The Daily Grind: What stereotypes get your goat within the MMO community?

The WoW one for me.It's pretty ignorant to assume that 12 million people are all the same,even if a large portion of them are horrible.

You know what really (Daily) Grinds my gears? The stereotype that all RPers are either fanciful drama nerds with unhealthy obsessions with the Renaissance Faire or that they're furries. I'm a normal dude, I just enjoy stories, people!

Q:Which assumptions do you feel are patently false, and which ones seem to hold true from your experience?


A-1: FALSE:

The idea of the PVPer as a trash-talking ganker. Unfortunately, maybe like1 in 50 is, but you never hear from the other 49. It's always the mouthy piece of internet trash that spams other people with trash talk that folks hear from.

"PVPers don't care about gameplay or earning levels/items in MMORPGS, and would be happy with some FPS game" -- ridiculously false stereotype perpetuated solely by RAID-centric players with ZERO, repeat, ZERO basis in reality.

If anything, PVP in MMORPGS is truer to the MMO and RPG elements in MMORPGs than questing or raiding. PVPers are facing other players and not the computer in single-player co-op mode that is questing/raiding. And folks getting gear in PVP reflects that the character has been through (perhaps literally!) hundreds of skirmishes and is now a battle-hardened veteran, as opposed to a lucky roller on a lottery epic item.


A-2: True (BUT SWEPT UNDER THE RUG) Stereotypes:

Leadership in Raid guilds as elitist snobs: The rank and file of most raider guilds are pretty cool, but the leadership are generally nasty, self-serving, and into patronage and watching out for their friends.

I ran three raid guilds in vanilla WOW and have been sought for recruitment back into raiding ever since, and I see it over and over again.

The REASON is that getting a raid team together is still a lot of work, and the players doing the work feel the need to maintain the fruits of their labors as well as enjoy them.

This isn't totally unfair of the raid leadership. Folks forget many small business making over $1 million a year have less than 10 employees. These players have to essentially play HR director, organizer, supervisor, site-boss, grief counselor, etc. to keep things running smoothly. They have to play longer hours to make sure they keep their relationship up with their guildies or risk their raid groups falling down.

Still, it ROYALLY sucks when a raid guild leader decides to give her boyfriend your raidspot, or [insert random abuse of power here] and then talk down to you like you're some piece of trash.

"Everyone loves a good gear grind."

No actually, they don't. Gear grinds are awful, cheap excuses for content.

Also this: "Adding lots of open PvP or RvR will make my game a niche and drive away the casual crowd."

No it wont. You can have your cake and eat it. DAoC did it. There is no reason you can't have compelling open PvP and RvR battles across multiple zones and still have robust and full PvE at the same time.

Someone please do this!

The only stereotype that REALLY irritates me is that women aren't good players. There's quite a bit of discrimination against women in some hardcore raid guilds.

Probably the two stereotypes where people seem to believe Casual players and Roleplayers lack skill/knowledge of the actual game.

I kick plenty of ass as a Casual player who enjoys RP, thank you very much.

I hate the stereotype that any MMO player is instantly a WoW player. When I hear someone say this I really just want to murder them.
That and any game with stats (like agility and strength) is compared to WoW, that one is mainly the idiots of idiots that have rarely occurced.

The idea that female players have it terribly easy because we can just bat our virtual eyelashes, show a bit of pixelated leg, and have male players tripping over themselves to hand us gold, items, and help.

Not only does it completely ignore the radical notion of women who have enough self respect to be appalled at the idea of flirting our way to a raid spot, but the imagined offense seems to be less poor gamesmanship--which I could at least understand--and more, "Why can't -I- just cyber for loot instead of working for it?!" And, well, there are guys who do exactly that: roll up a female toon, act cutesy and helpless, get other lonely guys to give them stuff, and in the process perpetuate the stereotype. There are entire threads on some forums devoted to how to pull it off. Yes, there are women who do it, and it's just as disgusting coming from either gender, but it's twice as exasperating to go out of your way to avoid depending on anyone when playing just to be considered a legitimate gamer, then to hear the guy who just made a sweeping generalization about female players needing to depend on male players to succeed ingame follow it up by admitting that he does it himself, because, hey, it works.

@Puremallace
I'm pretty sick of this one myself, not least because I usually hear it from trolls. There's always one person in discussions about any upcoming MMO doing the "lololol this game will never kill WoW" thing, as though anyone expected that they would.

It's like console wars. You'd think nobody would care what's sitting in someone else's living room, but I guess that's human nature.

I have two stereotypes that really chap my ass.

First, men that play female characters are closet homosexuals or transvestites. Guaranteed, any forum thread that starts up will blow up, and tons of idiots and trolls will run wild. There are plenty of reasons why people play opposite gender but I think the overwhelming majority do it for aesthetic reasons. I'm a guy and I think women look better than men.

Second, that RPers are out of touch with reality. I see RP as being both an author and an actor. For some people, the game becomes more enjoyable and exciting when you can create a character (not just an avatar) and really interact with the world and it's goings-on.

That PvPers are all kids.

I may be immature, but I'm not young haha.