The Possible Problem - Personal P.O.V.

First of all I mean no offense to anyone, but merely wish to share my personal point of view on things I have seen and witnessed both in-game, and out of game on these message boards of the Guild Wars community.

So far since the release I have seen the state of things in-game fluxuate greatly. In the beta weekend events I didn't see many problems but now that the game has been globally released I see many bad apples so to speak.

I've seen many people who merely wish to cause trouble, bash players for their race, age, country, whatever. There are those who wish to merely scam and be top of the game in the scamming community of GW, which there unfortunately is until ANet can stabilize this, which they're thankfully starting to do by removing the casinos. I have seen those players who think they themselves are godly and that everyone else is below them for whatever reason, and I have seen spam run rampant in certain channels in many places.

However, this is not to say that there are not good things either.

I have witnessed people giving things away for free, gold and items to the newer lower level players. I have given warnings out to those who may be unaware that selling armor is impossible to other players as they cannot wear it and gotten a thank you in return for letting them know they had made a mistake. I have seen teams working together, people of guilds coming to help their lower level companions and I have seen people giving help to those who asked for it without a single smart arsed retort about them being 'noobs'.

There are both good and bad sides to the Guild Wars community like any other, unfortunately I fear that the bad may overshadow the good if people let it. I've seen the players in pre-ascalon swindled out of dyes by players on their second or third characters merely because they didn't know any better. A friend of mine personally did this, and I would at least warn them to keep them until post searing even if I wanted them for something I knew it wouldn't be right to take advantage of them.

As for the community here on the message boards I have seen both the good and the bad. What bothers me most is those who cannot post without making a statement to bait or provoke others, or, those who cannot post without it being sarcastic or smart-assed. I have noticed people who purposely spend their time replying to point out what is wrong with what someone else had said, when it was merely their opinion, not fact. People are not necessarily wrong in opinon, misinformed perhaps but it is their opinion and everyones is different as this now is my personal point of view, not perhaps to be taken as true fact but what I have observed and feel.

I have seen those who genuinely help on the boards, post enjoyable threads that are entertaining and funny and those that offer help to others too.

I have to ask myself why there have to always be those to make a comment in a vulgar, smart-assed, or whiney way to where it merely provokes more argument than discussion. Personally I feel like I should be able to say what I wish here, as long as it is appropriately put, without fear of ridicule or such provokingly smart-assed commentary back, when it is unecessary to reply in such inappropriate ways.

Mind you, this has all been my opinion, my point of view and how I feel, not necessarily is it meant to say how things should be, or how things are to everyone, but this is just what I wished to point out to you, the players of Guild Wars and posters of these boards. Forgive me if I have somehow offended, insulted or somehow made it sound as though I was accusing any of you. This was not my intention, merely to inform of MY PERSONAL view of things, nothing more, nothing less.

Thank you,
~Adaria

Nicely written. A valid point of view. I even agree with most of it. Remember the Golden Rule. Treat people the way YOU want to be treated!

Quite true. The interesting thing about any online game is the large variety of personalities therein. As with all things in life we just have to take the good with the bad, and do our part to make the community better.
It truly does come down to doing unto those as you would wish them to do to you.

Regarding the smartassed commentary and the trollers... ignore them. Typically they want nothing more than attention and it's sad. Ridicule instead of constructive criticism is worth squat, so it's not even worthy of response. Just let it slide, because someone's -always- going to be there to try and throw rocks at you.

Today i gave away 6 staff-heads, 3 hammer upgrades, 3 elementalist runes (minor, major and superior), 2 necromancer runes and some other stuff.
Yesterday i gave someone 30 glittering and 30 iron when he was asking if he could buy 10 of each. (Buy? Nah! You can have it!!)

Casinos are not allowed? OMG - try visiting ascalon sometime. I thought ascalon had turned into Las Vegas!

Yes it is unfortunate that online gaming has it's idiots. We just have to hope that they grow-up.
As for argueing... "Never argue with an idiot. They'll lower you to their level and beat you with experience!"

As for the scammers and the "advantage-takers"....how's this....

There was someone in Elona reach today saying "I've beat the game...been there done that. I will help you through this mission for 1000gp"
How lame.
I help people through missions for free and even drop my items for them if they want them.
I am sure many people do too.

Very constructive topic!

Thank you!

And yes, Casino's are NOW not allowed under GW Code of Conduct thing.

Which I am very happy about.

I'm glad to see I've gotten some positive replies to this. It took me awhile to think of a proper way to say all of this without sounding bad.

Edit: Oh yes! Nearly forgot, the Golden Rule, I love it, however is it rarely followed, or it is most often ignored...

u can unalter armor right
if its customized for some 1 else
jus take it to the smith?
he's good right

nope
you can salvage it for raw materials but thats it

no, you cannot.

That's why most guilds are so great. It's like this all the time in mine.

So very true

1000 gold? On my first character the first time through that mission, that was quite a bit for me. I never farmed, I just played through normally to that point. I'm guessing most people new to this game, especially those not too experienced in games like this, will find this to be an extrodinary amount of money at this point

Okay...

First off lemme list off the problems with your post uber-noob!

1-just kidding... it's nice to see (especially here in the forums) that someone is not only into making the gaming community more of a community but that someone can talk about the problems in game without forgetting the good stuff in game. Props to Adaria.

Its MY personal P.O.V. that the next month will make or break the GW community, if people like Adaria are still around then, then i think the good will be around for a very long time. But the truth is alot of my friends are leaving due to the lack of a real community, going back to grind games that they can at least make friends in. Im gonna stick with this till the very end, as i have just been inducted to a great guild and in the past 2 nights have had more fun than i have in the past week playing this game. I know alot of good people are leaving this game, being driven away by the mass of idiots(no thats not a flame.. literally they are not very intelligent) And the more that stay the better

Awe, that just gave me the warm-fuzzies. I'm glad I made this post, I didn't know what to expect, I'm really happy to see where it's gone so far.

C'mon everyone, group hug!

Ok, um... yeah I'm a little tired and hyper. >^_^<; I'm in a fairly good mood considering all things that went badly today, so yeah ignore my hyper-tired-weirdness.

I hope in the months to come we start to see a dividing line more than we do know between the community-type guilds. competitive guilds and then just the rest of the lot who aren't really into the community bit, but like to play and such. I hope that we'll begin to overlook the bad side of things that seems to make its presence overwhelmingly hard to notice, and see the true community of the in-game Guild Wars as time goes on. Maybe over time we'll see maturity levels begin to raise because of what groups in the game do, acting as a community and the like, and become an influence for the troublemakers who may be at the younger end of the spectrum of players.

I've got alot of hope for Guild Wars, and I think between changes ArenaNet is making and what the [though seemingly little] Guild Wars community does, we'll be seeing alot less complaining of scammers/harrassers and maybe even spammers, though the last one is everywhere anyway.

Hope to see you all in-game sometime, now time for this little elementalist to go to bed...

Why, what is the problem with casinos, except that they should add an official one instead of having players do it.

Why did the put the roll and RPS action in the game if they didn't want something like that? It can't be for dividing up the loot. It automatically divides.

I haven't played in any of the player "casinos" but if that is how they want to spend time in the game, why not?

Whenever I play an online game, I always remember this: "What comes around, goes around."

The Golden Rule applies majorly to any online game as well. Since I have taken my time and finished the game for the first time through as of yesterday, I have taken my time in building a second character in Pre-Searing to also help destroy scam rings and keep new kids on the block playing the game and keeping what little amount of dyes they have left in their inventory.

If the benevolent players maintain the standards of which the community ought to be, then those who have nothing better to do than to scam and cheat will leave because they do not have a way to worm into the economy at all; there will be nothing left for them to do because they have lost all ability to manipulate others into gain on their part.

Other than that, keep up the good work of updating those without knowledge of the updates and the forum of all these changes. Balance of the Force, you must keep or else, sense a Great Disturbance, I will.

I had to take a little interest in this post. It just so happens that about an hour ago I was online with a buddy talkin about this very topic.

However, I had a different point of view. I was talking about how GOOD Guild Wars was in this aspect. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I have only run into the "Cat Fighting Pre-Teens" like once or twice.

It may be the 5 years of Everquest 1 that I endured that makes me think this way....

Wow, EQ 1 was crazy with the.... Ahh, let's just call em mean people...

I had a friend on Everquest 1 named "TunnelRat" He was one of these mean people. hehe... He actually had quite the reputation on the Bristlebane server for a while.

Anyway, to make a long story short, he had gained some unwanted attention from a guild on the server. They were causing him a little trouble and he was looking to get a little "Payback" if you know what I mean. I could not believe the size of his "Kah-Hoonies" He got wind of a Raid that this guild was going to attempt. They were going to try and kill this HUGE sea monster.

Anyway, the guild was preparing for the raid on the beach. About a 200 man raid party. While all of this is going on... TunnelRat, a Wood Elf Ranger, casts Enduring Breath, Spirit of Wolf, and a bunch of other buffs on himself... Swims out to the Sea monster. From long range fires one arrow at the sea monster... Then he swims to the shore line... Runs into the center of the raid party and then gates to Kelethin City. LMAO.

I went back there with him 20 minutes later... the beach looked like D-Day.

Meanest Cruelest nastiest thing I ever saw on a MMORPG.

My 2 Cents

-Witt78

The /roll system was used long before the auto-labelling came about. I think Gaile explained that in one of the posts about the news of the Casinos.

Edit: Yes I know I said I was gone, got dragged back by a friend, not a bad thing though

Sadly I must agree, I've had really bad experiences with the community. If there even is one. It is even hard to make friends, everyone's always too busy doing missions / quests and not dying to talk.

What bothers me isnt just the d00ds who fill up local channels - those are easily ignored. But when several decent groups get destroyed by the sudden pointless infighting of two (or more) group members - with immature curses flying back and forth - and one of the two draws extra agro on purpose just to get the other killed (and the rest of the group) - thats horrible.

I have seen this happen several times. It is worse than anything I have seen anywhere else in many years of online gaming. At least in EQ1, jerks had to worry about retrieving their stuff, and about losing exp, acting stupid for no reason was punished by the game. Here its not - and it really hurts the community.

First sign of infighting on a team or anything similar & I leave. Simple. I will not quest with a group that won't/can't act as a team. You only get so many heartbeats in this life. Im not gonna waste mine on ppl that do not deserve them.

It's real bazaar, because... I have not run into ANY of this so far in my first 2 weeks of playing Guild Wars.

And it suprises me quite a bit. This IS an MMORPG after all. I'm sure the instanced zones have something to do with it, but you can't keep peeps apart for ever!

Something else that I am suprised NOT to see, are the forum threads on this site like "What's the best class?"

in a game like Everquest 1 where ALL Wariors are identical this was SOOO common. The class lines in Guild Wars are so blur'ed that this question does not come up in these forums. What a blessing, huh?!?

- Witt78

I've luckily had very few problems with any PUG's I've been in, a few bad experiences here and there have taught me to be careful of who I choose in a team, or our guild for that matter...

It's somewhat odd, you hear of many good things but then you also hear of the bad things which seem to get more attention than the good. On these forums or in game itself.

Most frustrating thing to me is the flooding of all of the channels except guild and team chat when people want to sell things. WHY must they flood all the available channels and make communication with groups you aren't in soooo difficult? Its very aggrevating and though I ask nicely, no one ever listens to please use the trade channel. -_-;

I am so glad that someone has brought this up. I have been watching several message boards but have not posted on any of them until now. I am new to on-line role playing games. In reality the only role-playing game I have ever played was the Wizardry series.

In the different communities I have seen people be so mean to people for asking questions that it leaves me in disbelief. I started playing GW about a week ago and feel I have learned a lot on my own through research on the fansites, but I also know there is a lot I could learn from others. What I do not understand is why people feel they have the right to complain about "noobs" when they are not willing to help them become better players. When I look at how some of these people are treated I feel like I am watching a group of 13 year olds pick on some poor kid in class. I think it is horrible that I as a new person have to step in and defend/help others in-game. I just hope that "noobs" will stick with it and remember to be nice to people once they become better players. Maybe then we will have a community we all enjoy being a part of.

There are plenty of worse communities out there, there will always be scammers. And this place has the biggest potential for them. Credit cards in games usually filter out half of the immature players, it also makes it more possible for a company to find out who is doing it and makes people more scared to abuse the game. Because that can not be done here, people take advantage of it.

This is spot on.

Having just gotten my first character to 20 and into Elona's reach, mostly by soloing with henchies, I am just beginning to look for and need actual competent players to enjoy the game. So far that has been hard to find. It is amazing how fun this game is in a good group (which unfortunatly by the nature of the game often breaks up after a single mission) and how awful this game is with rude, immature companions.

I came from WOW (still play it as well) and that community I feel is the same as the one here. Much younger as a rule than games like everquest and SWG as a rule. Difference is that in WOW I started in a good guild of players I knew from SWG, and in Guild Wars none of my mates decided to play this particular one so I am on my own (still capeless If any of you have tips on identifying good players and guilds, that would be helpful advice. As the last couple of evenings I have had to log off in frustration from the inability to find people I enjoyed playing with

Best wishes

Dralon,

Best advice on finding a guild would be to (A) Keep note of the good people you happen to play with in PUGs and see about getting into one of their guilds (B) Look through the guild listing in GWG here and see if you see one that fits your idea of what the game is about or whatever and approach them., and (C) Keep a good "Friends" list and see about playing with some of the same folks again later.

Who knows.. maybe you'll find a few uncommitted people like yourself and make your own guild.

Good ideas Corwin, and really just beginning my friends list as I did mostly hench up to this point (as with kids I hate having to bail on real people when they need me, henchies don't mind

Quite true. I usually stick to playing with henchies or my guildmates. We do get the odd player joining us at times, but we are usually the majority in any human group we are in. Most of playing are on Team Speak, so we have a blast while playing to and a lot of times just socialize there even if we are all doing different things in-game