The Toxic Syndrome

[Baneto]

I don't play this game anymore because of the awful community. I have a million other games to play with other people online, and WoW isn't even that good anymore, so if the game is lackluster and the community sucks, I'll play something else. The community has always been pretty bad but you could at least join a decent guild with friendly people and it would be fine, that doesn't exist at all anymore, especially if you don't raid. There's either mega guilds where hardly anyone talks to each other, or tight knit raiding guilds, there is pretty much no such thing as "social, friendly" guilds left in this game anymore and I feel like that's a pretty big indicator of how bad the community is now.

Why do you hang out here if the community is so awful? The second biggest forum for the game.

[therealbowser]

Because the internet is an anarchy state. There is no central authority, there is no law, no police.

Remove those from real life and you will get the same results.

This isn't the issue. Acting like an ass would still have consequences, and comparing this to real life is ridiculous since there are restrictions ingame that literally prevent you from doing certain things that don't exist in real life (for instance, you can't attack or kill someone on your own faction in normal circumstances, or even attack unflagged Horde players or even communicate with them most of the time, etc). These 'laws' don't exist in game or on communities because they are enforced in other ways or simply can't occur. You might as well argue "imagine if when you died your character was deleted", etc., but I am digressing here.

GMs exist in this game and there are standards of community that are punished and acted upon. Socially speaking, these rules exist in real life--that is to say, people can be as much of an asshole in real life as they can be in game under the law. They choose not to, because acting like an asshole is easy under anonymity. It has nothing to do with being in an 'anarchy state' nor is it remotely true for World of Warcraft, which is certainly moderated.

It's simply that people aren't willing to act like an asshole when there can be dire consequences for their action, even if that consequence is simply that they will have to deal with angry people face to face and this makes them uncomfortable. If in real life they could treat other people like shit and be completely immune for any risk or harm, they'd likely act the same way (and often do under similar circumstances).

And the more people who act like assholes, the fewer people will remain that don't. Either people will get tired of the bullshit and leave and move on, or they will become more like them so that they can continue playing the game and being in the same community. It's kind of inevitable. Hell, I try to be above it but I'd be lying if I said playing this game doesn't make me more of a cynical person.