Guild Wars 2

At least that’s the impression I get.

I see the attached comment and others on more than one occasion.

Is GW2 one of the best communities out there?

Better than wow for sure. I think the way the game is designed leads to that. It’s more cooperative than competitive.

I think so! Its pretty great.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Better than wow for sure. I think the way the game is designed leads to that. It’s more cooperative than competitive.

As someone who plays both games I unquestionably agree with that.

Overall, barring trolls and certain ‘special’ people in PvP, the community is awesome.

The community is just great
and not to mention the past couple of hours in WvW some person spent an hour and 50 gold on siege golems and made quite a beautiful golem picture thing. (and eventually took over like all the keeps with those golems)

As well other things that happen out of WvW. Though I haven’t played WoW, what I hear from it and think about things that go on in GW2. Its just great :’D

Agreed. It’s not remarkably good in any way, but it is better than a majority of other mmos that i’ve tried.

and we don’t have many of those 4-chan people with their odd humor, which makes me glad.

At least outside of the forums and spvp. hehe.

It’s probably because of the way the game is designed. It’s designed specifically to promote cooperative play and to reduce griefing and competition. A game like WoW is designed with a focus on competitive play. It has non shared loot, nodes, and rewards for certain open world events and it has open world PvP. Even the PvE world has PvP options that sometimes causes the unwary and unwilling to get flagged for PvP.

A game where everyone is a “friend” is going to be more social than one where everyone is a competitor.

the mesmer ports and people helping you out with random stuff

yeah it’s pretty cool
anything that competitive are all pretty cool

This is the only MMO I’ve played where I’m glad to see other players. In most MMOs other players are more likely to steal your kills/loot/resources, or kill you. They did a good job with that part of the design.

I have never played another mmo, but I think the gw2 community is very nice. If I ask a question on map chat, everyone will try to be as helpful as possible and that goes for everyone else too that I notice. There are some unfriendly or unhelpful people in most areas of the game, but they are the tiny minority.

This game feels like facebook meeting, a lot of people doing/talking much with not much of a goal. I don’t know if it’s a good thing. I don’t like facebook. Maybe I’m too old.

What I can say, when the game forces me to play with people I don’t know (aka open world “content”) it’s the best way to disappointment about this community. Everybody patting each others back even though they failed the goal (of the event, boss, whatever).

For sure, this is the most unskilled community I’ve ever seen in any game.

If you like it, good for you.

Iiiiiii don’t know… it’s just I’ve seen so many people come and go here. Maybe that is a normal thing now? I don’t know, this is about the only themepark mmo I’ve played in years, and I don’t play f2p’s, but I’ve played a lot of classic themeparks before the wow era.

I did play wow for four months some years ago, that was a pretty bad-bad player-base. GW2 is better than that, yeah… but most people I liked left, and most bad players I blocked are still around. I see quite a bit of pretty bad trolling in game now, compared to early in the game. Not like attitudes, but trying to intentionally wreck events for other people etc. But I guess as long as they can hide behind a non-aggression system, I suppose that’s just how it’ll be.

segman.3560:

For sure, this is the most unskilled community I’ve ever seen in any game.

Which isnt so bad, since its the elitist communities that are the worst.

Said it before, saying it again: GW2 is a fun, relaxed game. That’s why its awesome. Yeah we kitten and moan on the forums, but it doesnt really affect the way we play, unlike certain cough p2worsubscriptiongodawfullkittengames hurk. Anet is heads and shoulders over other developers in a time where most exploit their customers to the max, have to give them credit for that. That leads to us being happier, which leads to us being more friendly ingame.

Dawdler.8521:

segman.3560:

For sure, this is the most unskilled community I’ve ever seen in any game.

Which isnt so bad, since its the elitist communities that are the worst.

Said it before, saying it again: GW2 is a fun, relaxed game. That’s why its awesome. Yeah we kitten and moan on the forums, but it doesnt really affect the way we play, unlike certain cough p2worsubscriptiongodawfullkittengames hurk. Anet is heads and shoulders over other developers in a time where most exploit their customers to the max, have to give them credit for that. That leads to us being happier, which leads to us being more friendly ingame.

The game can be relaxed however being casual is not an excuse for being lazy and destroying fun for other players. I’m not talking about min-maxing or elitism (this word is so overused by this fluffy community), I’m talking about common sense. Let’s take silverwastes as an example because it’s very simple encounter – there are whole zergs of people acting like macroed bots. They don’t even care to avoid glowing orange aoe circles or use stability or reflects – the very basics of this game. They destroy fun for every other player there. This is why I think this community is bad. People don’t respect each other. They don’t want to work for common goal with other players, they expect to be rewarded just for showing up. And I’m not talking about intended leechers but about those who deny learning the game basics.

So yeah, when it comes to chat community looks ok. People talk, joke etc. But when it comes to game, the community is terrible. From my point of view.

This is why I feel this game is a facebook adventure. There’s a lot of talking but not much of an execution.

segman.3560:

Dawdler.8521:

segman.3560:

For sure, this is the most unskilled community I’ve ever seen in any game.

Which isnt so bad, since its the elitist communities that are the worst.

Said it before, saying it again: GW2 is a fun, relaxed game. That’s why its awesome. Yeah we kitten and moan on the forums, but it doesnt really affect the way we play, unlike certain cough p2worsubscriptiongodawfullkittengames hurk. Anet is heads and shoulders over other developers in a time where most exploit their customers to the max, have to give them credit for that. That leads to us being happier, which leads to us being more friendly ingame.

The game can be relaxed however being casual is not an excuse for being lazy and destroying fun for other players. I’m not talking about min-maxing or elitism (this word is so overused by this fluffy community), I’m talking about common sense. Let’s take silverwastes as an example because it’s very simple encounter – there are whole zergs of people acting like macroed bots. They don’t even care to avoid glowing orange aoe circles or use stability or reflects – the very basics of this game. They destroy fun for every other player there. This is why I think this community is bad. People don’t respect each other. They don’t want to work for common goal with other players, they expect to be rewarded just for showing up. And I’m not talking about intended leechers but about those who deny learning the game basics.

So yeah, when it comes to chat community looks ok. People talk, joke etc. But when it comes to game, the community is terrible. From my point of view.

This is why I feel this game is a facebook adventure. There’s a lot of talking but not much of an execution.

Why are you singling out this game for these complaints? This is common behavior in all games. When I read the WoW forum, for example, I will see people complaining in there about people who “will not get out of the bad” in dungeons, forcing the healers to heal them or let them die. People who run ahead of the tanks and draw agro before the tank can is another common complaint. People who kick without reading the kick description is another complaint. (One guy there said he used to troll groups by marking the healer for a kick with remarks such as “low dps” or “is a healer” then laugh and leave when the group kicked their healer). I see complaints that people won’t group up while doing quests but everyone trying to do them solo, which makes it harder to do with a limited number of quest objectives available.

Singling out Guild Wars 2 for your complaints is to expect people to act different than they do in all other games.

segman.3560:

Let’s take silverwastes as an example because it’s very simple encounter – there are whole zergs of people acting like macroed bots. They don’t even care to avoid glowing orange aoe circles or use stability or reflects – the very basics of this game. They destroy fun for every other player there. This is why I think this community is bad. People don’t respect each other. They don’t want to work for common goal with other players, they expect to be rewarded just for showing up. And I’m not talking about intended leechers but about those who deny learning the game basics.

Hahaha… Well you are talking about PvE. GW2 is not PvE. GW2 is WvW, sPvP and PvE. Silverwaste in particular is a tiny part of PvE.

So basicly you are saying that because 1% of the game has dull PvE farmers, the other 99% is bad as well.

From personal experience…

The Secret World has the best community.
But GW2 is pretty high up.

It comes naturally. BM and such comes out only from “competition”. That competition can come under the form of raids..big boss fights whatever. In other mmos all that is effected by the trinity specially healer-tank relation.

If you eliminate that, and give everyone similar abilities…then nobody will complain as much as they would if 1-2 ppl fail a group of 20. Here if 1-2 ppl fail, there’s 20 more to do the job.

It’s not because of the ppl playing the game. It’s because of how the game is made. It does not promote competitiveness so indirectly it doesn’t promote BM, grudges and so on that are a result of that competitiveness.

A casual game is played by casual players mostly. Casual players tend to care about things other then “being the first” or “getting that thing”…..2 mentalities (meaning progression) that, when influenced by the work of a team and some of that team failing repetitively, can create irritation.

The other side of the coin is a casual game can feel lackluster….with no impression of ever doing anything worth the time invested. You reach a point where you “beat the game” much much faster then a traditional mmo. Instead of actually putting effort into getting “that 1 thing”.. in this game you get it basically for free even if you are the worst player possible. This means there’s close to no distinction between good players and bad players. That also means, after playing most of the game, ppl will feel like they haven’t achieved anything to be proud of…to show off why they wasted their time in this game.

Everything has a plus and a minus. This thing can be detailed over several pages.

SoPP.7034:

Gw2 has the best MMO community

Uhm…. no

Why?

First of all you never played PVP did you? The flaming on pvp is insane, even if its not everyday there are a lot of ppl that flame only if they lose 1v1 or lose the match because some “noob that should go unranked” was in their team.

Same goes for PVE.
For example all the dungeonruns that dont want beginners aka noobs, kick you from fractals or dont rez you in open world because they dont give a kitty.

So overall the community in GW2 is not the best, neither its the worst.

Don`t see this as rage post or something, these are just the facts about GW2, sure there are nice people but they are as rare as a precurser.

^That’s proving my point. You place in anything (not just games) just a bit of competitiveness, BM will 100% appear. PvP…WvW…

Depends on what you want from the game and what part of it you play.

GW2 has the best community is a total myth. It’s not much difference than any other mmorpg.
One of the contributing factor that make you think as such is the nature of the game where cooperation is needed rather than competition, heck even nodes farming there are no competition.
Like Teniz said there are fair share amount of rude ppl in this game from open world pve, dungeons, fractals to pvp. If you haven’t seen it, you obviously haven’t played long and extensive enough.
I’ve played WoW, AoC, WHO, Rift. No different, rude ppl on every corner.
It’s the nature of online gaming community these days. Yah there are nice and good ppl here and there, but to say this game has the best online community is an overstatement by far.

Dawdler.8521:

segman.3560:

Let’s take silverwastes as an example because it’s very simple encounter – there are whole zergs of people acting like macroed bots. They don’t even care to avoid glowing orange aoe circles or use stability or reflects – the very basics of this game. They destroy fun for every other player there. This is why I think this community is bad. People don’t respect each other. They don’t want to work for common goal with other players, they expect to be rewarded just for showing up. And I’m not talking about intended leechers but about those who deny learning the game basics.

Hahaha… Well you are talking about PvE. GW2 is not PvE. GW2 is WvW, sPvP and PvE. Silverwaste in particular is a tiny part of PvE.

So basicly you are saying that because 1% of the game has dull PvE farmers, the other 99% is bad as well.

I would like to see the data proving your statement that 1% of playerbase is pve farmers.
Thank you in advance.

To conclude my previous statements, SW was just an example and I used it because the content there is so easy it should be a natural win for this game’s target audience (which is 12-year-old kids). I will only add that the same happens in pvp (two or three ppl capping 1 point) and wvw (scaled up wannabe heroes fighting a camp with inv buff on).

So, from my point of view, the general playerbase is not worth playing with. I found few people sharing my mindset and we’re doing very well together. I hope one day general playerbase will learn how this game works.

In my experience, coming from WoW, I have to agree thus far with OP. I can personally attest to a community that will turn on you in a second for some perceived slight. Screw up a mechanic? You’re as good as toast. Don’t go along with the status quo on the forums? You’re done. The problem is that Blizzard breeds and desires this kind of community. All you have to do is read some of the developer interviews, the blue posts on the forums, and what kind of snarly, nasty threads they leave up while deleting others.

Here? I’m sure people can act snarly, maybe come off with a snarky quip or two, but NEVER in eight years, have I seen a community that is willing to be so co-operative just for the sake of being co-operative. Example: Yesterday I was swimming to get waypoints for Teq (because who doesn’t like being underleveled and punching an Elder Dragon, right?) and came across the Snake Champion guy that happens to be on a vista.

I called it out in world chat and had a couple of people come along and we got DESTROYED. What happened? We laughed like crazy. And then a couple of other really good players came along and helped us destroy it. THAT is one heck of a community.

Compared to WoW? “OMG U SKRUB! U SUK!” or “GDIAF!” or “I hope u die of cancer!” would be some common responses to a call out like yesterday. Getting in on a world boss kill or trying to while I’m underleveled or inexperienced? No way.

The point is this: I spent eight years dwelling deep in a poisonous pit of mostly hateful people. Being here, in Tyria is like anything I’ve ever experienced and I couldn’t be happier though I’m sure you still have some of the same poor behavior though I cannot recall seeing any as of yet.

Lets face it, the most healthy communities are the ones you can kill and loot

GW2 ist designed (at least in PvE, well mostly) that players play not competitive but cooperative. You should “be happy” to see other players is one of the game basics.

However, there are in PvE some situations where different playstyles clash. That can lead to some kind of “competitive playing” and that can result in situations, where things could become negative or even “toxic”.

Pino.5209:

to say this game has the best online community is an overstatement by far.

You misread a few things, this being one xD

SoPP.7034:

Pino.5209:

to say this game has the best online community is an overstatement by far.

You misread a few things, this being one xD

It’s your title lol, you left the sarcastic part out.
“Gw2 has the best MMO community?” would be more appropriate as sarcasm.
That quote you put, doesn’t say that you actually said it. It is actually being aimed at those generic post that say gw2 has the best community, hang around reddit and this forum and you’ll see a lot. There is a reason i didn’t quote you directly.

guildwars comunity was always nice and greatfull overall, Anet has 10 years of it.

Aeolus.3615:

guildwars comunity was always nice and greatfull overall, Anet has 10 years of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DOYuktGGe0

Stop living in the past, the golden age of online gaming where ppl actually being nice was long over. Welcome to the age of online trolls and ragers. GW2 community is no worse or better than any other online mmorpg out there. It’s just the era we are living in.

Pino.5209:

would be more appropriate as sarcasm.

Now your just being subjective and missing the how/why of thread posts and their intent. Perhaps your mistake was thinking people in this thread were naive.

In any event from my perspective it worked. I got you to post after all xD

segman.3560:

I would like to see the data proving your statement that 1% of playerbase is pve farmers.
Thank you in advance.

To conclude my previous statements, SW was just an example and I used it because the content there is so easy it should be a natural win for this game’s target audience (which is 12-year-old kids). I will only add that the same happens in pvp (two or three ppl capping 1 point) and wvw (scaled up wannabe heroes fighting a camp with inv buff on).

So, from my point of view, the general playerbase is not worth playing with. I found few people sharing my mindset and we’re doing very well together. I hope one day general playerbase will learn how this game works.

only if I can see your data on silverwastes being bad for the community. Last time I played, it was a cooperative effort.

But I understand, given your examples. My earlier point about elitists, the type of players that only complain about other players no matter what they do, still stand. Ingame its luckily not that many though. When people attack a buffed lord and dies, we generally laugh about it. Even make jokes. Community run WvW TS can be hilarious. But I have never seen anyone seriously say “you are not worth playing with, gtfo!”.

Pino.5209:

snip.

Well either it does or it doesn’t and picking and choosing your argument along with your “because I said so” doesn’t make you look any better.

For all intents and purposes you’ve completely missed the point and got hung up on inconsequential information that you subsequently disagreed with yourself over.

About the same as WoW, I would say.

Good and bad people (and everything in between).

For example, if you accidentally do a speedrun dungeon, as a new player, without meaning to (in a group where someone else joins one, or whatever), a lot of people are pretty obnoxious.

Also, whereas some less than pleasant people may be scared to be openly rude in chat, they obviously don’t have the same problem in TS3, where they think they can say what they like.

If you do WvW, you will probably encounter that.

No it doesn’t Message Body length must at least be 15.

Dawdler.8521:

But I have never seen anyone seriously say “you are not worth playing with, gtfo!”.

I did.

Dawdler.8521:

only if I can see your data on silverwastes being bad for the community. Last time I played, it was a cooperative effort.

This whole thread is about personal impression players can get. I told you in one of my posts that this is how I feel about this community – not only silverwastes, which was only an example (that information you kindly ignored). I don’t have to proof anything because I’m talking about my personal feelings and impresions. You are the one providing numbers so burden of proof is on you.

Better luck next time.

Huggywuggles.2814:

Compared to WoW? “OMG U SKRUB! U SUK!” or “GDIAF!” or “I hope u die of cancer!”

I was told to “Kill yourself IRL.” in WvW chat, in this game.

I had said nothing offensive.

…and I’m not even going to repeat what certain people have said in TS3 (and I’m not referring to swearing a bit, here, which is pretty normal) .

There are also some very nice people who say hi and inv me to groups.

But, then there were in WoW, too.

Ive played about 10 mmorpgs and gw2 aint bad, but everquest 2 had/have the best community ive come around imo.

I see a little hostility in PvP (just the nature of the beast) and a lot of it in WvW (normally towards or from commanders), but PvE is extremely chill for the most part. The game is engineered from the ground up with mechanics like revives and personal loot/nodes to allow cooperation to flourish.

Hum. I regularly see racist and sexist ‘jokes’, invective and comments in chat. I see a lot of sniping about classes, builds, gaming preferences. A lot of truly nasty stuff about people who are not doing things ‘the right way’ (i.e. maximising loot during events, or not doing things ‘in the right order’). And that’s not in PVP or WvW, that’s just in local chat on various PVE maps. So is this an particularly good community? No, not really. Not the worse by a far stretch, but not exactly a model to hold up to all other games either.

I also rather hesitate to call what is happening in GW2 a community. There’s too little coherence. Guilds mean jack, servers mean little, unless you’re active in WvW, and even then there’s a lot of server hopping. There are no real community generated events of any type, no things large groups gather around and rally to.
Basically, what you have here is a lot of gaming individuals. Quite a few are nice and helpful, but not more than in other games I’ve played. Quite a few are behaving like complete brats, who should have their mouths washed with soaps (frequently). This too is tiresomely common.

Pino.5209:

Stop living in the past, the golden age of online gaming where ppl actually being nice was long over. Welcome to the age of online trolls and ragers. GW2 community is no worse or better than any other online mmorpg out there. It’s just the era we are living in.

That’s exactly what Scipio Æmilianus was saying in 150 BC. Well, maybe not the part about online gaming, but the part about things being better before.

I remember playing vanilla WoW back in 2006. The community, if I remember correctly, was far worst than the current GW2 community, except for some pvp solo queuers and dungeon elitists. Special thanks to the amazing WvW and SW community.

Broom.2561:

I also rather hesitate to call what is happening in GW2 a community. There’s too little coherence. Guilds mean jack, servers mean little, unless you’re active in WvW, and even then there’s a lot of server hopping. There are no real community generated events of any type, no things large groups gather around and rally to.
Basically, what you have here is a lot of gaming individuals. Quite a few are nice and helpful, but not more than in other games I’ve played. Quite a few are behaving like complete brats, who should have their mouths washed with soaps (frequently). This too is tiresomely common.

I’m going to have to agree with this part. GW2 has some nice (and a few not so nice) players, but there’s not really a community here. Not player to player, and not dev to player either. A few people may be connecting here and there, but there’s no overall pulling together.

Compared to FFXIV it’s a lot better. Just like that person said, there are some rotten apples here. But overall, going from that game and back to this one has been interesting. Even the elite 10k ap people have been more kind than the elite XIV are.

Earlier I witnessed 2 people arguing over ambient farms. Things started to heat up. Called each other idiots. Then one one them suggested that they just team up. And they did.

It was weird. That’s just the most recent example I can think of.

Might be true since you don’t need to group or talk to any one really vs other mmorpg
No world chat helps reduce the vile as well but also can make it feel like your playing a sp game in a empty area

uhohhotdog.3598:

Better than wow for sure. I think the way the game is designed leads to that. It’s more cooperative than competitive.

To be fair, WoW is a victim of their size and age. When WoW first came out the community wasn’t very toxic, world events where quite fun and friendly. Granted I don’t know how things are now or how content has changed since TBC.

E: Usually the smaller the game the better the community and the larger the worse. GW2 does have a good community for its size though.

BrooksP.4318:

uhohhotdog.3598:

Better than wow for sure. I think the way the game is designed leads to that. It’s more cooperative than competitive.

To be fair, WoW is a victim of their size and age. When WoW first came out the community wasn’t very toxic, world events where quite fun and friendly. Granted I don’t know how things are now or how content has changed since TBC.

E: Usually the smaller the game the better the community and the larger the worse. GW2 does have a good community for its size though.

I wouldn’t say this is true for all games – Like calls to like. I’ve been in several very small/medium sized communities which were pretty much defined by their toxicity. Even new players who came in and were super nice at first either left after they realized how terrible the communities were or stayed and became toxic themselves.

As for GW2’s community, it DOES shine compared to many other MMOs.

I do wonder if it also depends on how actively the game penalizes players for offensive chat. Guild Wars 2 is pretty active there and the first offense is a 72 hour suspension, which increases with each succeeding offense. From what I’ve read, other games might only have one or two hours suspension for offensive language. In addition I suspect this game’s suspensions don’t start until the next time you log on, unlike others which don’t and therefore can be missed completely.

No MMO is without it’s jerk-heads, but GW2 is by far the greatest community I’ve ever been a part of.

Edit: Then again, I mostly avoid things like competitive PvP and run dungeons with buddies, so there’s that.

To be honest I’ve had the opposite experience. I’ve previously played the following:

Phantasy Star Online
Guildwars 1
World of Warcraft
Aion
RIFT
TERA
Starwars the Old Republic
Wildstar
Guildwars 2

By far Gw2 has had the most toxic and rude community I’ve ever seen. Wildstar, TOR, and WoW had very vibrant RP communities. RIFT involved alot of theory crafting and PuG raids were generally nice despite the difficulty of the content.

I’m not sure why Gw2 is so bad. The RP community is generally unsupported by Arenanet and was pretty much murdered by megaserver (overall I consider megaserver a good thing despite this). Most of the RP I’ve seen is pretty much a Tinder simulator at the Sun in Ossan district, which makes reading passages from Twilight and 50 shades of grey more appealing than reading map chat or emotes.

PvP is horrible. I haven’t played a 2-4 hour session without having to block someone for screaming profanity, rude whispers, etc. Granted im Rank 65 and far from a novice. The matchmaking is just bad and there are easily exploitable maps like courtyard and Spiritwatch that just makes the unranked experience even more horrible. I remember a pic where a guy was comparing the farming premades to a professional football team in full stadium gear vs. a bunch of ragtag pugs with white t-shirts. This is all too real.

WvW is filled with powermongers running cheap roaming builds that 2 shot people or permasteath thieves that play simply to troll all day and reset fights until you meet up with a zerg, causing them to disappear forever. Scepter eles and macro thiefs abusing exploits…

But PvE… man dungeon PvE is the absolute worst. Entire classes (nec) being segregated from content, gear mongers making big deals off of fights taking nanoseconds too long, zerk meta and total alienation for non-conformists. I mean I’ve gotten kicked from groups for the most ridiculous stuff (even being a veteran player). I’m talking about things like having traveler runes on my mesmer’s ascended armor.

Despite this, I think this is still the best game to play. The quality of the game is so good its worth dealing with the crappy community to play. That says something.

Ive played WoW, Tera, SWTOR, Mabinogi, Vindictus, Rift, Aion, ArcheAge, Runescape, Maplestory, and countless other lesser known MMOs and GW2 was by far the friendliest.
It’s not like there are not any trolls, but for every troll I run into there are 10 nice people willing to help. In other MMOs you whenever you ask a question in global chat you will most likely get a troll answer and then more responses mocking/deceiving you, while here when I get a troll answer other players immediately intervene and point me in the right direction.