Ceyvel Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) From the moment Blizzard introduced cross-realm battlegrounds realm communities started falling apart reaching it's point of no return with introduction of cross-realm LFG tool. Those who played it since Vanilla can easily see the inevitable fall of once a good school-like community, when you knew a fair part of the realm population, if you remember how active realm forums were back in 2006-2008 and compare them to what you could see in 2010-2011. That bloody thing ruined the most living part of World of Warcraft, devalued social interactions inside a single server to the point when players no longer wish to make any relationships other than with people in their guild may be. Rated battlegrounds, that are still not working in a cross-realm style, is the only force to make people interact with the server community in the absence of automated grouping systems. A lot of people from the generation, who started playing back in Original WoW, unintentionally kept specific standards, old standards, those, that were established when people were fascinated with the game and had a mutual respect to all players by default, unless somebody ruins his/her reputation behaving out of line. And those standards were being passed to newer players as older were quitting and since there were no cross-realm interactions those rules kept on cultivating inside each realm community. And with the introduction of cross-realm grouping tools, the majority were getting into situations when they had to interact with other players of the same realm less often from day to day and the result of that slow process you can see now. The amount of players, who still interact with the game community the same way the majority did back in Original WoW is so miserable, that it leaves no hope to see the whole situation get significantly better not only for WoW, but for other future MMOs as well. The game community got filled with elitism, hating, arrogance as most of restrictions closed realm communities had now faded with more and more cross-realm grouping features being introduced. And the new players don't even know how else they can communicate with others. Those, who has never played MMORPGs enters an already spoiled community that lost all sense of what is morally accaptable and what is not. First I thought I would end this with a question if the the cross-realm feature in Star Wars MMORPG would justify the inevitable slow fall of the community, that just began to establish here and establish reasonable and not so reasonable rules for interaction with each other. But after I finished writing I figured there is nothing left to do about it. SWTOR Dev will certainly introduce cross-realm features, as it no doubt will result in more income from the game and a big part of the player base happy with the absence of any sort of behaviour restrictions based on moral cultivated inside the community. Please, just take it as my humble opinion and the reasoning why I think the feature won't bring anything good to the game in a long run, based on the observation of another game's community over a long period of time. Certainly Developers can't please everyone, but their choice of what part of the community to listen to is unlikely to be supported by well-mannered people, who make it enjoyable to play any MMO game, it will cast them away over time like the above mentioned game did. Thanks for your time. Edited February 16, 2012 by Ceyvel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enrogae Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) I remember the time before WoW had a cross-realm LFG tool. The communities seemed just as immature then as they do now, to me anyway. All of that elitism was there months after launch, far before any dungeon finding tool was available. In fact, I've met more nice people now than I did then. What's different? Simple: the server I play on and the speed with which I use the /ignore tool. The only other difference is that after the LFG tool came out, I actually got to experience dungeon content, when I always skipped that before because I chose to remain in a small, tight-night guild comprised of real-life friends rather than join a huge one that sees all the content. Besides, with the guild perks in WoW there are now strong reasons to still do things as a guild. Forcing community is what ruins a community. I fail to see how giving people the ability to see content without waiting for hours on end is a bad thing, or how it will ruin a community. The argument rings as fallacious to me as the whole "gay people are ruining families" thing. Correlation is not causation. Besides all that, I don't really see a community in SW:ToR yet. I see people standing around the fleet waiting for something to happen, and tiny numbers of people on higher-level planets. How is that a community? You can't ruin something that doesn't exist. I respect your opinion, but I also respectfully disagree... perhaps because I remember a time before WoW when MMO players were more often older, and/or more mature. The problem isn't the LFG tool, it's the theme-park hand-hold style of developing an MMO. Edited February 16, 2012 by enrogae Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darkcerb Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) Right there with you enrogae. Been playing mmo's since EQ, wow , rift aion and a mess of f2p in between, this community as defined I just haven't seen, except in guilds where I believe it's only ever existed. Edited February 16, 2012 by darkcerb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChicksDigHarleys Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 They're going to add x-server LFG (even though they said they wouldn't pre-release) because they have a bunch of dead servers, but don't dare merge servers already...plain and simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Putriss Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 I would be for it, but under certain changes to the way loot distribution works right now. I fear that a cross realm LFG would be a hunting ground for people taking loot that they dont need (and to stop some arguments lets say to vendor an item) over others that need it for their character. I also feel that a good community as a server has been established but will erode over time with the more cross realm features that they come out with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akash Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 I don't give a rip about WoW. Cross-server works well in Rift. It works exceptionally well. It lowered que times and increased play opportunities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceyvel Posted February 16, 2012 Author Share Posted February 16, 2012 Honestly, I wouldn't take a possibility to be in a guild community into the discussion of cross-realm features impact to the game. I myself is in a small guild with a pleasant community that's been around for almost 5 years now and it certainly helps to ignore all the negative "outside" of the guild and the only raid dungeons we did on our own in TBC, for example, were Karazhan and Zul'Aman. The LFG feature in the next expansion didn't add a single bit to the amount of the game I could explore being in a small guild, only a big of convenience in getting into dungeons themselves. "I fail to see how giving people the ability to see content without waiting for hours on end is a bad thing, or how it will ruin a community." Exactly because it eliminates the need to interact with others. Sure, if interacting with your guild's community covers your needs in so called socializing, then there is little I can say to defend my point. And, of course, elitism was always there. The point is the amount of well-mannered players was also significant back them, compared to nowadays, when those standardarts, unintentionally maintained by those people, are almost gone. P.S. I didn't mean to say that SWTOR has it's own community on each servers. However, the reason I play on an RP-PvP server is mostly because people tend to build some sort of relationships sooner than on other non-RP realms. Roleplaying has little to do with it, I believe (and I am not a roleplayer myself, I simply try not to spoil RP aspect for others I play with and accept it's rules). I just see more polite and well-behaving people and a lot of those who started playing MMORPG for the first time accept that behaviour as a default one. At least that's what I could see after coming across several complete newbies on that realm and leveling with them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remidi Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) One big problem. Populations will diminish. Many servers are seeing it already, a cross realm LFG toll will be be needed eventually or you will be spamming chat for hours. It's alreayd starting especially for alts and new characters. Stop with this community crap it's not going to ruin anything. WoW's community was already falling before this implementation which is why it needed to be implemented. Numbers! Join a damn guild and make some friends there is your community. If server populations get much lower there wont be a community, half of my friends list is gone. Yes there are guilds and friends..they are not on all the time. Many good games are around the corner which will make the population even smaller. Do not fool yourself and think this game is going to get bigger. I have heard that in every MMO since WoW(Played them all), its not gonna happen. I just do not get why anyone is against this. You can level alts via FP's, you can get in a FP quickly at 50, and you get to meet more people. Unless someone is very stupid on your server there is no blacklisting so stop with that lie as well. It will be implemented, stop crying about it. This is not WoW and this game will not have 50 million subscribers, they will do what they have to. There are 3 huge PC games coming up, and you are a fool if you think populations will increase. Its all about money, to make money you need to keep players. NO ONE wants to spam chat all day looking for a group, and friends and guildies are not always on. I have played every MMO except Everquest 1, done all the raid and PvP content in those games. I know what I am talking about as do many others. There is a reason it has been implemented in other games. Stop trying to go backwards. Change happens, grow up and get use to it, stop trying to ruin the experience for everyone else because you think this awesome tool will ruin your server community. I did not know a chatbox was a community btw. Its the same crap as people not wanting meters n such. A lot of it comes down to bads wanting to be bads and they can hide this easily at the current state of the game. Then when meters come out and there is proof they are bad you will come up with some other stupid excuse to make yourself feel better. Edited February 16, 2012 by Remidi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Notannos Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Greetings Everyone, We currently have a thread discussing the topic of cross-server group features. We thank you for taking the time to express your thoughts in a constructive manner. However, we ask that you join this thread to continue this conversation: Unoffical Cross-Server is coming to town thread This will help to consolidate the conversation on this topic and help us to organize the forums for the community. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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