The real reason why WoW's community sucks

[Flower Milk]

Because WoW is usually most peoples' first online gaming experience. They don't understand that that is just generally how people are in online games, and on the internet in general, in an anonymous and not face to face setting. No, it was never better in the "old days", you just dealt with random people a lot less, so people had reputations and such. But even then, the crappy people still existed in droves. That's just kind of how online gaming is.

It's not really an excuse for crappy behavior, but when you've playing online games long enough you just sort of come to accept it and learn to ignore it and not let it get to you. From what I've noticed, there seems to be a lot of people who just haven't been into online gaming for long enough to understand this. Sure report them if they have done something terrible or whathaveyou, but if some guy is crap talking about your mom in Trade chat, you don't need to flip a table over it. I've seen people do and say crappy things all the time, in many games, not just WoW, but I've never got seriously angry over it. They are a random person on the internet, why would I?

I'm getting pretty sick of hearing all the time about how WoW's community will kill the game or something, or how it is declining because some guy ninja'd a level 50 blue item from you in a low level dungeon. Holy crap just get over it already.

Edit: And yes, obviously putting together groups yourself was better before they implemented LFR/LFD, but it still is! Seriously! I don't understand this complaint at all. "Yes before when you had to put together groups yourself it was better and not when I was somehow forced to randomly put them together when I could just as easily now put them together just like the old days". This makes zero sense.

[Deleted]

The real reason is LFR/LFD/BGs. Everything can be queued nowdays, so people dont NEED to behave.

[Deleted]

The real reason is LFR/LFD/BGs. Everything can be queued nowdays, so people dont NEED to behave.

Social and legal reprimande is what keeps people from being twats. WoW has only a bit of legal reprimande. Social reprimande is irrelevant. People should get a honour system of sorts. Like riot uses, its proven to work. They need a sociale exclusion incentive to behave.

50 reports? No more LFD for a week.
100x reporting for flaming? [Insert Name] The Asshole title enforced for a month
20x kicked out of BG? -50% honour gain 2 weeks.

etc.

[Deadite]

The real reason is LFR/LFD/BGs. Everything can be queued nowdays, so people dont NEED to behave.

Indeed. Blizzard sacrificed community for convenience a long time ago.

[Deleted]

I blame queue's.
We can queue for everything. Now we don't really have to behave because if get kicked we just queue again. Back in the day we would have wasted hours if we got kicked.

Different times.

[Giscoicus]

Social and legal reprimande is what keeps people from being twats. WoW has only a bit of legal reprimande. Social reprimande is irrelevant. People should get a honour system of sorts. Like riot uses, its proven to work. They need a sociale exclusion incentive to behave.

50 reports? No more LFD for a week.
100x reporting for flaming? [Insert Name] The Asshole title enforced for a month
20x kicked out of BG? -50% honour gain 2 weeks.

etc.

The issue with this is that what people think should be punished is subjective, it changes from person to person. Having people locked or punished while others may not feel they did anything wrong is still taking away the control by the community. People report for anything and everything, just because some people find a player's attitude negative doesnt mean others feel the same. When players themselves policed each other, hearing what a person did that was so "bad" meant making my own decision whether I would group with them or not. Just because somebody finds behavior to be negative doesnt mean everybody does, putting it to players to lock others out from playing with those who have no issue with their behavior is ridiculous.

For example, the loot system is not set in stone by any means. Some people feel you should need on offspec if you need it, others feel it should only be when people dont need it for main spec. So some guy gets reported for needing for offspec and beating a tank on the roll, and he gets banned from LFD. Why? If I agree with his interpretation of loot then I would have no issue grouping with him, but he is locked from LFD, because others did have complaints about the way he handled loot.

- - - Updated - - -

LFD/LFR have no real bearing on how the community behaves as a whole. The community just doesn't want to behave, even without things like group finders. Which is hilarious when you consider the fact that Vanilla/TBC players also act like complete dicks. Even funnier when people think these two eras were the height of the game. People care only about themselves. Always have.

As for Battlegrounds, we've had them since Vanilla, you know, when the game was apparently at it's best. How are they all of a sudden "evils of WoW" too?

I've been playing since Vanilla too and I still talk to most people. I even make conversation if I happen to run LFR. Shocking, right?

- - - Updated - - -


Also this...

BGs werent xrealm initially.

Furthermore, people only behave the way they do because social norms and personal morals. Social norms dont exist when you strip the social aspect from the game.

[Orange Joe]

The real reason is LFR/LFD/BGs. Everything can be queued nowdays, so people dont NEED to behave.

People were asses long before LFD.

[metzger84]

It's more simple than that, we're just assholes.

[Asmekiel]

The real reason is LFR/LFD/BGs. Everything can be queued nowdays, so people dont NEED to behave.

Just because you can queue for it, doesn't mean you suddenly have to be a jerk. You either are one or you aren't. If people think that using a nickname gives them the right to be an ass, then it shows a lot about their true personality.

[Frozenbeef]

The real reason is LFR/LFD/BGs. Everything can be queued nowdays, so people dont NEED to behave.

No, there was a holes on da interweb long before those were introduced, in the mmo i played before wow it was crammed full of gankers, people calling others noobs, bad players etc.. The only difference is those tools you mentioned pretty much forced you with more random people than it did before so you have a higher chance of finding those bad players. If you think it's caused by them then you are pretty delusional :/

[Vargas]

Trying to place blame on LFG/LFR and xrealm stuff is just taking the Fox News way out; placing blame on symptoms but not the root cause.

Star Wars Galaxies was my first MMO and I played that a LOT, and my encounter with asshole players were few and far between. WoW by contrast had/has a more competitive nature to it and that by sheer virtue attracts assholes trying to prove they have a fatter e-peen because apparently that's important and impressive. The problem (and its hysterical in its irony) is that MMO's, which are supposed to be social games where players have to communicate and work together to achieve goals), seem to attract people who are either antisocial or just never learned or cared to learn how to properly communicate with another human being. In a face to face discussion if you ask someone a question, you aren't going to be snidely told to Google it or otherwise be hassled for having the balls to ask a question and disrupt General chat. I also blame the community for being so apathetic and letting people think its okay to act like a douchenozzle as well as Blizzard for almost protecting assholes from suffering the consequences that, again, in a social situation would befall them and rightly so.


I think that having a rep system like League sounds good with some reasonable criteria; if a player is constantly AFK in a raid or dungeon without informing the group they can be penalized by not being allowed to raid or do dungeons for a week. If a player is constantly AFK in a BG they won't get honor for the week. Obviously there will have to be some wiggle room to discount petty players who want to report someone out of spite when they weren't actually doing something report-worthy.


TL;DR version is that its high time players start being held accountable for their actions. "The Internet" isn't an acceptable excuse for being a shithead anymore.

[Enitzu]

Every game has the a-holes and trolls. But it has gotten exponentially worse since around 2006 and later.

The older crowd can all tell you that in games like EQ, DAoC, and the ones of that time frame you had alot more respect going around. People helped people because your rep meant something. If you had a bad rep then you lost everything and had to start over. There were no name changes or server transfers.

Now ... we Q up to do stuff with people we will never see again. We dont care about anyone but ourselves simply because we can always change our name in game or move servers if it came down to it. There's tons of reasons why the internet has become the way it has but mostly it boils down to this generation. Bunch of ungrateful pricks wanting a hand out if you ask me. Stop wanting things handed to you and work for them. Promise you it's much more fulfilling when you work for it

[Nosdrone]

Forums. /10char

Infracted.

[Orange Joe]

No, it wasn't the amount of people. The change to community started to happen once Blizz added LFD and LFR - that was when I observed the downfall. People didn't have to worry about their reputation anymore. They didn't have to depend on others to advance in the game. The solo hero is what ruined it.

Yes it was. As someone who always did random groups.(trade chat spam FTW) It was no worse after LFD.

[Pull My Finger]

I played the game since early Vanilla and from my experience, people who blame LFD and LFR are fooling themselves. It's just like the OP said actually - it's just the way people in online games are, and always were.

[Djuntas]

One thing:

Blizzard created the means for people not having to act good.

Honestly, Im lvling a warrior atm trough LFG tanking. Besides never seing 1 good DPS (A guy that does maybe hole 20% group dmg overall! wow 20% yes) and thoes useal things, I also see AFKing leechers, or people who barely do anything hole group. Worst example I saw is a guy thinking its okay to RAF level with 2nd account on follow not doing shit, so basicly boosting hes AFK account....MY FUCKING GUT I MISS VANILLA AND TBC...Id pay serious money (If I had any lol) to exsperience it propor again...

[Nosdrone]

http://fcdn.mtbr.com/attachments/rec..._8pszr-l-2.jpg

Infracted, as well as removed the [IMG] coding.

[Frozenbeef]

In my expierence it was LFD and LFR that brought out the "I can be an asshole because I'll just queue up again if I get kicked".

There are games without lfg/lfr with terrible communitys as well as just people on the internet in general...

Besides never seing 1 good DPS (A guy that does maybe hole 20% group dmg overall! wow 20% yes) and thoes useal things,

Tanks/ healers are drastically OP compared to DPS at low level, it's pretty normal for tanks to be on the top of the dps chart at level 10-60 dungeons then they start evening out

I also see AFKing leechers, or people who barely do anything hole group.

Kick, the vast majority of groups (leveled from 10-80 *12 times through dungeons) don't like leechers...

[Orange Joe]

There are games without lfg/lfr with terrible communitys as well as just people on the internet in general...

And games with LFD/LFR that are fine. I've yet to have a bad group in SWTOR (bad as in full of jackasses)

[MoanaLisa]

I blame queue's. We can queue for everything. Now we don't really have to behave because if get kicked we just queue again.

The question that comes up for me in these threads is simple: Why wouldn't you want to behave in the first place?