3 People You’ll Meet In Game Forums

There are three basic personalities you’ll meet in every game forum; no matter the game, no matter the forum’s moderation policies.  These three people, collectively, make up the bulk of forum posts and (often) blog commentary as well.

These three forum users are:

1. The Troll
2. The Fanboy / Fangirl
3. The Noob

Here’s how to identify each.  It’s not difficult.

The Troll

This one is relatively easy.  Usually he or she will be the one pointing out the n00bs (see below).  Often with put-downs (including calling them “noobs”), hostility, and general meanness.  The troll loves nothing more than to stir up pointless controversy and destroy civilized discussion with slander, vitriol, and other things you’d normally only hear during Congressional hearings and Parliamentary vote calling.

Trolls are known to latch onto a specific game or game type and steer all of their hatred towards that game into any forum remotely related to it.  Often seen in groups, they’ll enter forums in packs and flood them with pages of manure-like commentary meant to “destroy” the game.

The Fanboy / Fangirl

Usually the opposite of trolls, these people can quickly become trolls when engaged in forum battles with said trolls.  These are the uber-fans of the game, the people who not only spend all of their waking hours playing the game itself, but then sacrifice sleep and rejuvenation time in order to talk about the game in Internet forums.  They often appear in droves whenever the game is down for maintenance or updates.

These people are marked by two things: their intense loyalty to the game that is their focus and their inability to accept that they might be ignorant or unskilled in any aspect of the game whatsoever.

Incidentally, they are often self-appointed moderators and can be quite friendly to noobs who ask very basic questions about the game – this is usually a Fangirl attribute.

Noobs

Not to be confused with body parts, these are the new players to a game (or those interested in it who haven’t played).  Short for “newby” or “new guy”, noob can also be spelled “n00b”, “nub”, etc.  The term is both a marker or experience level and a derogatory slang used to slander another player for being stupid.

Noobs are most easily noted for their asking of basic questions (often ones that are answered in the FAQ or game’s manual) and for posting queries in off-topic or inappropriate forum areas (such as asking about the game’s mechanics in the role-playing forum).

Most noobs are either taken under the wing of a Fangirl or chased away with violent attacks from trolls and/or Fanboys turned trolls.

Those are the three basic people you’ll find in any game forum, no matter the subject.  Even games that don’t exist or haven’t been released yet have them.