Why are these forums full of complaints and negativity?

[Moontide]

Welcome to every official MMO forum ever. People don't usually take a peek at official forums all that often unless they'd have some improvement they'd want to have in their beloved game. It just feels like a good way to reach towards the community and the devs for those.

[Starlord]

It's so horrible that they still play the game. Logic right?

[Rivienne]

See the big wall of text by @Alcyon_Densetsu Mostly agree with that. Typically when people have a problem, real or imaginary, they want to complain. Sometimes you have that amazing moment you feel you just have to share, but those are less common. Usually it is more along the lines of "hey that was awesome", and you move on. Negative things on the other hand just get bottled up until you feel you have to share.

Thus the people most likely to post are the ones who have something to complain about. This in turn attracts the reverse complainers and die hard white knight: the person who looks for slights where there are none, and looks for a reason to attack the poster or defend the product. This means the biggest most active threads are going to be negative by nature. Then you have the first group @Alcyon_Densetsu talks about, and they dive in to the negative posts, to try and help diffuse things which rarely works, and makes it seem like everyone on the forums is involved in the negativity.

You also will note that most of the negative posts get comments by the same people, if they weren't started by the same people. If you do the math, there are less than 1% of the total player base who are active in the negativity the forums.

Mind you there are also valid complaint threads, constructive criticisms, thoughts on improving the game, but these usually get run over by the negativity groups, either to defend the game, or generally hijack to vent something else. I think everyone has probably seen this, if not been guilty of it themselves at one point. Negativity can be catching.

The best bet is to try and retain objectivity as much as you can, and if you dive in, be rational and have a coherent reason for why you are involving yourself. Otherwise, only post on the positive, or silly, or innocent question threads. (Which so often get buried before they are even seen).

[Nura]

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I Only come here to see all the rants and put some fuel in the fire
It is my daly enjoyment to see all the people raging about everything xD

[Klefth]

I cannot go into a thread or read a thread title without someone nagging or complaining about the game and talking about how "horrible" it is.
I usually like frequenting the forums of the game I'm currently playing but everyone here just cannot enjoy the game and all they do is whine and it puts me off.

why can't everyone just be happy and enjoy playing this game for now, there are obviously some things that still need to be worked on, but it'll smooth out eventually.

Because the game underwent a lot of unnecessary changes for the worse and some of us would like to see them fixed to have this game be the best it can be.

Also, way to make a complaint thread about complaining.

[Bearssi]

Short explanation. For every bad experience there needs to be ten good experiences to balance it. The customer having a bad experience is more vocal than the one having a good experience.

[wolfsspirit]

It's also reason why devs don't care about the na/eu forums and hardly read them at all.. it's all negativity and for every fix they get 100 complaints back.
No matter how hard they work and how many things they fix.. people will always complain.
It's never good enough.. add some new stuff and u have 100 complaints about it , noone is happy with new stuff.. because it's not designed as the complainers demands it.

New MMO communities are like that... i remember the old days when i played MMO's , the forums had hardly any complaints at all.. bug reporting yes and advice and hints for the devs.. the people nowadays are spoiled .. new gen MMO players

[Jess_Spark]

Luckily 90% of people playing the game are not on the forums. The negativity is a small portion of the people actually playing and enjoying the game.

Forums in every game I've played are negative. Seems like the place people go to just unleash. I just use forums to learn new things and I generally just ignore the "I hate this game etc etc" rants.

We love this game or we wouldn't be here...

[Bibimbap]

Because they're the English forums.

[Esura]

It's also reason why devs don't care about the na/eu forums and hardly read them at all.. it's all negativity and for every fix they get 100 complaints back.

That's a poor excuse. When you work and deal with your customer base you are going to deal with a lot of negativity no matter what you do or sell or whatever. That's life. They most likely don't care about the boards because they don't seem to care about us in comparison to their Japanese players to begin with. I'm not liking these posts in these threads lately that seems to want to stifle criticism just because they love the game. I love this game too but if someone got some issue with the game they might as well say it. Not all criticism are criticisms to take heed to mind you but it's not like all of them are worth ignoring like this OP is implying and SE knowing what's up would only help make the game better for everyone. Not just MMOs but other gaming communities I see others who want us to just deal with whatever a company throws at us just because and it's irksome.