Worst In-game Community?

[Spudd 0]

Many online games have great in-game communities, with members who will help anyone who needs it, and who treat each other with respect, dignity, and understanding. Those are not the type of communities we are discussing here today though. Today, we are discussing games with very BAD in-game communities. I am, of course, talking primarily about PC MMOs. I'll list a few of what I think are some of the worst, and then you can reply to those, or bring up your own bad experiences. And yes, this will be a ranting topic, so those of you with weak constitutions (or attention spans) may want to leave the topic immediately.

 

Runescape

 

This isn't really so bad, as unlike some MMOs you can get away with not talking to anyone in Runescape. When you do talk, however, the conversations are usually not so great. It says a lot that this game handles capitalization automatically; the members in general are not so literate. If you're into texting, you'll feel right at home with the average Runescape goer, as a good 90% of the messages there contain abbreviations. You'll be asked what your <Insert Skill Here> level is a LOT, by people you've never met, who will simply reply with "o" when you tell them, and they then go back to whatever they were doing. There also seems to be some sort of obsession with couples in Runescape, as you can't go through any remotely populated town without seeing multiple instances of "do u wan 2 be my bf/gf???" Another issue is the random trading that goes on here, people just randomly ask to trade with you, and put all their items up for trade. You then put whatever you have that you're willing to part with there, and they say "no I don't want that." The Runescape community is not so fun to deal with, which is why when I do play (and I don't very often anymore) I generally join some random European server with the least players on it.

 

BOTS

 

Ah, this is a fun community. Everyone there who hosts a room seems to have an idea of what level players they want in the room, but no one ever puts what level that is in the title. What's worse is that even when they do, random newbies join anyway. After being kicked, they rejoin, and get kicked, and rejoin, and so on until the room is full. When trading items, you often get asked what I think is one of the single most annoying things ever. The conversation plays out like this:

 

"Hi."

"hey"

"I'm interested in the <Part Name Here>."

"k"

"How much do you want for it?"

"how much do u have"

"Enough."

"but how much??"

"That's irrelevant."

"wut?"

"..."

 

I wish I could say I've only had that conversation once, but alas, I can't. You also get people who ask you to gift them the real money items, which is really annoying. Another annoying community. Even this, however, did not prepare me for the community of the game I'm about to tell you about:

 

Grand Chase

 

A very fun game, ruined by the worlds WORST in-game community. Some of you will disagree, and all of those who do have clearly never actually played Grand Chase. While the whole community is illiterate and immature, the heart of the terrible community lies within the PvP area. PvP, you see, is populated by over competitive whiny honor freak elitists who have lost the ability to reason as decent human beings. Anything and everything sets them off. Use one attack three times in a row, you are what the community likes to call a "spammer," despite the fact that there's only one attack button and thus are not a whole lot of other choices for a given situation. They like easy wins, so they hate it when you dodge their attacks, and will proceed to call your a "runner". Hold on a sec though, you can't stand still either, especially if you're doing it strategically and actually doing well, that makes you a "camper". One of the favorite maps in the game is one where you can fall off the map easily, which is part of what makes it so ironic how angry they get when you knock them off the edge; that's right, even THAT makes them mad, they call that "pushing." If they can't think of what you just did wrong, they'll likely just cal you a "hacker," and kick you from the room. This is, by the way, the only game where I've actually been flamed for saying "good game" at the end of a match. And if all that weren't enough, they have one final terrible trick up their sleeve. After all that poor sportsmanship, they do something to give themselves the appearance of being good, honorable players, with something called "1v1". This is an unwritten, unofficial "rule" that 90% of GCers comply to. It is where, in a team match, if you defeat 1-2 members on the other team, leaving only one more player on that team, you are expected to sit in a corner, and leave your own teammate to fight the remaining player alone. This totally defeats the purpose of a good team strategy, and makes it so a team with the single best player with a terrible team strategy can still easily succeed in a team fight. And oh boy do they make a fuss when you say "no" to it. This is only a summary of what bugs me the most about the community, but you bet there's more. My hands are wearing tired however, and I doubt you'd want to read any more.

 

Anyhow, those are my top three picks based on what I've played. Your opinions may differ. I'm interested in seeing what other people would consider the worst of the worst.

[rob86 2]

Gaming communities? If there's a word to describe the prejudice and negativity towards people with slow internet connections then I'm a victim of it! Some games like Command&Conquer and Starcraft were designed in a way that let people with slow connections play, it's not so noticeable, but most game developers don't take into account poor dial-up users and assume everyone has broadband connections. I've tried playing a few older games online that I thought my connection could handle, but I've met the same reception every time. People are like, U wanna play? I'm like, sure! They're like this is laggy! I'm like sorry, I'm on dial-up, maybe you should host and see if it's faster? They're like .............block............ :lol:I know it's annoying to play with someone using a slow connection, hey I experience the lag too!, but I wish they'd be a little more polite about it!

[Spudd 0]

I've been called out for lagging on Grand Chase several times, and I AM on DSL. It really stinks. When that happens I generally ask them, "so you want me to quit and never play again?" And they say "no, just stop lagging." To which my response is "oh gee, good idea, I'll just turn off the lag switch on my router and everything will be okay." As if anyone lags on purpose. It's irritating beyond words, as there's really nothing more I can do about my lag than what I'm already doing. (Turning off all outside programs, making sure I'm not downloading anything, even pointing a fan at my computer to keep it cool.) So yeah, it annoys me too.

[rayzoredge 2]

I almost love this thread. Isn't this sort of thing widely-tolerated on most online games, to one extent or another? I love your description of Grand Chase. If it's anything like an FPS, I can relate with Halo 2.I used to love playing LAN games with the guys in the barracks, running CAT5e cable up and down stairs, across the hallway into different rooms, and basically leave a nightmare of cable runs just so that we could play a LAN game of Halo 2. Which was a friggin' blast. No lag, loads of fun with people you knew, and the trash-talking was hilarious, especially over a communicator/headset. Then when that scene slowly started to die and when I found myself with less LAN opportunities, I turned to XBL.Granted, it was fun at times. And granted, I met up with some cool people. But the majority is what set me off from really ever playing Halo 2, or even any other game, on XBL.People. are. horrible. It's amazing what comes out of mouths when you're hiding behind a screen. It was like the Internet, live. People were rude. People swore incessantly. People were racist. People whined when they died and gloated over easy kills. The trash talk was tasteless... and I'm saying this from the point of view being an Army guy that played LAN games with a bunch of other Army guys. You know what the worst part is?Most of these "people" were kids. And I hate to reveal it, but the majority of these kids seemed to be older than 8 and younger than 25.Playing Halo 2 on XBL with this sort of community was ridiculous... and people fed off on each other. It was bad. It made me rethink the coolness factor of that communicator/headset... and it made me wonder if it was even a good idea to let people even talk to each other. Halo 2 had a bad way of presenting the option to mute people: you had to do it in-game and do it with individual people. Unless you were really proficient with the menus and could do it in the 5 seconds you had after you died or before you get killed because you were standing there, you were forced to hear things like an 8-year-old calling you a b*tch and a n*gg*r (true story); constant garbage yelling that, of course, sounds great when you have a BOOM mic IN your mouth (true story); incessant swearing (again, true); kids whining (true true true); the list goes on and on.However, there are a few people who are decent on XBL, and those few are the people I've actually kept on my friends list and more likely, I've met online before I played them. That would be the only draw back to getting XBL for me: to have that medium to be able to play with these guys again, because they reminded me of playing LAN games back in the barracks, because you know these people, you can talk to them, you can trash talk without getting too touchy or be randomly heinous, and it IS a good game, every time, because you can talk about that kind of stuff later. Even if you suck (which I do, compared to a lot of my online buddies... but I WAS pretty damn good and was one of the best in my Army circle), you can talk about how much you suck and how it's funny or trash-talk anyway, because it's fun.Anyway, it's not just Halo 2 with me... it was Command & Conquer: Generals too. I was turned off almost instantly when my first match was with some random person that had a custom map that... you guessed it... gave him a thousand V2's to start with. Starting off with my turtle strategy was kind of useless when I was just first building my base defenses and the cheater was already sending V2's over them and destroying my construction yard...I think one of my best experiences online was with F.E.A.R. There was no talking; only playing. The reason behind that was the only communication to be had was by text, and NO one liked having to take the time to type some crap out. It provided a good community, IMO, since there was more playing, and more standard etiquette of "gg" and "gj" instead of "omfg u sux." F.E.A.R. was funny in that way too anyway when you could congratulate someone else for pinning you to the ceiling with a 25mm Penetrator, killing you with a random flying kick to the face, or even a well-placed mine that made you instantly laugh out loud after going, "What the hell?" The "adrenaline" (or what I would like to call "panic") between close-quarter battles with a shotgun was always crazy and fun and commanded congratulations in order after your opponent reduced you to a bloody mist or decapitated a limb or your head with a well-aimed (or lucky) shot. Weird how that works...

[Spudd 0]

Ah yes, I almost forgot about XBox Live. I love the game service itself, but the community is... Something else... I know what you're saying, the games are populated by a bunch of kids. (Very young kids in most cases.) They don't seem to have even the slightest sense of sportsmanship or common decency, and just spout random trash talk by the minute. It's for this reason that it's best to play Halo 3, or any similar games with a friend. It's quite surprising how much less that sort of thing bothers you when you have your buddies around to laugh with you. It also doesn't feel as bad when you lose fifty times in a row. (True story.) Guess that relates to what you said about the LAN parties. Anyways, yeah, Live can get pretty bad, it does vary from game to game though. I'd have to say Halo 3 was the worst, but then there's games like Soul Calibur IV where people rarely talk at all, which is actually probably for the best most of the time.

[Zagubadu? 0]

Xbox Live Community. Oh my god. Primarily Call of Duty and Halo. I always join lobbies that should have idle chat, talking about the game, etc. Instead I get mindless screaming, swearing, racial comments. I mean you can't even hear what anyone is saying. Its not even trash talking its just GARBLE! GARBLE! Yea and also little kids with high pitched voices screaming. I don't even mind if they just talk normally but I always seem to hear them scream. Now getting on the subject of MmoRpg. World of Warcraft probably has like 30% decent people and the rest are so immature. They just ruin the entire game for me sometimes. I'll be in a dungeon and some people will pull the whole instance! You know childish stuff like that. I don't understand how people would act so immature on the internet just because the people they interact with they'll most likely never see in their whole life.