I'm having a lot of fun... but I'm having it by myself.

You know eventually the immature and ***holes in games get bored and leave making the game a lot better give it time maybe they will leave.

Only people I play with are people in my guild. The vast majority of the community sucks IMHO.

I'll go out on a limb here and take a different tack, and if I get crucified, you can bill me

The way I see it, the problems are not from "idiots" but from "idiots in denial". Now let me explain for all the crossed eyes reading this:

Elitism is the issue here. Not "morons". I have read posts from many of you in this thread in other places, and I can see a pattern among you. Many of you are veterans of many many games before GW. Good for you. You want a friggin cookie? Many of the people you label "idiots" have never been involved with a game of GW scope, or its sheer volume of learning curve. There is so much to do and see and whatnot in this game, that the newbie is perhaps quite literally intimidated into doing little BUT shouting in town about "help me find the anus of devourer quest item". They simply don't know any better.

Several voiced the concern that these "idiots" ruin the game for everyone else. Let me shed some reality on that argument: How many of you "serious hardcore gamers" DO NOT make fun of those people in open channel? Be honest. You cannot sit here with a straight face and tell me that a large chunk of these level 20 uber badasses that have swords that could cleave GODS NAD OFF do not taunt, intimidate and ridicule some poor bastard who quite honestly cannot keep up. Wake up. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

I applaud those of you who have the "maturity" to help those who ask, regardless of how they spell a damn word. It is the seeking of knowledge that matters, not the goddamn color code of it.

As for the claim that NPC's never charge off into certain death, that's complete BS. It happened to me last night. I had a party with a necro, fighter, and healer bot. I died, respawned. As soon as I stood up from death, the dipshit necro-bot ran off to the EXACT SPOT where we died before. I couldn't catch up, and upon rounding a corner 2 minutes later, found him anally pounded to death by a hulking stone elemental cluster (4). So no, thats bs. Bots can and do cause serious issues in party.

Bots also have usefulness. I got from pre to post ascalon with nothing BUT bots. So there.

In the end, the problems that this thread attempts to shed light on are not a one sided argument, as is the apparent intention. Calling someone names for asking a question you think is stupid only causes resentment. There is another kind of "fun-locust" no on bothered to mention, and which I suspect was intentional to keep this thread in agreement: "BAITERS". Baiters are people who intentionally act like many of you claimed, to get attention, to anony others, and to cause conversations like this one to become more important than PLAYING THE GAME.

Fun-locusts indeed...

I've honestly never had this problem,

Its true though, I have loads of friends on my teamspeak server so if I want to team with people as opposed to henchmen, I go see what they are doing.. nearly everyone can fit you in at some point.

Yea occasionally I will randomly join a team, but thats just a look really, to see what other people are doing..

I go into those teams fully prepared to expect the worst. When you expect the worst, magically the worst doesnt annoy but rather amuse.
In reality though, its rarly THAT bad to justify some of the sweeping statments going on here.

Its not like there are lasting negatives either, no debt(CoH) to speak of, only thing you have lost is a bit of time and your temper.

I cant honestly talk about PVP yet however.. not got into that completly yet, still training

but, surley the 'loosers' that are annoying will eventually grow tired of losing and give up?
after all it does seem that you need to put serious intellectual thought into creating AND playing a competative PVP character. Something the immature mind finds difficult to do consistently and for any lengthy periods of time.

Also, its about building or joining a succesfull 'Guild' which implies choice.. so you have the choice to play the game how you want, if something annoys you its your choice to go somewhere else or try something different... isnt this part of the skill of being a Guildwars master?

The Snowman

Im a lvl16 w/mo and I too find it hard to get a party mainly because there is so much item spam. I hate it when people go off and attack everything they see when you don't need too kill that group. Im a nice guy and usually give stuff away to people like minor runes. I also hate leechers that are afk half the time.

I feel pretty much the same way. I rarely group outside of the areana. I made a monk because in other games healing classes are always really rare and all. Now I'm at lion's den and I can't seem to get much further because of those moronic weak henchment.

Oh well, I can always start a warrior/monk like everyone else!

--Lyim X
13 Monk/Mez

Yeah, I solo'ed until I was roughly level 13, but then the quests (like Ashes in Piken) got too hard for my R/Me to deal with, then I looked around and most of the time all the people I party'd with really didn't use any spells or healing (I really love it when a guy is a Mo/W and they say they're a "Warrior" and don't heal anyone)

But then I found a really nice person, we did several of the 'hard' missions by ourselves easily

Yeah i really am annoyed at the community of this game (Except for this forum of course). You try to ask a question your lucky if you get to get an answer since no one seems to really give a **** about anyone but themselves. Try to have a convo with few people without being grouped or whisper then you get spammed with stupid sales when people should be using the trade channel. People seem to like to rush out and say haha these look easy only level 20 i can take em. They rush out aggro about 20 mobs and then complain that you didnt help them when they die. If theres anyone that knows where the monks path is please let me know. Also if theres a guild that isnt imature, stupid, 4 year old kids, likes to play a game not a computerized life (yeah some people are that damn addicted that if you dont do as they say theyll try to murder you), and actually likes to have fun tell me.. I need to get with them.. Thanks..

I also forgot to mention that "social engineering" people doesn't solve the problem either, and in fact encourages more of the same. Oh well, I'm going go actually PLAY the game rather than spend neuron-time trying to outwit people I will never meet.

Oh dear, I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this anti-community attitude vastly prevalent in (so far) my first 13 levels of RP Guild Wars.

I've made a bunch of posts about this already, but they seem to go unheard/ignored, so it's good that we can now vent in one place and hopefully be heard :P

There are actually, as far as I can identify, reasonings behind this 'unfriendly' behaviour, and I don't actually think it has anything to do with whether or not there is a monthly fee. Altogether, the most annoying people in WoW at least TALK more than the general populace in Guild Wars- and I don't consider "WTB 10 Raw Cloth" as talking.

For starters, to counter this ultimately 'selfish' gameplay (and I say selfish, because there is simply no other word to describe the fact that the only time people talk in ANY chat channel, is when they're either trading, or looking for a monk or warrior) that is hampering the community feel to Guild Wars (forums aside).

There needs to be a better (or any) player-matchup system- a way to find like-minded/levelled teams to party with while questing. There also needs to be a far better degree of GM involvement in the general populace- spamming trade lines 10 times should be grounds for a warning AT LEAST, and doing it in *general chat* is definitely not helping the situation Without simple deterrent penalties or repurcussions for doing things with are definitely outside any logical ruleset, they are only going to be exploited even further.

Even a simple LookingForPlayers channel that is used for this purpose (so that players CAN turn off the spammy trade channels and still locate and request party members) will prove to be much more effective in managing this often frustrating aspect.

Then again, the other solution is to get yourself involved in a dedicated, mature Guild, who pride themselves on helping their members advance, and ultimately emphasise that with the right people, Guild Wars can definitely shine, and shine bright. If you ARE looking for one out there, you can always shoot me a tell (Aviendha Romina in-game) and I'll see to getting you involved with the fantastic people that make up Knights of the Gods.

Having said that though, there are often times when you won't be at the same stage, or playing at the same time as your guild mates, and are forced to look towards the mainstream for party-options. I think the current friends system is almost no use at all, except for a simple address book (to remember often long winded names)- you don't get notifications of when a 'friend' has come online, and there's no way to tell what level your friends are at (or your guildmates for that matter) or what area they are currently in, which would greatly enhance your ability to find a suitable team.

I think these are just small things which surmount to an escalating problem, and just like the smaller things above-mentioned should be easy to counter/fix, so too should the problem facing many new (and I daresay), more experienced players looking to immerse themselves in the Guild Wars community and truly enjoy their entire GW experience.

Perhaps we can all try to compose a list of several little things like this and present them to ArenaNet as a list of community-enhancing suggestions? The least it could do, is shine some light on these problems, and perhaps if we're lucky, see to a few of them being implemented- to the benefit of all who enjoy this fantastic game.

I read the thread, and i feel somewhat the same way too. There is also some considerations prior to such a situation. In my opinion, there are almost unlimited combinations of characteristics in a human behavior. When the barriers of nationality, age and sex is being removed, you will see in plain every kind of situations which you can think of. However does that makes you quit the game? I mean in reality, i bet that you all have met such situations. So what do you do about it? You will just keep quiet and ignore that person, or shout at god and say buff this in life or nerf this in life or implement this.

Now about community in GW, so far i had never met such players which left in the middle of a quest, or left in the middle of a mission. Experiences in Warcraft III dotA, has annoyed me so much that i hope i won't have such experience again in GW. My way of dealing with such stuff is, suck thumb and find another party to venture, if not just get a henchman or 2 or maybe 7 of them and just try questing your own. The game is made by the creators, but how it's played depends on the players. You can't have like we want improvements in this way, and that is you alone and then post a complain all the way to arenanet. Think of it this way, if you have 10,000 mails each day complaining and want you to change something in yourself, you will get annoyed and simply just ignore.

Anyway i think i'm a good questing partner :P, lol feel free to add me, E/N12 Selina Wishwood.

I'll add my vote on this matter as well. I am a refugee from EQ2 (beat it) and the allure for GW is really quite attactive. The relatively low level of commitment involved with the game is an attractive feature, it's just too bad we can't all be mature professionals (or at least professional gamers).

I've found the community of GW by and large to be idiots. It's getting depressing really. I've tried to solo, and simply find it too slow or mostly impossible with hench alone (I tend to play nukers). I shout for groups, often listing pertinent quests, in all zones and several districts, with no luck. My fiance holds less interest in playing than I do but will hop on occaisionally to play with me (of course not being of the requisite Warrior or Monk persuasion either...). I'm not part of a guild yet, so I'm almost totally lacking the community I'm used to in EQ2 (I'm in a prominent and active guild, but content is stale).

Anyways, I'm up for a mature, friendly guild if any are recruiting. And in the unlikely event anyone needs a level 11 E/N, I'll be on Elle Bloodwish.

Regards

I always try henching before organizing/joining a party. The henchmen are a known quantity, one I can plan a mission strategy around. Being in a group of people who don't follow the leadership, or even worse, trying to lead such a group always ends up driving me back to henchmen.

That said, I did lead 2 groups through two of the rougher missions near the end and the sense of accomplishment was much greater, since it was shared.

My main gripe is usually the utter lack of common sense on people's parts. This one ranger in the last group was always charging the front line, drawing aggro, and dying before the healer could even begin to heal him. He did this over 8 times in the mission. Yes, 8 times. We got so used to it, we forgot to rez him one time. After that, I said, "please, just sit in this spot for about 10 minutes while we work off most of your death penalty".

I try to get a good idea of the group in the first 10 minutes. If it is obviously going to fail, I say so and wish them luck. I'll waste my time playing a game, but I won't waste it being frustrated by the incompetence of others.

Oh I'm not so sure that's the right way to approach things though - ArenaNet are very switched on and community oriented, many suggestions passed on from the community result in the great product we enjoy today. If we can identify things that will undoubtedly improve the current system in an attempt to improve the gaming experience, it's highly likely that it will be at least recognised, and if adopted, well- we've done something productive! (It's not like there's anything to lose on the matter).

You think thats bad. My guild leader is an immature kiddy. Dont want to leave guild though cause I pretty much like everyone else in it.

I found a good party today we did several missions in a row. Finding a good healer is troublesome and takes forever.

What they really could do is to create atleast one instance called someting in the lines of 'Roleplay 1' , which would be used a as a gathering place for RPers (within your 'realm').
Sure anyone will be able to join, but atleast it will be easier to find ppl who enjoy RPing.

That's why I'm glad I got into my guild. Lacerta Priscus saved my GW life.

I don't believe (hope) most players are refugee (veterans) from other MMORPG's. I think Guild Wars is the closest thing to a MMORPG majority of the players have ever been on.

A part from the usual onboxious minority, they seem eager to learn. Just try to be polite, nobody want to learn from someone who just called them names.

A simple "Please use the trade channel ($)" broadcast works for 90% of those who try to trade in the local talk channel.

I answer question, but not during a fight, and in town only a few. There are far more new players than veterans, so most questions will go unanswered.

Personally I haven't had much problems finding decent people to group with.
At first I went to the missions with mostly pick up groups.
From Yak's Bend on out, I usually had at least a few fellow guildmembers join in - because we wanted to arrive at Lion's Arch at around the same time (to check out the Guild Halls ofcourse ;p)

After Lion's Arch I still went mostly with pick-up-groups, which worked quite well (except for one group I had on Bloodstone Fen which rushed in foolishly at the end, causing us all to die)
Especially after Denravi, the level-of-play and attitude of players improved dramatically - and non-english languages in local chat became almost non-existant.

Unfortunately, now that I'm well into the game (Droknar's Forge, for whoever of you knows where that is ;p) it's starting to get harder to find a party, there aren't many people that far along ;\