Okay, I'm so sure this has been done before.  But maybe it's time for an update.

Which game do you think has the best community?

To start you guys off, let me tell you my favorite times in MMO's have not been questing, or PvP, or RvR.  It's been with a great community.  It was there in early EQ, and it was there in early DAoC.  And, well, to be honest I'm not sure if I've felt that feeling around people playing a game again.  Something died at that stage.  For me at least.  Perhaps you guys can steer me in a new direction.

I had big hopes on WAR, and I have to admit the community is not all that bad.  But I can remember in DAoC where people would just come up and start having a conversation with you.  All the while remaining mostly in character and all the while being entertaining, having fun, and making me want to stay and play some more.

I personally like eve's community, most of the players there are 20+ so it gets rid of most of the annoying kids.

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

I personally like eve's community, most of the players there are 20+ so it gets rid of most of the annoying kids.

yeah eve for sure, so helpful.

when i started out i got so much help and so much money thrown at me

I'd say WoW.

Population big enough to find lots of groups with a large fanbase that creates lots of great videos and UI mods. I've also met lots of great people in the game and have never had any problems with the community other than the horrible forums, but there hasn't been a game that hasn't had bad forums. People always say how immature the people who play the game is but I'm not up my own arse and can have a laugh and havn't come across any people in game that have had ruined my time. I mean EVE Online has had many nasty people I've come across and Everquest has had rude elitists but in WoW people don't care and just have a laugh.

I'd also say SWG pre CU had an amazing community because the game had mechanics that kept everyone so close and it felt more like a large family on each server. Problem was when majors changes like the NGE came about everyone left along with the amazing family like community.

EQ2 and LOTRO.

Originally posted by Varny

I'd say WoW.

Population big enough to find lots of groups with a large fanbase that creates lots of great videos and UI mods. I've also met lots of great people in the game and have never had any problems with the community other than the horrible forums, but there hasn't been a game that hasn't had bad forums. People always say how immature the people who play the game is but I'm not up my own arse and can have a laugh and havn't come across any people in game that have had ruined my time. I mean EVE Online has had many nasty people I've come across and Everquest has had rude elitists but in WoW people don't care and just have a laugh.

I'd also say SWG pre CU had an amazing community because the game had mechanics that kept everyone so close and it felt more like a large family on each server. Problem was when majors changes like the NGE came about everyone left along with the amazing family like community.

I can't agree with WoW.  Pretty nice looking game, moves at a nice pace, but the community (to me) blows.

Nearly 80-90% of the experiences I've had on WoW with other people have been bad.  And from a group that I would think have the same interests as me (namely delving into an online massively huge world) they sure don't seem to be as much like me as folks in other online games.  Mostly remind me of the kids in school who thought they were funny in the hallway but were really just insecure and boring when you got to know them.

Originally posted by grandpagamer

EQ2 and LOTRO.

LotRO I could see.  But I never can find anyone to actually see what they're like.  From the people I have talked to they seemed pretty cool.  But nobody ever just walks up and starts chatting with you.  Seems like everyone is just driven to play instead of get to know others.

EVE is the best right now IMO, though you have to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Originally posted by gnomexxx

Originally posted by grandpagamer

EQ2 and LOTRO.

LotRO I could see.  But I never can find anyone to actually see what they're like.  From the people I have talked to they seemed pretty cool.  But nobody ever just walks up and starts chatting with you.  Seems like everyone is just driven to play instead of get to know others.

LOTRO is about as solo friendly of any game ive played and people tend to do just that. However as far as friendly and helpful i think LOTRO has the nicest people and EQ2 has some great folks as well. I play on the RP servers and that may make a difference.

Ryzom, These guys and gals are the most helpful people I've ever seen in a mmo.

Best at the moment is definitely EVE. Being politic is part of the meta-game.

Second is still WoW. There are morons, but they're easy to avoid and ignore.

Originally posted by gnomexxx

Originally posted by Varny

I'd say WoW.

*snip*

I can't agree with WoW.  Pretty nice looking game, moves at a nice pace, but the community (to me) blows.

Nearly 80-90% of the experiences I've had on WoW with other people have been bad.  And from a group that I would think have the same interests as me (namely delving into an online massively huge world) they sure don't seem to be as much like me as folks in other online games.  Mostly remind me of the kids in school who thought they were funny in the hallway but were really just insecure and boring when you got to know them.

That's the beauty of such a big playerbase.  When I was in that game I would say easily 70% of the interactions I had were positive/average.  Of course, outside of their forums as mentioned.   Speaking in-game only. 

Then again, in-game I treat everyone with respect (until proven otherwise).  You give what you get.  Not to say my experiences with people were all rosey, yes, about 30% of encounters with people, either randoms or people in guild, rival guilds etc...were very, very VERY negative.

That's the thing though, those experiences tend to weigh more heavy on the psyche than the positive ones, and leave a bad taste in your mouth.  We can only put up with so much crap from our fellow players before we consider it an overload.  The bad experiences stick in our minds while the abundant positive ones can be chalked up as "normal" and more easily forgotten while the negative experiences we go over and over in our minds how that could have played out differently, what we could have done after the fact to "one-up" or have it come out in our favor, turning a negative to a positive.

I believe that's hard wired into our beings instinctually as a survival instint no less. 

Now, I haven't played that game in 2 years and have played several others, and honestly have not had horrible experiences elsewhere to speak of, but in terms of memorable positive experiences with other players I would say WoW indeed, despite it's reputation otherwise, did have the best community.

Simply put, the larger the playerbase the increased chance you will have for encounters with others either personally or groupwise.  This increased encounter rate, the sheer fact of just being around so many people, gaurantees various human interactions from time to time.  This increased rate of interactions decreases the chance that a single specific positive or negative act by someone in game would stick out in your mind as being worthy of remembering.  I guess that wasn't "simply" put so I'll try again since even I had trouble following that line of thought.

What I'm saying is this.  Large crowds of people playing increase your chances of experiencing all of the negativity that is out there in competitive gaming "culture".  It also tends to dull our experiences since we have so many of them in such a large crowd and also tends to equalize itself with experiences that are positive as well since the chance for those goes up greatly.

So for many they will have a different perception of the community of the very same game!  Simply due to the fact that it's so damn big that replicating a personal experience exactly to give someone the same impression as someone else is not guaranteed.  Two people can play this game on different servers, from different countries and with different factions, guilds, goals etc...and have two entirely different perspectives on the community easily.

So in closing I will say that neither side is "right" in their perceptions about the community of WoW as the game is too and the players experiences too varied to really pidgeon-hole an entire community of millions either way.

I mean, some people will say "the community 100% sucks everyone I met was an arse licker!  A total douche!"  And honestly they may actually have had that experience, it's entirely possible with such a huge mass of people, they may encountered 100% jackasses!  So I wouldn't disregard what they had to say simply because it differed from my experience.

On the same token but the other side of the coin, another player, playing the same exact game, could have made a mass of great friends, met a significant other, become involved with a community of like minded individuals they love to hang around with online, maybe become married among other positive experiences and only run into one or two dicks the whole time.  That's entirely possible and probably is common place!

The game is just huge, too many different takes on it to entirely generalize the community.  It can be the best for some and the worst for others, both of those possibilities are entirely capably of being true for the individual.

Spent four years in CoH (til the dreaded AE launched) and they have one of the friendliest communities around.  That's one of the few things I miss from that game.

I played LotRO for about 6 months and their community is quite friendly as well.  Very helpful and most won't even flinch when you ask for a helping hand.

The worst would have to be WoW.  When you ask a question there, there is a competition of who can give the snarkiest retort.  Bad community.

From what I remember it was Everquest 2.

maybe because it's mainly a PvE game, there are other games in which I've had good meetings, but overall I'd say EQ2

Originally posted by junzo316

Spent four years in CoH (til the dreaded AE launched) and they have one of the friendliest communities around.  That's one of the few things I miss from that game.

 

I played LotRO for about 6 months and their community is quite friendly as well.  Very helpful and most won't even flinch when you ask for a helping hand.

 

The worst would have to be WoW.  When you ask a question there, there is a competition of who can give the snarkiest retort.  Bad community.

I agree with that.

Sad thing is that I just resubbed to DAoC to check out the server merge.  I asked a question in /advice.  These were my exact words...

"I thought I read somewhere that they were going to do something to hinder the buff bots in the server merges"

That was it.  You would not believe the insults and rude comments I got.  I never even replied to any of them because all I could picture in my head were a bunch of ill mannered brats at the keyboards.  I immediately went and canceled the resub.  50% of the reason was because the buffbot problem was still there, and the other 50% was because of the rude comments I got just from that simple inquirty.

Everquest

FFXI. That game is centered around community.

EQ2. Friendly bunch of people. It went downward a while a year ago or so but the people who started spamming the chat with Chuck Norris jokes and so on either quited or grew up. If you ask a question in the OCC you usually get several helpful replys and it is rare that you get a rude.

LOTRO have some pretty nice players too, I would rank it second with COH as number three. Only tried COH for a few days but I was actually impressed how nice people there were. But the game was rather bad.

But all games have manynice players, it is just that some have more morons than others and 1 moron makes himself more heard then 10 nice people.

The game I played a lot with worse community is Guildwars. Onthe other hand were there also some really nice fellows there but in any game were the OCC have people saying " I will PWN U , U NOOB" I would say the community is pretty bad. And it is of course sad that a few idiots will drag down a whole game.

I never heard anyone ever say something like that in EQ2 and I played if for over 2 years.

Darkfall

I have to say i've made great friends and met really unpleasant people in every MMO i've played so it is very hard to pick a favourite. I guess I would say UO if really pressed on the matter, but even in the much maligned WoW community I have met plenty of people i liked.

One thing I have noticed is that communities can vary a lot from server to server or even from zone to zone. It just goes to remind me that our perception of a community is generally based on a rather small sample of people met.

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

I personally like eve's community, most of the players there are 20+ so it gets rid of most of the annoying kids.

 This.

Not that anybody here will second me lol but,

vanguards community is pretty amazing.

Originally posted by SonikFlash

Not that anybody here will second me lol but,

vanguards community is pretty amazing.

Vanguard's community wasn't too bad when I played.  I can't fault them on too much. 

FFXI.

Games with the best community from my personal experience would be ryzom, atlantica, Lotro and wow. People i met on these games  were fun to talk with and very helpful.