I think reducing the raid size hurt a community that already had issues. I think allowing people the ability to change severs hurt the community even more.

 Transfers hurt because you can be a real *** and change every few months after buring all bridges.

 Reduced raid size reduced guild sizes which is a major issue I think. You could have a guild big enough for two full raids but that is very hard to manage. The issue is that when you have a 40+ man raid team you could log on just about anytime and have enough people on to do something with. With only 20-30 people total to pick from it becomes rather hard to find enough to do anything with.

 If you don't think the community in this game is bad you must be confused. Every MMO I have ever played easily had a better community. Then add in the fact that the average player does not have the level of skill that blizzard thinks is average to run the average instance and it makes pugging impossible.

 I don't think there will ever be a WoW killer just because Blizzard seems to be the only company that is willing to deal with the idiots they do.

I am glad the OP has left,but not for the reason many others think.I do not care if you left WOW but that you finally realized games are just games,they should NEVER own you outright.

Myself i have left FFXI for the 4th time,i have actually been away fro mthe game for about 2+ months now,i never let it own me to where i have to login everyday every month year after year.I just play when i feel the urge to play or do something.I find it sad that so many players stick to that one gamebecause they are afraid to leave their level 50/60/70/80 player and their gear behind.

It is all virtual nonsense,something that should entertain you for that period of time and nothing more,it is not real life or a home away from home.Even if you have found friends in that game,why not try some other form of entertainment or another game,burying yourself in that one game is a BIG mistake,everyone realizes sooner or later,usually too late after much of their life has been wasted.

Originally posted by Roche7

I think reducing the raid size hurt a community that already had issues. I think allowing people the ability to change severs hurt the community even more.

 Transfers hurt because you can be a real *** and change every few months after buring all bridges.

 Reduced raid size reduced guild sizes which is a major issue I think. You could have a guild big enough for two full raids but that is very hard to manage. The issue is that when you have a 40+ man raid team you could log on just about anytime and have enough people on to do something with. With only 20-30 people total to pick from it becomes rather hard to find enough to do anything with.

 

 If you don't think the community in this game is bad you must be confused. Every MMO I have ever played easily had a better community. Then add in the fact that the average player does not have the level of skill that blizzard thinks is average to run the average instance and it makes pugging impossible.

 

 I don't think there will ever be a WoW killer just because Blizzard seems to be the only company that is willing to deal with the idiots they do.

Obviously you didn't play WOW that much at launch because this was the major issue that most guilds had. With the limited content in the game (Onyxia, MC and then later BWL and Naxx), 40 man raids were ripping the community apart.

We had a hardcore raiding guild on Blackhand, Alliance. We had come from Terris Thule in EQ and the guild was built to raid. That is what we did.

After about 3-4 months of it, people grew sick and I mean that literally and figuratively. I was the GM and it got so bad that even I created alts and didn't guild them so I could have some peace.

People would stop logging on for one reason or another. Remember its a raiding guild and the content then was much, much harder, you had to raid and raid and raid some more to get anywhere. SO there was no playing alts, no nothing. if you logged on, we were raiding. So people stopped logging on. Once they stopped logging on, getting 40 people together was impossible and raiding came to an immediate halt.

The whole server went through this and if you go back and look at it, the number of guilds that successfully cleared each of the progressively harder dungeons dropped considerably. A lot of it had to do with getting 40 people together regularly to do it. Now people look back with nostalgia on those days but honestly, they were the worst. WOW literally was a job and I and others have many, many friendships that ended because of it.

There are still many large guilds out there. I am in one of the largest and there are so many people they can effectively form 2, 25 man raids in a week and have 7-8 10 mans going during the week. Why? Because they treat the game like its meant to be - fun and relaxing and since its a guild with a strict age requirement, drama and immaturity is kept to a minimum (not that age is always the best measuring stick but its the best thing to us in a large, random community).

As far as the community being bad, I have said it before, then you were on a bad server. My server is fine and the immaturity and bad community aspects are kept to a minimum. My guild is better than the server as a whole and the server itself is better than other ones I have been on. However, I spend a lot of time picking my servers and guilds and that might be part of it.

All games have bad communities at some level and in some cases but it is impossible to condemn an entire players base due to your limited experience.  Even in games where the community is considerably worse than WOW, I still will not condemn everyone who plays because it isn't my place to do so.

Originally posted by dazaonline

Originally posted by Antipathy

It sounds like the OP was incapable of finding a decent guild containing mature players.

 

That could have been for one of several reasons. E.g.

 

a) The OP was the only mature player on his entire server

 

or

 

b) The OP was incapable of finding the other mature players

 

or

 

c) The OP found the other mature players, and they decided they didn't want anything to do with him.

I beg your pardon? I ran a successful guild right the way through the burning crusade expansion. The guild was made up of close friends. All of which left because of the bad community in the game. Other factors of course were - Blizzards mess up on the Black Temple and how early it was brought out and when they decided to drop the 40 man instances in the game. Don't forget the flock of burning crusade players. That was bad.

During Karazhan we let some players join the guild using the guild website etc. Most of them were to lazy to supply pots etc to the raids or couldn't be bothered to install the Ventrilo client when asked. Also guild "members" who couldn't even be bothered to tab out and read how a boss would work. All these people didn't last long in the guild. They were first to bang on the door when there was loot going though.

 

You can try to defend this game, but I'm right in what I say and I know people will agree with me. Most of them wont say anything though.

 

Well i've never been part of the silent majority so i'll say it out loud: I do agree with you :-)

Took me only 3 months to figure that out though. Guess i just saved 4 precious years to my life!