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Unmitigated QQ
Simphanatic
Member Posts: 92
No denying it, this is a QQ, whine, or whatever derogatory label you want to attach.
I haven't posted here in a month or two because I've been off sampling MMORPGs; some had promise, most didn't. Aside from the fact most are carrot-and-stick themeparks, with little backstory, originality, or other trappings that would encourage staying in these virtual worlds, the gaming communities are horrendous. Griefing, ganking, trolling, snerting, and other sophomoric behavior seems the order of the day. I'm only 28, but my aversion to ubiquitous drug references and gratuitous profanity make me feel 68.
Now, it happens that I've a strident egalitarian viewpoint. In the world of online gaming I don't think it matters if you're 13 or 80, clergyman or felon, dropout or scholar; but is there no game-haven for a reasonably level-tempered, polite, somewhat well educated woman, who knows how to begin and end sentences that don't include an F-bomb?
Answer to that last question: apparently not. MMORPG and civility are mutually exclusive words.
Done looking for my holy-grail MMORPG; just ordered Elder Scrolls IV and V. No more watching snotty bastages pop their zit-sized brains onto game chatboxes or being ganked by immature turdmuffins.
Comments
It's why many like you (and me) (and others on this site) are snubbing themepark games. Sure themeparks won't go away, but the game you might be looking for is a sandbox. Patient, understanding people live there. Those that want everything NAOW!!111 end up leaving, because they can't find what they are looking for, and never will.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
Sandbox, themepark... won't make a difference. The biggest difference between good and bad communities (other than guilds, it is your responsibility to find a group of people you like) is the size of the community. Small games typically of more like minded people. Sandboxes, so far, have better communities because they are smaller. As sandbox becomes more popular I expect this to change.
So check out smaller communities. Istaria is a nice one.
umadbro?
Sorry. I couldn't resist.
edit: Are people really saying the community in sandboxes are better. Played EVE recently?
Might want to try stepping away from mainstream games.
Think of it like this. What kind of games could I play that the antagonist types would have no interest in?
You might find a gem where gameplay and community match your personality.
The Internet, by its very nature, is a rude environment. I can not see what games you have been playing in order to offer any real advice or alternatives. Your profile is empty of them. I can say that there are games like Lord of the Rings, Ryzom, and The Secret World (RP servers in particular) just for example with more mature communities than other games might offer. To a degree, maybe you are crying and quitting too easily. There is likely an MMORPG out there some where for you.
But... "turd-muffins" ... LOL. Reminds me of a girl in 3rd grade that thought "turdy" was a bad word.
Not so much mad as disgusted.
The late George Carlin once said: "Pot is supposed to heighten your personality -- but what if you're an asshole to begin with?"
MMORPGs obviously have the same affect on people.
Thanks for the advice about sandboxes -- I was surely acquainted with them before my most recent walkabout.
I'm just not real sure what outcome you were expecting. People are assholes on the internet, and MMO's have their own special breed of assholes. Find some like-minded people to play with and turn off general chat. It's really nothing to get upset about. If I let myself get upset over assholes on the internet, I'd probably be in a padded room right now. Just laugh at their stupidity or ignore it.
But they weren't always such assholes or so stupid.
One of the best communities I was ever a part of was CoH. Since grouping was very encouraged, people seemed to just get along. I've played many MMO's and the CoH community was the best. Still friends with some of my SG mates I met in-game. Sadly, the game was closed. (even though I stopped playing s few years back)
I would love to find a community like that again. Though, I don't think that's going to happen. =(
Hey OP, if you haven't tried GW2, you could always log onto Maguuma, which is my server. As for GW2 I've not seen hardly any rude behavior in the game as a whole.
I'm in a very active, small guild. We are all in our late 20's to late 30's. I haven't hardly heard so much as a curse word out of any of them, and they're very very nice people. Very polite, helpful, and pleasant to talk to over vent.
If you ever do try GW2, pm me here on the site, and I'd be happy to send you a guild invite. As I said, regarding GW2 as a whole, I've found it to be the mmorpg with the least amount of scum baggery.
Hear hear.
Amazes me that people still expect other people to play nice when the population is 100k-500k for most themepark MMOs and 10 Million for WoW.
If I go to a city in real life that has more than 100k+ people, do I expect to only see 'nice' people?
No, I don't.
So why does anyone expect that in the virtual world where you are anonymous?
Doesn't make sense.
I actually talked about why you should find a community first and then an MMO in another recent thread;
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/371602/page/1
Most things have changed quite a lot since we first got MMOs, why do you think the community aspect hasn't changed since?
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
*starts to type something witty, intelligent and optimistic to restore your faith in humanity and gaming*
*waits for the words to come out*
*keeps waiting*
For crying out loud, brain, where are you when I need you?!
1) Find a good guild
2) Don't listen to general chat or turn it off
3) Have fun
I've played GW2 for a couple of months and joined a PUG for a dungeon a couple of days ago. Well, we got ourselves a guy who seemed to spend more time typing swear words in chat than playing, died constantly and had a crappy build. So, I guess I was lucky my group was 4/5 competent, but that's the first time I've had to deal with kind of that behaviour in GW2, because I avoid PUGs.
You know what? You're absolutely correct. Maybe I am being naive with regard to my expectations. So, no more MMORPGs for me. In the past 12 years I've perpetually maintained at least one game subscription, sometimes as many as three. I've also dropped a fair amount of cash in various F2P cash shops and more money for other F2P financial models (a la LotRo). LOL ... I doubt my financial contributions will be missed, but it's a revenue source game managers -- who can't or won't police their player base -- will not be be getting.
Somehow, I doubt I'm a lone voice in the wilderness, and I wonder at the impact of cash-ready customers, like me, who're fleeing MMORPGs to seek more conducive sources of entertainment. That's really the larger question I was implying when I started this thread.
Just to provide some equilibrium to this thread.
Just like the examples mentioned which I agree with. It's equally bad to be part of communities with women or people in general that tries to slap a PG-13 on the guild chat, just because she/they are offended by the F word. Specially if said community is an adult one and can easily distinguish betweem excessive foul language and the occational swearing and said drug reference. I'd much rather you people just removed yourself and play in your own little bubble.
Other than that your other examples are spot on which I again... largely agree with
i laughed so hard.
The entire post was direct and serious and then turdmuffins
@Simphanatic
game chat channels are a lot like virtual roads (hmmm, "information superhighway" pops into mind atm).
its basically the same thing as road rage, that you are seeing.
people feel so disconnected by being seperated by the metal/glass of their cars + the metal/glass of OTHERS cars, plus the concrete between them. we are even MORE blind to others on the internet. most people have a hard time seeing any of the normal cues of humanity when its reduced to purely text chatting, with absolutely NO physicality to go on.
while current offerings may all be a bust for you, we WILL have online games in the future that transport WAY more of our personality/humanity into the interactions.
we will be seeing each other's actual head movements, actual facial expression, hearing their actual voice, seeing all of their body language in all of its amazing nuance.... etc.
things like Kinect and SOEmote (perhaps try EQ2, and see if that feature helps any? its free2play) are JUST STARTing to trickle into use. but one day those kind of things will be in ALL online games (to speak of). these kind of things will dramatically decrease the impact of "virtual road rage". if you notice, even switching from pure text comm to pure voice comm makes a huge difference in the kind of unattached callousness people can be prone to.
so..... there's a little brightness for the future. 8)
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Corpus Callosum
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Yup ... I've been in factions where leaders tried to censor members' language. It does not work. However, game-provided language filters do work -- as I recall, SWTOR had a user-enabled filter, which I liked. I used to chuckle at the fact that some players' conversations were absolutely unintelligible because of it. It served as a reminder of just how far written language has progressed in 30,000 years. I'm a big kid, I get that use of taboo words have utility with respect to conveying emotion and impact. Notwithstanding, excessive use of these trigger words diminishes their effectiveness.
BTW, use of so-called taboo words is only a small component of my disgust. Griefing, ganking, kill stealing, ninja'ing drops, snerting, and stalking reign more supreme within the context of my utter disenchantment with contemporary MMORPGs. And these are issues game managers absolutely can and should deal with.
Such is the impact of careful application of vulgarity.
Some might consider 'turdmuffins' to be somewhat profanic too
So you are nicely illustrating your point 
I know what you mean though, and agree with you... Other people, the rude players everwhere, are easily the biggest downside of online games. Common courtesy has gone the way of the dodo... It's all a sign of our society's decay
That's perhaps a bit extreme. Certainly, all societies reach an apex of sorts, but I'll wager such judgments are based more on technological achievement, wealth, and the arts than on civility or 'common courtesy,' whatever that means. We need only look to the likes of authors Elizabeth Browning, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Sylvia Plath, or Malcolm Little to realize that even so-called polite societies have a more insidious underbelly.
Traditionally, it has been a very thin blue line that separates law-abiding citizens from anarchy. Cities, states, and national goverments accept it as a universal responsibility to deploy that line. From a pragmatic perspective, I posit policing authorities are deployed less for individual welfare than to ensure economic viability of the respective cities, states, and national governments. Game developers would be well-served to take a lesson from this.