Back in the day (1999) mmorpg's were built around communities. Everyone knew everyone, people had respect for each other and if you were a dirt bag no one would group with you.Today's mmorpg's are mostly instanced (ie WOW & FFXIV) and a lot people are dirt bags because they can get away with it. Because you never see the same person twice in a instance. And a lot of people are lazy and put no effort in the game and want to be carried through the dungeon. Whats worse is people fail at basic math and are selling things for next to nothing on the market board. And a lot of people are selling things for less then what the merchant will buy it off you. Its totally killing the fun in the game for me.

I play FFXIV and next month I am cutting my membership down to the basic $12.99 membership and I am just going to run the dailies and call it a day. I plan on going back to regular gaming again and eventually quitting mmorpg's all together. What are your guys thoughts on mmorpg's?

people have always been dirt bags in MMORPGs - even the early 90's ones, where max leveled characters get bored and cause drama, terrorizing newer players.

1999's too early for me, hah.

In any case I liked them at first, but then I realized they had lots of pointless grinding in them. Also, there's the never-ending obsession with items and stats. I prefer single player games than MMOs.

FPSers are no different. There is one person on my regular TF2 server in particular who just loves being a [censored]. He gets off on pushing peoples buttons by taunting after every kill. He knows it pisses people off yet he continues to do it. Most of the regs know he's a [censored] and just put up with it. (He was even an admin at one point, til people complained and he was removed from his admin duties for abusing his power.) My concern is the new folks. Who wants to frequent a server with some [censored] being an antagonistic *** wipe?

People svck. Thankfully the good ones make up for it. I really enjoy playing when it's a bunch of regs on who actually try and play the game as intended rather than Solo-Fortress 2. We just shoot the **** in game and have fun. Frankly, I play for the people as TF2 annoys the hell out of me with all the BS Valve added.

Bah! /rant

That little time I played XIV people really seemed to be all on their own. Only time I've seen people grouping up was when a rare event monster spawned. Other than that there seemed to be no contact between people, and I haven't seen a single "couple" of players running somewhere together. It was kinda sad. Not that I care though. I plan to get a full membership in the future, and I'll be more than happy to do everything at my own pace on my own. The only thing I'm sad about is that I won't be able to buy myself a house.

Oh yeah, damn, I remember Diablo 2 back in elementary. Group of us, all level 15-19 trying to do a quest, and then two or three Germans (nothing against them, but it was always Germans, always Paladins) who would storm in front of us and kill our quest target, effectively making us create a new game. Some of them would target us and kill us, and then sometimes one would stand near the waypoint, and one in front of the city, so that we can't get out. XD I always assumed those guys must have pretty svcky real lives.

The people in an MMO and the ones you interact with have always been what you make of it. If you want to be part of a good community, go and find one. There are plenty of them out there. I used to always go solo and just try to build a decent name for myself as a solid player who can be good filler in any group that needed a role filled (as I would roll a few different characters), but primarily I liked being a ranged DPS.

The first time I really got into a community was for SWToR, and I joined Legend Gaming and their chapter for the game (Jen'Jidai). It was great. Well organized and everybody always had your back if you needed them, and I wasn't a great player or anything but I was solid in what I needed to do. When I had to delay playing for a week, almost everybody jumped ahead of me and when I got to the PvP planets and was being absolutely slaughtered by some max level guys who were trolling around the planet, I needed help and the top level guys of our guild jumped on and rushed out to help me. They didn't need to do it, they could have been doing better things to progress themselves, but instead they decided this one guy was more important because he was a member of the community that had he strived to be a part of.

The best type of community for a game is the one that (and this is strictly imo) is one that encourages you to do what you want to do to the best of your abilities, has strong leadership, an organized heirarchy, a clear direction and/or objective but an overall inclusive community where everybody's voice is heard. That's what I got there and it was one of the best online gaming experiences I've ever had. It was short-lived, but it was still great. The point is that I had to apply to them and show them I was really the type of person they wanted in their community. I even failed the first time and had to reapply.

Again, the experience you want and desire in an MMO is what you want of it and what you are willing to put into it. I wanted to be with dedicated people who were friendly and respectful and overall supportive, regardless of what you were doing. And because of all that, the result was that we had some of the best players in not only the server, but the world. I wasn't one of them, but I was part of the culture that allowed it to happen.

So you want a good community to play with in an MMO? Go find one. You want a good experience in your time with the MMO? It is up to you to create it. No one will do it for you. And be selective. No one says you have to join the first one that looks to be good. Do your research, interview some members (especially as they interview you). And if you get an invite to join, you're not obligated to take it (though as a courtesy, let them know your intentions up front....for example, I researched a lot of guilds before I applied to any and found that LG was the one I wanted to be a part of).

Here's a good video on MMO's: https://youtu.be/bgkoz5EZTok .

I've been playing MMO's like Star Trek Online and TESO and I like STO better because it has a very nice pacing on from the time you start to the time you become a battle harden vet it just balances itself out, sadly TESO is not like that I mean in STO by the time I got to lvl. 15 I already had a Constitution Class Starship and a pretty decent layout, in TESO I'm still in Iron Armor and won't be able to use Steel Armor till I get to lvl.20----REALLY FOR STEEL ARMOR!!! I mean in STO you get decent experience and if you die you just respawn and the battle continues but in TESO you die EVERYTHING resets making it like a car stuck in mud you're spinning your tires getting nowhere. Basically STO has turned me off of TESO because TESO is so tedious when it comes to experience and progression. Don't get me wrong I love TESO but STO is just better in how MMO's should be.

I didn't start playing MMOs until WoW in 2005. But I've played a bunch of them since then and am playing SW:TOR right now. I basically just treat them as massive single-player games with a lot of wildly unpredictable "NPCs" running around in the background. I see the occasional jerk here and there but I ignore them. If they pester me I log off that character and log on to another.

This is pretty much how MMOs are made these days, Single Player experiences. The games never kept me logging in for years (EQ 3+ years, CoH 7+ years off and on, WoW 2+ years), the people I gamed with kept me logging in

Old MMOs did have their share of jerkwads. But the population has increased 100 fold and the number of jerks equally so. I find I get bored very fast in MMOs today. They is very little difference between them and single player games, sans jerkwads

I think level from 1 - 50 was handled well in ESO. Everything after that is a complete grindfest.

On the topic though, I used to grief AFK players in Tera with an alt account by aggro'ing boss monsters that did AOE. What was amazing was that the people who witnessed it tried to save those players. So I believe there is a balance between good and bad players.

In ESO, the way the game handles it's players makes it even more susceptible to creating complete jerks. Depending on where you are you may be instanced in a different world than someone else. Aside from damaging that "persistent" community that the OP mentioned, your public image is never really effected by your actions.

This reminds of a story from EQ way back when. http://www.notaddicted.com/fansythefamous.php.

Back then, EQ had 2 servers for PvP, with the boast "No Rules!" The gist of the story is that Bards, at level 5, were immune to attack, a rule in place to give players a chance ti level up some. But, at level 5, Bards got a song called "Selo's Accelerando." This allowed Bards to move faster than most Mobs in the game. Fancy roleplayed this loophole perfectly! They (he or she, I do not know) would train huge mobs on groups and the chat showed in that link gets me laughing every time I read it

Yeah, I pretty much stopped playing online multiplayer games with anyone except friends a long time ago. Too many annoying people made it decidedly un-fun.

I havn't played a mom in years. They all feel the same to me. Grinding and maxed out players killing you on sight and camping your dead body. No thanks.

The closest to a mmo I get now is Chivalry and even the there's always some ass TKing or kicking my archer down from the high ground.

Ok, I'm gonna put in my two pennies here. I've steadily been playing MMOs since Ultima Online in 1999, and one thing I know without a doubt is that people in MMOs are exactly the same as they were 16 years ago. No different.

And another thing I would like to point out. Players have always done solo play in MMOs. The only difference now is that MMO companies have began to see it and adjusted the content accordingly.

All those players in those huge raids were never the majority of the player base only the most rabid. Even in 1999 most players hung out and talked. In UO it was done in front of the Brit Bank.

Did people even have internet in 1999...?

The point brought up here is just one reason I forever am a single-player only

My first online game was Crysis 1. Boy it was fun back then. All kinds of people and a lot of ass wipes. And I actually ENJOYED killing those hackers, and those sore losers who got angry because their shiny score of 70 kills and 0 deaths had been upset. ^^ I was that player specializing in c4 and didn't give a rats if I had a score of 0 kills and 100 deaths. I gave them a kamikaze extravaganza until they finally rage quit. ^^

But seriously, I also met great people too. Even to this day, even though Crysis 1 MP is now defunct, I still talk to my buddies I met there via Facebook. As for MMORPG's, LOTRO was the first and only one I have played and in my experience, the LOTRO community has been phenomenal. For one year I played solo, and not ONE instance I had in which someone was acting like a jerk. On the contrary, I met many strangers who out of the blue gave me things for free. Like one player who was 40 levels above me, gave me a nice stack of resource items for me to sell.

But as someone mentioned here already, one has to know what community is out there, to know what you're getting yourself into. There are communities and the game itself that are a magnet for jerks or civilized people. Online gaming is like real life in that you'll meet all kinds of people there and like real life, you won't find a world nicely perfumed and packaged exactly the way you wanted. Sooner or later, you'll find yourself thinking, "something tells me we're not in Kansas anymore". That is the time to move on to another game/community. Getting angry won't fixed anything and in online gaming getting angry makes things worse.

Lately people have been burning me out of many game types whether it be MMORPG, FPS, or RTS. I usually just play with my friends and any other occasion will just play single player.

Yeah MMOs do have their share of jerks. And I won't bother explaining how toxic and vicious RP servers are. I tend to keep to my own and only come out to RP with friends, but even then it's in a private instance. The farther I am from the community the better.
My biggest issue is having so many mmos to play with so little time! Star wars and Final Fantasy are my current ones.