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Why does the MMO community act the way it does?
seshomaru3789
Member UncommonPosts: 17
I do not post often at all, in fact this is my first thread. I have mainly just lurked the forums but I decided I wanted to ask the community something. Why is it that so many MMORPG players hate on each other?
This has bothered me for quite awhile. People put each other down because of the MMORPG that they like. To me this doesn't make any sense at all. For example person A might get pissed because person B is excited for a certain MMO. For some reason person A has the need to tell person B what kind of dog shit person B's game is. I am unsure of what the point of it is.
People like to play certain types of MMO's, why is that so hard to understand? Why can people not accept that others may not have the same tastes as them when it comes to gaming?
Comments
Erm yeah, why you be hatin?
This sort of behavior extends to everything in the world, where if someone is cheering on something someone doesn't like there is a possibility that it could catch on, snuffing out the possibility of their own wants becoming a reality.
So many people resort to shouting louder to appear as if their opinion is greater; making people feel ashamed of their own opinion drives their agenda forward as the oppressed are now less likely to lobby their opinion. The internet being so vast may have given us all a wider platform to tread a soapbox, but we're now all contending our opinions world wide in potential millions and so the trend continues where they feel need to shout even louder than before, and dissuade others more sharply.
There is one option most people don't even think of doing and that's taking matters into their own hands.
Look at how many registered users there are. And then look at how many are on line at this moment. (Its right under the MMORPG logo)
Now I bet I can make a pretty accurate guess and say about .10 (one tenth) of the current users are being douche bags.
Over all thats not really bad.
And if you been a lurker on here long enough (like me) you know there are only about 20 or so D-bags who consistently post negative comments. Then there are the about double that amount of parrots who just repeat the negative things they heard others say.
The trick is, once you recognize the D-bags, just learn to ignore them. Trust me it isnt that hard. For me I see their names and truthfully read the next comment. They almost never have anything to actually add to the convo so its not like youre missing a part of the discussion.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
It's self-interest, but it makes an ugly kind of sense. There are a limited number of game studios capable of making MMOs. Of those, even fewer are capable of making AAA MMOs. Most of us who are playing MMOs now have played MMOs before, and we've developed definitive ideas about what we do and do not like. When other players claim they like a particular style of play we don't, what the reptilian part of our brain hears is "I'm trying to take limited resources away from you." So, let's say you love group-based, FFA pvp MMOs, and a major studio is devoting the next 4-to-7 years to developing a solo-based pve MMO; that means they're not devoting it to the thing you love. Worse, if that solo-based pve game hits it big, it means the other major studios are far more likely to create solo-based pve games, because the industry's risk-averse, and that's the way it works.
So, self-interest is the main ingredient. Now pour in internet anonymity, low-to-moderate levels of addiction, varying degrees of self-entitlement, informal cabals that effectively act as echo chambers for shared desires, add the occasional troll whose only interest is to aggressively mix the drink until the glass breaks, and what you have is an MMO forum.
It's because they don't want to admit someone else is playing something different (or better) than they are. Most people hating on a game have never even played said game.
A lot of the haters/flamers etc haven't even got their first hair on their balls yet either which is why they act so immature because they are immature.
Unfortunately on these forums, your are rarely allowed to address people directly. This causes people to be rude and condescending in a more passive aggressive manner. Since direct person to person conflict is seen as a thing that should be avoided, what you end up with are "shotgun" statements that are taken personally by a wider group of people, then those people shotgun back, and usually it escalates until the thread gets locked or someone finally blows up with a personal attack and a bunch of threads get deleted with that quote.
Some may think this is better that being able to be allowed to call individuals out by name and air out conflicts one on one. I've moderated a gaming forum that way and in the long run it was a much healthier environment than this forum. People report other incognito and are banned with zero communication. It leads to guerrilla tactics of trying to get away with dishing out as much poison as you can without getting caught or accused of a technical personal attack.
Yeah people could be more nice and accepting. But its also just as important to facilitate an environment that makes people feel comfortable to talk about things they like and dislike without having to navigate this type of moderation.
I think its funny that we crave community in our mmos but it is an offense to talk about the community here; a community based on said mmos.
Ok, So here is my question. 2,200 users online. What the hell are they all doing? These forums are dead for that many actual users. Is there a member only club on this site or something? Recent forum posts is creeping along at a couple minutes per post. It's not an oddball time.
Childish games attract childish antics. It's that simple. I have yet to see an mmorpg that doesn't play on horribly constructed community concepts and just plain lackluster socialization rewards (like, what mmo offers a bonus to a group for grouping every slot?). The industry is based on get as much money as possible in 6 months, and then turn to F2P or some other project. It's just been a very dark time since 2004 - and perhaps in reality, the initial giants: Ultima, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, and so forth, were the titles that set the standard of how different mmorpgs could be, yet all of those titles offered something fun to their customers.
Who in ten years will ever remark about the good old days in ESO, Rift, Wildstar, Archeage, Age of Conan, DC Universe, et al. and so on and so on.
Here's to hoping that at least part of the industry changes, attracting a more mature, caring population. A bit off topic, but I felt it was related.