Guild Wars 2

I have 2 accounts, one on EU and one on US.

I have no idea why but the EU community seems to be far less cohesive and helpful to one another than the US. Sure you will sometimes get help if you ask for it in chat, but more often than not, EU map chat is dead. Noone calls out events (even if you ask for them as part of daily) hardly anyone bothers to res, and the community, while not hostile, just doesn’t seem to care about each other. Mention any of these points in map chat, however, and you can expect to get lambasted.

On the US server, if someone downs there is usually a flood of people rushing to res you. One of the happiest sights I see in GW2 is “Too many resurrectors” when you go to help someone. I very rarely see this on EU servers, ever.

Why is this? It just seems that EU players are more ignorant but I want to think differently. There is certainly a very different attitude between the 2 regions. It seems every time I play on EU, something happens that makes me regret not having logged into my US based account instead.

Thoughts on this?

I think making a thread disparaging EU players won’t get you far.

Good luck.

Well, I am English so technically I would be disparaging myself, but well done on scoring your internet ego-point.

I started writing a reply to this post five times and at no time was I able to reply without saying something someone would have taken offense to or misinterpreted.

I know when I visited the UK, I found a ton of helpful and friendly people there. Is it possible that there’s more of a language issue in EU servers with different people speaking differently languages. I’m asking because I don’t know.

That’s a good point Vayne.

I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, I’m not trying to insult anyone either, which is why I don’t want to think or feel that EU players are ignorant when they most likely are not.

Does having a broad mix of languages create disaffection at a subconscious level? Is there an element of belief that the respective lack of communication due to the language diversity in the EU means that one would not receive verbal appreciation if one does help another?

It could very well be perception, rather than reality. A lot more people are playing at any given time than most of us realize. Are you comparing peak US hours to peak EU hours? Could it be your specific home worlds instead of EU vs NA? — despite megaserver, players tend to be grouped often with people from the same few servers, except when there’s a world boss or a 4-event daily specific to the zone.

For example, several people I know with multiple accounts chose alternative home worlds and they believe that their main account’s home world is much more friendly in terms of rezzing, map chat, and so on than their secondary account’s home. Whereas the people who have main accounts on that same world report that they think the community is super friendly.

In other words, it could just be the accident of who you have been running into, combined with the human mind’s “skill” at remembering examples that reinforce our impressions (and ignoring evidence that contradicts it).

GuzziHero.2467:

Why is this? It just seems that EU players are more ignorant but I want to think differently. There is certainly a very different attitude between the 2 regions. It seems every time I play on EU, something happens that makes me regret not having logged into my US based account instead.

Thoughts on this?

It would be a good idea to change the way you think because the current way you’re thinking is close to ethnic or racial discrimination.

Also, I haven’t seen the issues you report on EU servers. I get ressed, I res, I see people call out events (especially in the regions for daily events) and so on. Maybe the US servers have “more” of all that but I haven’t seen any problems on the EU ones.

Perhaps it’s the time of day/night that you’re playing at?

I’ve only played on the EU servers so I can’t really compare but here’s a few thoughts on the matter:

Firstly even with the introduction of megaservers your server does still make a difference in who you’re playing with and therefore the community. I’m on Desolation but I’ll occasionally guest to other servers and I’ve found players are much more talkative on some of the others, Gunnar’s Hold in particular. On Deso map chat outside of cities is pretty much for coordination, announcing things the whole map needs to know and asking questions. On some other servers there seems to be a conversation going in any map with more than 3 people on it.

I think you’re right that in general people don’t call out events, there’s not usually any reason to. But I always see people doing it if it’s one of the daily achievements, it’s a big or popular event (like when a world boss chain is starting) or it’s a map that requires coordination like Silverwastes or Drytop.

In fact last time I was in Drytop they’d gone a step further and had people calling out lists of events before they started so everyone could coordinate to get as much done as possible. Apparently that was off-peak time and when it’s busier they’ll actually have multiple groups, each with their own rotation to follow.

I can’t explain the lack of people resurrecting however because I’ve never seen that happen. I’ll always resurrect people if I can and I’ve rarely had to wait more than a few minutes, even when I think there’s no one around, for someone to resurrect me.

I get the impression from your post that you don’t live in Europe, so you’re probably in a different time zone and I wonder if that makes a difference. It seems that most people outside of Europe play on the US servers, meaning they’re much more likely to be active at all hours, whereas the EU ones are pretty much limited to people in Europe so everyone’s peak time is pretty much the same and the population drops off dramatically after that. Some servers have dedicated WvW night crews who live in other places, but they only play WvW.

It can be really sudden too. I can do a few rounds of Silverwastes in the evening with a consistently full map and close to 100% success rate. Then it gets to 11pm UTC and suddenly everyone’s gone and we’re struggling just to hold the 4 forts. The UK players like myself might stick around a bit longer because we’re lagging behind the mainland, but it doesn’t make a big difference.

If you haven’t already tried this and you’re able to I recommend playing on the EU servers between about 8pm and 10:30pm UTC and see if it makes a difference.

I also have account on both EU and US. I also have noticed huge differences between players there.
On US I see players small talking all the time where as in EU it is mostly quiet, or just talking about tactics to be used or other important game related stuff.

I like EU players more. On EU it seems players focus more on the game itself than being over social and friendly etc. Before anyone loses their mind for such rude comment – I did not mean to insult anyone. I play this game for sake of playing a game, chatting comes after it.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It could very well be perception, rather than reality. A lot more people are playing at any given time than most of us realize. Are you comparing peak US hours to peak EU hours? Could it be your specific home worlds instead of EU vs NA? — despite megaserver, players tend to be grouped often with people from the same few servers, except when there’s a world boss or a 4-event daily specific to the zone.

For example, several people I know with multiple accounts chose alternative home worlds and they believe that their main account’s home world is much more friendly in terms of rezzing, map chat, and so on than their secondary account’s home. Whereas the people who have main accounts on that same world report that they think the community is super friendly.

In other words, it could just be the accident of who you have been running into, combined with the human mind’s “skill” at remembering examples that reinforce our impressions (and ignoring evidence that contradicts it).

Selective cognizance could be a factor. I’d like to think that it doesn’t affect me, but perhaps it does. I generally don’t engage much socially with the playerbase in whatever game I play, but there could be a preconception of hostility or at least reduced acceptance when I am in the less familiar surroundings, aka EU as opposed to US.

When I started playing on GW2, I was on Desolation and found helpful advice whenever I asked for help in map chat, but as often as not, I would be lambasted for ‘spamming’ map chat with questions. This was my first MMO adventure game, so I of course had a lot of things I wanted to ask. All-in-all, I found Desolation to be helpful with a few less pleasant people on.

Then I moved over to Dragonbrand and there was far more random and unsolicited chat going on. Any hostility tended to come in the form of mild trolling rather than outright curt responses.

It is possible in my case at least that those early aggressive interactions on EU have caused me to have a pre-defensive mindset when I go onto EU.

Danikat.8537:

I get the impression from your post that you don’t live in Europe, so you’re probably in a different time zone and I wonder if that makes a difference.

I am English, living in England. I do see the Aussies in the morning and Americans in the evening with a lull in the middle of the day. EU is of course pretty quiet during work/school hours so that could be part of it.

napooz.1986:

I also have account on both EU and US. I also have noticed huge differences between players there.
On US I see players small talking all the time where as in EU it is mostly quiet, or just talking about tactics to be used or other important game related stuff.

I like EU players more. On EU it seems players focus more on the game itself than being over social and friendly etc. Before anyone loses their mind for such rude comment – I did not mean to insult anyone. I play this game for sake of playing a game, chatting comes after it.

This is very much the impression I get as well. EU seems a lot more ‘serious’ than US where people just chat for the sake of it.

GuzziHero.2467:

Selective cognizance could be a factor. I’d like to think that it doesn’t affect me, but perhaps it does.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t suffer this, even people who are excellent scientific researchers, especially when it comes to social interaction.

I point this out as an issue frequently when it comes to people who think they are seeing reduced drop rates. And yet, despite my warnings to people that we really have to count and not just go by memory, I find myself frequently wondering whether ANet just nerfed the rate on something. The only difference between myself and those who dismiss confirmation bias/etc is that instead of posting on the forums, I start counting and writing things down to see whether the data backs up my gut feeling (it never has so far).

Just because this is a likely factor in your own impressions doesn’t mean your instincts are wrong. I do think it means it is worth collecting additional evidence, which includes asking people here what they think, so you’re off to a good start.

GuzziHero.2467:

That’s a good point Vayne.

I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, I’m not trying to insult anyone either, which is why I don’t want to think or feel that EU players are ignorant when they most likely are not.

Does having a broad mix of languages create disaffection at a subconscious level? Is there an element of belief that the respective lack of communication due to the language diversity in the EU means that one would not receive verbal appreciation if one does help another?

I think it’s just that it makes it more difficult. Even people who know multiple languages may struggle with things they need to say in-game because a lot of the names aren’t translated directly and the name chosen isn’t always obvious unless you’ve played the game in that language.

Having said that attempting to coordinate players in multiple languages can be a lot of fun too. One of my favourite experiences in this game was playing The Battle for LA on a map with a roughly even mix of English, French, German and Spanish speakers and people whose first language wasn’t any of those but knew enough to get by.

We had one commander who happened to speak fluent English, French and Spanish, one who knew French and German and a few other people who contributed whatever they could. It was absolute chaos but the added challenge made it a lot more entertaining than some of the smoother runs I’d done before.

GuzziHero.2467:

Well, I am English so technically I would be disparaging myself, but well done on scoring your internet ego-point.

Lol!!!!! +1 my friend .

I do notice language barrier being a factor in certain map chats, but its hard to conclude with anything.

Could you verify, that you were on an english speaking shard? On Riverside [DE] shards the map chat is actually pretty alive, but unless you speak german, the conversations could mean anythig to you.
The problem here is, that the megaserver can and will toss you into shards regardless of language, so while english is often the to go language, I very much enjoy WvW for the simple pleasure of being able to speak my native language, without having to be afraid, that no one understands me.
This is a non issue for the US community, but on the EU server, there are many languages spoken and there is no guarantee, that everyone is able to use english, or a third language to bypass the language barrier. That is likely the reason, why the map chat is more quiet, since you can’t be sure, that you will be understood.
The most common languages you will encounter on EU are: English, German, French and Spanish.
But those are just the most likely ones. I’ve met Dutch, Russian, Greek, Romanian, Polish, Italian, Albanian, Croatian, Czech and Turkish players so far.

I am not sure Anet took that into consideration, when they introduced megaservers. Like I said, if you are on a server with a [DE] tag, at least you can use that language in WvW, but everywhere else, there’s just no certainty you’ll be understood.
There have been several suggestions to allow players to see which shard they’re in and allow them to switch to a different one. I know I’d like to use that feature.

GuzziHero.2467:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It could very well be perception, rather than reality. A lot more people are playing at any given time than most of us realize. Are you comparing peak US hours to peak EU hours? Could it be your specific home worlds instead of EU vs NA? — despite megaserver, players tend to be grouped often with people from the same few servers, except when there’s a world boss or a 4-event daily specific to the zone.

For example, several people I know with multiple accounts chose alternative home worlds and they believe that their main account’s home world is much more friendly in terms of rezzing, map chat, and so on than their secondary account’s home. Whereas the people who have main accounts on that same world report that they think the community is super friendly.

In other words, it could just be the accident of who you have been running into, combined with the human mind’s “skill” at remembering examples that reinforce our impressions (and ignoring evidence that contradicts it).

Selective cognizance could be a factor. I’d like to think that it doesn’t affect me, but perhaps it does. I generally don’t engage much socially with the playerbase in whatever game I play, but there could be a preconception of hostility or at least reduced acceptance when I am in the less familiar surroundings, aka EU as opposed to US.

When I started playing on GW2, I was on Desolation and found helpful advice whenever I asked for help in map chat, but as often as not, I would be lambasted for ‘spamming’ map chat with questions. This was my first MMO adventure game, so I of course had a lot of things I wanted to ask. All-in-all, I found Desolation to be helpful with a few less pleasant people on.

Then I moved over to Dragonbrand and there was far more random and unsolicited chat going on. Any hostility tended to come in the form of mild trolling rather than outright curt responses.

It is possible in my case at least that those early aggressive interactions on EU have caused me to have a pre-defensive mindset when I go onto EU.

Ah, ok that explains a lot. I’d say what you experienced is more Desolation specific than EU specific.

I’m not quite sure why but Deso is the ‘serious business’ server among the English language EU servers. Which has both upsides and downsides. We got Europe’s first Tequatl kill after the update, the world’s first Triple Wurm kill, were The map to be on for the Marionette and Battle for LA and even now I take it for granted that Drytop will get to at least T4 if it’s not the middle of the night, Silverwastes will almost always succeed and we’ll have a heap of WvW bonuses. But the downside is less chatter and some people with no patience for it when it does happen.

It’s been my home world since launch and I don’t think I’d ever switch, but I do sometimes feel like the odd one out because I don’t take the game all that seriously.

Have you tried guesting at all? Even now it does make a difference. I recommend trying Gunnar’s Hold, Piken Square or Gandara in particular.

Guzzi: Could it simply be a matter of population?

I personally don’t know which regional group of servers is as a whole more populated, but ‘if’ NA is in fact a more populous than EU, maybe that is why you see more resurrectors and more chat/calling events and more help there.
Solely due to the fact that there would be more opportunity to do so.

Currently I am on Piken Square which I guess has probably the most diverse language variety of all the EU servers, thanks to being the unofficial RP server.

US server seems to have Americans, Aussies, and many Asian players, most of which have English as a primary or at least strong secondary language. Most of the time, map chat in anything other than English is not tolerated, and anyone speaking Spanish or Portuguese gets smacked down pretty quickly.

From my experience on EU servers, English is the primary language followed by Russian and Polish, then trickling down through German, French, Spanish and other western european languages.

Maps do reach capacity more quickly on US servers than on EU, but even so, whenever there is someone nearby on US it is very rare for them not to res you if downed, whereas it seems more like a 40/60% chance in favour of ‘will not’ res on EU.

I might have to start keeping a tally for a more scientific approach.

The EU servers from most games, along with Asian servers, tend to be divided at least partially by language barriers. But its really weird for this game, considering GW2 is built for easy adhoc team work.

One other thing that works in the US regions favor, is a natural zerg mentality. Theres no direct competition for Loot, so its to everyone’s benefit to try and get people get tags. But its also a major sticking point about US servers…. they will get upset if you do something to jeopardize sources of loot. This mostly happens in Orr and Kessex, as those areas still operate on the old drop tables setup. Since newer maps work on pop-up chests and Champ bags, stronger focus is put on the mechanics that yield loot…. hence the complaints about Chest farms from the small group of people who are still focused on event completion.

napooz.1986:

I also have account on both EU and US. I also have noticed huge differences between players there.
On US I see players small talking all the time where as in EU it is mostly quiet, or just talking about tactics to be used or other important game related stuff.

I like EU players more. On EU it seems players focus more on the game itself than being over social and friendly etc. Before anyone loses their mind for such rude comment – I did not mean to insult anyone. I play this game for sake of playing a game, chatting comes after it.

To me, this would make sense.

Excuse me for oversimplifying here, but here we go.

Because there is a huge amount of cultural diversity in Europe, people have very different experiences, tastes and what-not. It is probably more difficult for Europeans to chat over particular TV programmes/shows or other pop culture, simply because some countries might not receive such things, or prefer to watch things made in their own language that might be more culturally/socially relatable.

Assuming that the NA servers are mainly comprised of people from the States and Canada, the populations probably have far more in common. I’m not saying that there isn’t any cultural diversity (of course there is!), but it’s far more relatable and probably on a smaller scale.

Language is a main factor in this: it will affect the interests of the populations, as some things aren’t going to be available in their native languages. Moreover, people who have English as their second language might not be so comfortable in chit-chatting, but only in conveying direct information, such as tactics.

I hope that my post is clear and understandable. If I’ve offended anybody, I’m sorry and I didn’t mean to :P

I never had issues on EU servers. Yes, generally they are a bit less helpful, but people ping events if you ask and I’ve been rezzed 90% of the time when I got downed.

Back when I played GW1 they merged the EU and NA servers after some time and I noticed that the NA players had more of a ’let’s just go’ or ‘just do it’ mentality while EU players were very conscientious, preparing and asking for certain classes or skills. There are positives and negatives on both sides.

About being offensive to either side: there’s always someone feeling offended and this forum here is so super-protective it hurts. I leave this here (Quote from George Takei aka Mr. Zulu from original Star Trek):

You might think it’s fun to joke about this potato, but do you consider how this image might trigger someone, like myself, with Irish ancestry, because it reminds us of the potato famine? Also, the potato is brown and dirty and it grows in the ground, which could easily be construed as a statement that brown skinned people are dirty and live in caves. Meanwhile, people from Idaho are likely offended because this image appropriates their culture and makes a mockery of it.

It might be a big laugh to you, but remember that this potato is also a visual image, which is certain to make the visually impaired feel excluded. Not to mention that a potato is a spherical, three dimensional object. If you stopped to think for one second you might see how this could otherize those who struggle with depth perception and those who are geometrically challenged.

This says nothing of the trauma it will surely impose on the starch intolerant community. Obviously — but I’m sure you all knew this — potatoes are originally indigenous to the Andes mountain region, so this picture could quite easily cause emotional stress to the peoples of that area who feel they don’t get enough credit for cultivating the potato for so many centuries before privileged white Americans stole it.

So, yeah, have your laugh, you bigots. But think about what kind of harm a provocative photo like this might do to all of these groups.

As you can clearly see, everything truly is offensive and everyone’s feeling are hurt, so stop saying things, thinking things, or otherwise communicating thoughts of any kind to anyone. It’s the only way to make sure everyone is safe.

I always see people chatting, especially in daily zones. The only bad thing is when you join a zone where they are roleplaying and using Black Speech. Or maybe its German, I dont know.

Coming from Piken Square, I can honestly say that I’m surprised by your view, OP (I thought your EU account is on Piken too, am I mistaken?). I can’t speak for the other servers, but I can honestly say that the players from Piken are the friendliest people you can ever meet.

I’m really surprised by this thread.

Yeah, my EU account is on Piken. I still find that there is a more ‘businesslike’ attitude and a lot less random friendly chat on EU compared to US, and a lot less of a community attitude there.

I’m running on my EU account today and… near silence in all the racial city map chats.

Nothing but (non-English) guild adverts and PVPbank ads.

People are chatting in Divinity’s Reach right now, but in /say chat instead of /map chat. People in DR tend to hang near [Minister’s Waypoint] and speak in /say. I do think you’re right that /map chat is used less, but I wouldn’t say that’s because we’re unfriendly.

You know me, I always asked how everyone is in map chat, and I rarely if at all get berated for it!

Its a stereotype but Americans are thought to be more confident and want lots of people to hear their views, possibly they use map chat to speak more and EU uses /g /s etc?

I dunno this thread seems odd and is asking us to guess cultural differences (which obviously exist but difficult to explore without sounding rude).

I think the multiple languages point was good, while lots of EU players have excellent English maybe it not being their mother tongue inhibits them from speaking publicly in /m for fear of being incorrect (we all know grammar kittens exist)?

I assume EU is more of a old school gamer community.
they will chat not on the map but in party/say/guild.
they are more solo-ish and dont see any reason to call out events, dont see any reasons to do them either unless is for gold farming.

eu has more mmo from the east than the west if im not wrong.

I haven’t read even half of the thread since I’m tired, so sorry in advance if someone already wrote this.

The main issue why european players “seem” to be more unfriendly is – at least from my experiences – the Megaservers. I remember when I started playing almost 3 years ago on my main account, I joined a server where my native language was spoken. Whenever my guildmates and me were standing in main cities, infront of dungeons or around farming spots, ppl constantly wrote about all different things, game related or not. During LS1 it became really hard to follow everything, because lots of people spamed the map chat, for example on the Karka event, Tequatl overhaul or God Reach festival and so on. But we had lots of fun, my server had a “rare winner, but looser who never give up” mentality and we were a colorful, chaotic bunch that just enjoyed to spend time with players we shared our victories and failures with. I could name at least 8 players I saw during LS1 over and over again. Great times!

Most of our servers “identity” died however when Megaservers were introduced. You werent on the same map with the players you did play before, in the open world, I barely even met the ones who were on my friendlist. I saw numerous of times when players started to write something in their language, they got lots of hate and almost always the sentence “english please” or simply “ENGLISH!!1!”. But not everyone is is able to speak english. There are racist jokes about french people, germans, italiens and others. Looking at this, I can relate to those who simply gave up to write something in the map chat, something that – again – was not the case before the megaservers.

I know it might be hard to understand outside of europe, but the EU is not the same as Europeans. Our behaviour, culture and language are very different from each other. It’s wrong to just push us all in one pot. Try this with chinese, japanese or koreans. They wouldn’t like this neither (thats why Anet got quite some grudge with Factions from asian countries, they also mixed cultures and religions which felt kinda rude).

tl;dr:
Megaservers are a main factor for EU players to not be “all friendly” with each other. If you start to write something in your language, you get laughed at and people urge you to write english. If you are not good with english, you can’t talk with each other.

Pifil.5193:

GuzziHero.2467:

Why is this? It just seems that EU players are more ignorant but I want to think differently. There is certainly a very different attitude between the 2 regions. It seems every time I play on EU, something happens that makes me regret not having logged into my US based account instead.

Thoughts on this?

It would be a good idea to change the way you think because the current way you’re thinking is close to ethnic or racial discrimination.

Also, I haven’t seen the issues you report on EU servers. I get ressed, I res, I see people call out events (especially in the regions for daily events) and so on. Maybe the US servers have “more” of all that but I haven’t seen any problems on the EU ones.

Perhaps it’s the time of day/night that you’re playing at?

The event callout only really makes sense on maps with the daily event otherwise you are just being a nuisance.

The other thing is that the content guide will show you locations of the closest event that runs on their own(it does not seem to show ones that requires a bit of interaction). For the rest you need to play on the map a bit and figure out how things work.

EU communities often have several languages spoken and are smaller, leading to quite a fractured community, this is why I always go to NA servers where I can though I’m in the UK, as NA communities have far less communication barriers and tend to be more talkative and less “clique” based.

Vileste.7148:

tl;dr:
Megaservers are a main factor for EU players to not be “all friendly” with each other. If you start to write something in your language, you get laughed at and people urge you to write english. If you are not good with english, you can’t talk with each other.

I find this somewhat depressing. I had considered buying an alt account in the EU region so I could practice/learn Spanish, French, or German. I would have hoped that people would be more accommodating to each other. (INB4: yeah, it’s the internet; I should know better.)

People from different regions of the world also have different social behaviors. I’ve been thinking about this. I have friends from Yugoslavia, who have to stand right up against you when they talk. I mean this is how they converse. Their shoulder touching yours. When we’re together, in public, I’m too loud for them. They’re more private. Their view of Americans (and the view of many others) is that Americans are just loud, and laugh too loud at their own jokes.

I know I end up trying to fill a silence if I’m in a room, and I’m the same way sometimes in map chat. But I think that could be a cultural thing. I certainly don’t believe it has anything to do with “ignorance”. It’s what you learn as acceptable social behaviour.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vileste.7148:

tl;dr:
Megaservers are a main factor for EU players to not be “all friendly” with each other. If you start to write something in your language, you get laughed at and people urge you to write english. If you are not good with english, you can’t talk with each other.

I find this somewhat depressing. I had considered buying an alt account in the EU region so I could practice/learn Spanish, French, or German. I would have hoped that people would be more accommodating to each other. (INB4: yeah, it’s the internet; I should know better.)

Admittedly I don’t spend too much time speaking my non-English language in map chat or any truly public chat, so most of my experience here is from observing others.

There aren’t many people who will jump on you for not speaking English. I’ve noticed that most of the time when it happens, it’s more towards single players who are asking a question in their own language, or aimed at two people having a discussion about something. The third common circumstance is if it’s obvious that the other players are explaining tactics, which I sometimes see for TT and Teq (often German).

Now, in all circumstances (in my opinion), asking for them to speak English is somewhat reasonable.

-The first one, people want to help- especially if they have asked a couple of times without a response from a helper in their own language. Luckily for me, I can often pick out a few key words in Spanish, French and German to help to ping a location or skill without demanding them to ask in English.

-The second one can also be explained using a comparison: if two people were babbling away in English about something that wasn’t of any relevance (e.g. an obscure TV show or something), many people would tell them to take it to whisper or party chat instead of filling up map chat- especially during a world boss or large event. It’s a bit different if its a whole discussion between many people, of course. (disclaimer: this kind of thing doesn’t bother me, but I can understand how it can bother other people).

-The third, people want in on information. They want to be able to understand, to help, to do things the right way.

Now, none of these excuse any rude behaviour towards non-english speakers. I have seen many rude people, often calling out cruel and racist remarks.These people always get a report and block from me- I love seeing different language in chat as it reminds me how international the game is and how it brings so many diverse people together.

On the other hand, I do see many people “humourously” chime in to non-english conversations. E.g. if people are speaking beautiful French, people will start writing things like “omelette au fromage” and “baguette”. Now, I’m not sure how funny this is for the French (or how fast it becomes old), but I have seen a few respond and carry on the fun. Sometimes I’ve seen it advance to people getting taught new words! I guess it would be similar to people saying “cuppa tea and biccies”, “bring me the yorkshire puds” and such things, if you’re British. :P

So, it’s not all doom and gloom. The people who rudely call others out for not speaking English are usually the kind of people who harass other English speakers too. I’m sure it would be worth your while joining an EU server to practice a second language. The German and French servers in particular are always beautifully organised and do very well in WvW. I know that there is a strong sense of community there and many large guilds.

Tl;dr: I see more people talk freely in their own language than get told off rudely by others. Often there are reasons why people ask for them to speak English. Sure, the language barrier exists, but I often see people try to get past the language barrier.