I think you remember that backwards.
They stopped communicating - THEN people started being toxic.
They got some - understandable - flack for the OML nerf and “you’re supposed to lose” but other than that nothing out of the ordinary.
Until they just stopped talking to the forums.
Hahahahahaha, I was thinking wayyyyyy before that. By the time that stuff happened they were already long gone from here, at least by the standards they set earlier. Those things brought out some pretty ugly abuse but by that point they’d stopped reading and responding daily.
I want to say it was the insane overreaction to the back-to-back nerfs of Sentry and Xforce/4Thor that drove them away, but there might be something else I’m not remembering. There’s also a clear split that happened pre- and post- true healing (go look up that thread if you’ve got a spare month and a desire to lose all faith in humanity).
Ohhhh… Yeah.
I remember the first year they were really active.
In hindsight I think it was to establish a community here.
After that was done, they just shifted back a few gears because - apart from Ice - they never actually LIKED the interaction.
Buf it’s all speculation.
Eh, I think they liked it until they didn’t, and they probably stopped liking it when it turned into a bunch of crazy people screaming at them all the time. I imagine they don’t allow that sort of thing in the Discord channel. I also imagine it’d be fine if they started posting here again, but maybe that ship has sailed.
I’ve always been intrigued by the definition of what toxic meant on message boards. The reason I got the moderator job at jq.com was because previously there was nobody but Joe and he didn’t have time to do it so there was basically no moderation. On my first day I was handed the tasks of:
Banning a poster who made a rape threat
Deleting pornographic images that had been posted in the forum
Creating a set of posting rules for the forum which immediately made me enemy no.1 to those running wild with the anarchy
Rampant disrespect and personal insults to creators (and sometimes their spouses)
Oh and one guy wanted to fight Chuck Austen the X-Men writer. I didn’t do anything about that as Chuck didn’t post there and well he was a terrible writer…
This was the official board of world famous artist and Editor in Chief of the no.1 superhero company in the world! Don’t get the wrong idea, it wasn’t all bad but until that point it was the wild wild west. In part that was because at this period Joe and Bill had a bit of an edgy online persona and could rub people up the wrong way so I guess it drew in a fair share of trouble.
What sort of “toxic” things were on these forums? I am honestly fascinated. I have never seen anything beyond mild grumbling. I got a formal warning last month for mildly rebuking some guy who turned up to have a pop at the Devs, I can’t imagine this place ever truly being filled with actual anarchic trolls? I know there were more moderators here in the past when I first started lurking yay years ago. Was there a period when the boards were unmoderated? That would explain a toxic atmosphere more readily.
I think it was pretty mild, especially after seeing your examples.
i always felt this place was well moderated, a tad over-moderated even.
I agree. The moderators do a good job (even if I disagreed about that warning, lol.) There was one moderator who was forever moving topics and I got into trouble for moaning about him. Otherwise though this place is pretty sedate and people might get snarky but it is still sort of a nice sort of snarky. Like everybody is Keanu Reeves. I would have loved the dedication posters here have to staying on topic back in the day!
In those days they just didn’t have enough moderators for the level of activity, and sometimes some of the moderators were quite anti-developer themselves, so they’d let stuff through.
No offense but it’s a lot easier to moderate the forum today, when it’s getting 10 or 20 posts a day, vs 500 or 1000. A lot of that discussion happens in Line or Discord now but it wasn’t always that way.
As far as the actual toxicity, it was pages upon pages of people calling the developers malicious or hateful, accusing them of personal vendettas, cash grabs, pump and dump schemes, slaps in the face, etc. It was generally accepted in the larger community that the developers were not only clueless but actually evil and that players were actively being exploited/cheated/milked of money. Many of these players justified hacks or cheating because of this.
Like, we laugh at Hound defending the developers at all costs, sometimes – well, in those days I was frequently called a shill for them, because I thought some things were accidental, or done for good reasons. The attitude was just gross and it was pretty much universal. It’s still around but not as prevalent among all the noobs who only started playing in the last 6 or 7 years.
Here’s one: True Healing Discussion (Live 6/25) - MPQ General Discussion - 505 Go! Official Forums
This was basically the beginning of the end of them posting here.
My god, 71 pages.
I was trying to find a post from me in there, but… Yeah, no.
Yeah, ain’t no way I am in for 71 pages! Some griping starts on page 2, it is not so far aimed directly at Ice himself but it is more what I would call whiny self entitled than toxic and certainly nobody as yet seems to be an actual psychopath. Did you get forum topics asking for posters to post the measurements of their gentleman’s package? Heh. That was a fun one! I shall read some more and see where it goes.
I can dredge up some stuff that’s likely worse; that was just my first thought.
The really cool thing about this forum is that during the first, say, 3 or 4 years of the game, everything was here – alliance recruiting, a thread for every PvP and PvE, season summaries, detailed strategy guides, conversations that developed most of the strategies we still use today – and it’s all still there if you go looking for it.
Toxicity? A lot. When it’s impossible to keep a mature discussion, that’s when I call it a toxic approach. I can remember the famous slap in the face, for absolutely whatever reason able to imagine it (I can remember someone accusing devs that chavez always was creating critical balls on the board corners, and he was serious). And of course devs where the evildoers and half of their time (when not working on the game), were discussing the best way to destroy the players.
But also there was toxicity toward other players: there was the rightful player type, the f2p, enduring the devs’ evil attempts to destroy their game experience, and after that there was the infamous player type: the awful whales.
They were the most disgusting persons, putting money into the game and hence quenching the money thirst of greedy devs (without these players devs probably would make the game 100% free). Also because they buy better characters they steal the best rewards from rightful f2ps, and even sometimes they ask for challenges! Someone suspicious of being a whale rightfully deserved the most acid quotes.
Of course I fought a lot of them here.
Now I’m losing the edge.
That thread is getting pretty fun! A guy on day 95(!) is worried about his slow 3* transition and Ice is still in the thick of it so far!
Page 10 we get our first sort of mild insult towards Ice accusing him of not bothering to do something. But we also have other posters calling out those who are being a bit more uncivil.
Page 13 and the gripes are still pretty tame. As nearly everybody is “unknown” it is hard to tell if these are a few posters repeating the same thing over and over or if there is a wide range of views.
We have hit page 16 and there are now some posters who like the change!! Is the tide turning? With 50+ pages to go probably not. Let’s see what happens. Also - I found @Bowgentle!
Page 19 and we have some reluctant acceptance. Page 20 we have a moderator appearance but not to take anybody to task but to confirm a posters question about he changes to true healing. The conversation had segued into a bit of a tedious back and forth on what true healing is (was?) and I guess we have some disagreement on this and if it was a good idea.
Page 23 and we have a request for the Devs to review the whole thread so far. Hmm…not sure that is gonna happen as there is a lot of noise but hopefully we get some more action. However it seems that a moderator has been up to something naughty with post editing!!! Ice confirms it has been taken care of and it seems the Mod might have been booted?
Oooooooohhh we gotta death threat!!! I am not convinced it is anything but a joke but now we are talking!
Page 30 now and it has been a bit tame but we do have a wish that nobody buys a health pack ever again.
Page 33 and we have a refund request and I will never spend another penny on this game pist from a poster I recognise by name (no idea if they spent another penny but their roster ain’t bad). Page 33 was a bit grumpy!
Ulp! Page 34 brings news of a spin off thread being locked. Guess the moderators are active. Repetition? Seems so.
Page 40 - hot dog stand buff?!?!? Could be the answer!
Page 43 - ha ha, somebody has asked for a recap of the previous 42 pages as they can’t be bothered to read them! Good idea, what sort of maniac is reading this thread let alone summing it up?!?!?
Page 49 and we have a real $$$ value that somebody has spent/been cheated out of by this change. It is $70, a not inconsiderable sum to be fair.
Is Ice still reading somebody asks?!?!! Good question. I am going to have to keep going aren’t I?
Uh oh…page 52 confirms that Ice hasn’t posted anything since Tuesday, whenever Tuesday might have been. Time has started to warp to be fair and is beginning to lose some level of meaning…
Ice is back!! In a different thread! Basically saying nothing more to see here. Crikey, I still have 16 pages to go. 
I have been punished for cheating. I skipped ahead only to find people quoting Ice. I have to go back 3 pages to 57. Ice is telling the forum that sales dropped below normal over last Friday/Saturday but seem to be back to normal. Ice is saying the change wasn’t made to line pockets and is trying to fill in the gaps. Will it work?
Wait, what is this!!! They didn’t actually end prologue healing after all??? Oh wait they did for teams but not Wolverine and Daken. Thank god. To find out after 63 pages that this had all been a mistake…
Page 66 and we have the admission that the players are gonna have to suck it up.
We are now settling into some solid roster advice and PvP management.
Page 69 and we have a HP sale!!! Ha ha. Oh Devs you are awful!
We have calls for the thread to end! But posters are keeping it alive as a joke!
And a Mod finally puts it to death on page 71. What a ride! It had highs, lows and we nearly lost Ice there for a minute. But he came through, scarred but perhaps a little wiser. I think we all learned something but I am not sure exactly what that was.
…I can’t believe you read all that.
Every Time I tried to skip a lot I hit an important quoted post! It is like the thread knew I was trying to cheat…
I recall that time and that post quite well. It was early in my MPQ playing days and I was probably still a 2* player then.
I was a definite abuser of Prologue healing back in the day.
As Entrailbucket noted, there were lots of 50+ page threads in those days anytime players even slightly thought things went against them. On the other hand, it was VASTLY more difficult to build your roster in those days. There was no such thing as saved covers and other goodies (champ levels for more resources) we take for granted today so it was easy to waste lots of covers (ie had to sell them for ISO) and other resources so it definitely felt a lot worse when a change happened that caused more wasted resources and time.
KGB
In all seriousness that thread was poorly moderated in my opinion and if it is an example of general behaviour then it was less a problem with toxicity and more a problem with the allowance of spam, repetition and irrelevance. There was absolutely nothing new on page 30 than page 10 and there is evidence that there were multiple threads on the same topic. Maybe the Mods were stretched but when they did appear they seemed more interested in adding their own opinion than keeping things in line. It seems to back up what Entrailbucket said about them not exactly being on side with what they were supposed to be doing. I only had experience with one of them and he was a poor moderator in my opinion at the time and his actions were reversed by Brigby as being inappropriate. So you can see where some of the problems lay with the forum. Ice was left without much help it felt.
I remember being embarrassed about that thread at the time…like, I felt bad that players said some of the things they said, and didn’t want to be associated with them. I haven’t read it recently and I probably won’t, but that change and the reaction to it was a pretty clear starting point from the era of “demiurge/D3 all over the forum” and the era of “basically just announcements.”
I don’t know if it’s the reason why or if it just happened around the same time, though.
No, don’t misunderstand it.
At that time the usual behaviour was to rant and complaint about everything, and to call devs thieves here or there.
Someone quoting and arguing them, defending game or devs (exactly like me), was a person trying to call attention, being incivil, kind of trollish, etc…
It was really hard to change that perception, but it happened.