Best Gaming Communities - Examples welcome

[Passion 3,489]

So yeah, anybody who uses internet nowadays knows that apart from all the good and bad stuff it provides, it also promises you the destructive force other people can bring through words in the package. I guess 99% of players (the remaining 1% are those who don't even care about interaction or reading) experienced toxicity in gaming this way or another.

 

But what about the opposite? We all know that it's very easy to remember all the bad stuff that happens to us. Because it has an effect on us, it leaves a mark and has consequences at times. But do you remember any really positive moments coming from entire gaming communities, or the general feeling you've had from them?

 

To give an example, real one so that you know this is not made up even though it'll be hard to believe.

 

Lineage 2, back when it went Free-to-play from Pay-to-play system. This game has a very annoying questing system. In order to advance your character and "level up" your class, you need to finish a quest, which includes killing an enemy that took about... I don't know, 10-30 seconds to kill depending on class. Then, after it died, it took about 15 seconds or so for it to respawn. Obviously, since game went free-to-play, the place was SWARMING with people. The annoying part of quest was that only the person who landed LAST HIT on the mob was gaining the quest item required from it. So as you can imagine, playing an aspiring buffer, healer or tank might have been a pain there. But when I came to the place, I witnessed something I'd never have expected.

I saw a line. Going for long metres. People standing and waiting their turn, and it just kept growing. It reached a point some of guys had to wait 1.5h to kill that mob. But barely anyone complained really. Most people understood that other classes will have it rough with so many others and 95% reached agreement that line won't hurt. And the ones who were waiting actually started engaging in meaningful conversations. Snowboarding, soccer, music, books, movies. People were just... talking. The same way you'd talk to your friend. I can bet many of them remained friends afterwards and probably joined same clans. And maybe it wouldn't be so weird, if not the fact that I went there out of curiosity for next two days. Since at night server time mob was free to kill, and everything would start anew next day. And... it repeated itself. Time after time. People were actually forming a line and waiting, day after day when necessary. They weren't clanmates, they weren't an alliance. They were just strangers, nothing more.

 

This is something I am convinced I will never ever see again in any game. And I really miss that feeling. Sure, there were a few who wanted to break everything, but the line was actually guarding itself. Random people from line were PKing the disturbing ones, and nobody batted an eye while they were getting their Karma down on monsters to cease being a PK. And afterwards, they returned to their place in line and everything was fine.

 

It's nothing unlike communities I see these days.

[PlzDelete 2,456]

I really like this story! I'm glad there is at least ONE good community for gaming out there. I honestly can only think of the worst ones which is not good. I'll give this all some thought! 

[Dark Bun 681]

As a long time Guild Wars player 2, I can confidently say my community is the most patient and kind. I see posts of new players asking trivial questions all the time and people giving answers. I see this happening in game all the time as well. I read a story a few days ago of a guy who was gifted 3 bags after asking how to expand his inventory slots. Here's a post from a month ago of someone asking how to obtain the first mount in the game and having over 100 comments explaining what to do: 

About 3 weeks ago, I went out of my to escort another player through a long tedious cave, so he could get map completion for that zone. And if I ever wanna chat about something random, I can just go to a city and type in map chat about whatever. I think this kind of behavior is common in MMO's that promote player interaction. Lineage and GW2 are just those kinds of games where helping is just fun, and this reflects the overall image of the community.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Dark Rider