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Haydrian wrote on 2010-05-19 00:35
To new coming members and older members of the MMO "Mabinogi" distributed by Nexon, the community is one of the first things brought up. It's not uncommon for members to complain that the community is host to a great too much drama and immature idiots. I myself have been a relatively "hardcore" player of the game since early to mid 2008 and am here to show other players just how fast those accusations are placed upon this game.
For the past year I have been getting to know other online communities to see how they communicate and function is hopes of finding a good recipe for a guild foundation. Instead I found out the primary reason why this game has become so dear to me. The community.
While it is true that drama frequents every server for North America Mabinogi, this drama is not unlike regular drama you would find offline. It may be aggravating but aside to the play versus player drama the likeliness to the real world is there. The friendship circles and love-struck triangles all are normal drama that would occur anywhere. This form of drama doesn't require any explanation other than "not everyone in the world will like you or be nice to you, but there will be people who do."
The player versus player drama is in essence a boys club. Not to be derogatory, just a term used to explain competitive and tough expectations from the group. If you have the skills whether you abuse them or not there are two ways that you can be viewed: either a "pro" or an asshole. When your newer to the game and involved with this drama you are either stereotyped as a "noob" or as a player with potential. Both sides can easily be called a "camper" which is simply someone either bored or with a vengeance continuously killing another person. Either way these "campers" will have people who view them under one of the above groupings. This drama is actually harmless and extremely common in the world of MMOs.
While taking a look into some of the popular MMO games out there at the present the Mabinogi PVP drama is greatly overshadowed in the MMORPGs that have more open ranged PVP options and is very common is FPS PVP situations on both the PC and on consoles. Games such as Perfect World International still have "permission based" PVP but at the same time once you hit a certain level in the game it's a free for all outside of the safe zones. This is not uncommon practice for most MMORPGs and is why MMOs were originally just a boys club with fewer female players. In the console FPS world there are no restrictions, however you are generally on a team making things usually less dramatic than their PC equivalents. Another factor to the lack of drama to the FPS world is that unless you use voice chat typing is not a common activity, and without the conversation there is no drama.
The other major drama for Mabinogi can be found in the forums especially the official Nexon forums. The forum drama is usually an extreme version of daily drama. Often guild or "clicks" banding together against an individual or group. It's also home to some very mean comments that normally wouldn't be said in game as most in game conversation is more simplistic than forum.
This just goes to how forums work. There are two primary types of forums: general interest and role playing. Role playing forums rarely have the drama associated with the former general conversations as the posters are all there upon a common ground - to build a story. General discussion forums however are be the most intense of conversations to the most brain-dead of conversations.
Recently I have been perusing around different forums. I kept it in the more gaming oriented area to keep simplicity. The eye of this is the social avatar community Gaia Online. The community is broken up into different categories of the artists, "Cbers" and "GCers". Whenever people mention how band the drama is withing the Nexon forums all I have to say is Gaia is 50x worse. The "flamers" are so common it's a pandemic, the clicks are more dominantly obvious and even more stupidly harsh with their comments against each other, and all the while holding a mentality similar to those that are involved with MMORPG PVP calling out people as "noob" and causing fights.
The drama for Mabinogi is almost always connected in some way to the game and is therefore nowhere near as intense as that drama which is connected to an individual. The Gaian community makes it their duty to completely bash someone and assume childish accusations towards people over something as stupid as a movie or entertainer. While the Gaian art community is not like this, the rest of the forum is primarily for young teens to flame one another.
In comparison to other forums such as general gaming forums and even deviantART the Mabinogi forums are actually pretty normal. While there is some trash talk it's generally just basic talk about the game itself and sometimes general interest, however flaming is not as common.
So in the end I look at the Mabinogi community and have nothing but pride. While alike to most online groups we have our issues we are for the most part a very together community. Very often will we go out and help one another without ask and have generally intelligent conversation.
So to any of you that may be disbelieving of my overview I ask you to go out an see it for yourself. Anyone that is mature enough to care about the Mabinogi community should be able to see, we're actually a really great group.
Disclaimer:
While yes I only mentioned 3 real comparisons I did go through several others. Most were pretty similar and therefore i felt little need to mention them. Also please keep in mind that this case study is not official and is an opinion of an individual. These are not facts and simply observations. Thank you for reading.
This is a copy and paste of a journal entry that I did as one of the starting posts for a future blog. I will probably be doing more observation based blogs pertaining to Mabinogi and I will probably put them here as well for discussion purposes.
Discuss :)
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Chockeh wrote on 2010-05-19 00:44
Read the whole GODDAMN wall.
It`s true that mabi has less a-holes than in other games (I`m pointing at you MS!).
It`s kind of hard not having any help at all anyways, since there is only so much things you can do in mabi .-.
+Rep o3o.
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Haydrian wrote on 2010-05-19 00:46
Quote from Chocklitshop;38995:
Read the whole GODDAMN wall.
It`s true that mabi has less a-holes than in other games (I`m pointing at you MS!).
It`s kind of hard not having any help at all anyways, since there is only so much things you can do in mabi .-.
+Rep o3o.
Lololol yea it is a wall of text isn't it? I should maybe put a warning label on it, haha.
I was going to touch base on the helping people thing but I figured I'd start with just the communication portion. I'll probably go over the helping people thing more so and perhaps include a guide on how to get started and how to acquire help. that's for another day.
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Intex wrote on 2010-05-19 00:51
Official game site forums usually tend to be crap holes, especially when poorly moderated.
That's why Mabination is the place to be ;o
So in the end I look at the Mabinogi community and have nothing but pride.
Why would you have pride in something that's still bad (even if it's decent in comparison standards).
I still think the Nexon forum/community are bad.
I've literally only gone to the Nexon forum to list a buying list (got little from it) and check out hilarious gossip.
Especially the life section, it's all chatter.
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Drifter wrote on 2010-05-19 00:52
Nice study there man!
Whenever you start your blog I'll make sure to bookmark it :D
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pataterose wrote on 2010-05-19 00:59
i can't compare, but i heard gaia and MS were worse. Nexon forum is still better than 4chan tough v:
nice wall of text.
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Haydrian wrote on 2010-05-19 00:59
Quote from Intex;39005:
Official game site forums usually tend to be crap holes, especially when poorly moderated.
That's why Mabination is the place to be ;o
Why would you have pride in something that's still bad (even if it's decent in comparison standards).
I still think the Nexon forum/community are bad.
I've literally only gone to the Nexon forum to list a buying list (got little from it) and check out hilarious gossip.
Especially the life section, it's all chatter.
A lot of my pride is based primarily around the game itself. However I do hold pride as a mabinogian because the players are actually usually good company unlike other games and forums I have ventured. Nexon fails i'm not including in this. There is no pride for Nexon until they smarten up, but the community is not Nexon. The majority of my pride comes from the fan sites as well as fan sites are the home to the usually more dedicated player or at least usually the more sane. While the official forum is indeed still crap the community itself outside of those forums is not. there in lays the pride factor.
Really that part is only there for a good closing remark, haha.
Every community has it's bad points but you just gotta enjoy the little things.
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Hiccup wrote on 2010-05-19 01:14
Drama really only pertains to those who enjoy PvP and those who enjoy putting down others online.
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Intex wrote on 2010-05-19 01:15
Quote from Rysterz;39016:
A lot of my pride is based primarily around the game itself. However I do hold pride as a mabinogian because the players are actually usually good company unlike other games and forums I have ventured. Nexon fails i'm not including in this. There is no pride for Nexon until they smarten up, but the community is not Nexon. The majority of my pride comes from the fan sites as well as fan sites are the home to the usually more dedicated player or at least usually the more sane. While the official forum is indeed still crap the community itself outside of those forums is not. there in lays the pride factor.
Really that part is only there for a good closing remark, haha.
Every community has it's bad points but you just gotta enjoy the little things.
Really....
Maybe it's just Ruairi.
The drama isn't even about PVP.
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Haydrian wrote on 2010-05-19 01:21
Quote from Intex;39037:
Really....
Maybe it's just Ruairi.
The drama isn't even about PVP.
Possibly. It's usually just PVP on Tarlach or has something to do with either Bliss or Dreams which are both very heavy PVP guilds. There is drama that has nothing to do with PVP but it's easily avoidable. The only time no one had a choice is when Boy decided to whine via bugle about the gold duping. That's a rare occurrence though.
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Piko wrote on 2010-05-19 01:24
Pikachu pika. pi pikachu.
(Pika applies the same basic knowledge to every NA MMO Gaming community - 1 ~ 2 years into the game's release, the community should have assholes and noobs who care too much about pride and drama. At worst, it will be mostly made up of those kinds of people. Though Pika agrees Mabinogi has less assholes than in other gaming communities. Pika just thinks that it has a whole lot more newbies who don't know much of what they're doing in-game since Mabinogi can be confusing for first timers.)
Pi pikachu pika pi. Pika pi pikachu pika pika. Pikachu pika. Pi pi pikachu. Pika.
(Relevant to topic :
Today Pika was fishing, and this random noob walks right on top of me, slaps on the same title, and starts fishing. Then a bunch more people came. When Pika come back from being afk, Pika find 5 people around me. So Pika just stops fishing, slap on a different title from the dude who copied Pika's, and say, "Where'd all these people come from o3o;"
The dude who copied Pika's title said "You know you love it" (Reference to him having a 17 year old character while Pika drank a potion to be 10 that was gained from gachapon and is a Female Elf). This led Pika to automatically tell he was a pedo, call him a pedo, and change channels.)
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Juno wrote on 2010-05-19 01:51
Mabinogi's graphics have a surprising ability to deter the worst of the worst. It's hard to argue you're as hard as it gets when you look like an anime character.
I like where you're going, but I'd like to see you go deeper...anywhere. You scratched the surface of a lot of areas without getting into a ton of detail.
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Everwanderer wrote on 2010-05-19 01:57
Too many kids play, most are on that "age" where they want to follow trends and act all cool to impress who knows who. No, I'm not saying all kids are dumb or retarded, or whatever. I'm just sayin there's a large amount of "kids" who are on a certain age where we all were idiots =).
I'm fine with kids playing, as long as they don't annoy me with said behaviour.
Quote from Pikablu;39052:
Today Pika was fishing, and this random noob walks right on top of me,
You know, calling random strangers "noobs" doesn't help =/
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Archibald wrote on 2010-05-19 04:36
Alexina = low drama. Thank goodness. We have about a small handful of dramazombies. The rest get along.
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Haydrian wrote on 2010-05-19 07:17
Quote from Juno;39076:
Mabinogi's graphics have a surprising ability to deter the worst of the worst. It's hard to argue you're as hard as it gets when you look like an anime character.
I like where you're going, but I'd like to see you go deeper...anywhere. You scratched the surface of a lot of areas without getting into a ton of detail.
Really that was the point for this, to just scratch the surface. If i do open up a blog I'll probably take this another step further and kind of dissect the community. Besides if I were to have made it any longer Sacrifice might've tried to kill me, haha.
Nah in all seriousness this is just kind of a demo idea/ my odd version of jot notes (no i'm not kidding). Figured i was thinking about starting a blog so I posted this on here to see what kind of interest it brings and see what everyone else thinks about the community. Whether they agree or disagree and why. :)