Where has the sence of Community gone?

[MegaMouse]

As the title says I am wondering what happened. When Profecies came out you couldn't go to any mission without players looking for groups to play in. The Guilds weren't always competeing for points, there was even friendly rivalry between some of the guilds.
When Factions came out it pretty much fractured the community into those who love to farm and those who do not. I don't believe this is what NC-Soft envisioned for the game. The faction point farming was pretty much designed for those who like the PVP part of the game, while ignoring the rest of us.
Then NightFall came out and introduced the Hero's. In all they are a good idea but the way they are fractures the player base even more. Why get a group when you can now have customizeable henchies? Again I realy do not think that NC-Soft has envisioned this type of problem.
I personaly like to go and get pugs for missions and quests. I don't use henchies much even though they are available.I like th human interaction that there used to be when GW first came out.
If anyone else feels the same as I do please feel free to post here.

Mega Mouse

[Hockster]

There's a lot of threads like this. No need to start two new ones.

[Lonesamurai]

ok, you seriously want to know where the sense of community has gone? I would answer with how I feel, but I'd be banned and then slit my wrists from depression...

I'm sad to say I've actually become bored of the game... after two and a half years...

[Mournblade]

Originally Posted by Lonesamurai

I'm sad to say I've actually become bored of the game... after two and a half years...

How did you make it past that boring first year before the game was released?

[Lonesamurai]

Originally Posted by Mournblade

How did you make it past that boring first year before the game was released?

A great guild and an amazing group of friends... Oh, and Factions and Nightfall new content

[Kook~NBK~]

I haven't been playing GW for 2-1/2 years , but in the 21 months since I picked up the game, I've seen lots of things come along that have weakened the "community" aspect of the game. The introduction of Heros did a lot of damage in this area. The spreading out of players over 3 chapters has thinned out the population, but even in the busiest places there's not much chat going on.

But most of the problem lies with the players themselves. Too many people are in too big of a hurry to get through the game to spend time in town chatting: 1. Do mission A. 2. Visit merchant ot get rid of unwanted loot. 3. Visit storage. 4. Pick up Quest B. 5. Gogogogogo! 6. Repeat.

Many people have abandoned the local chat due to the high volume of WTS/WTB spam that doesn't belong there. The "market towns" of LA, Kamadan, etc. are no place for conversation, but there's no reason to keep local chat off in most other areas.

There are many, many guilds out there with 40+ members, most of them in Alliances. That's all the community most people need.

Using TS or Vent to chat with guildies really cuts down on the in-game chat, so that part of the "community" aspect of the game goes unnoticed, making it seem as if the problem is even bigger than it is.

[lilnate22]

Originally Posted by Lonesamurai

ok, you seriously want to know where the sense of community has gone? I would answer with how I feel, but I'd be banned and then slit my wrists from depression...

I'm sad to say I've actually become bored of the game... after two and a half years...

yep..same here farming is useless...and im not gona make a ele just to farm, HA is taken over by stupid guilds...ahh gota luv it!

[Tufty]

All you need is a good guild to regain the sense of comunity. Get out there and do things. I love the Heroes and henchies and very rarely play missions with People for so many reasons. The game can be frustrating enough without someone rushing a mission messing it up and proclaiming everyone else is a noob.
Im increasingly getting more bored of the game with perpetual nerfs coming out and screwing up things that I enjoyed doing. I didnt do them to get rich and by no means is it advantages for some players and not others as all you do is come here and find builds so you can do it too.
I find myself logging on to the game now and half playing then getting bored. The last thing that inspired me was capping all the warrior elites but now Im back to being bored

[Tufty]

Plus gimicky events like wintersday dont really add to the game and are a minor distraction to consistant players. They should try something different to inspire some of the longer serving players

[Lonesamurai]

Originally Posted by lilnate22

yep..same here farming is useless...and im not gona make a ele just to farm, HA is taken over by stupid guilds...ahh gota luv it!

I've never farmed and the titles don't mean anything to me... New content every six months kept me going, but its not thee anymore...

BF2142, here I come!

[Cebe]

Where has the sense of community gone? It died when the wammos went off and aggroed everything on the map. Think about it...A lot of players are complete idiots...why would you want to play with an idiot that doesn't know how the game works, how to play it, what skills go well together? That is why, when Nightfall came out, Heroes are "teh win"...EVEN if you give Koss a Monk secondary profession HE doesn't aggro every god damn red dot out there...

It's like the Other day when I was in The Wilds. We were going to go in with heroes, my brother and I, but he took pity on a wammo and invited him. Mr. Wammo was desperate for the bonus (and we wanted it too) but even though we said "Don't kill the Centaurs", clicked, and drew furiously on the map the STUPID wammo still ran on in and killed them.

[Aegeroth]

Was there a Community?

As soon as a new game picks up, major cross-game Guild pick up Vent/TS and just disappear, dragging multitudes of players with them.
Then youve got the unavoidable: Anti-Socials! Self Explanitory.
Mass AFKing creates a sense that no one wants to talk to you; so hey i wont talk to any back! There goes another chunk of players.
Hell by the end of the night, youve got like 20% of the game still talking to people they dont really know.
The only other way to get people talking is forced co-operation, which then falls on Alliances/Guilds.

Again, Was there a Community?

[devils wraths]

well if you compare the wintersday just gone to the one before you will notcie a huge differnt in the commuinty. the first wintersday everyone one was happy and willing to chat and help. but the one just gone was just full of hate and telling peopel wrong things.

so basiclaly some where last year something happend

[Titan Chrae]

Your "Community" is what you make of it. I go through periods where I don't want to take real people or people don't want to go with me.

If I want to do a mission or a quest, though, I can almost always find a group of some kind. I can pull from my guild, allaince and or form a pug. I seldom do missions without at least a few Guild members in my group and I often recruit new members durring missions where we can't field a whole guild group. Sometimes I even join parties on this message board. (Jade Quarry mapping for instance)

Quite often I adventure with Heros/Hench though. I am one of the few people in my guild that likes to capture every skill and explore every nook and cranny of the world. When I do that I am limiting my community to heros/hench unless someone wants a specific skill I am going to cap at the time.

Quite frankly...it is more fun to go with friends but much more efficient to just take heros to go cap a skill.

[twicky_kid]

Basicly better games have been released. Anet's constantly changing things so you have relearn the game over and over. If you stay you'll be bored. If you leave for a month or 2 its really hard to get back into the swing of things in pvp.

WoW burning crusade is out. So is vanguard.

There wasn't much community to begin with after beta. Then people just started leaving. I've seen a constant flow of people leaving the game. Not many new players these days.

[Prefectus]

there is a ton of people out there still were just all spread "thin" on doing diff. missions quests pvp gvg hoh uw and fow there are more options out there now so naturally your going to see less people out in the one mission you're doing

[Traveller]

Originally Posted by Aegeroth

Again, Was there a Community?

I think there was. When I started in the summer of 2005, the game was relatively new and most people didn't know what to do. Of course a lot of it was the newness and the charm of doing everything for the first time, but you still can't help remembering times when you could actually chat in towns, have people help each other and not laugh if you're an inexperienced player and having a purple 13-29 hammer was special. But the community spirit was definately better and morale overall higher.

It somehow seems to me that so much of the community is just so damn angry all the time. Spamming, cussing, being impatient and rushing their way through the game. It's definately become an allegory of the rest of the world, but it sure wasn't always so.

[BryanM]

Before release, during the E3 for Everyone event, there weren't even henchmen. You had to play with people in the missions.

(The areas between missions were also designed for one man parties, so much for that one. The Guild Hall seems like a fansite that liked what Guild Wars was going to be...)

The people were much nicer, you'd get into a group with one or two people interested in talking maybe 1/4 of the time... If there will ever be a time like that again, it'll be after GW is dead and only crazy people who won't let it go (Hello, I can not let things go) are around.

The last time I let a PUG into my group:

Was doing the first mainland mission with the 5 billion exploding afflicted guys (as opposed to the other 5 million places in that campaign that had the same enemies. More scorpians plzzzzz grrr). Was a ritualist I think. Had a guild mate with me. He had Barrage. Barrage is a nice skill when used against a billion guys at once.

Was planning to go in with him and the henchmens. Two mesmers instavite me. I feel whimsical, and say what the hell. Let them in. It is a class with a touch of finesse, right? There was maybe a chance of intelligence here?

First guy leaves after a few seconds of looking at the henchmen.

Second guy says we need a "tank". The second I saw that word, I knew I should have just kicked the guy. But no.

I tried to explain that we had barrage and a couple NPCs with an armor level that wouldn't make them a liability, despite their horrid skill lists. I would have gone on to explain that if any class is a "tank" it is the monk. Or maybe the ranger with its longbow range, that's kind of like a canon? But no class in the game has treads nor stores large volumes of water. So the very word "tank" should never be mentioned in the game. But by then...... he was GONE!

A mystery. Maybe his internet connection dropped.

So I went in with my one human buddy and got Masters without any stress.

I quit PUGing years ago. Why bring people who might be a liability in the Desert missions, or the falling down crap level, when I have an army of mediocre but reliable bots?

It's great being able to beat every mission with an empty skillbar.

And by great I mean kind of lame.

Edited to note:

I ended up in my guild when I saw some wacko demanding an all-necromancer group in the underworld. We had to put up with one elementalist that day, but dang if we didn't get far.

Too bad Nature's Renewal was still a huge piece of cheese back then. Damn those behemoths.

[Fluffyx]

Originally Posted by MegaMouse

As the title says I am wondering what happened. When Profecies came out you couldn't go to any mission without players looking for groups to play in. The Guilds weren't always competeing for points, there was even friendly rivalry between some of the guilds.
When Factions came out it pretty much fractured the community into those who love to farm and those who do not. I don't believe this is what NC-Soft envisioned for the game. The faction point farming was pretty much designed for those who like the PVP part of the game, while ignoring the rest of us.
Then NightFall came out and introduced the Hero's. In all they are a good idea but the way they are fractures the player base even more. Why get a group when you can now have customizeable henchies? Again I realy do not think that NC-Soft has envisioned this type of problem.
I personaly like to go and get pugs for missions and quests. I don't use henchies much even though they are available.I like th human interaction that there used to be when GW first came out.
If anyone else feels the same as I do please feel free to post here.

Mega Mouse

Its very sad to see so very few people wanting to play with each other anymore. The games population has been spread very thin and that is why I felt they introduced heroes. While it does let you play through areas where you couldn't get a pug it has killed the community a bit more. Honestly I don't think we will ever have what we did in Prophecies. I've had to play through Nightfall four times now with just heroes/henchmen and its been very dull. So when I see a pug I just jump on it for fun even if I don't need the mission. I will always prefer playing with humans over the AI.

[Tempy]

Originally Posted by devils wraths

well if you compare the wintersday just gone to the one before you will notcie a huge differnt in the commuinty. the first wintersday everyone one was happy and willing to chat and help. but the one just gone was just full of hate and telling peopel wrong things.

so basiclaly some where last year something happend

I agree...and I think its called a bunch of kids(not just talking age) got the game for christmas last year and weren't to LA last Wintersday. After that the community just stopped...they don't care, its all about them, and STFU NOOB, if you say different, but by God you better answer my question that I spam a million times!

Sorta makes ya wonder what their "real" community is like don't it?