Demigod Co-Op: A Heroes of Newerth Hope!

There is just something about tower defense team versus strategy games on the Personal Computer that turns a lot of people into raging maniacs and rude lunatics. Many tales tell the story of how unforgiving the community is on Defense of the Ancients and how they are able to spread their seeds of evil into games like Demigod and Heroes of Newerth. I have played latter two games and boy the ratio of friendly matches to criminal-level abusive matches is 1:100. What's more disturbing about the rude people in Demigod and HoN is that they self-destruct on their own team mates when they should be focusing on their opponents.

I have played my share of online matches on Demigod when I first picked it up. After realizing that high rudeness encounter ratio mentioned previously, I stopped playing the game online entirely. I then exclusively play the game offline with my dumb A.I. teammates - it's really strange how your team A.I. is significantly dumb compared to how smart they are on the opposing team - but hey, you won't see me yelling and cursing on the top of my lungs or typing out curse words from the frustration. Playing with the A.I. gets a bit lonely though, so two nights ago, I decided to go online. Instead of joining the player vs. player matches, I opened my own "co-op" game room and set the matches to human players versus the computer. I was able to get two full games going and guess what - I have never met people this friendly in this game before like they were during the co-op matches I created. I suppose when your stats is not in jeopardy and you are fighting against the A.I., all of that fear, hate, and murderous intents just dissipate. For the first time in these online games, I see people joked around and "lol"ed while playing it. When someone died, I didn't see the "oh you idiot" message anymore. This behavioral change made me a bit hopeful that IF it is possible to set bot matches in the finalized release of HoN, I may be able to find fun of playing that game online.

And the best thing about this is that you still get rewarded with online Favor Points!

Speaking of HoN, I played the game two days ago as well just to check out if the community has changed due to the open beta phase. The answer? No. Two of the three matches were horrifically filled with abusive people. Heed this advise: if you haven't mastered this game to perfection - if there is even such a thing when the new tutorial indicated otherwise - do not join a "Match Making" game even though this mode matches you up with 9 other solo players. During the first minute of the game, everything I did was questioned rudely. I didn't honor them with an answer and when I realize that the abuse wouldn't stop, I just dropped out of the game. This game records the instances when you quit before a match is over, which in turn will prohibit you from joining games with a "No Leavers" requirement but believe me, I rather have that than voluntarily subject myself to constant harassment.

Don't touch that!

Of course the best solution for these games' problematic online community is to play with friends and I need to find them because I enjoy playing these two games enormously. With the "co-op" success I had with Demigod - I am going to try and recreate these friendly matches on a periodic basis - there may be hope for HoN after all.