Guild Wars 2

Why come ingame, everyone is super positive and supportive of the game, but on the forums, we have people complaining and bickering like they’ve never dealt with a growing MMO before…

So, heres the question…

Why are the forums so negative?
(Not everyone, just a select few)

Because the people who enjoy the game, are playing the game. Most of them don’t feel the need to shout at everyone about how good the game is and how much they enjoy playing. They just do it.

The people who don’t enjoy the game, who want the game to become something it isn’t, or are frustrated because their pet peeves have not been immediately addressed by the devs and fixed, get ignored when they stand around in the game shouting about it. So they come here and find other people shouting about the same pet peeves and it makes them feel better.

tolunart.2095:

Because the people who enjoy the game, are playing the game. Most of them don’t feel the need to shout at everyone about how good the game is and how much they enjoy playing. They just do it.

The people who don’t enjoy the game, who want the game to become something it isn’t, or are frustrated because their pet peeves have not been immediately addressed by the devs and fixed, get ignored when they stand around in the game shouting about it. So they come here and find other people shouting about the same pet peeves and it makes them feel better.

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Lol, IMO that sums up what I thought, I was hoping they had a real reason to be so negative but I guess they don’t.

before tolunarts angry immature attacks he had a good point.

People who are unhappy are more liketly to say something, people who are content are going to stay in the game. Also, most people who were severely unhappy have already quit so you wont see them in game. (people tend not to keep logging on to something that is upsetting them)

I had some complainers in my guild, now my guild is less than 1/10th the size from 3 weeks ago as the complainers simply quit logging on. Hope this helps.

tolunart.2095:

Because the people who enjoy the game, are playing the game. Most of them don’t feel the need to shout at everyone about how good the game is and how much they enjoy playing. They just do it.

The people who don’t enjoy the game, who want the game to become something it isn’t, or are frustrated because their pet peeves have not been immediately addressed by the devs and fixed, get ignored when they stand around in the game shouting about it. So they come here and find other people shouting about the same pet peeves and it makes them feel better.

True story.

Judging the state of a game by its forum community is like judging the health of a city by its hospitals.

Forums are places people come to vent their frustrations, issue complaints and demand fixes from the Dev team. As a corollary, negativity tends to breed negativity. Therefore, a community that’s caustic and unpleasant tends to drive away everyone who isn’t also caustic and unpleasant. We’re less likely to bother contributing to a forum that’s constantly upset about something.

The “art” of discussion is bleeding out in the corner, both outside of the Interwebs and on it, where it wasn’t that healthy in the first place. There is a very hilarious paradox that while, in theory, Internet/text based communication removes plenty of factors that can negatively affect disucssion, the lack of said factors actually makes things worse overall, not better.

I have no idea how the “happy players don’t feel the need to vent on forums” argument factors into all this, but if I had to take a guess, I would probably agree that a person posting on a forum is more likely to have a problem with the game, wants to see something changed, clarified etc.

Then there is the whole “Its all just negative and pointless” fad that has been going around as well, additionally crippled by the completely unnatural understanding of what discussion is and how it works propagated by a lot of the “popular” sources.

Overall, if you know the principles of good, logical argumentation, know when to call it quits, don’t use trendy words like “strawman” , avoid extremes and generally approach everything with an appropriate distance, you will do fine. Internet Forums as a general rule do require a thick skin and distance to yourself, but that can be said about any sort of discussion medium.

Zinwrath.2049:

before tolunarts angry immature attacks he had a good point.
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LOL I’m neither angry nor immature. It has been explained on this forum ad nauseum that Arenanet staff are aware of the botting issues, they are working on fixes, and will post updates when they have new information to share. It has also been explained that the best thing to do is continue reporting bots through the game’s report mechanism and that individual posts here will not be responded to.

Still, people open new threads about bots, post pictures of alleged bots that break the TOS, and open new threads to complain when these threads are closed. Do you expect anyone to believe that these people think they are doing something good when they deliberately post threads they know will be closed and deliberately break the TOS when the threads are closed?

At this point you have two options:

A: Wait for Arenanet to develop its plans and see if the situation improves.

B: Do something else for a while and come back later to see if the situation has improved.

Posting threads that you know the mods will immediately close does nothing productive or positive for the game. If you really do care about the game you will let people do their work without interference.

When children throw tantrums and their parents give them a cookie to make them stop, it doesn’t do anyone any favors. The child just learns that if he screams loud enough his parents will give him whatever he wants. This does not promote development into a mature and responsible adult.

If you went by what you read on the forums alone, you would think this was a terrible game with a failing population.

My experience is the opposite. The game is great, the community in the game is thriving and friendly, and most people playing it are having fun and have nothing to complain about. They aren’t bored and they accept the game the way it is.

It’s a mistake to accept any game’s forum as the true state of the game. Found that out the hard way a few years ago with another game.

“You cannot judge a game by its forums” … I think, by this point, it’s ah internet axiom.

Morningstar hit the nail on the head (I haven’t figured out how to quote his/her post, so I’ll just refer to it.)

My reaction to GW2 (as seen through the eyes of a GW player) has generally been disappointment. Whatever. I’d be interested in an honest and open-minded debate about the design decisions that lead to me feeling that way, but I don’t see that happening on internet forums; I’ve been around long enough to know better, just like I know the core game mechanics of GW2 will not change, no matter how many complaint posts appear.

But I haven’t been playing long, and when I’m in-game, I’m there to play the game, warts and all, not stand around near a waypoint and gripe. I’m guessing there are plenty of ambivalent players out there, but I doubt many of them think that in-game is the place to voice their misgivings.

And to echo other’s sentiments, but perhaps more strongly, you shouldn’t accept anything you read on an internet game forum as remotely close to fact. If you like the game, that’s good; if you don’t (unless it’s due to a pervasive bug,) then you suffered from not having a demo available and will probably smart at the expenditure of funds. I think everyone would be better off if they were less concerned about what the ‘community’ (and I think that’s a dodgy concept, at best) thought of the game and just played or didn’t play it as they saw fit.