I have to admit that the community really makes or breaks a game for me. When I played WOW the immaturity of the players was too much to handle. I found a better game to play--one that had an excellent community of helpful and polite players who engage in intelligent conversation.

To have a truly rich community, I think you need to have your mix of pro's/noobs/asshats/cool people.  All make for in-game drama that is just part of the atmosphere. 

I used to love logging into some of the earlier MMO's and listening to someone gripe about a "pull" or a "train".  This added life to the game world.  An MMO community sometimes needs to allow folks to occasionally "step on one another's toes", and should get away from this present day mode of isolated/instanced gaming experiences.

Remember, an MMO is half game/half community.  Without the community aspect, you might as well be playing offline.

I voted Very Important.  I play these games for the multiplayer experience.  If the people around me are tools then I will not want to stick around and play the game.  If I'm going to ignore the vast majority of them then I'll just go play a single player game.

Voted very Important. I can forgive bad graphics, crap story, unintresting quests, and under par game play, but I can't get past a bad community. Don't get me wrong I agree with one of the above posters that you need all types of a gamer to make a diverse player base. But when nine out of ten gamers you encounter are clearly ass hats then I uninstal and don't give it a second thought. Communitys can make or break a game.

I voted "not so much" but that mostly due to after realizing what MMO gaming communities were turning into as far as in game post 2004 every game I've entered the first thing I've done is disable the game's "global" or "world" chat. Too many attention starved Howard Stern wannabes in this world who use it as an outlet b/c they are anonymous and are out of arms reach.

I play WoW and LotRO.

The communities are completely different and LotRO's is much nicer but with WoW, I just ingore the idiots. I have my guild and I socialized etc with them and ignore the rest of the people when possible.

It is still somewhat important to me because I hate being around people who just don't know how to act around people but I'm old and mature enough to just ignore alot of nonsense some like to bring with them in mmos.

An MMO ain't an MMO without players, players are the MMO, otherwise its some laggy singleplayer game.

Even when I solo parts of an MMO I like the player base to be cool.  Every time I tried WoW I felt like I was in a day-care facility.  Every time I played EVE I felt I was in the middle of a corporate takeover... wait I think I was.  Those 2 types of player bases will drive me out of a game.  Everyone doesn't have to be polite but it would be nice if every third person wasn't chatting about something totally unconnected to the game(and reality too for the most part).  LOTRO's base is good.  EVE's was helpful but I always felt like I had to count the change in my pocket after anyone gave me advice.   Other games were good and bad.   I think the player base is very important and that is why I appreciate WoW.  A lot of the players I don't like play it and that is cool for me. I hope they continue to enjoy it for many years to come.  My Opinion.

I voted extremely important as well, because the main reason why I play MMORPGs in the first place is because of the community aspect, otherwise I might as well invest in a single-player game. As another person has said, I don't mind a small percentage of idiots in the game, because after all, that's where the drama is, and honestly, I cannot help being interested in drama from time to time. But, when the majority of players I interact with are like that, then I automatically look for another game to play. I don't mind idiots from time to time, because after all, they liven up the atmosphere from time to time (and for all I know, people might consider me an idiot in game as well), but too much of everything is never really a good thing.

I said 'somewhat' because it really is an unquantified question.

I prefer dealing with people who have a high 'quality' intellect or ethical standards. I prefer people who have at least an age appropriate 'quality' of spelling and grammar.

On the flipside, I rarely if ever even look at the chatterbox in my MMORPGs.(something that has upset many guildmates and friends in the past) So I rarely notice someone I'm not actively engaged in dealing with directly and what they're up to in chat. My field of view in a game is almost tunnel vision which the text box is usually outside of.(I blame racing games and youtube videos with text boxes).

The only games I recall having been "forced out" of or turned away from was never by the community, but by things like forced PvP or grouping necessity or a total lack of creative/programming ability on the developer's part.

I'm interested in strong, friendly, intelligent communities, but then again, much as in life i'm interested in being on the outer edge of that community rather than a constant, active participant.

Originally posted by pencilrick

To have a truly rich community, I think you need to have your mix of pro's/noobs/asshats/cool people.  All make for in-game drama that is just part of the atmosphere. 

I used to love logging into some of the earlier MMO's and listening to someone gripe about a "pull" or a "train".  This added life to the game world.  An MMO community sometimes needs to allow folks to occasionally "step on one another's toes", and should get away from this present day mode of isolated/instanced gaming experiences.

Remember, an MMO is half game/half community.  Without the community aspect, you might as well be playing offline.

Sure, that was great, right up until you got asshats who ran trains through crowded dungeons on purpose, just to laugh at the people they hurt.  You'd get idiots doing it over and over and over, then laughing in the public channels at everyone who got killed.  That's when it stops being fun and that happens far too often these days.  Not only do you have to worry about what's coming up in the dungeon, you have to worry about morons who are only playing so they can ruin the experience for you.

personally i think community is like 50 percent of the game, how good or bad the players are  in the game really affects how enjoyable the game is, so its a game breaker if you have a community with a negative outlook... though its a mutual thing, how well you are able to get on/work with other people will definitely affect your ability to enjoy the game, if your a billy no mates then MMO's probably arent your thing anyway, so i guess by being interested in MMO's means your at least willing to participate alongside others. best communities in games i've encountered  Everquest, DAOC, SWG, Eve... so yes.. for me, i would say the quality of the other players in an MMO is very important.

Quality can have two meanings. If you are talking about a new player or a player who just isn't very skillful, I like those kinds of players. I like to help players out who do not have as much skill or experience as me, because I like it when players do that for me. In this respect the quality of players is not important to me. I can tolerate and actually prefer to run with "newbs".

If you are talking about personality, then low quality players that are elitist assholes can fuck off and die. In this case it is very important to me, and the more dickheads there are running around, the less likely I am to keep playing.

Community is everything, as far as I'm concerned. I'll play a crappy game with a great community over a great game with a crappy community any day. The reason I left Eve Online after 4 years.

I said this in another post but it applies here as well: I don't give douchebags the time of day in real life, so why would I bother playing a game with them?

In almost all games you can fine people who are good in terms of personality.  So I don't usually find this much of an issue, as long as there is some moderation of global chat channels to keep out the worst sort of talk.

I wish more MMOs provided some in-game feedback on how well you were playing and so forth (perhaps even compared to other people at your level).  All too often becoming good at what you do requires endless forum reading or research because in-game nothing is provided at all.  This means a lot of good people aren't good players, especially when they don't have time on their hands or think to do a lot of research.  (It isn't that they can't be good it is that the game does enable them to learn to be good).  This is usually more of an issue to me when tackling difficult game content.