Massively Overthinking: What’s the most polarizing topic in your favorite MMORPG?

I was playing Lord of the Rings Online last weekend when my server naturally veered off into one of its favorite discussions: whether Moria sucks. (Honestly, any conversation is better than whether Rings of Power sucks, so I’ll take Moria any day.) The interesting bit is that there never seem to be that many people who are just “meh OK” on Moria. Either you love it or you hate it.

For this week’s Massively Overthinking, I want to hear about the topics that tear the communities in your top MMOs in two. What’s the most polarizing topic in your favorite MMORPG? And why does it keep coming up over and over?

Andy McAdams: Well, I started playing Guild Wars 2 again, and the whole argument over whether ANet is being greedy with SOTO being a smaller expansion. I’ve been playing for about a week, and I’ve seen it come up in map chat at least once a day. It’s always from someone who thinks the expansion is too small and gets upset when folks don’t agree with them. Then they demand we… do… something… to make ANet feel our rage. I think. I’m not actually sure what folks think should happen after they’ve already bought the expansion.

I’m not sure why its such a point of contention. It’s not like ANet did anything other than say it was going to be a smaller expansion. The expansion literally does what it says on the tin. Still, some folks are incredibly bent out of shape that the expansion isn’t bigger. And it keeps coming up again and again and again. I dunno, I’m enjoying the expansion, even if it’s smaller.

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): I am not a huge fan of Moria personally, but over time my annoyance with it is less about the claustrophobic ambiance and more because there’s no good way around it when leveling, which is not true of the rest of the lowbie leveling experience.

In Star Wars Galaxies Legends, the eternal community debate is over item decay and whether it should be restored the way it was pre-NGE. Anyone paying attention to the state of the game’s stagflated economy knows how important decay was, even if it’s not super fun. Alas, it’s too late now. Combat-only players will be fighting decay to the day the last crafter who made their stuff finally quits.

Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): Most contentious topic in Black Desert Online? Politics. Especially during this election cycle.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): When it comes to Final Fantasy XIV, the subject of Lalafells almost always manages to light a tinderbox of arguments. Some people view them as children or child-like and often approach them with similar levels of dismissal or disdain, while others try to argue that they’re actually adults and act like them in many ways while being stigmatized as… well, gross people, let’s just say.

This topic tends to mostly come up in roleplay circles from what I can gather, which ends up making people feel ostracized at large because of their choice to play the short race, and it’s all just infuriating and depressing in pretty equal measure.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): If you’re trolling a world chat channel, you can never go wrong with flinging your “hot take” on politics onto everyone’s screen. I’m not merely talking about certain candidates but anything controversial, from vaccines to wars. Either you do this because you’re trying to make people uncomfortable and elicit fiery responses, or you’re trawling for sympathetic voices, but in either case, it’s bad form and (in my case) results in a quick /ignore or even turning off the channel entirely.

Sam Kash (@thesamkash): I haven’t been playing anything consistently enough to snag onto any of the rants that come up. Harry Potter Magic Awakened has some world chat, but it’s so small on my screen that I never look at it. Likely for the best.

I do remember in Guild Wars days partaking in my fair share of “GW is better than WoW” debates. Of course, we were all playing GW, not WoW, so it was dumb on so many levels, but we were kids. We argued about dumb stuff all the time.

Tyler Edwards (blog): Vashj’ir comes to mind. WoW’s first and only underwater zone (technically three connected zones), it’s pretty widely despised, but there is a significant minority, to which I belong, who thinks it’s one of the best zones ever added to the game.

Also New World. That’s it, just the entire game.

Fun fact: If you look at New World’s Google reviews, its average is about 3 stars, but that’s because nearly all of the reviews are 1 star or 5 stars. This is truly a game you love or you hate, which honestly is what games should aim for, if you ask me. Shows you’re doing something interesting.

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!