How did the community become this toxic?

[KenzieLynch]

The funny thing is if they sat all of us in a field we'd all look at our phones or feet then say hi THEN promptly freak out.

You wouldn't even need to go that far. If you got most of these players on voice chat rather than text chat they would become drastically timid.

[amnie]

I like it all, too. But Joe Schmoe from Idahoe.... Idaho, got caught up in the -oe, wouldn't be able to listen to thrash and pick out a symphony :P

I'm not saying redefining is necessarily bad, I just mean to say we won't be able to call them mmorpgs any more.

well maybe, but I don't see that happening right now *shrug*
I do see the basics of why I originally enjoyed the genre when I started playing (UO in 2000)
we've all grown up, and may either hold onto the past (still believing the community in FFXI was better than the community in WoW just because people were .forced. to be friendly) or realise that nostalgia eventually wears off (getting lured outside of town as a noob in UO was certainly not fun and there were plenty of people scared off of the genre right on their first day back then. I don't mind if a game like WoW.. or hell, upcoming games like Wildstar.. makes these people - or more likely their children - enjoy the genre again)

[Peptaru]

Look at what happens when people are not forced to be friendly. I do still find nice people, and i find helpful people, but I find fewer of them than i find, let's say, unsavory others.

Community was a big part of the genre, even if it was forced, but that is falling out of popularity. It's about stuff now, not people.

[gadenp]

End Game is all about doing hard to super hard content as fast as possible, multiple times to get loot.

This is not conducive to social interactions.

And you can forget about easy content, as many have already gotten their gear and do not need to grind them anymore.

Even the grind for gear is not really social interaction. It is just 8 people or 24, doing their job for a chance at gear. In no get, then to again with different party or same till get gear and leave.

[amnie]

I don't think that's the sole reason. in LOTRO they had a system for years where getting the top gear meant having to run 1-2 dungeons on endless repeat (in fact usually an add-on in that game meant little new end-game and you still needed the previous tiers to progress) and yet it was always cheerful. granted you find 'bad beans' in all games, and the lodestone forum often makes it sound a lot worse than how it actually is in-game, but it's like as soon as you reach lvl 50 you're playing with an entirely different set of people.
well, except they are creeping into the leveling dungeons too know and turn sastasha into speed runs because apparently all that matters is getting a few more tomes quickly. (even if they get the message that a player is new to the instance)

[ImDingDing]

Right now I see people trying to sell "Crafting Powerleveling service for 750k" ... What the hell is that?

They craft HQ items for crafting leve turn-in for you, you can max a DoH in less than 2hours if you have 60+ leve points.

You can't put something on the market board without it being instantly undercut for 50% of the average price, so making any kind of profit from anything you do is near impossible.

you can offer the power level server above and undercut them for like 600k. Making gil is like making money in real life, it doesnt suppose to be enjoyable otherwise everyone will be rich and cuz huge inflation.

[Doo]

Making gil is like making money in real life, it doesnt suppose to be enjoyable otherwise everyone will be rich and cuz huge inflation.

whew I'm glad I'm poor then it means I'm enjoying the game.

[Cupcakehyperion]

There are many worse communities. Go look at the Youtube comments of anything. Go on Twitch or any site with chat boxes.

It's just a societal thing. NAs are raised seeing that they can sue whoever does something they don't agree with or they can go home and complain about their teacher giving them homework and their parents will take their side. In Japan, parents get angry if their kid doesn't obey the teacher. It's a different problem, but at least it creates a community that genuinely wishes the dev.s of a game good health and people who wanna help each other succeed.

People are jerks. Find jerks you can understand/get along with or spend life looking for people that like to play pretend and enjoy being married to someone who doesn't admit that they're gay until they're 45.

[LobsterBisque]

Yes because you spent 2 years playing it. Is it even a serious question?

Ohnoes! Looks like I'm murdering this game then

[Tlamila]

I won't read 11 pages so I'll just answer the OP.
It's a serious issue I noticed myself. I remember back at launch, I enjoyed puging. Seriously. In each and every game before I hated PUGs because always full of jerks, in here the only bad thing most of the time was you can't see anymore people from other servers. I was almost starting to believe "p2p has better communities" was true.
Now interacting with strangers gives me itches, you can almost be sure every group will have a jerk. And if you go on stuff like Titan HM, oh my. I stopped trying it in DF cause tired not of the battle but of the people there. One can face a boss challenge, but a patience challenge... it's nothing I want out of a videogame, especially one I pay for.

Now what's to blame for this change? Maybe the game having more people at endgame and that easily turns people into entitled elitists? Maybe the newly added PvP, since the average (not saying all are) PvPer is a jerk? (just look at LoL community...). Or just people having ran out of things to do in game and being nasty out of boredom? I don't know, but whatever it is I wish it would stop <.<