fully agree here. I think it is a extremely sad thing to completely disrepect a person\a person's memory like that. In my opinion it speaks terribly about the people and (even to their parents who failed to instill better vaules in them) that they don't have enough human decency to know where to draw the line.

This is a game, yes, I think we all get that. Death is about has real as it gets. Whether I think it's cheesy or not to have an in-game funeral, another topic. If you were on that server, regardless of faction, those involved should have been shunned off the server. The fact that it's tolerated, explains why so much of it happens.

pvp happened on a pvp realm shocker. who cares what they were doing.

[Halabash]

The community has been through a lot since vanilla. Many of the changes that have come to the game have given the community a better idea of the company's goals toward game play, player recruitment and player retention. The simplest answer is that the community has become comfortable at large existing with a very poor level of communication amongst itself. Couple this with a steeper learning curve for veterans used to archaic play styles with the advent of the most recent changes and you have great stew of disgruntled individuals that cannot effectively communicate their needs with other players to maintain the highest level of satisfaction from their game experience. The solution is equally simple, be happy as a middle of the road player, join a guild to correct the communication issues, and keep a short memory in regards game play mechanics. I think blizzard would do well to invest some research into finding ways to discourage trolling, name calling, and elitism.....these things put off players from wanting to really immerse themselves into the wow culture. Is that too much to ask for?

[superstargoddess]

I started playing shortly after TBC came out, and I have noticed the change in the community. It has gotten so much worse over the years, I can tell for sure. It's hard to say why, so I'm not sure.

[Mad_Murdock]

pvp happened on a pvp realm shocker. who cares what they were doing.

I'm sure that's the excuse some people used to justify it. But I'm sure if you dig through the history books, you might even find real world cases where even in a time of war, the opposing side allowed the enemy to honor the dead. Hell, I'm not even sure Garrosh would attack a funeral, since you know, he does seem to have that "honor" thing going for it. Again, using the "it's a PvP realm, anythign goes" just speak t the lack of honor and intergity some people lack. I'm sure if it was your son or daughter being honored, you'd be totally cool with other people trahing it cause it's funny to them.

Again, this is a beliefs stand point. I believe you've already stated you like to troll. I'm sure people like yourself think it's because you're so much more clever than everyone else and what you do is really cool and funny. May you enjoy the full fruits of your labor.

[Barracks00]

In most circumstances, people look at the past through rose colored glasses. Everything was always better "back in the day." Knowing what you know now, though, would probably make the past feel pretty crappy and incomplete if you were to warp back somehow.

[superstargoddess]

I cant fully agree here. I think it is a extremely sad thing to completely disrepect a person\a person's memory like that. In my opinion it speaks terribly about the people and (even to their parents who failed to instill better vaules in them) that they don't have enough human decency to know where to draw the line.

This is a game, yes, I think we all get that. Death is about has real as it gets. Whether I think it's cheesy or not to have an in-game funeral, another topic. If you were on that server, regardless of faction, those involved should have been shunned off the server. The fact that it's tolerated, explains why so much of it happens.

I'm going to agree with you there, I think that over the years, there has been a serious fail on the parents behalf in the world. At this rate, by the time you and I are 60, this world will be going to hell in a hand basket even faster than it it now!

[ComputerNerd]

...
Some problems with that video:
1. If you're going to throw a in-game funeral...why in the world would you post the location and the time on the WoW forums. Then they say 'oh please don't mess anything up!!' (just asking for trouble)
2. It's a pvp realm.
3. It's nice and cool they had a in-game funeral for this girl but they are complete idiots for posting the time and date and not to mention on a pvp realm...did they expect everyone to bring flowers?

Despite being a pvp realm, the vast majority of members there from both factions were participating as a mark of respect and both were behaving.
It was one guild responsible for ruining the event, so you justifiying it with the excuse of it being a pvp realm is utter rubbish.
It was nothing more than a cowardly act.

[seam]

Uh, I completely disagree. Anal jokes didn't exist in Vanilla, there's one thing.

First of all, nearly everything you said was wrong, and I think you just didn't pay attention. Bads still got in guilds. People with bad reputations still got in guilds, ninja's still got in guilds.

Second, anal jokes came with patch 2.4.3(Or was it just 2.4? I forget), when linking spells became possible. So you a kinda right.

[GennGreymane]

I'm sure that's the excuse some people used to justify it. But I'm sure if you dig through the history books, you might even find real world cases where even in a time of war, the opposing side allowed the enemy to honor the dead. Hell, I'm not even sure Garrosh would attack a funeral, since you know, he does seem to have that "honor" thing going for it. Again, using the "it's a PvP realm, anythign goes" just speak t the lack of honor and intergity some people lack. I'm sure if it was your son or daughter being honored, you'd be totally cool with other people trahing it cause it's funny to them.

Again, this is a beliefs stand point. I believe you've already stated you like to troll. I'm sure people like yourself think it's because you're so much more clever than everyone else and what you do is really cool and funny. May you enjoy the full fruits of your labor.

its a video game. btw wow great argument calling me a full time troll

[lolo855]

The community was less active on forum's outside of wow-europe forums, and people tend to stay more on server specific forums.

Also since your reputation on a server mattered people were more carefull.

But i gotta agree, always been a lot of retards and trolls, nothing changed, just you notice it more now.

[dotSeed]

You're talking about two different issues.

Non-WoW players refer to the community as bad because it's full of meme spouting kids, and always has been. WoW players refer to the community as bad because people are complete and utter douches in LFD groups. The latter is new - because prior to cross-server groups, repeatedly being a dick in groups would quickly get you a bad reputation. However it was more that people have always been dicks, they just have less holding them back now.

[perera]

People have always been mean/selfish jerks, but when they weren't so anonymous they would be more inclined restrain themselves. The introduction of BG battlegroups, server transfers, ease of leveling another character, and then 'dungeon battlegroups' made those people lose any reason they had to restrain themselves. It was a risk/reward situation, now there just is no risk as you're never gonna see those people again - what are they gonna do, put you on their ignore list ? Currently that makes no difference.

I think most people here can agree that, if you think about it, when you are in a raid, even if it is a pug, most of those jerks are 'gone'... It's quite simple really, there's a risk that they would become known as such on their server, and end up having to transfer. Even then, it's a 25 dollars risk, and to most people negligible.

My point is: the game needs mechanics that make people a little more afraid of acting in such ways, which is hard to do on an MMO, and what little the game had in that manner has been removed. It needs new mechanics, i.e. when too many people put you on ignore it automatically raises some flags for GMs to investigate.

[La]

Tools, assholes, douchebags, elitests, losers...there really isn't a word you can't use to describe at least some part of the WoW community, although I only started playing since the release of TBC, I have to say I never really noticed how bad it was until wrath when people really, really started acting like assholes, at least to me...that's what spawned all those things like gear score and how if it wasn't 6k+ you were deemed "bad" etc. I stopped raiding early in wrath after I realized ICC would probably suck as bad as ToC, and in many ways it did...yeah.