As part of my podcasting duties on LOTRO Reporter I’m often poking around in the forums to find the latest news. If I let it them, reading game forums would suck all the joy out of my day and my gaming. I had a feed of the LOTRO forums in my Feed Reader for a few weeks. I gave up on it and deleted the feed because I couldn’t take it. The titles alone were making me not want to log into such a horribly broken, evil, out to ruin everyone’s life game. LOTRO isn’t broken it’s a wonderful game. Is it perfect? No. Is it the worst thing out there? No. If your only exposure to any game is through the forums you would think it was running around kicking puppies and taking candy from babies for fun.
Negative angry forums are not anything new. I’m quite sure the first forum was full of negativity. I know what forums are like, and I normally avoid them unless I’m looking for something specific.
I’ve been feeling particularly sensitive about this subject for the last few days. The biggie was the Player Council announcement. It took only six or seven comments before the first negative one showed up. Further down on the first page was a comment in response to a previous comment that was so over the top in reaction with anger that if someone had spoken to me like that in person, I would have kicked them out of my house. I feel a lot sympathy for the Player Council members. They didn’t sign up for shenanigans like someone putting up their player sheet and ask if you would want this person to represent your server.
I know it won’t do a bit of good to ask for kindness from the forums. I would like to ask the few people who will read this to take a minute and send a thank you or a congratulatory note to the Council Members on your server or to your favorite Community Manager. They could probably use some positive words about now.
