It’s common wisdom among MMORPG players that player communities thrive in smaller games with lots of history, developer input, and social interaction. Games like Lord of the Rings Online always float to the top of discussions about where the best community truly is, especially when we’re turning off open chat and romanticizing specific social events.
But as we have repeatedly observed, games traditionally thought of as toxic also produce players capable of great generosity and exceptional kindness.
As we did last year, we’re going to try to get the measure of the different games’ communities right now. Forget about a year ago, five years ago, fifteen years ago; let’s talk about today, this year: Which MMORPG had the best community in 2017 – and why?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
FFXIV has one of the best communities I’ve seen. I developed a sort of PTSD-like behavior over grouping with strangers and quit playing healers after WoW came out with their dungeon finder. For straight-up randomness and friendliness, I haven’t had a better experience with strangers than I have had in FFXIV.
I’m not even sure. The only game I ever play with other people because it forces me to is FFXIV, which at low level seem nice enough. But outside of the occasional dungeon run, all is silence just like every where else, minus the trolls in WoW General.
LOTRO for me, Laurelin (EU RP) is a blessed placed filled with wonderful, creative and friendly people
Lucky you. I miss Nimrodel these days. Arkenstone is like being in WoW or Age of Conan community. :/ I basically ignore my “World” tab these days so that I can enjoy the game and memory of what once was.
I don’t really play enough different MMOs to really vote. Marvel Heroes had a really nice but small community that I enjoyed this year, so I’d probably give it to them. It probably helps that there isn’t really much to be competitive about in that game, so you really would just log in for fun.
I also played Aion which also was nice while I played before the merge. I heard that my faction fell apart after the server merge with trolls who have the raid power who decided to ruin the faction and I stopped following it.
I’m presently playing FFXIV. As a returning player a lot of people have been nice and patient. Yesterday I did run into a group where I told them it was my first time in a dungeon, and they ran into the final boss while the 10 second cutscene played. I was locked out of the fight and since I was the healer, they died. They complained that I didn’t skip the cutscene. Um, they could have waited 10 seconds. They also got 6000 bonus gil which is like 20-30X the cost of their repairs because I was new and you get a bonus when you clear something with a new player.
Later in Novice chat for new players, someone said I should be catering to the bored veterans with level 70 on all jobs by skipping 10 second cutscenes. No thanks – if it’s my first run I’m going to watch the god-damned 10 second cutscene. It really put me in a bad mood.
That’s so frustrating, but really does aptly summarize what people are generally like in level cap content (or any raid) these days in FFXIV. No patience and little empathy for anyone else.
About a month ago, I got kicked from a dungeon for the very first time in the 4 years I’ve been playing ARR. It was the classic ‘2 FC-mates kicking someone so their other FC mate can join.’
It was right before the final boss, tank said he needed a moment, and then I was promptly kicked. My friend was also in the party, so she saw another healer join instantly and asked why I was kicked. No response. So, we looked them up on the lodestone and sure enough, they were all in the same FC. We hadn’t had any problems prior to that; no deaths, no complaints, and I was even outdamaging their dps on trash pulls!
Of course, that’s just one instance, but do just about any 24 man alliance that can’t be facerolled a few times and you’ll quickly discover how “great” the community is.
I’m sorry that happened to you. It’s horrible to do all of the grunt work to be kicked at the last minute so some friend can get free rewards for almost no effort! I really hope that doesn’t happen too often. It’s just sad and selfish. They could have just re-run the dungeon with their friend after you finished the last boss if they wanted them to get the clear so badly.
Yeah, I finally just started skipping and watching it in the Inn, which is a pretty neat feature. But like, the last two dungeons of ARR 2.0, there’s like 30 minutes of cutscenes in there, and the actual dungeon only took like 15.
Yea random pugs can do that. On the other hand when I played my guild was awesome, insisted on my watching all the cutscenes in one of the major quests.
And defended me in ones which were not all guildies. Because of them I always think the best of that game.
Star Citizen! The amount of positive, patient backers always rises above the haters, doombringers and the DS’s of the internet. The amount of entertaining banter a casual reader might enjoy following daily too makes it the most entertaining game community to follow.
Nice to see the game devs ignore most of it and continue to create magic where most of the above won’t matter and we’ll all be one big (nearly happy) gaming community.
Take my upvote, good sir
RPG MO
City of….oh, right. :-(
Paragon City…
Pokemon Go, You get to meet new people and most of the time it is pleasurable.
Imo the all time favorite LotRO community wins.
Well…so far the Blade & Soul community have been behaving themselves, despite some of the horrific ways they’ve named themselves. WoW and TERA are relatively the same as ever…
…it kinda reminds me of that passive honest nest being maintained in the small tree above me. That is, if I don’t poke at it too much, I won’t get stung. Not sure that’s answers the DG question or not…but that’s been the extent of my gaming community experience for this year. :)
Edit/Erratum: …passive *hornets nest…proper.