The top 5 worst gaming communities

"What the f*ck are you doing?"

"Idiot noob"

"Useless team wtf are you doing? I'm the only one doing sh*t."

These are the kinds of remarks you hear when playing certain video games. Even though there are plenty of good, kind-hearted gaming communities out there (I'm looking at you Dark Souls and Elder Scrolls), there also several toxic ones as well. 

I am going to go through five of the worst communities I have had first hand experience with. Let me know if you agree or disagree with my thoughts in the comments below!

5) Minecraft

Minecraft is probably the most controversial choice here. However, I have personally seen just how poorly people get treated by some world creators, other players, and even moderators.

From my experience, there seems to be two categories of player -- elitist bastard and insolent kid. The elitist is usually an older guy, anywhere between the ages of 16-30, who absolutely loves to be an arrogant overlord, abusing their power and showing off on a server they own or helped to build.

The insolent kid is exactly that. A rude, loud-mouthed 10-14 year old who clearly hasn't got a parent around to give him a good telling off. They'll shout, swear, and moan at you -- and generally make any Minecraft activity they are involved in an unbearable.

There are, of course, plenty of well-mannered players as well. But for every one of them, there are two complete assh*les. 

4) World of Tanks

It's a shame that I have to include one of my favorite online games here, but it's a well known fact that the WoT community is very toxic. Even fellow WoT players acknowledge this. Random battles are filled with so many self-proclaimed professionals that you literally can't do anything right when you play. If I had a penny for every time I saw the word 'noob' in the chat, I'd have a sh*tload of pennies. 

At the higher tiers, where you typically find actual good players, it doesn't get much better. If you make a misplay, you get yelled at. If you outplay an enemy tank, you get some upset guy swearing at you in chat. The genuinely nice guys are so few and far between that it is always a pleasant surprise when you bump into one and cooperate effectively with them.

3) Call of Duty

Call of Duty is renowned for having one of the worst communities in any video game franchise ever. Every veteran player has heard the old adage, "I'm going to f*ck your mum tonight" - the cliché being that this poetry is spewed by 12-year-old kids who you meet on CoD's battlefields.

My experience with the online CoD community began properly with Modern Warfare 2, and I quickly learned that my best friend was the mute button. It wasn't just immature kids my buddies and I had to deal with either. There were plenty of older blokes who would accuse you of cheating, hacking, playing like a noob, etc., etc. The list could go on. 

The situation has not improved since those days, and many will argue that it has gotten worse. Plenty of players choose to play the game a certain way -- e.g. head-glitching, quickscoping, and camping -- and I take no issue with that. It's the unnecessarily aggressive attitude of many of these guys that is deplorable, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

As for me, even though I used to really enjoy playing CoD online, I've now moved on from the franchise in favor of other titles and series.

2) Counter Strike

My experience with Counter Strike is relatively limited, although I have clocked over 20 hours with the game. In that time, I have witnessed some of the most awful SOB's that I have ever encountered in a video game. Where do I start? I've seen racism, elitism, new players being kicked purely for being new, tryharders raging because their team is terrible. I could go on, but for the sake of brevity I will quickly talk about one example.

In what was probably my fourth or fifth match of CS:GO, I was clearly new to the game and playing on casual mode. I wasn't doing well -- maybe 2 kills to 6 deaths, and the guy who was at the bottom of my team kept telling me I should commit suicide because I was bad at the game. I found it hilarious because he was doing worse than me, but then another bloke (this time from the enemy team) joined in. I wasn't particularly bothered by this, but it was still shitty to have two people telling you to kill yourself for no reason.

TL;DR - Many Counter Strike players are nob-heads who have no soul. 

1) League of Legends

*Sigh*

What can I say about the state of the League of Legends player-base that hasn't already been said? LoL probably has the worst reputation out of any online multiplayer game in terms of how bad its community is. The way I see it, the problem is often caused by elitists (yes, that word again) who believe they are the best players in the world and get super frustrated when they don't do well or their team is faltering. They then proceed to take their anger out on their team instead of using the chat in a cooperative or constructive manner.

To get a more rounded view, GameSkinny's very own senior editor, Jay Ricciardi, gave me his well-balanced opinion on the LoL community;

I played League of Legends actively for about 5 years, and it was a blast while I played. I ended up stopping for two reasons: 1. Time. 2. The in-game chat. The LoL community does a lot of good, let's be clear about that up front; there are tons of great friendships, creators, artists, streamers, and pro players all over the LoL landscape. Unfortunately, these tend to be to be overshadowed by that one guy who raged after the support gave up first blood. You know the guy. The LoL community, for all of its grace and greatness, is at times tainted by the fact that LoL is a team game that puts a lot of pressure on individuals to perform well. You might all be on a team, but it's an individual person who isn't keeping up in CS, or healing, or stunning, or so on - and it's easy to hit 'enter' and lash out at that person. 

I pretty much agree with this statement; however, I have also seen entire teams of people gang up on one guy in the chat to such an extent that he quit the match. This wasn't an isolated occurrence either, as I have seen this happen more than once. And in my book, that is completely unacceptable and not what gaming is about.

Overall, these toxic players are the reason why many new players stop playing the game before they've actually got into it and improved. Get it together and stop ruining it for everyone else you self-righteous bastards!