Which one of these hurt the community more?

[Vaelorian]

snip

Huh, I didn't say you said something insulting anywhere. I thought you reacted like you were insulted. The guy who was quoted before, didn't say anything weird or nasty. Yet it seemed to me that you didn't agree there and sorta felt insulted.

And you say the community is at fault? Well yes ofcourse it is the community. But we wouldn't behave like this if there wasn't an opportunity to behave like this without getting away with it.

You surely remember the days of Vanilla and TBC and even a long period in Wrath where serverreputation meant something? And as I said again and again: there were asses back then aswell. But they were dealt with by the server in the end. So we controlled our "own" so to speak. Where is that now? I don't know anyone anymore apart from people in my guild or people I met during the period before all those crossrealm features.

Everyone can get away with everything. And that just sucks. It is the community, yes but only because we are given the tools to be like this.

[xanzul]

The thing you said is a sympthom of what the real thing is. Crossrealm PvP was needed. Why? Cause Blizzard failed to firmly control faction/server-change.
Why is it possible to this day to transfer to a pretty damn full server, where you have queues to log in? It is bad models like this that call for bandaid stuff like CRZ/LFR/LFD/Crossrealm PVP.

Blizzard can't make people play where they don't want to play. If Blizzard locked down certain realms/factions players would flat out just up and quit the game and likely not come back. Also before transfer services players were able to reroll and that caused realm populations to swing wildly back and forth for YEARS before the paid services were implemented. Again stop blaming lines of code for the behavior of people who have every ability to control themselves and what they do and what they say. Until people get it through their thick skulls that it is a cop out to blame software or a company or other players for their own behavior NOTHING is going to get better in this community.

---------- Post added 2013-02-04 at 07:07 AM ----------

I don't know the poster you quoted but by just that comment I don't see where you are coming from. Harpo just states a reason without insulting anyone. You on the other hand sorta do be it intentional or otherwise.

So calling players self entitled and immature isn't an insult? Good to know. Someone should probably tell the mods that since that typically causes posters to get infracted.

[Deleted]

Whatever cross-server made every personal responsibility go poof. LFD in itself is a good idea as there is no value whatsoever traveling to a dungeon after the first time, but making it crossserver; and CRZ is blatant catering to the morons and assholes.

Still, every group endeavour has the community it deserves.

[Vaelorian]

Blizzard can't make people play where they don't want to play. If Blizzard locked down certain realms/factions players would flat out just up and quit the game and likely not come back. Also before transfer services players were able to reroll and that caused realm populations to swing wildly back and forth for YEARS before the paid services were implemented. Again stop blaming lines of code for the behavior of people who have every ability to control themselves and what they do and what they say. Until people get it through their thick skulls that it is a cop out to blame software or a company or other players for their own behavior NOTHING is going to get better in this community.
So calling players self entitled and immature isn't an insult? Good to know.

Sadly you cannot change human nature. It is why we have cops and courts of justice.... It is also why we have wars. So unless there is control you will end up with stuff like this.

And I did say that they couldn't have rerolled on such a server that is already "full". So they either needed to wait or go someplace else. I am sure not that many would have quit. But then again.... I cannot prove anything and neither can you on that matter. Crystal balls are crystal balls.

[Baduric]

The lack of balance in Pvp.

[Elegiac]

The lack of balance in Pvp.

I'd like to say the introduction of PvP period

[Vaelorian]

Whatever cross-server made every personal responsibility go poof. LFD in itself is a good idea as there is no value whatsoever traveling to a dungeon after the first time, but making it crossserver; and CRZ is blatant catering to the morons and assholes.

Still, every group endeavour has the community it deserves.

This +1 - but I don't agree with the last line.

Everything usually starts out decent and respectful - it has the community it deserves you say, alright.
Then another member comes along. He likes your wife and ends up "stealing" her from you. You still think that is the community it deserves? You feel you deserve that? I think it has everything to do with that persons and your wife's upbringing/education.

edit:"13.22: actually if you go on with my thoughtprocess you do end up with the community it deserves. So point taken



---------- Post added 2013-02-04 at 01:16 PM ----------

Blizzard can't make people play where they don't want to play. If Blizzard locked down certain realms/factions players would flat out just up and quit the game and likely not come back. Also before transfer services players were able to reroll and that caused realm populations to swing wildly back and forth for YEARS before the paid services were implemented. Again stop blaming lines of code for the behavior of people who have every ability to control themselves and what they do and what they say. Until people get it through their thick skulls that it is a cop out to blame software or a company or other players for their own behavior NOTHING is going to get better in this community.

---------- Post added 2013-02-04 at 07:07 AM ----------



So calling players self entitled and immature isn't an insult? Good to know. Someone should probably tell the mods that since that typically causes posters to get infracted.

Quoting you again cause it is very interesting.

Yo've probably seen a post apocalyptic warmovie right? How do people behave there when there is no control and people have access to guns and whatnot. It is the same in WoW. If there is no control you end up with self entitled assholes.

And just to be clear: I am not having an arguement with you. To me we're just discussing.

[Blackmist]

Here's what I think ruined WoW's "community" (if it ever had one outside the first few years).

The reduction of the game to a never-ending gear chase.

Everything in game is there to push your ilvl a few points higher. At first you would just be out exploring. Most of us who started in vanilla would have ended up in a guild long before you hit the level cap. You wouldn't even know what raiding was, what roles were in dungeons, or what battlegrounds were for. It was you, the world, a long grind towards end game, and a bunch of others just like you.

At the point where you hit that cap and learned more about the game, the more you realise those around you are holding you back, so you move on. For some people, the only thing that ends up mattering to them is raid progress. Wipe for more than a few days on a boss and those people will either run off to a guild that already killed it, or log off until their guild has it on farm. For some, the people are more important. They'll log in just to chat, even if they can't be arsed to actually play. They'll chat in general, in guild, doesn't matter. Those people are the community, and they're few and far between now the end game is clearly marked. It's a vast sea of so-called "progression raiders", always trying to push their gear up and fuck everyone else over.

[Mission]

If you think back LFD didnt hurt it much... it was long before it, if you even remember.

Faction Transfers/Guild Transfers.

Before hand, back then, you would be some what known on your realm, as were the guilds, sure some still are known, not same way as before... not to mention if you acctually spend time looking through wow progress, you will see tonnes of unbalanced realms, been like it for a while, Ive watched 3 realms I played on over yrs become more like a 1 sided faction, and if we never had faction transfers or guild transfers, it wouldnt be anything like it is now.

we had more of an in game community before those xfers came through, bad guilds, ninja guilds, abusers etc were known... people were nicer, helped more, you had no where to run, transfer too, rename and hide on new realms.

LFD didnt hurt it, hurt came way long before then, like a silent fart, creeps up and BANG knocks you out

[stumpy]

Loosely-moderated forums.

[Trassk]

Ok, we assume LFD ruined the games community.. but are we even sure of that? Can anyone here honestly say if wow was still working as it was in vanilla and TBC era of needing to find a group of people each day, spending sometimes an hour in finding that group for 1 dungeon, that the game would still be any fun to play?

I doubt it, the LFG feature might have made it quick and easy to get into a dungeon, but I doubt people would be feeling satisfied with just having the old system still in the game of spending ages on getting people.

[Jeleh]

Personally I don't agree with server migrations actually hurting the game, the majority of people that leave a realm do so because their friends have stopped playing. Once your social group dies out on a server, if you don't find another one then you simply quit yourself. I stopped playing because all my friends quit and I cant afford to transfer 8 toons to a populated realm.

What is really hurting the game is blizzards refusal to actually address dead/dieing realms. There are more and more servers which should simply be merged/closed due to how empty they are; Rift did the right thing in my view.

[Crashdummy]

I picked the option Something else.

I think what hurt the community more is attunements, lack of catch up mechanisms and tiered raids, because those three is what caused the worst attitude a gamer in WoW can have go rampant, which was group raids stealing raiders from less progressed group raids just because they were too lazy to re attune and re gear new recruits.

The community wasnt better in TBC; it was actually worse. Nothing the community does know is worse than being a freaking lazy raider stealer community member.

LFG and server transfers DIDNT hurt the community.

The community was crappier at that time, some people just acted differently when they needed somethign from you.

I recall tanks and healers behaving like idiots just because DPSers knew it would take hours for them to get another group.

[Ruffles]

The only thing that hurt the community is the community itself.

I vote for this one too.

[MasterHamster]

Everything that changes how we view other players can be both positive and negative.
Did LFD hurt server grouping? Of course it did. But while it's easy to complain about how you can do dungeons without saying a word, I'm certain that most would find manual grouping a major pain if it was removed... hell TOR tried to go without it and was later "forced" to implement one.
Thing is, when manual grouping was the way to find groups, it was also a time when you didn't expect to always be rewarded. There was no end-bonus. You were compelled to complete dungeons and replace members because otherwise, well, bosses wouldn't die.

Server transfers... well yeah, you can conjure up some argument of how it killed your realm, it's easy to assume that your gameplay is being negatively affected when your realm went from Medium to Low pop. But restricting players to realms? What good does it bring exactly? You have a max level on realm A and you find out some friend plays on realm B, and one of you have to level from scratch. That could make players quit too.. and as far as I know, a cancelled sub is worse than somehow transfering because they wanted to.
And of course there's the namechange/server transfer to avoid bad reputation... come on.

I'll be the one to say it. The thing that hurt the community the most is EXPERIENCE. Yup. The community was AWESOME when everyone but top raiders were clueless about stat prios, where to quest, what boss dropped what...
As addons and players got better and better, there will be a growing frustration against new/bad players. They impact your dungeons! Wah!

But of course, that's not the only factor. Consider EVE Online, a game where you are literally dependent on other players to do anything, unless it's simple missions or mining some asteroid in a safe system... there's a lot of friendliness to new players there. They want you to become better, because you can be an asset to their corporation, even if you aren't perfectly "equipping" your ship.

[Wildtree]

If you think back LFD didnt hurt it much... it was long before it, if you even remember.

Faction Transfers/Guild Transfers.

Before hand, back then, you would be some what known on your realm, as were the guilds, sure some still are known, not same way as before... not to mention if you acctually spend time looking through wow progress, you will see tonnes of unbalanced realms, been like it for a while, Ive watched 3 realms I played on over yrs become more like a 1 sided faction, and if we never had faction transfers or guild transfers, it wouldnt be anything like it is now.

we had more of an in game community before those xfers came through, bad guilds, ninja guilds, abusers etc were known... people were nicer, helped more, you had no where to run, transfer too, rename and hide on new realms.

LFD didnt hurt it, hurt came way long before then, like a silent fart, creeps up and BANG knocks you out

I agree with some you say, yet it boils still down to the community as a whole being at fault.
Faction change for characters I don't see as that dramatic, really...
One was always able to roll a total of 50 toons per account, with a max of 10 toons per realm. If one didn't like their realm, and the ways the realm was headed, they simply rolled a new toon on another realm, problem solved.

Name changes, as others mentioned, they play zero role. As long as a player remains on your realm within your faction, the name remains on your friends list, no matter to what name they change the toon. Even your personal comment remains on that new name. When they faction changed back then, they've been gone from your list, as much as they are today. When they deleted a toon, they were gone, as much as when they realm transferred.

LFD and LFR... Okay, they may have some influence. But how so?
LFD, a feature put into the game to make the players game more convenient. Absolutely true, before LFD we've been in realm only groups. We made friends, and enemies alike there. But then, we were also at least once in a while sitting in trade chat forever, to get a group together.

LFR, no, LFR did not hurt at all. LFR was a relief tool. In it's original idea it had a rather different intention. It however became a necessity. Why so, I try to explain...

First I need to tackle maturity/immaturity....
The Game matured for itself. It gets older, and in overall from a technical viewpoint- despite all the nostalgic romancing - it got much better.
The game is played on the internet, which also matured (and still does). The internet actually even exploded when it comes to the possibilities. Someone pointed it out pages earlier, the age average in the game was so, that there weren't really a lot of youngsters to be found. Kids, 12 yrs - 17 yrs weren't present that much as they are today. In a way, and overall, it seems (at least the acting of the community indicates that) that the crowd became younger, and more than often more immature in it's actions.
We know the game keeps it's subs at a certain level now, since a few years. What we don't know is. How many actually left the game, and got refilled by new players. The timelines indicate that the sub peak was pretty much at the 1 yr mark of WotLK. Since then people left more than there were coming.
I for myself refuse to blame this all on the game and it's content. That effects some players, but not to that amount. I suspect the key reason for the loss and stagnation afterwards is the community and it's behavior. The behavior started to go to shits pretty much the same time the peak was reached. The more players there are, the bigger the community, the more from all kinds of varieties including douchebags. Those hurt the community more than one may think.
Of all the people I know in the game, everyone has for the most part different likes and dislikes. These are discussed and talked about. Class issues, content issues. Nothing left out. yet they all have one criticism, which they despise the most, and that's the community's behavior. The douchebag mentality.
I lost my entire old guild from vanilla/bc times over that problem. The guild had two 25 man, and three 10 man groups going during the first year of WotLK. The society influence did not stop at our guilds doorsteps. It fell apart, and most of those people quit the game. They've quit because they weren't willing to put up with the bullshit anymore.
LFR? No... that didn't hurt at all. It came to the rescue of many. It has knee jerks and douchebags too...... true that.... but the difference is...
I have to put up with them for that one run only. After that they are gone, and out of my game again. The douchebags on my realm, they are always there.
As it stands right now. It's almost desirable to move to a rather small, almost dead realm. Most of them have a community left, which is there forever already, and refuses to let the server die. Those communities are still functioning. Often even better, because they are aware of the realm situation and want to pull together.
Douchebags, trolls and the like have very little chance to exist on those realms.

Blizzards fault? Internet evolution as a whole is nothing where Blizzard had any role in.
Community change within the game? Yes there is some fault on Blizzards end. Blizzard should have long started to at least trace the realms.
People know that the realms are unguarded, aside from the Blizz ppl playing the game too in the anonymity of their private accounts, which no one knows where they are. The realms are unguarded and the community knows that almost everything goes unpunished. If the realms would be guarded, then the people would know, that if they are shit out of luck, they may just get kicked off the game for hours or days, due to their jerk behavior. That wouldn't be worth it to act like that for most, hence the overall behavior would never have nose dived...
That's the only change missing in the game for years. Guard the Realms and see how the communities improve again.

[Hotsforyou]

LFR and LFD are community destroyers.

Skywall had a pretty good community in Vanilla/BC. Watched it fall to pieces after the implementation of LFG.

[Orangetai420]

Wow talk about a biased poll. Where's LFR, arena, flying mounts, CRZ?

You set up your poll to get the answer you wanted.

That being said I voted LFD because it obviously hurt server communities.

[Byniri]

Wow talk about a biased poll. Where's LFR, arena, flying mounts, CRZ?

You set up your poll to get the answer you wanted.

That being said I voted LFD because it obviously hurt server communities.

There is a 'something else' category.

I chose LFD and transfers because they are by FAR the biggest 2 things that people seem to blame for the community's downfall.

[Sj]

Gaming communities have always had the tendencies to turn into "bad" communities. It's human nature to take the path of least resistances. Prior to late TBC, there were mechanics in the game that kept that tendency to take the easy route in check.

Flying Mounts - Don't get me wrong: I love flying mounts. They were a godsend in a day where out and about was the name of the game. Flying was a tremendous quality of life improvement, but it was the first game-changing addition that gave leeway to taking the easy path. I'm not saying it killed World PvP or anything like that; it just made something much, much easier than it used to be.

The "Big Nerf" Patch - Patch 3.0.2, the one where health pools and melee damage of all raid bosses in Burning Crusade raids were "adjusted" to help ease us into the new 3.0 talent system. While necessary in a way to let people raid continuously until Wrath's release, it basically signaled the end of the old raid progression model. You had people that were still struggling to click cubes and throw Tainted Cores the previous week in Black Temple and Sunwell, downing bosses the next. It was the first patch that made previous tiers obsolete, and it's been that way ever since. I do agree that people should be able to see the inside of every raid at some point, but I also feel that farming Karazhan, wishing you could raid Black Temple one day, was a good motivator to learn and improve and make it happen one day.

Dungeon Finder - Patch 3.3 introduced Dungeon Finder 2.0, which sported cross-realm group-finding capabilities. This was a much needed addition, as the old LFG tool was seldom used and people used Trade instead of LFG channel to spam for groups with mixed results. I don't believe the cross-server anonymity of the new Dungeon Finder is what hurt the community, but rather the emblems that came along with it. All of a sudden there was a much more selfish reason to complete dungeons, and complete them as quickly as possible: guaranteed profit for the individuals queuing up.

These three things I think are what started a shift in the community. We saw barriers to difficulty drop, as well as incentives to be selfish implemented. As players, our tendencies to take the easy route and be selfish were always there, dating back to the days of stealing power-ups and weapons in arcades well before online gaming's time. The players aren't 100% to be blamed, though, but neither are Blizzard.