Just why is GW Community so Rude?

Does the difficulty level of GW contribute to the rude culture of the GW community? Someone made a thread recently supposing that GW full of children ruining the game. Many quickly pointed out that jerks and rudeness was coming from all ages in the GW community. So I would like to explore why everyone is GW is not not singing kumbuya and bonding at the hip. I think its because GW is an extremely demanding game. I have never played another MMO but I have heard of people doing laid back activities in other games such as crafting and fishing. These people who play these games just log on for a playful rump in the sandbox it seems. Meanwhile GW is a warbox with no time to chill, once you leave the outpost its “game on” or die. Scrubs, n00bs or any type of mistake can’t be tolerated because any incompetence on anyone’s part can make an eight man team fail in pve or pvp. Many people because of the difficulty of the game I believe are frustrated and hostile. Think about your friends list. It is probably strictly made up of good players, guys you held halls with and ran though elite and hard mode missions more utilitarian relationships than anything else, when was the last time you failed a mission or got wiped in pvp and bothered to add those people to your friends list? GW is the skill>time game which is why we all love it, yet the cost of the challenge is an extreme intolerance for imperfection in our community. Given this I don’t ever think GW will have a friendly community, even the charr are rude and rank you when they win. Yet I would rather fight HM charr than fish any day. Thoughts?.

Kids play video games. That's what they do. Wherever there is a video game, there will be kids.

Now, if you see a 14 year old kid playing a computer game, and an old hairy 40 year old guy playing a video game, which do you think would look less appropriate? The 40 year old guy.

The GW community, for some unknown reason, is FULL of these people who are 30+ years old spending massive time on Guild Wars. Their carebear attitude and habit of taking everything far too serious is pretty much opposite of the people of the age group that SHOULD be playing video games (14-20ish) who are lighthearted players who can joke around. That's where the nuclear war happens. It's like when cold and warm air fronts collide, what do you get? A tornado. And in this case, it's a shitstorm tornado of over-punctuation and reports, and "NOUNOUNOU DIK DIK DIK" 's.

Because once you exit out of your town/outpost/guildhall/wherever the hell you are, you're all alone, and the REASON you LEFT everyone was so that you could game.

Also, I'd suggest checking out any of the numerous places that friendly(?) conversation still goes on:

~Shing Jea Monastery
~Pre-Searing
~GToB AD1
~RA (lawl)
~Kamadan, kinda...

Or you know, just join a guild for fun and chill in your guild hall, talking on the guild and/or alliance chat channels.

Guild Wars also isn't hard (excepting HM Gw:En), it's just time-consuming, and the majority of people who play Guild Wars don't really have as much time as they want to spend doing w/e in an online game, which is also why they didn't decide to spend 15$ a month on Guild Wars (which I happily would btw), and run on sentences really are ftw.

It's because it has no monthly fee. You'll find the same attitudes and blamings in all the rest of those that have no monthly fees as well. Just take a walk down Diablo 2's chat rooms sometimes. You must know in real life that leechers and users and freeloaders and riff raff of all kinds make their visits to the FREE places where they can get food and shelter and anything else they can get their lazy grubby hands on. Same applies in no monthly fee type games only it's a lil bit higher level than freeloaders and bums because they still need a computer to play. WOW has more of them because they have such a high population of any other mmorpg, but, if you go play say in a game world like EVERQUEST or DAOC or ANARCHY ONLINE you will hardly ever run into any kind of riff raff except on a very rare occassion.

What I do find funny is since TIME is the only consumption in this game there are so many people that get pissed off cause their groups wipe or blame everything on noobs and pugs when they can't even play the game well themselves a lot of the times. GW is a game about blame it on someone else and never accept any responsibilities....more of about being free to play and no monthly fee type people involved again. When you have pretty much total freedom (and you do in GW) you will have almost total chaos. There isn't really much of any law in GW and when you have no law you also have near total chaos. I see it in every town/outpost daily always with the foul language the stfu's the ya mama jokes and worst of all the CHUCK NORRIS comments.

Most of the people on my friends list are people I get along with. Not exactly great players, my best in-game friend doesn't even have a decent computer and I have the suspicion that he C-Spaces in PvP.

I don't add jerks or people that only have the objective to win.

The Guild Wars community is nowhere near the rudest community on the internet.

GW is not demanding game. Not at all. It requires players to know what they are doing later in game, but so do most games.

Its just that goal-oriented players dont want waste time on failures so they try to make everything to maximize succes chances: "perfect teams".

Those people are imcompatible with laid-back players, acusing them of "noobiness" are requiring perfection where one is not necesary.

As game progresses, goal oriented people get much narrower view on how to win game unless they get a grip. Soon, everyone who does not 100% agree with them or wiki seems to be noob. At same time, laid back people are done with game leaving in only goal-oriented ones, creating "noob hell" where everyone except them seems to be utter noob.

Its just impression of game that wont tolerate mistakes, in reality game is ... easy.

/dont confuse this with trully immature people, they are the ones who are prone to using "noob" label more than anyone/

I talk and get along great with my allience and while the conversaitions in Shing Jea waiting for 2 where um.....interesting....they where not very negative.

very true

i actually don't know about what rudness these people are talking about

From personal experience I tend to have found that subscription based games have a generally politer and more civil community hence question the influence this has overall.

I played CoH for over a year and did'nt see one insult....ever....and have found all of the other MMO subscription games I've tried to be much the same.

I have also found having a larger server choice based on more specific area locations to have had a similar effect.

Paying a one off price and chucking the majority of players at the same server seems to attract the more "vocal" subset of gamers in my experience.

most of my mates on my list are just that, "mates" some arent great players but nice to talk to, and good to teach, only a few have actually completed most the game but they just happen to be great people.

i dont tend to see most of this "rudeness and scamming" that people talk about, i think its down to your playstyle. talking to guildies and alliance members mostly, occasioanally have local chat on.

if you want to avoid it, then its easily done, some people rise to the bait too easy and will argue back, best way to win an argument, walk away, leave everyone else laughing at the trouble starter for being immature.

Well, I believe you'll find that if you play other MMOs, you will see that GW is incredibly relaxed compared to other mainstream MMOs such as WoW or Lineage 2, where the whole game is balanced (or rather not) around powerful items. In GW you get max items and you're done, which eases the burden on a A LOT of casual people. You also don't need to worry about repairing, and rebuffing when you die, or losing a ton of experience to your next level.

In short, to answer your question as to why the community is so hostile, use the following formula.

stupid people+mean people= bad community

It's not Anet's fault, it's not your fault, it's because people in general are either jerks, or are just plain dumb, and can't help but do stupid things.

What rudeness? Oh, local chat is off.

The community is simply a reflection of human society. The only difference here is that people have even less sense of responsibility and consideration due to no threat of tangible repercussions.

Global warming.

(I wanted to do a Colbert and blame the bears - but I think the joke would be lost on a GW forum ...)

QFT

Try Silkroad online, you'll know what rude is.

its not just GW any online game i've played there is an abundance of jerks, All games that are online do, its not the game its the people.

Once in a while you get a kiddie that flames you because you killed his W/Mo.

Because people expect you to be good. Welcome to Anets cookie cutter button mashing world. Where if your dumb enough to make a mistake you will pay for it.

Unlike most games, WoW for example anyone can get the best stuff and play on the elite missions without difficulty and due to Anet making the game easier *cough UB* as long as you have the right skills you can 'try' to play most high end missions, effectively bypassing the need to actually be good at the game.

Imo 90% of people trying to play the high end content of GW will suck at it. But they will get thru somehow and think they are great. "Very exp I have completed before!"

Where as in another game you have to work very very hard to get the items and necessary gaming knowledge, levelling etc... to even attempt highend content. And then try find a decent guild to take you on the runs with full team co-ordination and vent/ts a big requirement..

The most team co-ordination you get in GW pugs is "u bring cons k??"

Too many uber-intelligent elitists rampaging in the forums.
That's right, no one can match their intelligence, not even ANET.

People are people.

That's surprising to me, although I've only played Runescape, Guild Wars and Diablo II online.

Rude community: the Age of Conan PvP Servers.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

Also, the class forums are a great source of entertainment.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12

Logically theres bound to be worse but it's obviously based on personal experience.

The good thing about GW is that , for the most part, such players are easily ignored with tools provided to keep them out of your game.Once I'd joined a mature guild, made a few friends and discovered the ignore list, off-line function and chat tabs the issue became relatively minor.

^_^ =(
I'm light-hearted and fun-loving despite putting more time into gw than I should. Why exactly should I not be playing?

I've met people twice my age and half my age in gw, and of course there's a range of maturity and personalities in all of them, not necessarily with the oldest being the most mature and the least "carebare".

People can be asses on the internet because there's no accountability.
As an amusing cartoon once illustrated;
Normal Person + Anonymity = Total Asshole.

I'd say that GW has gone downhill a fair bit in the last 6 months (player attitude wise that is) - but it's still not the worst out there. Silkroad Online is worse, as is Age of Aries.
I only played WoW briefly, but my exp. there was not overly pleasant either ( an interesting note about separate servers though, I had a char on a Horde server that was very rude towards new players, while my char on the Alliance server was immediately accepted even at a low level).
I'm taking a break from GW due to ISP troubles, but I have a good 20 people (maybe 1/3 of the total) on my friends list that I can easily chat with for half an hour, not to mention my guildmates who are all great guys/gals. My ignore list only has 3 on it, so overall I'd say that's a good ratio. It's all about the people you surround yourself with - all new players should join a good guild that makes a point of helping new players adapt to the game.... best thing you can do to make the game enjoyable from the start.

Actually your wrong there.

All of the current and reliable statistical research and studies on the topic places the average gamer age at 22-40 with only subtle variations between this age range, based mainly on location, hence your "majority of players should be 14 and therefore have the relevant age defined attitude" argument holds no water or justification for bad or unacceptable behavior.

In saying age seems to be largely irrelevant, although not totally imo.I think maturity has far more significance.

Just bear in mind that your perception of the GW community is relative to your experience of the game. PvPer and PvErs can experience differently due to the different nature of these sides of the game.

I'd like to put again a link to a thread I created about the topic of how competitive videogames bring about mercenary attitudes, with links to relevant articles:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10240997

It's right that the age has an impact of playerbase attitude, but it surely is not the only factor (and probably not the main one, after all the GW community is not as big as one thinks). So stop blaming kids right now.

people+anonymous=troll

people (almost) never change= trolls never change

bad troll is bad...+anonymous is legion= "rude community" AKA trollfest

there we go, math for beginners =D

I would just add that i have been to more than a few MMO's before, and every game(without an exception) has alot of immature people and lowly talk (see RA for example). the game's payment has something to do with it, as free games have alot of botters for example and that may cause for stress and anger for many people.In general, GW is the best game i ever saw in the market. why? because while in other games those very same people that may hurt you verbaly, can very well also cause for grief in other means while here they cannot(and if using Ignore list not even verbaly).

Good grief you're listening too stereotypes too much. Yes, a lot of kids play games, but your average gamer is in the late 20s-early 30s (depending on the report you're reading). For example, http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/new...php?story=9342

Yes, there are games designed to appeal more to kids, but the game developers would have to be insane to write off the vast majority of the population is not of interest. Especially given that today's 20-30-something has been playing games for a very long time, and probably doesn't feel a particular need to stop.

You take this game too seriously for actually caring, if you not happy, just quit.

FFS, why do people whine so damn much in these forums instead of just quitting the game? Jeez, call me rude but if you're not happy, just gtfo, can't put it anyway else.

I'm playing on a few online games right now, notably Lineage II, Diablo II and GW.

On the L2 server I play, we have little to no problems. GMs are there, players with a bad attitude, spammers and leechers get shot down in flood chat by the other people and not just GMs, the guys and gals in general seem helpful... but they don't have that carebear attitude for most.

D2's community doesn't talk too much unless it's to make trades or spam "can ne1 rush 4 4ge nl???". Well anyways, the chatrooms I land in when I start. I used to get on some chatrooms (back when I played with my husband), the people were chatty but they were insanely boring (a lot of cute fuzzywuzzy furry RPers...), bit childish and we'd get abuse cases every now and then. As for the groups themselves, communication is extremely minimal. "pp", "tp", "tp up" and "ng". Unless you fall on some chatty groups.

While GW's just rampant with tards. Spammers, leechers, people with general bad attitudes and behaviors - you'll get insults for about every reason possible. Armor, builds, equipment, your main profession... the narutard who blames you for his death despite he rushed like mad in the next mob even though it took you all your energy to keep him alive because at the end of the game he doesn't even have max armor... the people who go AFK in the middle of a huge mob without saying anything, then comes back 20 minutes later with "sry had 2 go dinner" or they resume like it was nothing.

And that's in GROUPS. Because in outposts they're just spammers, they're going to insult you for a yes, for a no, they complain about skill nerfs/buffs, want the exact opposite of what they wanted 2 minutes ago, call you a noob for buying/selling something at a fair price, fight with groups who ditched them or just starting general arguments.

I dunno if I blame the lack of monthly fee or the general "anonymity + dumbass + crowd = even more of a dumbass", it's probably a mix of both. 'Cause with no monthly fees, parents are probably more eager to buy games for their kids. Then you have the adult who takes this game way too seriously. Actually, it doesn't take age to have no common sense...

I'm in that age range and I try to be careful to what I say in this game. I won't go and insult someone 'cause they're equipped with different weapons than I am. That's just common sense and I see a lotta people lacking it. As I was just saying, you don't have an age requirement for "no common sense". But I think anyone who's acting like a tard in this game, by the way they type, SOUND like (maybe) a 10-year-old and under. "UR MOM" replies, to name an example. The guy might be 30 years old, but it really doesn't sound like a 30-year-old...

@ Gift3d

I have been gaming since ZX-Spectrum days - if that "disqualifies" me from your social circle - I am relieved tbh. I bet you don't even know what a ZX-spectrum is, but thats ancient history to you and as such boring.

Age is not a requirement for politeness and courtesy.

The internet provides the anonymity needed to be a total ass. Contrary to the ignorant, such as the one I quote below, it's not limited to younger people.

Who are you to judge what is appropriate and what is not? And what exactly does that have to do with anything?

You're right, it isn't. I wonder how these people would behave if people knew who there were.

Why on earth would you ever believe that adults have no place in gaming or that its inappropriate for them to enjoy gaming ?

It's a combination of a few things. One of them is simply that there's a lot of immaturity here.

A huge proportion of the posters here are kids (< 16 yrs old) whose default reaction to things that challenge their opinion is to take deep personal offense. Most of them will grow out of this stage as the development of social skills becomes more important to their career.

You can get an idea of just how many kids are here just by tallying up the numbre of posters using words such as "ur", "wut", and "lulz" - or the ones that post in huge run-on sentences using no punctuation or capitalisation.

Many adults however, never really properly developed the social skills that allowed them to have a civilised discussion without turning it into an argument, and naturally letting it degenerate into personal insults. There is possibly a correlation between those adults whose social skills are limited in this way, and those that seek escapism by spending a disproportionate amount of time playing computer games.

QFT

Welcome to the club.

You guys seem to be forgetting what you were like when you were teenagers, I remember a LOT of hormones and very short temper or mood swings back then, I don't know, maybe I was just bad, but as an adult, it's YOUR job to be the mature one and not involve yourself with vulgar arguements ,specially on the internet, ever heard that saying "Argueing on the internets is like the special olympics, you may win, but you're still retarded". Although, I know that sometimes, these are impossible or hard to avoid, but a strong personality (something a LOT of you lack), security and a good sex life can easily be the key to change you from becoming offended to little things kids do, to not caring at all. Frankly, if you are such an adult, I think it's time you gained atleast 2 of those I mentioned before and others such as: patience, this is one of the things you really only start getting as an adult, most teenagers have no patience for anything, respect and manners: a lot of teenagers don't learn any manners until they get fired from their first job for being rude or simply lacking social skills, most parents these days don't bother teaching these lil things to their children and the schools even less, they are punished? Yes. Are they taught? No.

About the whole, being angry about the guy who said teenagers should be playing games more then adults, I'm sure that's not what he actually meant, and again, being a teenager, he just fails at expressing himself, what he probably meant is, most teenagers have only school to do and then they are free for the rest of the day, most adults have, Work, a wife, kids, a house to take care of, bills to pay, etc, it will probably be more common to see teenagers playing videogames then adults, and although that survey might be right (20-40 is the most common age amonst gamers), that survey only shows people who perhaps bought the game, it doesn't show how often they play it, a teenager might log on 5 days a week after school, and the whole weekend non-stop, I'm sure a adult (one who has a family to take care of anyway) will not be logging on as much, so, games purchases? Perhaps we have the lead, hours played? Probably not.


Anyway, that's it, hope that cleared something up.

Which isn't exactly a very fair thing to pit it against. It's a game, it ought to be compared to other games. Of course if you pitch it into the cesspool with places like /b/, Youtube, and the entire alt news tree it's going to shine by comparison.

Compare it to other games - especially other MMOs - and it's a pretty crappy set of people.

Dunno. I've seen much, much worse gaming communities as well.