Ok, we've got a couple threads about [Internet] toxicity going now, so I think negativity's getting its fair share of press; how's about a thread about the opposite? Recall a time, either in a forum or online game, that you encountered the rare exemplar of human kindness and decency from anonymous strangers? I've got two:
I'll start with the Escapist of all places. Late last year, I jumped back into a game that years prior had repeatedly ground me into dust pretty much out the gate, Dark Souls. So, I started a thread here asking for help and advice. I pretty much expected that of all the replies, about 95% would be dismissive snark, and maybe 5% actually helpful advice. I further expected this would all transpire over the course of maybe a dozen replies, the thread would die and fall to page 2 and into the annals of Escapist to be forgotten. That's the exact opposite of what happened. A lot of really good people on this site chimed in with hints, tips, links to wikis, general tactics, advice, etc. The thread went on for MONTHS and took me all the way to the full 1,000 Gamerscore in DS1 which I thought was an impossibility when I started. I doubt I would/could have done it without the help I received here; you guys were awesome!
Also, taking it back to Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. At the time, having been forged in the fires of Halo 2 lobbies, I was no stranger to the hostility of multiplayer lobbies; I'd been called every name in the book and my mother was purportedly the filthiest whore on the western hemisphere, so my skin was pretty thick. It was my knee-jerk reaction as soon as I saw the lobby filling up, to just mute everyone immediately. But GRAW2, for whatever reason, was different. I stayed pretty much to the co-op campaign and made a lot of really good friends over the course of the several months I played it, 30-40 people added to my FL. I can count the number of times I had an issue on one hand; the majority of the time, people were cool, actually cooperated and no one ever got bashed for their skill or lack thereof. Point in case, I partied up with a bunch of randoms, and we did a few rounds of co-op until we all decided to go for the Ultimate Defender achievement (had to hold off waves of enemies for one hour, real time.) We were having connectivity issues, and the match dropped a couple of times. We finally got a good start, and I fucked up, was killed within the first 10 minutes. There I am feeling like a shit stain watching from the death cam, but they told me not to worry about it and tasked me with sending them all friend requests so we could try again together the next night if they failed without me. But they powered through for the next 50 minutes while I watched from the afterlife and the achievement popped for us all. If I had near that kind of experience in Halos or CoDs, I still might actually be interested in multiplayer, but since GRAW2 died out, every other lobby I've peaked into has been the same old shit: N-bombs, "you suck," singing badly into the mic and my mother's purportedly working her way to the top of the Eastern hemisphere whore filth charts...
I'll start with the Escapist of all places. Late last year, I jumped back into a game that years prior had repeatedly ground me into dust pretty much out the gate, Dark Souls. So, I started a thread here asking for help and advice. I pretty much expected that of all the replies, about 95% would be dismissive snark, and maybe 5% actually helpful advice. I further expected this would all transpire over the course of maybe a dozen replies, the thread would die and fall to page 2 and into the annals of Escapist to be forgotten. That's the exact opposite of what happened. A lot of really good people on this site chimed in with hints, tips, links to wikis, general tactics, advice, etc. The thread went on for MONTHS and took me all the way to the full 1,000 Gamerscore in DS1 which I thought was an impossibility when I started. I doubt I would/could have done it without the help I received here; you guys were awesome!
Also, taking it back to Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. At the time, having been forged in the fires of Halo 2 lobbies, I was no stranger to the hostility of multiplayer lobbies; I'd been called every name in the book and my mother was purportedly the filthiest whore on the western hemisphere, so my skin was pretty thick. It was my knee-jerk reaction as soon as I saw the lobby filling up, to just mute everyone immediately. But GRAW2, for whatever reason, was different. I stayed pretty much to the co-op campaign and made a lot of really good friends over the course of the several months I played it, 30-40 people added to my FL. I can count the number of times I had an issue on one hand; the majority of the time, people were cool, actually cooperated and no one ever got bashed for their skill or lack thereof. Point in case, I partied up with a bunch of randoms, and we did a few rounds of co-op until we all decided to go for the Ultimate Defender achievement (had to hold off waves of enemies for one hour, real time.) We were having connectivity issues, and the match dropped a couple of times. We finally got a good start, and I fucked up, was killed within the first 10 minutes. There I am feeling like a shit stain watching from the death cam, but they told me not to worry about it and tasked me with sending them all friend requests so we could try again together the next night if they failed without me. But they powered through for the next 50 minutes while I watched from the afterlife and the achievement popped for us all. If I had near that kind of experience in Halos or CoDs, I still might actually be interested in multiplayer, but since GRAW2 died out, every other lobby I've peaked into has been the same old shit: N-bombs, "you suck," singing badly into the mic and my mother's purportedly working her way to the top of the Eastern hemisphere whore filth charts...