Queue: "If I can't click 1 button, I won't participate"

[Luxeley]

Why don't people want to interact with other people? There are a lot of reasons why. And, much of these reasons make a great deal of sense.

1) Players, generally speaking, place ridiculous requirements to be part of a group whether it be raiding or rbgs. For example, I took a peak at the LFG for RBGs yesterday and there only 5 groups listed (expected this late in the xpac) but each group placed a 2K or 2.4K rating requirement.

2) Formulating groups can be a pain stalking XP, especially pugs. This guy wants a cigarette break then realizes he's out of cigarettes and ends up being gone for 20 mins. Another guy needs to walk his dog. Another guy has wife aggro and disappears. It's all very frustrating when you just want to play.

3) If you're a younger player (early teens) or an older player (north of 40) you may not feel comfortable integrating in groups. I mean seriously, why does a 40 year old want to hang with 18 year olds? And how can young teenagers feel comfortable approaching groups when as a whole they are considered to be very immature for their age (which is not always the case).

4) Why bother getting involved with groups if the groups usually end up quitting the game, whether indefinite or permanent. I've personally encountered this a ridiculous amount of time (8x's since WOTLK) and it gets rather old and tiresome continuously needing to prove yourself to new groups. Or maybe you do prove yourself, but they don't need a Mage or a Warlock for their group.

5) The WOW community as a whole is insanely toxic. Yes, you do still find kind and helpful people in game, they are not completely MIA, matter of fact they are very apparent. However, players act very different when something matters or progression is involved, they are not as helpful or kind.

[Foj]

That's why no one talks in this game and no one offers help or advice. That happened years ago by now I realized most of the crowd is "I play how I wanna you don't pay my 15$ to tell me how to play" kind. There's simply no point trying to help anyone improve because 99% of the time it's "hurr durr how dare you, mind your own business". So I do. As do mostly everyone else.

[post goes completely off the rails]

You completely missed the point of my post, which is that a basic social contract among strangers is: No unsolicited criticism. Even among friends, you should only give criticism when asked.

You can't go from "No one will let us elite peeps who know how to play the game tell strangers what to do because they hate it" to "That's what's wrong with the game today," because elite peeps giving unsolicited advice to strangers is just WRONG and it's not a valid starting point for your argument.

People wandering around Org inspecting other people and whispering what's wrong with their gear and talents is part of what's wrong with the game, not something that will save it. That's not "socializing." It's harassment.

[primalmatter]

The community wasn't better.
People didn't change. You just had no choice but to interact with people back then.

The community of tbc or even vanilla is not the community of mop or wod.

It is possible you simply do not recall it properly but they where two extremely different beasts.

Hell are there still guilds that don't raid and just do dungeons together? At this point I think they are all dead.

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You completely missed the point of my post, which is that a basic social contract among strangers is: No unsolicited criticism. Even among friends, you should only give criticism when asked.

You can't go from "No one will let us elite peeps who know how to play the game tell strangers what to do because they hate it" to "That's what's wrong with the game today," because elite peeps giving unsolicited advice to strangers is just WRONG and it's not a valid starting point for your argument.

People wandering around Org inspecting other people and whispering what's wrong with their gear and talents is part of what's wrong with the game, not something that will save it. That's not "socializing." It's harassment.

It isn't wrong. I don't know why you think it is...

Hell if only people told me how to enchant properly when I first started playing. I don't think there is any common ground between us. You embrace failure as though it was a long lost love.

[kary]

You completely missed the point of my post, which is that a basic social contract among strangers is: No unsolicited criticism. Even among friends, you should only give criticism when asked.

You can't go from "No one will let us elite peeps who know how to play the game tell strangers what to do because they hate it" to "That's what's wrong with the game today," because elite peeps giving unsolicited advice to strangers is just WRONG and it's not a valid starting point for your argument.

People wandering around Org inspecting other people and whispering what's wrong with their gear and talents is part of what's wrong with the game, not something that will save it. That's not "socializing." It's harassment.

Yes but when you join a group with a bad spec and performing atrociously, it becomes my issue.

[Marrilaife]

The only way to fix things at this point is to do so slowly at the lowest level first. Random groups need a complete removal of kick restrictions and a increase in difficulty of at least twice of what it was in Wod. WoD mythic should of been what heroic dungeons were. The community can ill afford to keep going down the road of if it has a pulse it gets to progress.

Then the crowd that cries about being excluded on pre-selection will cry instead about being kicked too much. If you want to let the masses "play how I wanna" then you can only slot them in content where performance doesn't matter (a.k.a. faceroll).

Harder content that requires people to actually optimize their class, learn from mistakes and improve, and maybe even listen to a group / raid leader (and actually have someone take that position) doesn't go well with people who don't want to be judged, excluded or kicked, for whom any comment towards them whether obnoxious or helpful in intent is being dismissed as "elitism".

Blizzard learned it the hard way after the tantrums people threw about Cata dungeons, silver proving grounds requirements, MOP lfr, "too easy" votekicks and so on that putting even moderate requirements at queueable content is gonna backfire at them and the drama isn't worth it. Therefore queueable content is doomed to be easy.

You personally might be interested in content that forces people to step up to the challenge and overcome it but it seems there are more people that aren't than those who are among the people who aren't already in guilds, premade teams and friend circles.

And yes I agree there should be a better criteria than "ilvl" but how do you actually measure "performance" or "skill" objectively? People have to rely on things like addons and logs to check stuff like dps or how many times a person failed on a mechanic, and all those are still nowhere close to having a standarized, objective number "how much a person is worth in total".

And even if in an ideal world we had such number, some people would still cry it's unfair, they're worth more than that, they have a life and all those elitist basement dwellers shouldn't be allowed to exclude them from groups etc. A lot of people don't want to put effort because "it's just a game lol I play it to chill" but expect rewards and feel adequate and equal to everyone else because "I pay same 15$ as them", therefore rewards are cheapened or attached to "rng luck" instead of actual skill. Getting legendaries from your daily quest lootbox? That's how Legion presents itself.

People want "character progression" without actually having to improve themselves, just from sinking more time into the game, Blizzard tries to cater to them by giving artifact power that is a simple grind and making loot an rng lottery (titanforged items from normal dungeons that "can even be equal to mythic raiding level", legendaries from random lootboxes etc.)

To be honest MMOs were traditionally more about "grind" than challenge so not sure if that will (or even should) ever change, despite people who look for the challenge not liking the premise.

[kary]

The community of tbc or even vanilla is not the community of mop or wod.

It is possible you simply do not recall it properly but they where two extremely different beasts.

Hell are there still guilds that don't raid and just do dungeons together? At this point I think they are all dead.

- - - Updated - - -



It isn't wrong. I don't know why you think it is...

Hell if only people told me how to enchant properly when I first started playing. I don't think there is any common ground between us. You embrace failure as though it was a long lost love.

I did remember it, lol. People trolled just as hard as they did back then.

5 man only guilds existed because people were content doing only 5 mans and not raiding. Those people would just quit today.

You think elitism is a new construct? Lol. I remember trying to go an aq 10 run and the raid leader asked me what my class call on nef was before he sent out invites. People were shit then and they remain shit now.

[shimerra]

People did dungeons while leveling all the time before cata save for the really out of the way ones for their faction and if you are spaming trade for 30mins at any point in this game for a five man you are doing it wrong.

Or you play on a low pop server or play at off times. But thank you for generalizing your experience and unilaterally deciding it is the only correct one.

[primalmatter]

Then the crowd that cries about being excluded on pre-selection will cry instead about being kicked too much. If you want to let the masses "play how I wanna" then you can only slot them in content where performance doesn't matter (a.k.a. faceroll).

Harder content that requires people to actually optimize their class, learn from mistakes and improve, and maybe even listen to a group / raid leader (and actually have someone take that position) doesn't go well with people who don't want to be judged, excluded or kicked, for whom any comment towards them whether obnoxious or helpful in intent is being dismissed as "elitism".

Blizzard learned it the hard way after the tantrums people threw about Cata dungeons, silver proving grounds requirements, MOP lfr, "too easy" votekicks and so on that putting even moderate requirements at queueable content is gonna backfire at them and the drama isn't worth it. Therefore queueable content is doomed to be easy.

You personally might be interested in content that forces people to step up to the challenge and overcome it but it seems there are more people that aren't than those who are among the people who aren't already in guilds, premade teams and friend circles.

And yes I agree there should be a better criteria than "ilvl" but how do you actually measure "performance" or "skill" objectively? People have to rely on things like addons and logs to check stuff like dps or how many times a person failed on a mechanic, and all those are still nowhere close to having a standarized, objective number "how much a person is worth in total".

And even if in an ideal world we had such number, some people would still cry it's unfair, they're worth more than that, they have a life and all those elitist basement dwellers shouldn't be allowed to exclude them from groups etc. A lot of people don't want to put effort because "it's just a game lol I play it to chill" but expect rewards and feel adequate and equal to everyone else because "I pay same 15$ as them", therefore rewards are cheapened or attached to "rng luck" instead of actual skill. Getting legendaries from your daily quest lootbox? That's how Legion presents itself.

People want "character progression" without actually having to improve themselves, just from sinking more time into the game, Blizzard tries to cater to them by giving artifact power that is a simple grind and making loot an rng lottery (titanforged items from normal dungeons that "can even be equal to mythic raiding level", legendaries from random lootboxes etc.)

To be honest MMOs were traditionally more about "grind" than challenge so not sure if that will (or even should) ever change, despite people who look for the challenge not liking the premise.

You don't cater to them at all. Catering to them got us MoP and WoD the two black eye expansions. You slowly burn them away so new players actually have a chance. Can you imagine how shit of a game wow looks like to new players? We had a few we tried to recruit who were friends of guild members. Not one completed their ring from lfr before quitting in disgust.

You treat people who whine like you did in vanilla and tbc. With disdain they leave eventually. Look at WoD and MoP even when you appease them they leave. It is simply throwing good money after bad.

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Or you play on a low pop server or play at off times. But thank you for generalizing your experience and unilaterally deciding it is the only correct one.

Then reroll on a realm that fits your time zone.

I don't understand peoples fascination with making themselves the victims of everything is it a millennial thing I am just to old to understand?

[Bonezerker]

You completely missed the point of my post, which is that a basic social contract among strangers is: No unsolicited criticism. Even among friends, you should only give criticism when asked.

You can't go from "No one will let us elite peeps who know how to play the game tell strangers what to do because they hate it" to "That's what's wrong with the game today," because elite peeps giving unsolicited advice to strangers is just WRONG and it's not a valid starting point for your argument.

People wandering around Org inspecting other people and whispering what's wrong with their gear and talents is part of what's wrong with the game, not something that will save it. That's not "socializing." It's harassment.

I don't think giving unsolicited advice is wrong. I think it all depends on how the advice is given. I have played Shaman as a main for a long time, 8 years or so as either resto or elemental. WoD was the first time I tried enhancement. During one pug early in the expansion, another shaman whispered me and told me that I might get better damage results if I swapped a couple of talents around. I tried it, he was right, and I thanked him. He wasn't a dick about it, he was genuinely trying to help me.

On the flip side, I remember in Wrath, there was a Shaman who whenever I was in Dalaran, felt the need to whisper me and criticize my talent choices, even though I was getting good results with the build I had researched from ElitistJerks. Almost without fail, every day he would call me an idiot or noob for my choices. The only thing that shut him up was that we ended up in an ICC 25 pug one day and i smoked him on every fight, even though he outgeared me and had BiS trinkets.

Giving unsolicited advice isn't "wrong" unless it is done in a dickish way, or if they try to continue to give advice after they are told that you are not interested.

[Mosotti]

Can you really keep making the threat that if they don't lower the content to the lowest bar you will leave?

Look at WoD. The expac designed for people who wanted facebook games... how did that go?

Find a guild barring that just tank or heal. Yeah pure classes have harder times finding groups at low ilv but it isn't some herculean task. Before I found private servers I used to reroll on a fresh realm and level to cap. It never took me more then three weeks to be back raiding mythic during the last tier of mop and wod.

The only thing stopping you. Is well to be blunt you.

WoD didn't have any MMO content at all, that's why I left. I was very happy with Wrath, Cata or Panda... I don't want ALL the content behind a queue, it matters if it's enough for me. Leaving the game is not a matter of threat, it's a matter of not having anything to do that's also fun for me. I've come back for the last 3 months and I've only done ironman leveling, no WoD "content" at all. Yes, I have flying, so I've pretty much did everything in the world, but I won't farm apexis and shit forever.

Unfortunately they've destroyed LFR, I barely touched it this expansion. I had a lot of fun in LFR in ToT and SoO, and even the other raids had some fun bosses that used to create countless wipes and rage. It was enough for me.

I can't really join a guild because I play on a EU realm at retarded hours, not many people are online, not to mention raiding. But even so I could find some LFR...

I'm sure I'm a "special case" among the queue fans, most just love the convenience and don't really give a fuck about heroic or mythic. Nowadays to raid mythic you need more energy to find a guild that can do that without going to pieces in the next 2 weeks than you need to actually raid.

Btw, I have never ever played any facebook game, so I can only compare the garrison with a huge steaming shit.

[Marrilaife]

People wandering around Org inspecting other people and whispering what's wrong with their gear and talents is part of what's wrong with the game, not something that will save it. That's not "socializing." It's harassment.

If the game has to cater to people who feel triggered and harassed all the time then we get what we get. Apparently from my one line you already judged that I make my own pleasure in going around, inspecting everyone and criticizing them. You don't know what I was doing and what were the circumstances but you already painted a picture of some horrible snoop that goes around in a crusade trying to "correct" people. What next, telling a guy in a raid "hey, you have a fishing pole equipped" constitutes harassment as well?

In the extrapolated picture it's best to not interact with anyone at all besides absolute basics, because you never know who will suddenly get offended and start crying about harassment.

These days, not being invited to groups for some people constitutes harassment. Being vote kicked from groups constitutes harassment. Being told to shape up not by a stranger but by your guild's raid leader constitutes harassment and is a reason to leave the guild. Yes, been there, seen that.

And yes it's directly correlated with game being designed with accessible content where failure is not an option and choices don't matter and with no one giving's a rat's ass about anyone else.

I never said offering advice will "save the game" but in a world where protecting fragile egos is more important than trying to make people become better no challenging content can exist within the boundaries of "culture of participation rewards", any challenging content will be relegated outside of it. It's a game design decision with a tradeoff, one Blizzard decided to make it. That didn't improve the community or curbed the biggest jerks, but your problem got solved, nowadays people don't care to inspect others and either awe at it or criticize, and most people keep to their closed circles of friends and guildies or play solo silently.

There are still people who claim we should remove transmog so people again start going around inspecting others. Well apparently some miss the interaction but yes it got mostly curbed out. No one cares anymore what gear you have, what talents you have or anything like that before it comes to deciding "should I invite this player to my group". Enjoy your peace, I guess?

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On the flip side, I remember in Wrath, there was a Shaman who whenever I was in Dalaran, felt the need to whisper me and criticize my talent choices, even though I was getting good results with the build I had researched from ElitistJerks. Almost without fail, every day he would call me an idiot or noob for my choices. The only thing that shut him up was that we ended up in an ICC 25 pug one day and i smoked him on every fight, even though he outgeared me and had BiS trinkets.

Yes, going around calling people idiots and noobs is not "advice" it's just venting / trolling and doesn't help anyone. Even if you have valid advice but start from a condescending position "hey dude you suck cuz of x and y" no one is gonna listen to it ever because you just make yourself look like a douche.

[kary]

WoD didn't have any MMO content at all, that's why I left. I was very happy with Wrath, Cata or Panda... I don't want ALL the content behind a queue, it matters if it's enough for me. Leaving the game is not a matter of threat, it's a matter of not having anything to do that's also fun for me. I've come back for the last 3 months and I've only done ironman leveling, no WoD "content" at all. Yes, I have flying, so I've pretty much did everything in the world, but I won't farm apexis and shit forever.

Unfortunately they've destroyed LFR, I barely touched it this expansion. I had a lot of fun in LFR in ToT and SoO, and even the other raids had some fun bosses that used to create countless wipes and rage. It was enough for me.

I can't really join a guild because I play on a EU realm at retarded hours, not many people are online, not to mention raiding. But even so I could find some LFR...

I'm sure I'm a "special case" among the queue fans, most just love the convenience and don't really give a fuck about heroic or mythic. Nowadays to raid mythic you need more energy to find a guild that can do that without going to pieces in the next 2 weeks than you need to actually raid.

Btw, I have never ever played any facebook game, so I can only compare the garrison with a huge steaming shit.

"MMO-content"

people throw this phrase around whenever it's convenient to them.
What is mmo content exactly? Are you not in a living world with thousands of people?

[shimerra]

Then reroll on a realm that fits your time zone.

I don't understand peoples fascination with making themselves the victims of everything is it a millennial thing I am just to old to understand?

Kinda like your whole side of this argument does with claiming how LFD has raped and destroyed their game experience when the impact is negligible. Or how LFR has destroyed raiding.

And for your information I did do that after every raiding guild on my server collapsed that wasn't stuck in karazhan. I, unlike you, am just not a royal selfish asshole that insists that that should be the best/only option to address the problem.


It's a question of something but it's not age. Rhymes with schmupidity. Your age is just an excuse you use to rationalize your nostalgia and claim a false sense of superiority over younger generations because "older is always better" despite all evidence to the contrary. Heroics were boring snooze fests long before LFD ever came out. Mistakes in content were made but not because you could que for it.

[primalmatter]

Kinda like your whole side of this argument does with claiming how LFD has raped and destroyed their game experience when the impact is negligible. Or how LFR has destroyed raiding.

And for your information I did do that after every raiding guild on my server collapsed that wasn't stuck in karazhan. I, unlike you, am just not a royal selfish asshole that insists that that should be the best/only option to address the problem.


It's a question of something but it's not age. Rhymes with schmupidity. Your age is just an excuse you use to rationalize your nostalgia and claim a false sense of superiority over younger generations because "older is always better" despite all evidence to the contrary. Heroics were boring snooze fests long before LFD ever came out. Mistakes in content were made but not because you could que for it.

Define long before LFD came around? I don't recall tbc heroics being anything like what is offered today.

[kary]

Define long before LFD came around? I don't recall tbc heroics being anything like what is offered today.

They weren't.
Participation was abysmal until people got kara+ geared.
Most dungeons weren't done. Slave pens/Mechanar/Sethekk Halls were puggable whereas the others were way too difficult for the reward.

[Marrilaife]

They weren't.
Participation was abysmal until people got kara+ geared.
Most dungeons weren't done. Slave pens/Mechanar/Sethekk Halls were puggable whereas the others were way too difficult for the reward.

I think Underbog was way more pugged than Sethekk Halls, and yes Slave Pens and Mechanar were fairly popular while if anyone heard of Durnholde or Arcatraz they were running to the hills.

There was also a lot of class discrimination going on. Oh a dps but not a hunter / rogue / mage? Dude do you even cc? A druid healer? Lol you don't have proper rez. A druid tank? Omg aren't they manasponges? Are you even defense capped? And the usual questions: how many blues and epics do you have? What's your spell damage / healing power / attack power?

[kary]

I think Underbog was way more pugged than Sethekk Halls, and yes Slave Pens and Mechanar were fairly popular while if anyone heard of Durnholde or Arcatraz they were running to the hills.

There was also a lot of class discrimination going on. Oh a dps but not a hunter / rogue / mage? Dude do you even cc? A druid healer? Lol you don't have proper rez. A druid tank? Omg aren't they manasponges? Are you even defense capped? And the usual questions: how many blues and epics do you have? What's your spell damage / healing power / attack power?

Goes back to where I said that people were always shit.
LFD just allow the people who would face (needed) scrutiny to instantly form a group.
Is that a good thing? Who knows.

[Tadkins]

They weren't.
Participation was abysmal until people got kara+ geared.
Most dungeons weren't done. Slave pens/Mechanar/Sethekk Halls were puggable whereas the others were way too difficult for the reward.

I spent four hours trying to get a group to do heroic Old Hillsbrad.

It was the daily and after 2 hours, my stubborness kicked in and it became more about the principle of the matter than about running the actual dungeon. xD

[Foj]

If the game has to cater to people who feel triggered and harassed all the time then we get what we get. Apparently from my one line you already judged that I make my own pleasure in going around, inspecting everyone and criticizing them. You don't know what I was doing and what were the circumstances but you already painted a picture of some horrible snoop that goes around in a crusade trying to "correct" people. What next, telling a guy in a raid "hey, you have a fishing pole equipped" constitutes harassment as well?

It's entertaining that FOUR people replied along the lines of, "You don't understand, it's my mission and obligation to let people know whenever in my opinion they're being bad."

Not just entertaining but revealing.

[Bonezerker]

It's entertaining that FOUR people replied along the lines of, "You don't understand, it's my mission and obligation to let people know whenever in my opinion they're being bad."

Not just entertaining but revealing.

Well, if said bad player is in my guild or raid, it is my obligation to help them improve, solicited or not.