As I type this, we’ve been watching the Lord of the Rings Online transfer situation unfold for over a week now, and I’ve personally been monitoring the game’s Discord 64-bit transfer chat channel obsessively, largely because that’s where the most up-to-date developer proclamations are landing first. But that’s given me a strange window into the broader LOTRO community beyond my usual Landroval enclave, and I saw a lot of weird behavior.
See, if this were any MMORPG but LOTRO, I would’ve expected people hurling vitriol and slurs and death threats starting on day two, but that didn’t really happen. Even the angry LOTRO players are more aghast and frustrated than anything, and I just didn’t see real toxicity. Obnoxious self-righteousness, sure. Furious “I’m quitting” announcements, a few of those too. But toxicity, no. Honestly, what got under my skin the most was really the opposite problem: It was people demanding that gamers stop complaining/demanding answers, suggesting that top brass at SSG isn’t responsible for the chaos (seriously, people said this), and telling upset players to touch grass. I even saw one player claim that asking for basic accountability from the devs was the equivalent of violence from a mob with pitchforks.
Finally, somebody in chat over the weekend called all this out for what it is: toxic positivity. Toxic positivity is not the normal human urge to look for a silver lining in a bad situation; it’s a dysfunctional way of dealing with stress by denying it’s happening and pressuring others to validate that denial. In this case, it also runs cover for the people responsible for the bad situation itself (and who have been acknowledging and apologizing for the mistakes), which is probably why it annoys me so much: Toxic positivity undermines the devs’ ability to seek absolution and make reparations, too!
For this week’s Massively Overthinking, I want to talk about the problem of toxic positivity in MMOs. It need not be about LOTRO, as this is a problem lots of communities face, especially when the players feel kinship with the developers and read all criticism from fellow customers as attacks on their own identity. When have you seen toxic positivity become even more a problem in an MMO than actual toxicity?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): When we were discussing this topic in team chat, we couldn’t help but compare toxic positivity with “white knight” behavior, even though I hate that term. “Stan” might be another way to look at it. I see those on the spectrum of toxic positivity. Some folks are mostly interested in protecting themselves and see any negativity, true or not, as a threat on their mindset. But others are simply running defense for whoever is being criticized, and I suppose that’s where “white knight” behavior kicks in.
And we get a lot of toxic positivity turned on us too; it’s a journalist’s job to present the unvarnished truth, and the truth is often critical, unpleasant, and negative. So I get my guard up whenever someone is claiming that a dev studio is blameless for a situation it brought on itself and that in fact we’re the real problem for reporting on the problem. It just makes my head hurt. Gaming problems don’t get solved that way; it’s actually important for players to put some pressure on studios to get their houses in order, same as any other consumer. And that’s true whether we’re talking about SSG or Blizzard or ArenaNet.
If I had to pick one set of MMOs where this comes up a lot, it’s Kickstarter MMOs, and I think there’s an obvious reason for it: Once people have skin (money) in the game and have made it part of their identity, they feel obligated to defend it because they’re really defending their own choices.
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): I’d have to say I experienced the most toxic positivity in Final Fantasy XIV. Everyone knows the game’s reputation, it’s one of the least toxic and friendly communities. For the most part, I agree, but the level of of passive aggression in FFXIV is what makes the community so difficult to work with outside of doing dailies with them. I can never tell if people are just being “pretend nice” or being actually nice to me in this game. In games like League of Legends, at least when people hate you, they’ll say it to your e-face, but in FFXIV I just cant get a read on folks! It always feels like there’s some poop talking in the background or something.
A standout example: A popular MMO YouTuber once did a review of the game, and his primary gripe was at the super slow pace that the game plays for newbies. He specifically said the game was boring. He was not wrong, and everyone knows the pacing in this game can be sooooo terribly slow. But then anyone who says that gets flooded with, “Oh it’ll be fun at level 60, 70, 80 bla bla bla.” That’s got to be one of the worst ways to sell a game. I don’t want to make generalizations, but that’s the most common argument I hear about this game’s abysmal pacing. Try telling that to a busy person – yeah, they won’t be playing this game any time soon.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): There is most definitely an easy answer in Star Citizen, but I’ve also felt a bit of this toxic positivity – or at least something near enough – out of the folks who get behind City of Heroes: Homecoming quite a bit. Apparently a game that old and run by players absolves it of all sins to some people.
Colin Henry (@ChaosConstant): I understand the urge, when someone criticizes something you love, to lash out and defend it, even when you know, in your heart of hearts, that the criticism is legitimate. We’ve all seen it a million times in this genre, and I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it over the years.
I remember there was a podcast for an MMO that I followed (I won’t name names) that I really liked, and it started gaining a good bit of popularity, the hosts got invited to some live reveal shows, the devs were on their podcast, etc. It was at this point that I started to notice the toxic positivity. They would react to even the most basic criticism of the game with distain, constantly singing its praises. I rolled my eyes at that for a few months, but it was when they started a habit of mocking World of Warcraft for no good reason (a game I don’t even like, by the way) that I quit mid episode and never went back. It made me really sad; I liked the early days of that show, but it just wasn’t worth listening to them do free PR for a game. I think it’s because they had gotten their identities so wrapped up in being “the guys who talk about this one MMO” that they took any criticism as a personal affront.
I think we should all make a habit of self examination, to make sure we’re keeping my praise or criticism of games and their teams fair and realistic.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog):Â Ironically enough, I think there’s a lot of toxic positivity floating around in parts of the World of Warcraft community, and it has been for a few years now, but the tricky part is severing that from the toxic negativity that surrounds both the game as a whole and how people look at the game from the outside. There’s definitely a strong set of people who are eager to take Blizzard to task over wholly imagined or conjured problems, being angry at the company for not doing things it never promised to do, or treating literally anything the developers do as being shamelessly copied from somewhere else and that’s somehow bad instead of just… like… WoW’s DNA for the past 20 years anyway. “Take something someone else has done and refine/simplify it” is more of a Blizzard hallmark than a supposed action girl getting to hold the Victim Ball in the second act.
However, there’s also a strong tendency among fans of WoW to really, really look at everything the developers are doing now as a huge course correction from years of existing decisions instead of… y’know, finally catching up. There’s a contingent of folks who are very quick to hop on the idea that you can’t criticize the game if you, say, think that Mythic+ or the elitist gatekeeping that’s shot through both retail and Classic is both there and still running a lot of the decisions that the developers are making, or even denying that it’s still there in the first place. It transforms into a rather insidious sort of toxic positivity where only the in-group is allowed to voice critiques and everyone else just doesn’t get why the game is good or was historically successful. It’s loving not with too little passion but too much, denying the chance for poor decisions by assuming all must be well.
Sam Kash (@samkash@mastodon.social): I’ll take it way back to Guild Wars 2: Whenever GW2 has a big PvP balance update, there are so many players who refused to accept that the balance was off and certain classes needed nerfs. It drives me up the wall. So many players telling me to just trust the devs, they know what they’re doing, and I need to let it go. Of course, balance is never perfect, but to dismiss clear mistakes outright is annoying. Suddenly players are just straight up attacking me instead of trying to be reasonable.
Tyler Edwards (blog):Â It’s not an MMO, but the first thing that comes to mind is Stormgate. There were concerns raised about the game — especially in regard to its artstyle — almost from the word go, but those were always shouted down by a chorus “it’s alpha,” “they’re ex-Blizzard, of course it will be great,” “let them cook,” and so forth. As we saw more demos and previews, criticism became more widespread, but still concerns were dismissed as pre-mature. Then came early access launch, and lo and behold none of the problems people had seen coming were fixed, and now we’re left with a game that has double-digit player counts at most hours.
I wish people understood that criticizing a game in beta isn’t premature; that’s the most important time for criticism.
Stormgate’s an extreme example, but I feel like this is a pretty common pattern across the industry. Every game is the best game ever until it releases, and then it’s the worst game ever. Toxic positivity or just plain toxicity, never any middle ground.
To be honest, I’m a bit worried the same pattern is now playing out with Stars Reach. I feel like there’s a lot of very reasonable concerns about the game (especially around griefing) that are just being written off with, “Koster knows what he’s doing.” And hey, maybe he does. But after Stormgate, Star Citizen, and so many other debacles, this is all looking a little worryingly familiar to me.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!
