Civility and morality in the game

Maybe it's time to get back to some basics of "moral" or "civil" behavior, which would be:
--take some time to talk to each other.
The really bad side of anonymity on the Internet is the lack of accountability for personal behavior; it's up to us, as players, to hold ourselves accountable.
With that in mind, I've never been in a situation where I've felt pressured to join a PUG (and I do love to join PUGs in this game) in order to do a mission/quest, and force myself to deal with bad behavior from a PUG member. Why? because it's not life ot death; it's a game, I paid for this game, and I plan to ENJOY this game. As such, if I find ANY behavior to myself or a PUG member offensive, I call the offending person out. Either that person leaves, or I do.
I recently went out with a PUG for a mission in NF, and I'm happy to say that there are still people out there who comport themselves in a polite, enjoyable manner. Don't be afraid to put people like this on your friend's list, if you feel the current community is going to hell. Yes, Hero's may be an alternative to bad behavior, but going to just hero's alone----I might as well have stuck to FPS games, and I dont want to do that..

I think it's a case of two or more generations with different social sensitivities meeting in the same place and playing together where in the real world this wouldn't happen. How often do you see 45 year olds hanging out down at the local skate park for instance?

When you mix two or more generations of people who were brought up in environments where what is socially acceptable language and behaviour differs, people are going to get offended. So i think it's just a case of understanding that not everyone has the same idea of what is offensive and what isn't, and just dealing with it the way you would deal with foul language etc on television - change the channel or just don't let it bother you. By changing the channel I don't mean leave guild wars though, just find a guild with similar values. That should help. :-)

One would hope that objecting to the far-too-common overt and blatent racism, sexism, and homophobia one can witness in just about any populated town or outpost would not be a matter of one's birth date.

Albeit likely that hope is in vain.

I play Monk 24/7 and there are so many (mostly warriors/assassins) players that overextend or run from monsters in the opposite direction of me. They die, blame it on me and rage quit or start cussing me out. If this karma was put to use lots of Monks would be given trouble >.>

And by the way, why is everyone so anti younger players? I'm 14 and im civilized on Gw :/

The one thing that does hit a nerve with me is in Alliance Battles (that I do frequently) people go nuts. If the Luxons win, the Kurzick freak out calling them Suxons, newbs and say we mob and have no talent. Luxons also call the Kurzicks "Kurdicks" and yell all sorts of things saying that they also mob. The thing about it that makes me angry is that they both ignore their own faults and just point out the others, even when they lose the match.

We give young kids a bad name because we don't want to admit that the problem might be in our age-group. You'd most likely find that those claiming 12-14yr olds are the ones at fault are adults over 20-25.

To a degree, I think much of it comes from people of two or three generations meeting one another on a "level" playing field. If a 30-yr-old and a 14-yr-old met IRL, the conversation would no doubt go far differently than the same two people meeting anonymously in a game.
That said, there's also the matter of A: Stupid people and B: People convinced of thier own greatness. Stupid people are not only generally bad at the game, but also are convinced that it is everyone else's fault that they are doing badly. People convinced of thier own greatness are not only generally bad at the game, but also are convinced that it is everyone else's fault that they are doing badly. These people love to be rude and obnoxious to just about everyone else, especially monks. (And people ask why there's never any monks in RA...)
The problem is of course compounded by the fact that we play in a setting where to a large degree there is no social control over what is said. I have found that in general, politely asking people to stop swearing and/or being rude will either stop them or cause them to be more belligerent, promting other people to ask them the same. Try it... it works.

Image removed; If it wouldn't be allowed in text format, it's not any better in image format.

This is not the first time such a topic has been brought up nor is the above picture the last time we will ever see of it again i suspect.

Learn to deal with it.

u guys should see runescape theres alot more biccering and bitching in runescape i used to be member on it and theres alot of people argueing on that.
so yeah were luckyon guildwars

To be fair, GW pvp is far more polite (if you can believe it) than other online games I have played. This does not in any way condone abusive behavior here, just expressing that I have seen far worse. I'd give examples but some of the lil yoyos here would take notes and incorporate them into their next battle. Suffice it to say, if someone made such advances verbally and physically (within constraints of the game mechanics of course) to say a female player of your aquaintance, you'd have gone to jail, and they would have gone to hospital, had they happened in rl.

That said, this is an old issue. As long as they (the foul minded and mouthed players) perceive that nothing really happens to them, they will act as rude and crude as they can and claim our ancestors died to give them the right to use every filthy word they ever learned and more whenever they feel the need. Myself personally, I'd like involuntary dueling added. At least then you could frag the lil jerks.

Favorite memory is SWG. A lil troll was being very VERY rude to a female player on Dantoine. I challenged him to a duel. Since I was in old clothes and not my robes he quickly accepted. Trouble was, he was a Swordsman and I was an Elder Jedi. He cried foul when he saw the LS right before he died. I bowed to the woman he wronged, and left.

LOL sometimes you get to exact punishment on the lil trolls. Most days they run around and act like they wish and lil or nothing is done about it.

I had an interesting experience today in a mission. In a pug, we were trying to get masters in that nf mission that dunkoro gives you suggestions to do (dont remember the name). We failed about 3 or 4 times before we finished it off. What was surprising about the group is no one bickered, no one cursed another, and we even had the warrior admit he overextended when he died.

Many of the members of the group commented about their surprise about how well everyone worked together and not name call. Pity such pugs can't be the norm. Was fun and satisfying to finish that mission with a group that will stick out the failures.

As for the policing idea. The guilds would not have to go over logs; they could just flag the people they could catch in towns as they played the game. Although abuse would be an issue. Abuse is an issue in any system.

Abuse wouldn't be an issue it would be THE issue. So many run around pixel land on a power trip now. I would hate to think if they could actually get someone banned. There would be nothing to stop them from grinding a personal axe. Anet won't pay for someone to babysit the babysitters.

If you get harrassed ingame remember to take screenshots and submit to support.guildwars.com

Those white supremacist guilds you mention probably fall into the "breaking the rules" categories - report them at the above address.

As for the rest "welcome to the internet" about sums it up. This behaviour stems from being anonymous and being shielded from receiving a (real life) punch in the face, or any other consequences. Anonymity + no real consequences = brings out the worst in people.

I'm really mixed up about this one, actually I like the fact that you can't get banned for every little bit of foul language, it gives me the opportunity to solve my own problems. I'm very deaf/blind for all childish stuff in local chat unless it's
directly pointed to me. I don't have much problems with PUG's in general. If someone insults me I try to reason and if that doesn't help I just leave. Yesterday we did Boreas Seabed with a PUG, I was supposed to interrupt kraken with my mesmer but I forgot positioning and got pwned by some by-passing squid.
Some guy started cursing at me but I asked him to calm down on the coffee :P
He started cursing some more and we told him to calm down, for making mistakes is only human.
in the end he calmed down, we tried the mission again and succeeded without much trouble.
All of a sudden he was acting very friendly and even complimented us on the playing. Bottom line is that everyone can have a bad hair day every now and then, but as long as they listen to reason problems are quite easily solved. My experiences with random groups are generally good, sometimes theyre full of noobs that die on a first try but when they listen to criticism a little bit we mostly work it out in the end and get the job done (of course they listen, they don't wanna keep on dying).
PvP isn't much trouble either, matches are generally short, so if I got a clueless group I just finish the match, get owned and hop to another group (I mostly play alliance battles though, i don't know what happens in 'real' pvp). I think that the jerks are a minority, I meet too much nice people or people that are open to criticism to think there is some downward spiral of rudeness going on. It's not logical imo that people don't want to hear about a way to own a mission they are stuck on for a couple of hours already, most people just come to play the game they spent their money on.

Play Starcraft and you'll see THE most dirogatory/insulting/racists comments ever in an online video game. Swearing is second nature to EVERYONE who plays that game, only from what I've noticed whenever I do play.

bca242,

Personally, I'm not anti young player.
It's only that I've experienced that after a certain time, the behaviour of people changes.
And that's about the time most young players should be in bed.
Probably also a couple of adults that have to get up early the next morning.

Furtermore, one of our guild members is younger than you and I know that his way of playing and behaving is very different than that of the other guild members (who are mostly 30+).
Since he's not a native english speaker, he cannot really curse in english, but I know from his mother (one of our guild officers) that she had to correct some bad language and behaviour a couple of times.
The way he plays (or played, have not met him online for a few months) is the one that I don't really like (rush the mission without caring much about the other teammembers, not thinking about skills or aggro control, focus on mission when team decided to do mission and bonus).

I'm not saying that all young people are like that, sure there are loads that behave like you.
But, like someone mentioned before, you tend to remember the bad ones and forget about all those good ones.

This reminds me of "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns and Roses !!!!!!

My ranger got to the Grand Court of Sebelkeh yesterday and the thing that struck me as soon as I'd come thru the transition was a couple people being absolutely nasty to each other (didn't hear the provocation, if there was any). One was harranguing the other at how so-and-so was nothing but a sand ------ and several other very nasty terms. For the most part, people seemed to be ignoring the comments which led me to believe this had been going on for quite some time and everyone had put the offender(s) on "ignore" so they didn't have to listen to him/her.

I realize there are people in real life who think that behaviour is perfectly acceptable. We call them racists, bigots, vulgar-mouthed. Luckily, they are a minority even if they tend to be rather loud.

I resent the suggestion that if I don't want to listen to that sort of crap, I should turn my filters to max or just click out of local chat altogether. I am not the problem, they are.

There are times in mission I may same "damn!" or "hell" but if someone says even that offends them, I stop doing so. It's very very simple. Common courtesy. What I say behind the keyboard (out of GW while playing) is my business and does not affect other players unless I'm on Vent - which I may add, I have never encountered this vulgarity/nastiness problem while on Vent with a team, either - only during the annonymity of text ingame.

It's not just the young teens, either, although I suspect they make up a certain large number. I suspect the most offensive group also comprises those in their early to mid 20s as well. All I know is that two of our guildies are ages 14 and 16 and they are both well behaved boys who are mischievious and fun to quest/visit with but not deliberately vulgar.

Of course, that may have something to do with the fact they know I'm old enough to be their mother and they're both younger than my youngest child

Anonymity on the net is an illusion, just ask the million and one torrent users who have gotten snail-mail nastygrams from various IP holders and their legal representatives. Your GW account can be closed, your e-mail can be traced, your IP checked against server logs, true anonymity is difficult to impossible to achieve and maintain online. In practical terms you're no more anonymous on GW than you are going to a park and standing on a soap box. You can babble all you like, whilst standing on that soapbox, and chances are no one will ever know who you are. But give the authorities sufficient reason to be curious and they will shortly know everything they wish to about you. The same is true online. The problem is not anonymity, though its illusion probably helps fuel more than a bit of stupidity, the problem is strictly one of lack of percieved risk.

The fact is that by several orders of magnitude you stand a far greater chance of being banned from GW for farming than you do for standing in town and being a jerk to anyone you can goad into talking to you. Leeching, leaving your comardes in the lurch because you capped what you wanted, mapped what you wanted, or didn't like the team, spamming the chat channel with wts/wtb, all of the many and various ways people use to get around the filters, all of the many and varied scams galore (id est, 90% of the non-racist/sexist/homophobic chat in most any major town), all of this is commonplace and nothing happens to those that do it. Everyone knows this, presumably including Anet. They could hardly be unaware of what goes on in their own game, nor that their lack of any action amounts to tacit (or, in the case of issues like leeching, not-so-tacit) acceptance.

Frankly I don't see a solution to the problem. Anet doesn't seem to feel there is a problem, let alone showing any interest in expending the resources it would take to make a dent in things. The player-base is both powerless to do much of anything about the problem and seems mostly disinterested in the problem, having understandably long since tuned out the bulk of the in-game 'community'. Sadly, I'm not sure that, at least unless or until Anet shows any interest in the problem, "uncheck your chat options and only group with close friends, heroes, and henchies" isn't the best, only real solution to dealing with the GW 'community'.

Other than having in game moderators that can immediately jump on a person that's been reported, I can't see any solution to the problem either.

The problem with the current reporting system is that it takes so long. Sure someone spouting hate messages may eventually be banned, but often the damage has been done. I've seen players forced to quit playing GW by their parents after seeing some of the things that some poeple say.

OP: Unfortunately, anonymity tends to bring out the worst in people.

Very true. Most of the more offensive language comes from the 25-35 year olds. The kids are out playing the game.

You are right, leprekan. I am too much of an optimist, i guess, to think it could work. Personal vendettas are something I did not think over.


I wonder what happened to games being just for fun? Most online games come to mirror reality far too much considering they are just games.

Well i have some MMO experience and i can tell you that Guild Wars has by far the worst community ive seen.

Other MMO's have these kind of people to but there arnt many of them, i have noticed that in simple games like Guild Wars and WoW, the community is worse then when the game is very complicated.

This is the only game however, where most of the playerbase is made up of these people, or if there is another game ( not including runescape, i think we all know what its like there) i havnt seen it.

My experience with the community is horrible, absolutely horrible, god bless the day i run into a nice soul, or even someone willing to talk!If there not LFG'ing or selling sompthing or trying to recruit i hardly hear any talk!

It is sad that the game has actually gotten to the point it is. The fix will come from within but I won't hold my breath waiting for it. Always keep in mind the wanna be Ethug is the kid getting his ass kicked in school .. it helps If they were bright enough to understand that acting tough in a game shows just how lame they MUST be in the real world perhaps they would settle down. Do like I do and reward people you see doing kind acts for no reason other than helping. Yes, it is kind of pathetic that things are bad enough that I feel compelled to give plats to people I see helping others but at least they know someone appreciates what they are doing then.

It seems to me, the solution is easy. GW needs to have moderators for all chats. Now that said, it would not be easy to implement or maintain. That coupled with the business model of gw being spend as little as possible to maximize revenue. i.e no live help desk, etc.. I really think if they (gw/anet) were pushed to really curb the language etc in game, they would op to shut the game down or add a monthly fee. As is, they rely on us to police their game, answer their support questions and do all this mind you for free (no pay), and paying for the privelege of doing so by buying the game.

Pretty slick concept don't ya think? They make millions we deal with the headaches. What a country..

Anarchy!Yay!

Ok seriously though you dont HAVE to police the game or instruct the players, i dont know why A-net dous not have people policing the game, maybe becuase they dont have a steady income so they cant spend alot, however they cant police anymore: If they would ban everyone who is being abusive or displaying bad behaviour there wouldnt be alot of players left, youd be bannign a major part of the community, sad but true i think!

I must say though that moderators wont make the problems vanish either, and theres no guarantee the moderators will do a good job.

Oh and adding a monthly fee = suicide. No offense but Guild Wars is of considerably lower quality then other MMO's, or has other factors that make it unattractive, the reason Guild Wars has been somewhat succesfull is that it dous not have a monthly fee, adding a monthly fee is asking for trouble.

Unfotunatelly the 'new generation' problem is not only in my country. Kids nowdays do nothing for themselves - just playing some games and even doing it for fun but to release their negative emotions threw it by abusing the system and the anononimity. Of course there are a lot mature players that do not let such primal thing to influence them and it is a lot of fun to cooperate and play with them.

Kids are fine, but when they are allowed to play unmoderated eventually their bad side will shine through. (not my son though, hes an Angel )

I realize that kids are smarter, and more tech savy these days, but they're still kids and the inappropriate behaviors that have been suppressed all of their lives are Begging to come forth.

To the other grown ups out there, don't you remember when you got older and was finally, finally able to get out away from your parents and say your first few bad words? I imagine that most of the kids we see out there using foul language are doing exactly that, except they have a new, anonymous venue to do so.

The adults out there that are doing this should set a better example and not tolerate this behavior when we see it in the game. Who knows? These kids may be as young as eight or nine and never have started this behavior for a few years to come without our poor "adult" examples.

There not kids anymore though, cant realy stop them..not anymore, to many of em.

But being intolerant..that would be fun, flame wars:Return of the mannered ones! (/joke)