Recently massively OP released an article about the best MMORPG communities.
Massively OP Article
In the article they bring up LOTRO, Embers Adrift, and the Project Gorgon communities, with many of the comments bringing up the WoW Anniversary servers.
How do you guys think retail ranks with the rest of the MMORPG-scape?
Is retails community worth mentioning? Or has QoL and mass players taken away from the community vibes?
So long as you remain in you own isolated guild/discord bubble, the wow community is great. Pop outside such bubbles and the story changes somewhat.
MMO communities in general trend towards being kind of miserable but even by that standard I’ve never seen a more bitter community than WoW retail.
My take on it is that it might have some really great people in it. It does, I know. But community? I don’t know. You can find a guild that is perfect for you and let that be your community. But unless you are searching for a guild, most people I run into I have zero reason to interact with. Don’t need help with questing, don’t need to group up for most stuff, and when we do we barely talk anyway. So that isn’t the community you are interacting with. Most people I talk to playing retail are on the forums and boy can people be bitter.
I enjoy retail but when I played Classic, that is how I met a lot of the people I enjoy playing with. Being made to interact with people can be daunting, but everyone I have met was super cool. I’m interacting with people that aren’t just in my guild or discord, people who in retail I’d never say a word to. And it’s fun.
I won’t bore everyone with the millionth “This sucks I prefer classic but ima complain about it anyway” but I really wish we had more incentive to interact with people outside of our own little groups, but I don’t expect them to change everything just because of something I like.
LOTRO makes sense, there is a community of people there that put on music concerts, I’ve heard some of the recordings.
to be serious for a moment:
WoW Retail’s community is fine for what it is. honestly…it’s just fine.
It’s not totally irredeemably awful, nor is it rainbows and sunshine great.
Its right in the middle and your experience is what you make of it.
yeah there are a buncha forum poster who are mad that they can’t spam racial slurs in General Chat anymore so they call the game “disneyfied” and cry about wanting more “adult” thingamabobs or whatever. but that’s just a personal problem as far as I am concerned.
my personal experience though, is that you can curate your Community experience to a very large degree, so YMMV. I’ve heard the Mythic+ community can be pretty toxic, but I can’t speak to it because I don’t do Mythic+. (and when I ever get around to it, it’ll only be with Guild) My experience outside of that, people seem pretty chill…for the most part, when they do actually decide to speak up in General chats. Most of the actual toxicity happens on the forums.
my favorite game Community atm is Warframe. whole bunch of awesome people over there.
Pretty bad compared to most online games, lol. (It’s alright if you’re in a guild or with friends, otherwise? Nah wouldn’t recommend.)
Mostly due to the PuG environment being so hostile, no matter which pillar.
It’s not an MMO, but Deep Rock Galactic has one of the most patient and kind communities I’ve ever seen, love to be a part of it and help new greenbeards.