http://guildwars.incgamers.com/blog/comments/guest-blog-demajen-the-importance-of-community#more-8138

I saw this while browsing the guild wars incgamers site, and thought this article was rather interesting. Its partly about MMO communities and partly about GW2, but mostly about MMO communities.

Thanks for the link, it was an interesting read.

Interesting article, but to be frank, it's not just MMO communities infected by the "troll" bug, but practically any persistent online service, such as XBL/PSN, etc. It's going to happen to any non-exclusive community, because frankly, some gamers simply aren't mature enough to behave in a civilized manner in mixed company.

You could blame it on channer mentality, you can blame it on parents who use PCs/TVs/consoles/Macs as babysitters for their little darlings, or any other facet that constitutes the gaming community as a whole. It's not just console flame wars or Halo Vs. CoD, or Battlefield, it's not just PC vs MAC or Linux vs Windows, it's all of us together with our quirks and strange obsessions that make us functional as human beings.

Could we all be a bit nicer and politer? Certainly. Could we be more tolerant to difference of opinions and peoples' ignorance in some aspects of the community? Certainly.
Should we strive for that? Certainly. But if you're looking for a valid social experience in an online game in order to meet people, (and I may be missing the point here,) especially within communities as large as most MMOs' are, should you be surprised when you run across degenerates, idiots and people who act like the Internet is a license to be a douchebag? Nope. They're the majority. What the author is looking for is a niche, in my opinion.

Even within a niche, you won't find solidarity. Get a room full of LOTRO players together and they will come to blows over forced emotes, raiding, crafting, radiance, LI's, tapping, node stealing, etc... Forget outside influences like politics, religion, etc... this is all people that love the same core thing who will fight to the death (digitally) over issues within that game.

THEN add in the cultural differences that divide us on top of the digital opinions and views we have.

THEN add in that some people really do join communities to hate. Look within our community on GOG. There isn't a single offer that doesn't occur without a few specific people complaining about how poor GOG is compared to STEAM. THEN, they will join any STEAM discussions and complain about how people here don't like STEAM???? Why are they here?

I think people have a global non-gaming problem that needs to be solved universally before gaming communities need to worry. (sort of what you were saying, I think).

Well, this has been said many, many, many times already.
I think he should also point out that the the most vocal are also the minority, i.e. 10% of the people do 90% of the talking. The vast majority of players are simply there to enjoy the game.

Oh, I agree. As gaming communities increase in size, there's bound to be personality conflicts, just the same as in practically every real life work force. You can't have a burgeoning community and expect everyone to behave in a similar fashion, without instituting a community as maligned as say, Steam or having a bunch of mini-Stanley Woos running around DINGDONGBANNU everything in sight.

It boils down to how loose you want your community to be. The rest you really have to rely on the staff to control, as it's their job to enforce whatever rule structure there actually is.

It'd be pretty awesome to avoid the STEAM IS DRM fighting altogether, as that horse has not only been beaten to death, but mutilated into something else just as annoying.

I think the problem right now is that people have no skin in the game.

They can be rude to others without any consequence to themselves, more so then when interacting with people in person.

It's not the best of motivations, but in some cases, it's the only thing that will work.

Even you manage to make the mainstream adult a tolerant wise man, you'll still have:

1) The youth

Yes, some people grow up faster than others and some are born with the nice gene ingrained in them, but the vast majority of us will make significant social blunders well into our teens and mild social blunders well into our twenties and even early thirties.

Unless you plan to make games 35+, you'll have to deal with the youth.

2) The fringe

Some people just lack empathy.

A small percentage become mass murderers and are put away for life once found, but most lead outwardly normal lives.

Of those, some will have a sadistic streak (the psychos) and will be mean to others because they want to make them miserable.

Psychopathy is one of those statistical certainties of life that we just have to live with.

You need to familiarize yourself with it and steel yourself against it.

3) People who just have a bad day

I don't think this one requires elaboration. Also, everyone has baggage to various degrees and are prone to being less rational when discussing issues that pertains to their luggage :P.

So in short, you will always have posters that can't be coaxed into playing nice of their own accord (either because they are young, because they are messed up or because of temporary insanity).

That's when you need to get the whip and make them more accountable.

Technologically now, this is a hard battle to fight (short of requiring that a web site either store credit card info or take a money deposit for the privilege to post in a forum... in a gaming site, it could be tied to a paying account), but hopefully, there will be a point in the future where people will be more traceable online when interacting with others (either via a more reliable IP system or some sort of centralized ID that is tied to something more substantial than a free email account).

It's because MMO's, the Dota-like games, and competitive online multiplayer gaming in general, are the ultimate form of meta-gaming.

By meta-gaming I mean, there's no sense of immersion, the fact that MMO's are in a fantasy setting means almost nothing to the average MMO player, doing a quest doesn't mean going on an adventure, it means 456 xp, casting a certain spell doesn't mean some fantastic event, it means 47 damage. It's like a sport, only online, that's why the "communities" are so awful, who on earth would even want to breath the same virtual air as morons like that is beyond me.

They should also drop the "RPG" part from MMORPG, there's no role-playing at all in these games. If a game is doing something right, it should feel less conscious to the player that he/she is in fact playing a game, doubly so for role-playing games.

I always roleplay on the MMO I play.

I am of a similar mindset as you on this (to an extent, I will exploit overpower mechanics that I see as long as they don't force you to play in a manner that I consider absurd and if the overpowered mechanics make the game too linear, I will stop playing).

Watching several of my friends playing MMORPGs, it felt like they were playing less of an RPG and more of an open sandbox (with all the sharp corners smoothed... not too many changes: very status quo) with a story on the side delivered to each player in parallel.

And yes, many players will just actively look for exploits (even the completely absurd ones) and limit the possibilities of the game to revolve around those exploits.

However, I attribute this more to a difference in taste than a difference in temperament.

While for many, this "natural selection" mindset will also taint their social dealings with others (ie, "pwned you nub!"), others will compartmentalize their views better and treat you nicely even thought they approach gameplay in a manner that you consider off putting (some people are just very efficiency minded and can't turn the switch off, even when playing in the most efficient manner possible completely destroys the flavor of the game, but that doesn't make them brats or morons).

Never liked MMOs .

Imbalance in RPG's has always been a killer though, recently in an interview Chris Avellone (whom I'm sure you're aware of) said that the most important thing in developing an RPG was balance, because you only need to overpower one spell or skill and that makes using anything else pointless.

But I still think games can be overbalanced, that is to say that everything is so minutely balanced that's impossible to create and roleplay a character which isn't just a carbon copy of its counterpart in another class/race (isn't one of the reasons Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 disliked was that it's too balanced?). Their needs to be balance, but room for flexibility so you or your enemy can pull surprises out of the hat.

But back on topic, I did actually play WoW years ago before TBC expansion came out, and I did have some fun experiences with other players, as I understand these days you can auto-que anywhere in the world for a dungeon, and it teleports you there by finding other players from different servers (what bigger immersion killer is that right?), but when I played you could only go into a dungeon by physically going into the entrance of the dungeon with your party. Some fun times I had when we got lost and completely alone in a dungeon.

But apart from dungeons I spent the entire game just adventuring around on my own, never really spoke to any other players.