Runescape's playerbase sucks the nut.

First topic message reminder :

They're stupid, selfish, loners, spiteful, scammers, and make up the worst MMO population in the history of MMO populations. After I started playing WoW, I was amazed that players a few levels higher than me were actually willing to help or group with me from time to time, and max-level players didn't go out of their way to call me a dumb **** suck**** like Runescape's playerbase tends to.

It really doesn't matter what level you are in runescape, if someone has a single level or combat level over you, they'll gloat and gloat and be all "noobnoobnoobnoobnoobnoobnooboobdummy" and generally act like jackasses. Normally I don't really give a crap about people who do this because it gives me a certain sense of satisfaction to realize that once they start the real world, they'll be in the for the rude awakening that being an asshole is going to get your ass kicked, but it does irk me that I have such a hard time making friends in this game because every single person I come across is either retarded, can't spell correctly, or a prick that can't get his head out of his ass that he's got 75 attack, 90 strength and 72 defense and "LOL i own u nub wit my 90 str and dds spec lolol i like ****."

I personally have my theory on why runescape's playerbase sucks the nut (hence why i made this topic, dur). So. Yeah.

1. Players from the time they very first start playing this game are hardwired to assume that any and all other players they run across are not friends but hostile enemies intent on taking advantage of them, scamming them, or stealing their resources. What are the things most players do when they first start this game? They cut trees, mine minerals, and kill cows. All three of these, most notably the first and last, become exponentially slower when other players are present, often leading to intense verbal arguements and the ever-so-classy "noob noob noob.." Obviously, this is just an example, but the theme of players treating enemies as hostile instead of potential allies, friends, or simply other people occupying their same area continues throughout the low level areas. When playing WoW, players are given strong incentives to band together as low as level 12 or 14 on the horde faction and 20 on the alliance faction. By doing so they are able to run the first two dungeons in the game, Ragefire Chasm and The Deadmines, to obtain gear that is vastly superior for their level and to anything else available for the next several, sometimes up to 10 levels. When low level players band together, they mine slower, have to run around waiting for cows/nodes/etc to respawn, and gain *zero* experience at all that they couldn't gotten FASTER on their own. In WoW, even grouping for simple quests greatly speeds them, since monsters die twice as fast and downtime between them is reduced because less damage is taken (You can only eat outside of combat).

WoW players are encouraged to work together and runescape players are encouraged to work ALONE, as there is almost no task in the game outside of killing super-high level monsters such as in the God-Wars dungeon that aren't both faster and easier to complete alone.

2. Even if players wanted to group, there are no incentives to do so. In WoW, players who group together recieve about a 10-20% bonus amount of experience per monster killed (exp is divided by the number of players in the party, but the net result is faster gain), and since between a third and half the experience required to reach level 70 (the max level) is from finishing quests, it becomes often 20-50% faster to level in small groups of 2, maybe 3 than to level alone. There are also many many quests that require venture into dungeons with powerful monsters that require a party of 5 to defeat, and quite a few quests scattered around the open world that suggest between 2 and 5 players.

3. There was a third point that I figured out yesterday, but I can't figure out what it was. I'll edit it in later.

For the rocks you could only have a certain number over the whole world.

So like in the mining guld your replace say 15 of the normal coal rocks with 2 large coal ones, and the only mith one in the game, bring the glory back to the mining guild.

Have one at coal trucks.

Have an Addy one in the wildy and one at the bottom of the haunted mine.

And no Rune ones or Iron ones, to much emphasis is placed on iron, I don't want it to improve

I like that idea.

Nice to have some good 3-way conversation.

Very

Shame each post is so large by default.

I'm alone.

Yeah.

Conversation... -gone-

Trev's gone... I g2g

I mostly agree to the poll

If i may continue the discussion...

RuneScape consists mostly of younger players, who have as of yet amounted to very little in their own lives, living vicariously exciting lives and gaining power and prestige for an anonymous hero.

So? Their stats mean a lot to them; probably more than they should. And, again, they're young and don't have any good examples around to learn from. So, when they see high levels insulting them, when the situation is reversed, they will too.

It amounts to taking on a personal responsibility - changing the game will help, but first, you have to change yourself, and change others by your example.

Which sounds really corny, but it works, I see it a lot. Until recently I had to wear red dragonhide when ranging, and once when logging in someone said "lol r d hide nub." I replied "Lol i know, right?". Instantly the conversation changed directions, and he turned out to be a decent guy.

the moral of my story? I didn't insult him back. That's all it takes.

But, changing the game would help a lot too, because the way that RuneScape is encourages unfriendly competition, and fosters ignorance. We have to compete for rocks, trees, monsters - a huge portion of the game is non-contact PvP. The only true team Minigame, Barbarian Assault, is so obscenely complicated that it manages to cancel out its strongest feature. In many teams the players are so confused that they'll start flaming others for not doing their job, while not doing theirs, and not having any idea what they're talkign about anway =P.

Sorry, I rambled...

Rambling is fine.