Is it worth it to be nice?

Being nice will ultimately pay dividends, if you're smart about it - people LIKE nice people, they are desirable companions and friends, and if you're not a total pushover you get respect for it, too. But jerks and their ilk just alienate everyone and end up isolated and disgruntled...unless they're really precocious.

Think of it like a long term investment. Eventually you'll end up well-liked and respected by a group of people who value ethical behavior. Victory in our time.

My in-game anecdote: the first guild I joined, I got scammed by one of the members - he sold me a crappy gold item that had the mods stripped off of it for way too much money (it was only 2-3k, but the thing was merch food). I was too much of a noob to figure it out immediately, but it didn't take long before I realized. I left the guild, found another one full of people who are nice, and stayed in it. So the scammer dude made 2k, which is really nothing, and his guild's paltry membership remained low. He sacrificed a long term gain for a short term one; and eventually, that kind of strategy leaves you SOL.

No-one ever gave me anything when first starting up and that is by far the best way. AM sure many players the played from the start appriciate the wonders of earning your first 100k and then the choices made in investing that cash to make your first million. You only ever truely value items you earn yourself. I have very little patience with beggers that sit in towns spamming for free stuff, quite frankly its pathetic.
Now helping new people out with a certain mission or quest is completely the opposite, especially if they have one of the less desirable pve classes for groups.
So in simple terms financial help is not worth it at all, but gameplay help and niceness is the best way.

When I see someone begging for money/items I say, 'You paid real money for a game so you can beg for fake money? LOL'

And if I see someone asking for 50g so they can open storage, I show them how to get a quest that will earn them 50g in under 5 minutes.

But I try to answer every reasonable question I see in chat to the best of my ability.

My simple responce is....

...people ingame are just as bad (if not worse) as they are in the real world. Ingame they can get away with murder and never have to face you!

Tt the end of the day, its just a game. Dont take things so personally and NEVER give away a perfect weapon to a stranger. Did you honestly not expect him to sell it on for an inflated price?

Giving away an average weapon to get a newbie started is one thing. But to give away a low req, perfect stat sword is questionable.

That might not have even been his main character, and he was just trying the warrior out. So you basically gave him a perfect weapon that he can flog cos he doesnt really need it.

Just dont give stuff away free, especially not stuff that a person can get themselves if they just put enough effort in.

I usually only help out people who can use proper spelling and ask for help (not those who demand it like "Sum1 help meh plx!!1").
By helping I don't mean giving free stuffs, well unless it's the few GP to unlock a Storage or something, but more like tips and advice on how to do stuff. If you just give a newb everything they need, they'll (probably) never learn to save their money for armour/weapons.

I'm pretty much a loner on here after a number of terrible experiences with individuals, guilds, etc. I play PVE with my wife and do AB and RA, try to avoid the nasty folk.

One memorabel occassion was when i was capturing the elites in factions, I was running in and out of the towns every few minutes, somone was in a town wanting to do a mission and because i was rejected their calls to form a team several times, they went round for 3 hours slagging me in whispers and towns, simple because they wanted to do a mission while i was not.

Another was when a guild member asked for help then started to complain becuase I was going too fast for them, and then complained to the leader that i wasn;t wantign to play withthem because I went fast through a couple of mission with them. This is despite them being timed missions and helping them get Masters on it. This player then proceeded to circulate around all the other members that i hated playing with them, simply because I would go through missions in an efficent manner.

Whenever i have helped anyone I have never got any appreciation from them, and half the time I have suffered some form of verbal abuse. For this reason I carry out most of the game on my own,

It's one thing to give help and not expect anything in return, but quite another to either have it flung in your face and be abused, or to have abuse if you don't give it.

The leader of my guild has helped me get Protector of all 3 and has never wanted anything back and another guildy gave me a Scar Eater for my Survivor Monk
but in my last guild we were a new starting guild right from scrap and i paid for a sigil at the trader for a GH and one of the guildys that had been in the guild longer than me said to give it to him and he'll give it leader, i traded and
we said "So when getting a chance to give him it?"
-no answer-
"Will it be soon?"
-no answer-
so i open guild window and he's not at the top under active members and i check status and he'd left . . . run with a 6-7k sigil (can't remember how much back then but i was new so it was ALOT to me)

Point is there ARE nice people and complete evil people. Lucky for me my current guild is full of nice people and i don't need to interact with random people much. I could be missing out on nice people or i could be avoiding getting scammed and i'm happy to stay within the guild for groups as i don't like the risk

another E.G. I was in Deep (first time, yes more noobs in the deep for all you l33ts) i was tanking and had died. Then a Q9 Zodiac Sword drops assigned to me . Half the team start saying "Leave that noob dead till it unbinds"

.........

I haven't been in another elite area since as this wasn't a good first impression, Good news is i do have some hope in elite areas as someone did ress me to collect my drop even if it ment they got abuse off the others. They pm'ed me saying not to listen to all these and just have fun which was nice

There are only a few people I really trust in GW. I dont loan or give away gold, items etc now. I havnt done for a very very long time. Im nice to guildies, friends and when trading but other than that I dont really bother.

if some idiot in the guild was complaining that i was moving too fast in a mission, i would just notify the officers and the leader that the guy's an idiot and shouldn't be in the guild . ..

ok imma blind post...i read the OP and a couple comments but im somewhat busy today at work sooo i dont wanna try and keep up with 60+ comments lol.

Its worth it in the sense of good karma/bad karma where as if you help someone then someone may help you when the time comes. Its more of a matter how its going to be used. In essence helping in an MMO is like teaching a one legged person hopscotch or something. Theyll tell you they wanna learn because they never have been able to do it and they feel left out....a week later theyre on opera being the only one legged person playing hopscotch and capatilizing on your help when they gave you a pity story. I like to help people because a lotta people helped me when i started. Ive payed for an entire group to get a run to droks just because i was feeling nice and i had all the armor i really wanted for my char. Ive given people 15k+mats cause they really wanted a peice of 15k armor...i knew they were gonna get it and i didnt care....they gave me a run through the desert so i gave a 15k tip =D in other instances ive givin away my extra mini pigs and noob weapons to people who just started so theyre not left out. bought armor+runes for people who werent even guildies. on top of which ive made a post in the giveaway section of the forums... i asked people to take them because they need them and not because they wanted to make a quick couple of plat. i know full and well they prolly sold those in half a second but cant really expect much otherwise. but anyrate i digress back to the original point. Helping in an MMO is only worth it if you think its worth it, some people are just asses and thats how its gonna be.

Being nice when it comes to purely immaterial things, such as language, behaviour, etc, the answer would be "YES! Definately! Even if they reply back in an unpleasant manner, you will at least send off the signal that you are, in fact, a better person"

However, when it comes to being nice to anyone, except your friends, with regards to material things (not limited to items and gold, but also including your time, ie helping with missions) I believe the answer is, sadly "No, no, NO! A majority of the general MMO population are utter scum. People with so low morals that it could keep psychiatrics entertained for years to come. These people who would sell their own grandma to buy online gold for GW are even less worth than the dirt under your shoes."

_Zexion

Yeah, I never give anything for free...unless it's to my other account ^_^

The only thing I give for free, is information & advice based on my experiences in the game. Someone asks a question, I'll be glad to answer...i love to help people in that respect.

When it comes to items, I will always sell, unless someone is being nice to me and giving me something for free, i'll want to give them something in return. So it isnt a giving of free stuff or a moocher/moochee deal...but rather an exchange of gifts Because giving free stuff to someone "in Need" is impossible to gauge. If this Player is a Level 4 Warrior looking like he needs help...you dont know that he has 11 level 20 characters in HM doing FoW/UW/DoA/Vanquish runs etc.

Oddly enough for me, when I get given gifts of items and money...as i've been given multiple K just because of my character name and this guild revolved around her name and green items....I was on a level 20 character in 15k armor all dyed black...not like I was hiding the fact that I'm not a noob looking for a handout hehe. I find it funny when I was on a brand new warrior and someone tried to offer me some sword upgrade and I simply said no thank you as My warrior was wearing green items and i didn't need something like that + i have all those items from the pre-release packages so every beginner character has a max weapon to use.

I really don't deal much with my guild as they have everything and then some. Impossible to sell to people who have it all.

With my best friend (in real life) - when we play together and sell to each other. We take the base price offered from Guru Price Check, and take a 30% discount off of that. So if X Item sells for 10-15k. We take the base price (10k) then subtract 30% (3k) to = 7k for the item (70% of Base Price Range). So we still make money, but we get that "Friends Discount".

too true...too true

It is good to be nice, but I think a few people are abit clueless when it come to handing out free items. They're easily fooled by those fake people.

It's common for some idiot to beg constantly in a town for free gold/items while making up some bs excuse about how they lost their armor, etc. So they're begging and even SPAMMING the local chat.....then someone falls for it......"oh poor guy, he must be bummed that he can't afford his armor".....when you give out free items, you should remember that there's tons of rude people in the game so don't expect a "thanks" or some sorta reward for helping them out. Another thing is, it's just a video game. You might feel sorry for the person when they try and act all depressed or sad about a little item when they probably don't even care. I don't think it's ok to give out free items to any rude person or spammer. You're only showing them that it's ok to beg. If this was real life where you could actually see the person's emotions then sure, do what you can to help....but please remember this is the internet Anyone can take off their virtual armor in an attempt to look like a poor friendless person who is in fact a somewhat rich person who's just too lazy to get their own stuff. I've literally seen people spam and beg for gold for a long time, then some random guy finally gives it to them then uses local chat to say that "hey im a nice guy!". That just makes you look completely stupid, and I've seen it a few times. Again, you might feel sorry for those lvl4 players in ascalon wearing starter armor but keep in mind that there's a possibility that they have other rich characters that they just didn't mention.

Don't give out free items like an idiot. Save them, give them to people you know or people who deserve it. A majority of beggars are rude and lazy. I love being nice, but to people who deserve it of course. I'm a very rich person to give out items but I help guildies with missions often. Sorry if I sounded abit rude myself in this post, but I really think people need to be more careful when what they give out =/

A long while back I posted this:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=59890

At that point the in-game community was beginning to become more like it is today with a noticeable balance of players shifting towards the dark side & negativity and trolling were beginning to emerge in what had been up to that point a relatively positive and supportive forum community. Though nobody seemed to have gotten the point then, I still believe it holds true. Maybe now that we’ve all ‘been there done that’, it might make more sense.

And incase anyone isn’t sure, yes, I was trying to be silly & serious at the same time.

If I come off as a babbling sap, so be it.
I’m pretty much one in real life too.

Volunteer your time, not your weapons.

I'll help someone with missions and stuff, especially if they're a new friend. But I won't give you that pretty weapon.

theres ~2 people i trust in guild wars with items, one who ive known from other games for approx ~2 years, the other doesnt play anymore, but helped me so much that even if he did scam me i'd of still been better of thanks to him lol

i give the occasional random thing away, but other than that... only give it to people you trust lol

Personally I think to be nice you need to take money and items out of the picture. Helping out someone on a quest/mission/skill cap or teaching someone where and how to farm something for them self is of more value anyway IMO.

I have a weird story. Quite funny to me.
One day in akinang i was selling my stuff to the mearchant. Then some guy adds me. i say why he added me. I go check out his character and find out hes naxt to me and he also looks the exact same as my assassin. then we called each other sin sis. then one day she wanted some things for some cash. I give her elite tomes and i also give some gd bows. Then he gives me juggernaut. I got really excited and asked him really 10 times. then i gave in and took it. after that i got to marhans grotto and see the new armor set for monks. i really wanted it but no cash

then i ask my m8 if i can sell his juggernaut so i can get the armor. i thought she would say no but to my amazement she said yes. so then i got the new monk armor and i was sooo happy. i gave her loads of pressies after that. so there is kindness frm both sides.

Secorsky, I'm glad you aren't going to let this event change you, but in the future I'd suggest "giving away" a max inscribable skin no one wants, perferably a blue one. IMO a level nine asking for a gold skin should have tipped you off that something was afoul.

Personally I don't give away things in general. If you want to, that's fine but when I'm giving stuff away I'd like to know that the person who's getting it really needs it.