Sure WoW gets a lot of flack - but it has by far the biggest number of players - so it follows that it'll have the biggets number of idiots!!
The Best for me has been: Star Wars Galaxies (pre NGE - I left before that was deployed). Final Fantasy XII was OK. Lord of the Rings Online was great too - really helpful people, but seemed to decline over time.
Honourable mixed emotion mention: Champions Online. Some days the community is awesome - and on others it's really not pleasant at all!
In my opinion, these days WoW's community in the game is far superior to some of its competitors (AOC, Eve Online, etc). Simply because of a certain percentage of the population, who are rabid wow-bashing asshats who would rather flame people than just simply answer the question whilst at the same time politely correcting the error.
Such fanatical morons feel compelled to jump on the Wow-bashing bandwagon and flame anyone who asks a perfectly innocent question, and just happens to use terminology that may have also been used in WoW. Such as "How is the rogue class?" or "Where is the Auction House in this game?"
The usual responses are:
"wtf? There's no rogues in this game! Retard, you best go back to WoW"
"Auction House???? Moron. This ain't wow *********!!! We have a Trade House Lolz"
"Why does everyone wanna compare this game to WoW?? I'm sick of these script kiddie immature retards!!"
"Wow is full of immature carebear kids who have killed the MMO market!!". <five minutes later>...."I'm sick of that retarded <insert guildname here>, you're all a load of ******* and I hope you all die"
Best: LOTRO and, at second place, DAoC. The first one on European RP server Laurelin, the second one on many servers (Merlin was the server where i played most time). Nice communities on RFO, FFXI (japanese players was very mpressive, they helped everyone) and other many games
Neutal: Granado Espada. Played few time, very stressful.
Worst: LOTRO on Crushidge (and i'm italian, but reading blasphemy and offences to other players isn't good). I changed server and... a nice community (my guild was very good) but remain my worst experience. A lot of frinders, goldsellers and my account stolen twice (when i had stop to play)
The best community is one where you consistently find players that are willing to work together regardless of which part of the game you're at: FFXI. I found similar communities in other games: LotRO, DDO, and RO.
The worst community is no community: SotNW. The games that I felt had more percentage of "asshats" than WoW all came after it: AoC, DF, and I wonder if I'm an outlier for mentioning Tabula Rasa.
Best: DAoC during the early part of the game, before the Trials of Atlantis. I remember hitting lvl10 and heading over to the first dungeon Tomb of Mithra on the Albion side. That dungeon was packed, higher level players would run past the lower levels at the entrance and buff them up as they pass. Almost everyone was willing to group, I have fond memories of the Salisbury Plains.
Worst: World of Warcraft really brought out the dirge of humanity, creatures from all over the world crawed out of their caves to play this game. Don't get me wrong this is a great game, but the "Me, Me, Me" metality can really put a strain on a good time.
Best: UO, when the entire game, the feel, the day to day play evolves and revolves around what the players make of it, it creates a great community, and almost equaling UO was DAoC.
Worst: WoW, it's so bad that I actually find VN boards a blessing compared to WoW boards.
Best: LOTRO, people go out of their way to help, be it just giving an answer in /advice or helping with a tough NPC/quest.
Worst: WoW, the general public was horrible in my case at least. A lot of flaming and hating on each other in /trade and /general. I was part of a wonderful, US-Top 100 guild that was very nice and helpful so that helped a lot. Even with a wonderful guild there were still more bad apples in the WoW community.
best: Darkfall. upon joining, a stranger approached me and gave me a weapon, escorted me and defended me around town, then later gave me 2000g to get started (and told me to bank it immediately). he helped me via /send for a good hour with any advice i asked for, then eventually invited me to his high-level guild. i dont know what i think about the game yet, but ive played every MMO since eq1 and ive never had anyone be that nice to me.
worst: City of Heroes. first game ive ever played where literally no one talks to eachother, and the instance necessity perpetuates running an instance together and then breaking up immediately.
BEST: DDO for sure. Five months or so after release when the game was still fresh and vorpals were rare.. I was in countless PUGs with people I've seen around before, very few new faces, and always had at least one drunk dude in the group making everyone laugh. Specifically one time in a PUG dragon raid we were talking about a female GM's titties cause the dungeon was bugged.... amazing times. Wouldn't be possible without the excellent ingame voice chat.
Best: EQ1, AC1, Vanguard. People were always helpful (regardless of server), actively wanted to help, talked to each other instead of shouting at or cursing at each other.
Flat-out, hands-down worst: World of Warcraft. There are bad apples everywhere, but in the "good" games the sewer-sludge is a very small percentage of the players. In WoW, the general community (don't tell me about how good a guild is and so forth; if I have to overwhelm my "block" list or turn off general chat because it's raw sewage and elitist, pwn'd crap) is flatly the worst I've ever seen. I started in MUDs, played just about everything out there. WoW is incomparably the worst. can't stand elitist snobbery who talk down at people and mock anyone trying to learn something while staying IN the game; can't stand raw sewage, "pwn'd" language; can't stand morons who think it's "cute" to stand around with high-level characters in starting zones and constantly "hey, wanna duel" and spam sewage-speak at you if you dare to ignore them.
Honorable runner-up: LotR, it simply deserves mentioning because unlike many other mmos it hasn't gone to complete shit even after all this time.
Worst: Hard to say one because from everything I've seen it's getting worse with each mmo launch. I suppose at this point I would have to give that honor to Aion but I could just as easily have said AoC, Warhammer, WoW, etc.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Best: EVE, Vangaurd (~a year after launch), EQ2 (EoF) For the most part after WoW I only find MMOs with a good community that has been around for a while.
Worst: WoW and ever since its popularity every single new MMO has an awful and usless community for the first 2 months(untill they hopefully leave by then).
This one really isn't all that close for best: EvE online's community is nigh on untouchable, especially when you consider that the community has directly result in the longetivity and growth of the game. I've had good experiences with Lineage 2's beta, RF Online, even Aion though that was mostly a guild thing.
I think it's a little unfair to judge WoW's community as the worst, it's also the largest by some stretch. You were bound to get a larger arsehole to decent person ratio. Though i admit, the auchindoon community was the reason i stopped playing (pugs.... need i say more?) i do still think it a little unfair to judge it against any other mmo as what blizzard have achieved is beyond any other mmo. Lineage 2 now/Age of conan/post nge SWG are the worst that I can remember.
I think it's a little unfair to judge WoW's community as the worst, it's also the largest by some stretch. You were bound to get a larger arsehole to decent person ratio.
Not true really, unless you have 1 shard like EvE, but thats not the case, a WoW server hold about just as much players as an lotro, eq2 etc server.
Lotro is about the only game i didnt leave various chat channels.
Aion on the other hand took me 2 minutes to turn off all chats and wow didnt take much longer either
Seems like people really are clutching at straws with the WoW community.
BEST: Tie between WoW, LOTRO and EQ2.
WoW: My server's trade chat has fequenly entertained me well into the evening, and in general people are actually pretty decent. Sadly with the PuG finder I'm getting exposed to the asshats on other servers but for the last 4 years the community's been pretty ace.
LOTRO: Nice and helpful, but sometimes (often) silent and a bit "too nice" if you gett my meaning.
EQ2: Great, and helpful but some group experiences were a bit ergh.
WORST: Aion. Useless, unhelpful, annoying, immature. The game and the community go together hand in hand!
RIFT was a *crushing* disappointment; a shallow, loveless, generic MMO the likes of which hasn't been seen in a P2P format since, well, forever.
On the fence: I just started playing Darkfall Online so I can't completely give my comments about that. However I've met some great people already and it's a very tight community because if you don't make friends, you will die quick. From the first week of playing, it looks like for every douche, there is 5-7 great people. I've had random people just talk chatting with me and give me full sets of plate armor and tips for staying alive and progressing. I've been quite wowed with the new player support some have shown. But again, too early to comment fully.
To the poster above me saying darkfall due to actions - will you have to understand that darkfall is a cruel nasty world. The game is based on pvp, and if you don't make solid connections and friends quickly, you'll be chewed up, spit out and left for the crows - sort of like real life - no? You need to understand that Darkfall is pvp and you will die quick - and understand that one day you will get your revenge when you're not a noob. If you play darkfall currently, PM me your name if you are on the NA server if you're my alignement (I'm a dwarf) and we'll see if we can hook up.. I'll introduce you to my ring of friends.
The thing about darkfall seems to be that the faction you choose determines the ratio of douchebaggery, with all accounts saying Maharim are the worst. I am sure the Dwarves face little jackassery simply because the players look "less badass than others". People with a certain mindset flock to a certain character type, as seen in nearly every game with factions of any diverging flavors.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
To the poster above me saying darkfall due to actions - will you have to understand that darkfall is a cruel nasty world. The game is based on pvp, and if you don't make solid connections and friends quickly, you'll be chewed up, spit out and left for the crows - sort of like real life - no? You need to understand that Darkfall is pvp and you will die quick -
No. At least not unless you live in a post apocalyptic alternate reality where society has collapsed. This is my problem with PVP games. Unless you're willing to just accept that you will be living on planet sociopath for the duration, you are likely to be put off by the experience.
The real world features genuine repercussions for wanton slaughter. If it didn't the typical person playing MMOs and posting about them on a forum would be long dead (I doubt there are a lot of RL combat hardened bad-asses playing Darkfall) So I think the "just like the real world" excuse is pretty hollow.
I would love to check out a PVP environment that had the basic features of Darkfall, but actually implemented some sort of societal system whereby each and every citizen of the world wasn't openly encouraged to be a psychopathic serial killer. Unfortunately, most of the people who seem drawn to PVP *want* a wanton slaughter simulator. All of these PVP worlds devolve into Mad Max Online but without the "hero". Just tribes of lunatics whose sole motivation is massacring other people and "takin their stuff!" At the very least it gets boring, but given that MMOs entail a time and monetary investment that is ongoing, if I am in the mood for mindless killing, an online FPS death match seems a heck of a lot more sensible.
I'm not sure I can point out what community I found to be the "worst", but the best for me were EVE (even though the game doesn't hold my interest) and EQ2. Vanguard is good as well since it has sort of evolved into a survivors support group
Good points. However you make it sound like it's a bloodbath in darkfall - it is not. Most people are good respectable people that are willing and do help you. The main people you have to watch out for is the opposite alignment. In that case, they are allowed to exhibit wanton behaviour without any backlash. The general person that is your alignment won't run up to you and pvp you so let's not make this sound like you walk out of the city and get backstabbed immediately.. it is far from that.
On the fence: I just started playing Darkfall Online so I can't completely give my comments about that. However I've met some great people already and it's a very tight community because if you don't make friends, you will die quick. From the first week of playing, it looks like for every douche, there is 5-7 great people. I've had random people just talk chatting with me and give me full sets of plate armor and tips for staying alive and progressing. I've been quite wowed with the new player support some have shown. But again, too early to comment fully.
To the poster above me saying darkfall due to actions - will you have to understand that darkfall is a cruel nasty world. The game is based on pvp, and if you don't make solid connections and friends quickly, you'll be chewed up, spit out and left for the crows - sort of like real life - no? You need to understand that Darkfall is pvp and you will die quick - and understand that one day you will get your revenge when you're not a noob. If you play darkfall currently, PM me your name if you are on the NA server if you're my alignement (I'm a dwarf) and we'll see if we can hook up.. I'll introduce you to my ring of friends.
In real life there is law. You do not band together and kill others because you think they would kill you otherwise. That is gangs.
Comments
Sure WoW gets a lot of flack - but it has by far the biggest number of players - so it follows that it'll have the biggets number of idiots!!
The Best for me has been: Star Wars Galaxies (pre NGE - I left before that was deployed). Final Fantasy XII was OK. Lord of the Rings Online was great too - really helpful people, but seemed to decline over time.
Honourable mixed emotion mention: Champions Online. Some days the community is awesome - and on others it's really not pleasant at all!
worst: WoW
best: EvE
In my opinion, these days WoW's community in the game is far superior to some of its competitors (AOC, Eve Online, etc). Simply because of a certain percentage of the population, who are rabid wow-bashing asshats who would rather flame people than just simply answer the question whilst at the same time politely correcting the error.
Such fanatical morons feel compelled to jump on the Wow-bashing bandwagon and flame anyone who asks a perfectly innocent question, and just happens to use terminology that may have also been used in WoW. Such as "How is the rogue class?" or "Where is the Auction House in this game?"
The usual responses are:
"wtf? There's no rogues in this game! Retard, you best go back to WoW"
"Auction House???? Moron. This ain't wow *********!!! We have a Trade House Lolz"
"Why does everyone wanna compare this game to WoW?? I'm sick of these script kiddie immature retards!!"
"Wow is full of immature carebear kids who have killed the MMO market!!". <five minutes later>...."I'm sick of that retarded <insert guildname here>, you're all a load of ******* and I hope you all die"
The irony in all this is quite amusing.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
Best: LOTRO and, at second place, DAoC. The first one on European RP server Laurelin, the second one on many servers (Merlin was the server where i played most time). Nice communities on RFO, FFXI (japanese players was very mpressive, they helped everyone) and other many games
Neutal: Granado Espada. Played few time, very stressful.
Worst: LOTRO on Crushidge (and i'm italian, but reading blasphemy and offences to other players isn't good). I changed server and... a nice community (my guild was very good) but remain my worst experience. A lot of frinders, goldsellers and my account stolen twice (when i had stop to play)
My blog about (no more)MMORPG Addicted - a bog about videogames, cinema, politics and other things (in Italian)
Best: DAOC Mid Merlin in the era before NF
Worst: WOW Anub'Arak server, Bleeding Hollow was tolerable.
What i have found in most sandboxes are discarded toys and cat poop.
For me:
The best community is one where you consistently find players that are willing to work together regardless of which part of the game you're at: FFXI. I found similar communities in other games: LotRO, DDO, and RO.
The worst community is no community: SotNW. The games that I felt had more percentage of "asshats" than WoW all came after it: AoC, DF, and I wonder if I'm an outlier for mentioning Tabula Rasa.
Best: DAoC during the early part of the game, before the Trials of Atlantis. I remember hitting lvl10 and heading over to the first dungeon Tomb of Mithra on the Albion side. That dungeon was packed, higher level players would run past the lower levels at the entrance and buff them up as they pass. Almost everyone was willing to group, I have fond memories of the Salisbury Plains.
Worst: World of Warcraft really brought out the dirge of humanity, creatures from all over the world crawed out of their caves to play this game. Don't get me wrong this is a great game, but the "Me, Me, Me" metality can really put a strain on a good time.
Best-Vanguard
Worst-AOC
Best was Eve, worst was Darkfall.
Best: UO, when the entire game, the feel, the day to day play evolves and revolves around what the players make of it, it creates a great community, and almost equaling UO was DAoC.
Worst: WoW, it's so bad that I actually find VN boards a blessing compared to WoW boards.
Best: LOTRO, people go out of their way to help, be it just giving an answer in /advice or helping with a tough NPC/quest.
Worst: WoW, the general public was horrible in my case at least. A lot of flaming and hating on each other in /trade and /general. I was part of a wonderful, US-Top 100 guild that was very nice and helpful so that helped a lot. Even with a wonderful guild there were still more bad apples in the WoW community.
best: Darkfall. upon joining, a stranger approached me and gave me a weapon, escorted me and defended me around town, then later gave me 2000g to get started (and told me to bank it immediately). he helped me via /send for a good hour with any advice i asked for, then eventually invited me to his high-level guild. i dont know what i think about the game yet, but ive played every MMO since eq1 and ive never had anyone be that nice to me.
worst: City of Heroes. first game ive ever played where literally no one talks to eachother, and the instance necessity perpetuates running an instance together and then breaking up immediately.
BEST: DDO for sure. Five months or so after release when the game was still fresh and vorpals were rare.. I was in countless PUGs with people I've seen around before, very few new faces, and always had at least one drunk dude in the group making everyone laugh. Specifically one time in a PUG dragon raid we were talking about a female GM's titties cause the dungeon was bugged.... amazing times. Wouldn't be possible without the excellent ingame voice chat.
WORST: Every other game
Best: EQ1, AC1, Vanguard. People were always helpful (regardless of server), actively wanted to help, talked to each other instead of shouting at or cursing at each other.
Flat-out, hands-down worst: World of Warcraft. There are bad apples everywhere, but in the "good" games the sewer-sludge is a very small percentage of the players. In WoW, the general community (don't tell me about how good a guild is and so forth; if I have to overwhelm my "block" list or turn off general chat because it's raw sewage and elitist, pwn'd crap) is flatly the worst I've ever seen. I started in MUDs, played just about everything out there. WoW is incomparably the worst. can't stand elitist snobbery who talk down at people and mock anyone trying to learn something while staying IN the game; can't stand raw sewage, "pwn'd" language; can't stand morons who think it's "cute" to stand around with high-level characters in starting zones and constantly "hey, wanna duel" and spam sewage-speak at you if you dare to ignore them.
Best : EQ
Honorable runner-up: LotR, it simply deserves mentioning because unlike many other mmos it hasn't gone to complete shit even after all this time.
Worst: Hard to say one because from everything I've seen it's getting worse with each mmo launch. I suppose at this point I would have to give that honor to Aion but I could just as easily have said AoC, Warhammer, WoW, etc.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Best: EVE, Vangaurd (~a year after launch), EQ2 (EoF) For the most part after WoW I only find MMOs with a good community that has been around for a while.
Worst: WoW and ever since its popularity every single new MMO has an awful and usless community for the first 2 months(untill they hopefully leave by then).
This one really isn't all that close for best: EvE online's community is nigh on untouchable, especially when you consider that the community has directly result in the longetivity and growth of the game. I've had good experiences with Lineage 2's beta, RF Online, even Aion though that was mostly a guild thing.
I think it's a little unfair to judge WoW's community as the worst, it's also the largest by some stretch. You were bound to get a larger arsehole to decent person ratio. Though i admit, the auchindoon community was the reason i stopped playing (pugs.... need i say more?) i do still think it a little unfair to judge it against any other mmo as what blizzard have achieved is beyond any other mmo. Lineage 2 now/Age of conan/post nge SWG are the worst that I can remember.
Good post, OP.
Not true really, unless you have 1 shard like EvE, but thats not the case, a WoW server hold about just as much players as an lotro, eq2 etc server.
Lotro is about the only game i didnt leave various chat channels.
Aion on the other hand took me 2 minutes to turn off all chats and wow didnt take much longer either
Seems like people really are clutching at straws with the WoW community.
BEST: Tie between WoW, LOTRO and EQ2.
WoW: My server's trade chat has fequenly entertained me well into the evening, and in general people are actually pretty decent. Sadly with the PuG finder I'm getting exposed to the asshats on other servers but for the last 4 years the community's been pretty ace.
LOTRO: Nice and helpful, but sometimes (often) silent and a bit "too nice" if you gett my meaning.
EQ2: Great, and helpful but some group experiences were a bit ergh.
WORST: Aion. Useless, unhelpful, annoying, immature. The game and the community go together hand in hand!
RIFT was a *crushing* disappointment; a shallow, loveless, generic MMO the likes of which hasn't been seen in a P2P format since, well, forever.
Eagerly awaiting: World of Darkness, ArcheAge.
Best = Vanguard Hands-Down
Worst = Darkfall (Based on actions more than chat)
*I play DF currently, but am on the fence primarily because of the community.
"Going Against The Grain Should Be A Way Of Life"
Best - EQ2, AO
Worst - WoW
On the fence: I just started playing Darkfall Online so I can't completely give my comments about that. However I've met some great people already and it's a very tight community because if you don't make friends, you will die quick. From the first week of playing, it looks like for every douche, there is 5-7 great people. I've had random people just talk chatting with me and give me full sets of plate armor and tips for staying alive and progressing. I've been quite wowed with the new player support some have shown. But again, too early to comment fully.
To the poster above me saying darkfall due to actions - will you have to understand that darkfall is a cruel nasty world. The game is based on pvp, and if you don't make solid connections and friends quickly, you'll be chewed up, spit out and left for the crows - sort of like real life - no? You need to understand that Darkfall is pvp and you will die quick - and understand that one day you will get your revenge when you're not a noob. If you play darkfall currently, PM me your name if you are on the NA server if you're my alignement (I'm a dwarf) and we'll see if we can hook up.. I'll introduce you to my ring of friends.
The thing about darkfall seems to be that the faction you choose determines the ratio of douchebaggery, with all accounts saying Maharim are the worst. I am sure the Dwarves face little jackassery simply because the players look "less badass than others". People with a certain mindset flock to a certain character type, as seen in nearly every game with factions of any diverging flavors.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
No. At least not unless you live in a post apocalyptic alternate reality where society has collapsed. This is my problem with PVP games. Unless you're willing to just accept that you will be living on planet sociopath for the duration, you are likely to be put off by the experience.
The real world features genuine repercussions for wanton slaughter. If it didn't the typical person playing MMOs and posting about them on a forum would be long dead (I doubt there are a lot of RL combat hardened bad-asses playing Darkfall) So I think the "just like the real world" excuse is pretty hollow.
I would love to check out a PVP environment that had the basic features of Darkfall, but actually implemented some sort of societal system whereby each and every citizen of the world wasn't openly encouraged to be a psychopathic serial killer. Unfortunately, most of the people who seem drawn to PVP *want* a wanton slaughter simulator. All of these PVP worlds devolve into Mad Max Online but without the "hero". Just tribes of lunatics whose sole motivation is massacring other people and "takin their stuff!" At the very least it gets boring, but given that MMOs entail a time and monetary investment that is ongoing, if I am in the mood for mindless killing, an online FPS death match seems a heck of a lot more sensible.
I'm not sure I can point out what community I found to be the "worst", but the best for me were EVE (even though the game doesn't hold my interest) and EQ2. Vanguard is good as well since it has sort of evolved into a survivors support group
Good points. However you make it sound like it's a bloodbath in darkfall - it is not. Most people are good respectable people that are willing and do help you. The main people you have to watch out for is the opposite alignment. In that case, they are allowed to exhibit wanton behaviour without any backlash. The general person that is your alignment won't run up to you and pvp you so let's not make this sound like you walk out of the city and get backstabbed immediately.. it is far from that.
In real life there is law. You do not band together and kill others because you think they would kill you otherwise. That is gangs.