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#1 - April 4, 2013, 11:40 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Hey,

I've noticed while reading through the forums that regardless of how people present their argument which, admittedly, is often crying about the state of things in the game, other people will always counter with responses (possibly) meant to make the original poster look like an idiot.

In the Arena for example you'll have someone who, possibly out of frustration, made some post calling for a nerf to a specific class because of reasons x, y, and z. If players don't agree they'll counter with something like "HAHAHAHAHA coming from a <class> l2p" and other such things, and rather than present a well reasoned and structured discussion it becomes a flame war or a never ending argument about why the class in question is and isn't bad and in the end nothing is resolved and the thread gets left unfinished because people have gotten bored with trading barbs or trying fruitlessly to make convince the others.
I've seen many posts like this one of all types of forums: Arena and Rated Battleground, Battleground and World PvP, all the class forums...

In ancient times forums are where philosophers went and had debates and presented their opinions on a specific matter and it was discussed and if someone behaved badly they were told to leave, compose themselves and come back when they can look at the matter objectively. For my part I try and look at the argument objectively while respecting the opinions of others, but I'm only human (shocking isn't it?) and it doesn't always work, but it seems that most people have no filter at all.

The result of people coming in and flaming or belittling others or general bad behavior is that, for the most part, the forums mentioned above have ceased being a place of intelligence and well reasoned discussion, but are more akin to a nursery school full of whiny little children all complaining because they can't get their own way. It bothers me, and the obvious solution is to stop visiting them but occasionally there'll be one or more posts that are constructive and enjoyable to read and it's for those that I sift through the mountainous piles of rubbish. Also there are a few forum posters who I've come to admire for their capacity to look at things differently and rather than just bash people they argue with fact.

The forums need to be more closely monitored in my opinion because, even though the interaction between posters on the forums are not specifically prohibited by the Code of Conduct the level of abuse is still rather intolerable. Rather than being outright and unnecessarily harsh with their abuse and name calling they subtly attack a person with reference to their intelligence or their character or skill... (People like you make me sick) (<Person> is an idiot) (Troll is obvious)

I beseech forum users to set aside their own bias and emotion when posting and look at a matter that you feel compelled to respond to and actually respond rather than react. Respond calmly with facts that you can produce and build your argument based on those rather than intangible hearsay or circumstance. Be civil and respectful to others and it'll be returned to you, and if you can't do this then rather don't post lest you shame yourself.

I've made rage posts; I've made posts in which I'm quite literally throwing a temper tantrum out of frustration for one thing or another and to be completely honest, when I was done re-reading them I was very much embarrassed. Even this post might be in the same category but its something I feel strongly about.

TL:DR - Because of the abuse (however subtle) I've noticed on the forums I feel they should be more closely and strictly monitored. When you're posting stuff, be respectful, clear, factual, and civil to others, and if you can't do that, then rather forgo posting anything.
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#12 - April 5, 2013, 12:45 p.m.
Blizzard Post
The thing is just that discrediting someone by pointing out their lack of arena rating, boss kills, achievement points, epic gear, or whatever, is far easier than constructing an argument.

It's especially evident in the situations where a person constructs a really solid argument. If someone else then strongly disagrees – but isn't very good with words – then the retort is often an attempt to discredit the person – because there really isn't much else that person can do.


Very true indeed.

When encountering people like these, the best thing you can do is to simply ignore them and also report them if they are being abusive as well.
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#19 - April 5, 2013, 2:47 p.m.
Blizzard Post


...it is actually quite hard to find an example to counter that observation.

I know, apparently, that they read everything but they only ever comment on negative threads.
I guess the devs only post to the US forums - it seems that EU blues mostly just act as forum moderators and don't often get involved with threads involving constructive feedback except for the occasional "Oh yes interesting thread, blue posting to make it stand out" type thing - Which at least gets the threads highlighted on the front page and on MMOchamp i suppose, but it's hard not to get the impression that many really good feedback threads are just getting 'lost' over here.


I can totally see how we might come across like this, that it looks like we ignore feedback and only post in negative threads or silly threads. :-(

After all, one of the most time consuming and important tasks we do is to read constructive feedback threads and forward that feedback to the developers, and that work is invisible to you guys since you cannot see which threads we have read and which threads we still need to read. Furthermore, we tend to not post in those constructive criticism threads unless we have something we can share on the topic at hand, and if we do have something to say in those threads, then it is often a time consuming task to verify that the info we want to post is correct and up to date. Posting in negative threads or silly threads is often way more straightforward and takes much less time to do, which is why you often see more blue posts in such threads.