MMOG's Need Lovin' Too

MMOG's Need Lovin' Too By Allan Though a grizzled, old veteran donning war-torn robes and a gnarled staff in the MMOG scene, Allan is more like a level 5 squire in a simple tunic wielding a tin blade when it comes to the realm of writing articles. Nevertheless, he is here to train his typing fingers and bring you news and interesting perspectives on things you might not have known you even cared about.

Here's a little experiment we can try. Choose your favorite MMOG - it could be anything, really. Got it? Good. Now that MMOG should have a respective official forum that you can visit. Go to that forum. There should be a list of topics, with one being "General Discussion" or "Open Topics" or some facsimile of that interest. Open it. Now you should be at a new page with various threads listed within this topic. Within the first page, you will see at least one thread posted by someone complaining, whining, or outright bashing the game...or even threatening to - gasp - quit entirely. I can say that you will find one of these topics with 68% confidence.

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Some of you may scoff at this thinking, 'psh, forums are filled with this stuff,' and you would be right. Most MMOGs yield "cesspools" of bickering and game-hating - which they call their forums. So why is such a place intended for constructive perspectives and discussions turn into a hot spot for moaning and groaning?

There is actually a very logical reason as to why forums tend to give off this vibe of negativity. I'm sure most of you could easily relate to this scenario (myself included), but whenever one experiences a problem, they usually go out of their way to report it in the form of a thread, ticket, or in all caps in world chat. People have more of a tendency to lodge a complaint rather than throw out a compliment, and thus it is more likely to see the former instead of the latter. Forums especially mirror this effect in the more popular MMOGs, since the community is less tight-knit and much more anonymous. Or in the case of WoW, where the developers were much more forgiving and open to complaints for a time, they pretty much opened the flood gates for a swarm of "suggestions."