Community Problem?

I bought this game 7-8 months ago. Played for maybe a month or so before i found this website. Loving the game like i do, was expecting the community to praise this game. The exact opposite. Some people here seem to be very thickheaded, and ignorant. Complaints about a simple skill nerf, or maybe the AI Update. Some of these people seem to think of this game as it is theirs, and it has to be to their exact specifications. I see many threatening to leave the game, well, they should. If you can complain about a game, then dont play it. Just leave it in the past. Ive always thought of the game to be great and loads of fun, i understand it will change over time, will complaining help it? No. Why does the majority of this community seem to be this way?

I think it's because the majority of people in general have the Burger King mentality ("Have it Your Way") which is silly because life isn't like that. If life was like that, it would be A LOT different, I'll say that. I almost never listen to these kinds of people, I keep playing the game because I enjoy it. Obviously they don't, but that shouldn't affect your opinion on the game.

Reading the forum gives a very weighted view of reality. Posters in the forums are passionately pro or con and often represent the extreme of one side or another.

Additionally, some posters, like myself, come here to participate in debate and active discussion. I have posted frequently what I think about the in-game "community problem" but I consider the forum community to be very healthy.

So, basing any assessment on things seen in the forums can be...challenging, because this is a battleground of opposing view points and a high concentration of discord can result.

I worry more about community indifference within the game than I do about passionate differences of opinion here in the forums.

QFT!

i dont have anything else to say...

I have posted the same question myself - I wonder what it is about the people that act like trolls....

I think it has to do with a sense of....privilege...I am good at this game, bought this game, play this game, therefore I deserve XYZ.

There's a fabulous article in the most recent Chronicle of Higher Education about the Millenial Generation - the narcissists

Some people will always find a reason to complaint about anything, be it AI or skills nerfed. Just like in real world, you will alway see this kind of thing everywhere. They even complaint about offline single player games never mind online games.

Bah! why's the sky blue? Why's the glass green? OMG! they nerfed my farming build! my life is over, etc. Just blank them out and they will go away.

The majority probably isn't. The problem is two sections of the community: the guys who'd rather play... let's just say 'another game', if they could afford the monthly fees, and the guys who come to Guildwarsguru to bitch and complain because they know ArenaNet reads these fora.

The first group just hates the game. They see it as the games fault that they can't afford to play WoW, and ArenaNets fault that GuildWars isn't WoW. They will bitch & moan about this, and also attack people who play GW because they simply don't like WoW (like me - I simply can't stomach the shitty, retro-yet-kiddy, graphics of WoW). The rather-play-WoW group is the one you'll find being generally negative and complaining about basic mechanics like the instancing and the 8 skills and the 20 levels and the lack of uberloot.

The second group, those who come to get ArenaNet to do something, do like GW, but are upset over some detail, and go completely overboard complaining about it because they think that'll increase the chance that ArenaNet will say "OMG the players are really upset about this! Better fix it to their liking!". You can recognize this group because they use the word 'nerf' a lot. And I mean a lot.

The majority, the happy gamers, are simply playing the game.

I'd have to guess that the people that post on public forums like this are a vast minority of pretty much any game so the views you see here are those of the most vocal. Yes, you can look at it as a sampling of the game population, but I feel that those who like the game, play it and accept it the way it is and are generally content with it won't be too vocal here.

The attitude on a private forum like our guild uses is completely different and much more positive and even it has a relatively small number of posters compared to the guild's population (34 posters with 100+ posts, 150ish in the guild).

So I'd have to agree with Numa, "The majority, the happy gamers, are simply playing the game."

@Numa - and the third group, the us against them, complaining about favoritism.

If you go to a popular forum for another on-line game, you see the same types of posts, but usually less volume. (I've seen posts wanting dyable armor and instanced quests.) Why less volume? Because ArenaNet actually reads the fan forums. Getting enough agreement from other posters means that ANet devs will at least discuss (amongst themselves) the possibility of granting the desire.

A lot of posters are like small children who keep asking their mother for something in a store, hoping that she will buy it just to shut them up or have a tantrum because she won't. They tend to drown out the posts that are thoughtful and to the point.

And believe it or not, they all "love" the game and keep playing it. There is nothing else out there that compares to it. They just would like GW to have every favored feature of every game they have ever played.

And as in most tech support or customer service related jobs, you are always going to hear about the bad a LOT more than the good. People who are not happy tend to tell people about it and those that are happy tend to just enjoy it and don't necessarily feel the need to speak up and say so.

And the vast majority just play the game, whether hating it or not, and don't visit websites like this, so you are seeing a very small minority of the community.

I don't think the majority of this community is 'this way'.
The forum has 122,712 members atm and you are probably referring to about 1% or less of all the members.

I think the people that are on this forum and others are the people that have (had) more interest in the game than the average player.
Why would you join a forum about a game you don't care about.
And because they care, their opinions are more outspoken.

Then there is the reasons why people are complaining.
What you consider a 'simple skill nerf' could make a huge difference in some areas of the game.
I did not care about most skill nerfs before, but now that I have some PvP experience, I see that some changes that are minor for PvE make a huge difference in PvP.
And people complain when their 'good' build suddenly is crap.
Even more when they copied it and have to adapt to an other build.

I think only a small number of PvP players and guilds are able to come up with full 6/8-person team builds that are good in most situations.
The majority just copies, creating the next FOTM.
It's the copying majority that will cry 'NERF', the inventors are probably already creating the next build. But this takes a lot of time and efford.
Even getting used to a copied build takes time.

From that perspective, I do understand that people complain sometime.

And the scary thing is, sometimes that happened - we all remember the discussion on minipet sounds in towns, then the took away all minipet sounds, and then they added back in the minipet sounds, but only in explorable areas. So sometimes the whining gets the devs' attention.