Guild Wars 2

Just a brief post inspired by my time playing in the Legion beta.

Thank you to the majority of the community whom play this game. It is nice to know that despite whatever animosity there is with the game itself at times, the players are typically far more pleasant and mature than those of other mmo’s, specifically world of Warcraft.

I don’t even think I would need two hands to count the number of times I have been genuinely put off by people in this game, (outside of ranked pvp seasons), and think it is not only a combination of the people this game attracts but the way the game is designed. I think Arenanet has always strived to create a game in which toxicity had little room to spread, and it does wonders for player enjoyment.

In anycase, thank you, and be sure to keep this game in a positive direction by helping whomever you can!

You are welcome.

I can not say “you are welcome” because I do not know you.
Anyway… I am glad you enjoy the game community.

While I have had the odd player freak out over something I said in chat, I find GW2 to be a game containing many helpful people.

English in text form is not always an exact science.

Thanks community.

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

Fun fact: Our very own Mike O’Brien led the development of Battle.net.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

Fun fact: Our very own Mike O’Brien led the development of Battle.net.

Yep. And as I understand it, a number of original devs came over from there. Perhaps they saw how a competitive game fostered a bad game community and and that’s why they decided to leave there and make cooperative games instead.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

Sure, but the toxicity doesn’t end with the pvp portion of the game. The game in general seems to attract the worst of the worst.

My personal theory is that the design of the game itself with its minimal focus of raids/pvp/dungeons and extreme individual progress treadmill leaves many people with the experience of having a job but too blinded by addiction to admit that they’re no longer having fun. So what do they do next? Meaninglessly attack people in trade chat, give sarcastic responses to even the most basic questions that could be answered in the same number of characters or less, and essentially pick at each other out of either boredom or frustration.

Just MY personal theory, so I’m not listing it as fact. I just honestly can’t say that I’ve ever had that experience in abundance within Guild Wars 2 outside of pvp and raids. Perhaps I have and I didn’t take it to heart too much because I knew there were other avenues of the game in which I could seek enjoyment.

cptaylor.2670:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

Sure, but the toxicity doesn’t end with the pvp portion of the game. The game in general seems to attract the worst of the worst.

Just a flesh wound wasn’t only talking about PvP. As you both said the PvE portion of WoW puts people into competition with each other – not directly but you’re competing for kills, resources, loot…everything.

I played the free trial of that game back when it was 48 hours maximum and literally every experience I had with other players in that time was negative. The first time I finally found another person (about 2 hours in) I said hi and the only response I got was “plz leave”. I later found out (outside of the game) that was because they were grinding mobs and if any of them attacked me I’d get the XP so simply by being there I was affecting their gameplay.

Then I got to a town, said hello to the few people around and was told I should not “spam chat” unless I had something to sell, and I was too low level to have anything worth selling so I shouldn’t try that either. Everything else continued along those lines. If chat was active then I must not interrupt, if it was inactive it was because there was nothing to say and I should not waste their time by trying to start a conversation. If I saw another player I should keep away. If I had to go to the same location for a quest I should wait until they left and then go in….and so on.

I’m sure it would have gotten better if I had gotten out of the starter maps and joined a guild, but the idea of trying to find a group of people who did consider it acceptable for me to interact with them in a game where that was the general mood wasn’t especially appealing. (Paying monthly for the experience really wasn’t appealing.)

Whereas like other people I think I can count the number of negative experience I’ve had in 4 years of GW2 on one hand. Maybe two if I included things like “once someone ran past and didn’t resurrect me”.

And actually a lot of the negativity in this game seems to happen at higher levels where hopefully everyone knows better than to listen to them. Like the inevitable sore loser if Silverwastes goes badly (or looks like it might go badly).

Guild Wars 2 is the only MMORPG i’ve come across where having multiple people in one area does not negatively affect any one person. So in all the other games I’ve played, yeah you get the “plz leave” or even “YOU BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP OF A BEEP BEEP BEEP SHOULD GO TO BEEP YOU BEEP” simply because you walked in and pressed a button and accidentally hit a mob that another person had been waiting for an hour for. It struck me kitten odd that no developers thought to make resources sharable or equally obtainable by everyone. And then i began to think that it wasn’t possible to program because no one did it. And then gw2 happened.
Gw2 is also the only game i’ve played where nearly everything is account-bound and account-wide. I’m not sure it’s the only one out there, but it just so happens to be the one i found that also has above statement.
This game is awesome. The devs are awesome. The community is fantastic.

the community is pretty nice, thats true.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

I can’t believe I’m defending Blizzard, but…

It’s Blizzard, not battle.net (that’s the platform their games run on) and yes their games generally do focus on the competitive aspect to a level this game here won’t ever reach, but there’s also a huge area for casuals such as custom maps for Starcraft and such that generally don’t have that kind of “omg noob esports” as much. There’s also Diablo 3 which also resides on battle.net which is by and far a pve game and also ironically the Diablo franchise has been one of their more toxic ones.

That being said, I think your point is probably still valid; I hear the MOBA crowd tends to be not so nice at times.

ArchonWing.9480:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

I can’t believe I’m defending Blizzard, but…

It’s Blizzard, not battle.net and yes their games generally do focus on the competitive aspect to a level this game here won’t ever reach, but there’s also a huge area for casuals such as custom maps for Starcraft and such that generally don’t have that kind of “omg noob esports” as much. There’s also Diablo 3 which also resides on battle.net which is by and far a pve game and also ironically the Diablo franchise has been one of their more toxic ones.

That’s correct
Battle.net is an internet-based online gaming, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Battle.net was launched on November 30, 1996, with the release of Blizzard’s action-role-playing video game Diablo.

The point I was trying to get across however was that the choice of battle as an identifying feature of their name shows what they emphasize as important in WoW, which is competition.

generally don’t have that kind of “omg noob esports” as much.

I wasn’t talking at all about esports or PvP. Competition is expected there. I was talking about how they design the PvE, non dungeon aspect in WoW so that cooperation between players is minimized and competition is maximized. Hence the pointing out that casual PvE players have to compete, or “fight” to get XP, nodes, kills.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArchonWing.9480:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Difference in the two games mostly. WoW is developed by Battle.net and as you can infer by the name, it specializes in competition and setting player against player. It’s not surprising that people in a game that emphasizes competition are less helpful and pleasant. That game has taught the players that everyone else on their map is in competition for their mobs, loot and nodes. This game specializes in cooperation and actively encourages people to help each other and want to see others on their maps.

I can’t believe I’m defending Blizzard, but…

It’s Blizzard, not battle.net and yes their games generally do focus on the competitive aspect to a level this game here won’t ever reach, but there’s also a huge area for casuals such as custom maps for Starcraft and such that generally don’t have that kind of “omg noob esports” as much. There’s also Diablo 3 which also resides on battle.net which is by and far a pve game and also ironically the Diablo franchise has been one of their more toxic ones.

That’s correct
Battle.net is an internet-based online gaming, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Battle.net was launched on November 30, 1996, with the release of Blizzard’s action-role-playing video game Diablo.

The point I was trying to get across however was that the choice of battle as an identifying feature of their name shows what they emphasize as important in WoW, which is competition.

generally don’t have that kind of “omg noob esports” as much.

I wasn’t talking at all about esports or PvP. Competition is expected there. I was talking about how they design the PvE, non dungeon aspect in WoW so that cooperation between players is minimized and competition is maximized.

Ah, that is fine. I’ve never played WoW but I just wanted to chime in that battle.net is by and large a legacy name.

Diablo 3 pve was also individual loot and mostly cooperative, so I wanted to bring that up as well. Though somehow griefing was a pretty big thing there.