Hey I was just browsing, thought I'd drop my two cents if that's ok with everyone.

World of Warcraft is an epic game.  I agree with a lot of other MMOers that they set a standard that has too many clones attempting to steal some of that thunder, but overall WoW is good fun.  It may be a bit carebear and it also caters to the LCD more often than it should, like all blizzard games attempt to do which in my opinion is a bit of a weakness but maybe not for sales.  

However the easy to use UI, the polish, endless amount of quests/achievements, with vanity pets/mounts collecting, decent pvp (altho I prefer world/questing pvp), and a nice variety in classes I have to say that WoW atm is the ultimate anyone can join and play MMO.

Having said this and being experienced with a lot of different MMOs, WoW easily has the worst community I've ever witnessed.  It's a bold statement that I'm not afraid to make.  Many people will claim it's only because of it's massive user base that I think this way.  No, it is definitely worse percentage wise as well.  It's almost like WoW serves as a magnet for every whiney carebear, griefer, troll, and internet jerk on the planet. 

I'm very much convinced that the whiney carebear types got every kind of in-game event removed simply cause they don't want their "gameplay" interfered with.  Furthermore, the pvp in the game outside of the instances is bad.  There's random spawning guards everywhere that seem to multiply without end, and then of course a 1 second flying mount that brings you to safety.  We can thank the other end of the spectrum for this.

If that's not enough, the amount of whining that goes on in the forums and community will leave you awestruck.  There is not one issue I haven't seen complained about.  I remember a few years back Blizzard had a halloween event where a debuff would spawn zombies to attack.  Enough players complained to get it removed. 

I know that everybody has their own story with an MMO, but I'm willing to bet everybody has had multiple dealings with morons on WoW, and the addition of the new LFD feature, while convenient, has only fueled the jerks.  No server accountability means act like a jerk, roll on boes, randomly kick people, an all around failure of any kind of etiquette whatsoever.

If you doubt what I say here take a trip over to the world of warcraft forums and browse for 5 minutes, you'll undoubtedly run into the types of people i'm talking about endless spewing the most vile garbage of all the internet at eachother. 

There you have it.

I agree. Wow has good raiding (that's about it imo), but the community is garbage. It's not even little kids, it's mid-late teens, early adults, older adluts... so many of them are loud and garbage.

Games that try and immitate the formula wow and other mmo's are using, have better communities. Rift and Lotro come to mind. There's immature people on all games, but there are tons more helpful people on the ones I mentioned in relation to WOW.

and im not biased. Only mmo i'm playing right now is eve. It has it's helpful people, but there's some pretty sinister people in this game... but it's supposed to be that way.

Which came first, poor mechanics or bad community?

Originally posted by Palebane

Which came first, poor mechanics or bad community?

Not sure, but Blizzard sure have fostered the community they have today.

I kinda like WoW's community in a sense where I was able to find a relatively mature guild with all the immaturity confined to trade chat.  Sometimes I even found trade chat's immaturity to be rather humorous as some communities are a little too concerned with maintaining a mature image.

The worst community I can remember was EQOA.  Felt like every single person that played that game was under the age of 20.

I agree with the OP in that WoW is a magnet for all forms of scum.  I've played countless MMOs over the years and WoW does have one of the worst communities ever.  Even on the light servers the people are awful towards one another.  The new dungeon finder only seemed to make people 100 times more awful.  I won't even start on the trade chat...

If they even slightly moderated the game things might be a bit differen; but, unfornatly jerks are far from being in short supply and WoW isn't even going to consider booting half their player base because they lack any in game ethics.

Seriously, if there are any future developers reading this, make player ethics a major part of your EULA or terms of use.  I'm not even actively playing any MMO's at the moment, outside of the couple of Beta tests I am part of; because, I am sick of the people in these games.  Or maybe I'm just sick of people in general; they do suck.  lol

I think you all need to look up the law of large numbers, and that will explain your grief

I agree with the OP. This is the very reason why I have yet to resub. I am bored with all other games, and WoW is the only choice I see really.

Just not sure its worth resubbing with the horrible community.

I have been playing Phantasy Star Online since hearing all the info on PSO2.

But of course that being a decade old, and such I like to hop into other worlds as well. I am still considering WoW, its just man.. that community, and the fact that when I play WoW I feel like I'm offline half the damn time.

Originally posted by Lille7

Originally posted by Palebane

Which came first, poor mechanics or bad community?

Not sure, but Blizzard sure have fostered the community they have today.

This; also while I wouldn't call the mechanics poor per se, by making the game as accessible as it is it is bound to attract these types of players. It's simply a consequence of trying to get as many subs as possible.

Bliz did not foster the communities behavior,  there parents did.

I completely agree with the OP. Its the only poor thing about the game but its so major it will always prevent me from resubbing. the trouble is that WOW as a game is completely based on"one upmanship" over your fellow player. its pretty much the entire ideology of the game and this in turn is going to foster a spiteful, nasty community.

There was Rift player on these forums a while back who posted a massive rant about the GM's in rift because they gave him a 5 day ban for calling someone a faggot in general chat. He saw this as heavy handed and couldnt understand what he'd done wrong. This guy was abviously of an ex-wow player where that sort of thing is commonplace. Back in the "olden golden" days of MMO's (ie: before WoW) thatt sort of griefing would never have been tolerated by the GM's OR by the MMO community as a whole. Fairplay to Rift i say. there doing their best to try and steer there players away from what seems the standard shitty community ethics.  Ofc wether they can succeed is doubtful!

I wouldn't say WoW's community is this bad. I have spent countless hours playing WoW and I haven't had any of the problems people always seem to whine about.  I have never had any major problems in dungeons or guild chat.

I don't see a problem with most players being below or around 20 years old. Why would I want to play with someone who's 30-40+?

I hope you are not talking about trade/general chat cause that would be stupid. 

Originally posted by fivoroth

I wouldn't say WoW's community is this bad. I have spent countless hours playing WoW and I haven't had any of the problems people always seem to whine about.  I have never had any major problems in dungeons or guild chat.

I don't see a problem with most players being below or around 20 years old. Why would I want to play with someone who's 30-40+?

I hope you are not talking about trade/general chat cause that would be stupid. 

Age doesn't matter, people aren't less rude because they are 30+. Also why wouldn't you want to play with people who are over 30?

And why would it be stupid to talk about trade and general chat? If people are assholes it doesn't matter if it's on forums, trade chat, party or guild chat, the community encompasses all of that and more.

You want a bad community? Play Darkfall and/or Age Of Conan, my God....Though I never talked, too much, in WoW's chat channels. Being in a guild helps a lot, too for the social aspect.

Originally posted by crescens87

I think you all need to look up the law of large numbers, and that will explain your grief

Originally posted by crescens87

I think you all need to look up the law of large numbers, and that will explain your grief

 The law of large numbers tells me :

That if you have

100 people and  50 of them are ass hats.

Then 10,000,000 people = 5,000,000 of them are ass hats.

So in conclusion there are 5,000,000 ass hats playing WoW.  Is that how the law of large numbers works ?

It has everything to do with the number of players.

Originally posted by Lille7

Originally posted by fivoroth

I wouldn't say WoW's community is this bad. I have spent countless hours playing WoW and I haven't had any of the problems people always seem to whine about.  I have never had any major problems in dungeons or guild chat.

I don't see a problem with most players being below or around 20 years old. Why would I want to play with someone who's 30-40+?

I hope you are not talking about trade/general chat cause that would be stupid. 

Age doesn't matter, people aren't less rude because they are 30+. Also why wouldn't you want to play with people who are over 30?

And why would it be stupid to talk about trade and general chat? If people are assholes it doesn't matter if it's on forums, trade chat, party or guild chat, the community encompasses all of that and more.

Because general/trade chat in ANY MMO game is crap and is not representative of the community.

I don't buy the "law of large numbers" theory.  At least not on WoW.  I think it's terrible community on a high percentage base as well.

The less maturity the game requires to play, the less maturity the game will foster. As for which came first, the chicken or the egg... WoW was not always this way. At launch it stood well among other titles for difficulty and depth. Problem was that the whiners made the loudest noise on the forums which got the game changed. The new changed version was that much more appealing to more of the same whiney sort. Then among those, the whiniest made even more noise and so on until we have what we have now. A digital playground for toddlers who, on average, behave as such. I was all too happy to put that world to my stern and never look back.