The remaining GW1 community is very bad.

Can you give specific examples of what happened that soured your opinion of the community?

I've been a long time player who only PuGs and for the most part, I can say that I've had very positive interactions with the community on a regular basis. I think the only times I've had any issue is with a few traders in Kamadan who don't react well with negotiation. I solve that by not doing trades with them.

I did it all by myself. not as fun without real people even with pugs but that is how I got through the game anyway except for few guileless and friends.

I'm with Jayson on this one. Every gaming community is going to have a bad group of people. I play a lot of MMOs and multiplayer games, and some of them can be quite toxic. I assure you, in every single one of them, people are still called noobs on a regular basis.

This community was no different back in the day, and now it is rife with bots and still the occasional RMT. But overall, in all these years, I can say that the GW community has been one of the least toxic that I have seen. Your experience is more the exception and not the rule.

in my opinion many factors come into play.

Like cosy says, heros makes the game become more secluded in playing the game. It's been probably two years since I've personally have done a mission with more than 2 other people or it feels like it or a full 4 to 8 man vannquish, that's been 6+ years

The player base is old, many of the players of this game played it in their childhood or early adult years and have had to move on to focus on careers, school and family and forgot about the game I grew up on this game and keep coming back to it, others might just not have that feeling to.

Trends change, if you look for the most popular games these days, watch twitch or use a gaming platform it feels very rare to see a RPG pop up unless it's got the newest and greatest features that a game from 2005 lacks. Awareness this game exists is hard to get unless your coming from 2, how often do you look for a game from 12 years ago? It's always looking into the future for what's coming, not what's in the past.

Guild wars 2, a lot of players left to this, but some have come from it. Unlike other games from this era, there is no new content for the orginal going to be drawing in the crowds and masses unless the devote time and effort into release content for the game, they do minor updates, the rendering and random bot disruptions, but it's the same content since the last released expansion.

I can't say much and about the pvp side of the game and I do not know enough to have any input on that.

You can always go into kam and ask if anyone wantz to go do a mission or chest run, some one may take you up on the offer.

Look, if you think people are toxic (which I don't disagree some are) then you are looking in all the wrong places. There's always bad apples in every batch.

If you are not satisfied with your experience, feel free to come join my guild/Alliance. We have a 0 asshole policy, and everyone is friendly and helpful.

Sorry that you haven't had a good experience. Your post is not entirely unwarranted but I will say that it is inaccurate. There are definitely groups of folks that are more unfortunate to encounter, but for the most part the experiences are solid. Good people still hanging around.

If you need a group or a few peeps to play with, let me know. Best wishes.

It is a fact that Arenanet has all but walked out on GW1. Jagex, on the other hand, just had a $20k prize for first place in a PvP tournament in Oldschool, yes, you read right, Oldschool RuneScape. They still release content for that game, fix bugs, and police it. Now, it is true that there are just as many botters and cheater in OSRS as there are in GW. It is true that every game has them, whether the company is supporting the game or not. I mean, I can live without big ol' content updates and still play GW1, because it's a challenging game, intricate, and I've invested so much time and know so much about it. But as far as making an art of theorycrafting builds like I used to do on PvX, somehow learning something I could take with me in a career as a game designer; or as far as taking pride in in-game achievements--these things I am caring about less and less.

This is not really related, but I think we would better spend thousands of hours learning, playing, and mastering games that we know will be around forever, and hold some real-world prestige beyond the stories we tell about the game to friends and family.

Quote from Shady_C

After coming back to the game somewhat recently, I'm probably just going to quit. It's not fun to play a very fun game with very unfun human beings.

In closing... Nowhere else do people still call each other "nabs".

To be fair, if you played this game at any point while it was active, this was still the case. In general if you weren't playing the then "meta" stuff in pugs, you were at risk of being blamed for better or worse. (Obviously if you brought mending you need to expect that kind of stuff :P)

In fact, most MMOs are like this. If you screw up, people will make fun of you regardless of perfectly valid reasons like inexperience or unfamiliarity.

Quote from bsoltan

Is there a reason why you compare Guild Wars to Oldschool RuneScape rather than RuneScape Classic?

I don't know any online based games that are guaranteed to be around forever. Many have disappered over the last few years.

Because GW2 was a big graphical, gameplay, and content update from GW1, but Arenanet barely supports their old game. RuneScape 3 was also a big graphical, gameplay, and content update, but they went back and supported OSRS and just had a $50k tournament--the game is played in a browser with very simple graphics. People have told me that it's the fault of GW's community that GW1 is in maintenance mode right now, and I can understand that.

Thank you for posting that, I never have seen that posting in all my years of playing. It is good to know where Arenanet was coming from. I was talking with people on Reddit about it, and people basically said that GW1 would only be able to have content updates, etc., if there was a large resurgence to the population and petitioning from players, like that which brought OSRS back to life. You are right that the situation between RS Classic and GW1 are more similar, I just saw more of a similarity between RS2, RS3, GW1, and GW2, because RS 2 and GW1 were a couple of the big MMOs at least when I was in high school (back in my day), alongside WoW and Maple Story. RS Classic did not have the same player base or amount of attention afaik. But it's a moot point.

Yeah, I did read your reply, but the wind was being taken out of my sails as people started showing me how what I was trying to start was too idealistic. Sorry for not replying hehe. But yeah, I have considered going back and playing OSRS and forgetting about GW, the new restricted Ironman accounts trend is pretty fun to watch on YouTube at least. But I never enjoyed the grind of that game. I am looking to play something else since I'm starting to get hand pain as I get older, and PvP is the only thing that really interests me about the game any more. The theorycrafting side is becoming less appealing - it's like climbing to the top of a mountain that no one's ever heard of, even if it is fun to climb... Maybe I should keep at it for that reason alone, I guess, and forget about the prestige of achieving people's admiration...

What I think the op had in mind is playing the game more seriously and no offence to all the LGiT, pupu and other casual pve guilds, it's hard not to label them as casuals.

As for taking the game more seriously, SC guilds have been rather toxic throughout the years, flaming people for underperforming during runs, but that stems from a very minute margin of error when it comes to Speedclear runs. They have also been quite reclusive when it comes to the elitist part of SC scene, but that's also understandable, since the want to keep the runs consistently fast.

As for PvP, RA and GvG are the only actual PvP instances that are still considered to be PvP. There is like 40 GvG players that play MAT's on a consistent basis and majority of them have been playing GvG for many years and managed to get far beyond a regular player's grasp, hence every month when you open obeserve to check the matches, you'll see the same faces on and on. They did make attempts of doing scrims with new players and teach them, but it looked more like recruiting fresh meat to beat. Some players did thrive off those scrims, but they had to put a lot of time, research and patience towards it. When it comes to RA, the situation looks slightly different. Here, the issue lies on the shoulders of arenanet and lack of player and ranking balance. For instance, a newcomer with no rank or g1 is very likely to be pitched against a g10+ player. During the short battle, the g0 elementalist is being trained by a g12 hammer warrior, to the point where the ele is locked in a knocklock because he doesn't know how to prevent or defend against quarterknocks, the g0 player gets easily discouraged (or assumes that the enemy is cheating, which might be the case sometimes) and leaves the game. A change regarding assigning players accordingly to their ranks (e.g. a g0 player can play with anyone from g0 to g3 and g12 player anyonone from g9 to g12) should have been implemented years ago, but now, I'm aware that the game is dying, therefore with such system there would be very few matches.

On top of that you have all the kama kids with botted Gamer and Hero titles, which despite being avoidable, they are still quite vocal whenever a newbie tries to do some shopping in Kamadan.

The solution to all of those is to carefully pick nice players and add them to your friendlist if you want to just PvE. When you want to do SC's there are several guilds that still do training runs + there are some online guides, so once you get the basics, keep improving and then you might join one of those toxic SC guilds which from the outside look toxic, but inside they are actually quite pleasant once they get to know you. As for PvP, you are going to need a lot of resilience towards toxic RA players, but it's the best place to start and learn PvP basics, so don't be afraid to lose and if you get flamed for specific mistakes, try to erradicate them (the mistakes ofc). Watch MAT battles to see how GvG looks like and try to copy the top players. Try out several playstyles, frontline, midline, backline etc. and figure out which one you like the most, then try to focus on improving your skills in that specific areas. Try not to stay one profession exclusive, since playing other professions can give you insight regarding the entire game. Once you get the grip over the technical and mechanical aspects of the game, you might start thinking about GvG.

Obviously the entire PvP scene might seem toxic, but that's the main idea of the game and GW1 has always been incredibly competitive.

If you don't care for casual PvE, don't feel like learning SCs or pushing through PvP then just uninstall (wow that was toxic)

I have played a lot of games and i must say gw1 has one of the most friendly and supportive community, people help

Me everywhere if i ask, give tips, give free loot, in new dungeons people always teach me how to do it and so on

I guess this is a controversial opinion, but it's not very surprising to me that the type of people to really consistently hang onto a desolate game that's over a decade old aren't very personable. I'm not saying that as an outsider, I was extremely happy with collectibles I bought for this game in the year of our lord 2019, so I'm of the people I'm criticising. Just think it's silly to be defensive--if you need tricks and tips to get around the wave of scumbaggery, that doesn't make the community "generally good." I throw my hat in with OP's camp, if for nothing but the sake of argument.

Quote from fallhall

I guess this is a controversial opinion, but it's not very surprising to me that the type of people to really consistently hang onto a desolate game that's over a decade old aren't very personable. I'm not saying that as an outsider, I was extremely happy with collectibles I bought for this game in the year of our lord 2019, so I'm of the people I'm criticising. Just think it's silly to be defensive--if you need tricks and tips to get around the wave of scumbaggery, that doesn't make the community "generally good." I throw my hat in with OP's camp, if for nothing but the sake of argument.

I think this is quite the stretch. I think a lot of people who still hang around are just people who enjoy this type of game the most. Because lets face it: Guild Wars is pretty unique in a lot of areas. You don't find that in other games. I also think quite a few players also play different games on top of GW or have other hobbies. Saying they are not very impersonable just because of the fact that they are still playing GW is quite a shallow take on it.

I generally think that the internet is a toxic place. I have played many games in my life and visited a lot of forums and there was literally one forum (indiablo pre D3, German Diablo forum) and one bigger community (German beginners server for Starcraft BW) which I consider not toxic in the slightest. All other places have been toxic to some degree. I think swansonson's advice to pick the right type of people is generally a good advice on the internet.

Just because you are having a bad time doesn't mean others are too, I'm enjoying GW very much now.

GW has always been toxic from my experience; the only point you made which I agree with is that bots and gold-sellers are ruining the game.