When we had to be nice.....

[soccershot]

Of course it happened. Way to miss the point...

The point being that people are FOS when they talk about the olden days? No one had to be nice and if anything people are worse back then, when they had stuff to lose, than what they are now. There was no "community" back then. It was a myth spun from the angst of people who have trouble today because they do not meet the requirements by most groups to do content and are too awkward to talk to people. Now is the golden age, we have so many tools to communicate and interact with others and being a toxic is way down. In fact, I found my first toxic group for a long time last week. Was a complete garbage fire. I kicked all the people and had a new group pulling the next pack within 3 mins. GOLDEN AGE!

[Zardam]

You should still be nice, now more than ever. In most 5 man mythic content a communicative and friendly group is able to get way farther, and is more willing to stick together for upgrade keys. Most loot is now tradeable, so if you're vocal and pleasant its a good bet you can snag a piece of gear your 891 mage carry doesn't give a shit about. And with incredibly easy voice communication nowadays I honestly am having a much easier time meeting and friending people.

Yeah, with the casual que design blizz has implemented you can choose to sit at the lowest bar of effort and ignore other players, but you can also choose to not do that. And now there are WAY more accessible tools to connect with players than there used to be.

[procne]

If you are only nice because someone is watching, then you're not really nice. Does the new systems encourage douche baggery? Sure. But you either have a system where you have a net nanny watching over you at all times or you just to be the Wild West. I want Blizzard to look for ways to prevent bad behavior in passive ways, like removing the ability to mount within 10 yards of a major NPC (like Santa will be douche bag heaven come Christmas)

Outside of that, this is just the era of trolling. It's all the cool to make people rage. Sadly too many people get a great joy out of people getting pissed off. Part of the problem, is just like in Politics, people have bought heavily into the many Stereotypes about other wow players. So any thought that they can ruin the day of the proverbial 12 year old on momma and daddy's credit card is seen as a great act of service.

Hopefully the era will end and trolling will lose it's cool status.

I find this to be empty rhetoric. And I think this "era of trolling" is a result of this rhetoric. "you are nice because someone is watching" = just be bad. "be yourself" = don't work on removing your flaws and making other people comfortable with you. Do what you want, it's their problem, not yours. All this together with emphasis on individualism instead of community.

When we are born we are practically animals with only our lowest instincts. Other people, society, teach us everything that makes us human. They do that by watching and correcting our behaviour, even when we are adults. Noone is born "nice" or "not nice". It's always taught. Some people may be taught to treat "being nice" as a goal, others as a mean. In most human-human interaction (which is with people we dont or barely know) it doesn't matter that much. I still would prefer a person to be nice because someone is watching, rather than being bad because he won't "lower" himself to act against his "nature".

[beanman12345]

The point being that people are FOS when they talk about the olden days? No one had to be nice and if anything people are worse back then, when they had stuff to lose, than what they are now. There was no "community" back then. It was a myth spun from the angst of people who have trouble today because they do not meet the requirements by most groups to do content and are too awkward to talk to people. Now is the golden age, we have so many tools to communicate and interact with others and being a toxic is way down. In fact, I found my first toxic group for a long time last week. Was a complete garbage fire. I kicked all the people and had a new group pulling the next pack within 3 mins. GOLDEN AGE!

Well, maybe my two servers were different than the server you were on. So yeah we're all liars. No one had to be nice, bravo... At least you aren't pulling random numbers out of your ass while calling people liars...

[Thage]

You should still be nice, now more than ever. In most 5 man mythic content a communicative and friendly group is able to get way farther, and is more willing to stick together for upgrade keys. Most loot is now tradeable, so if you're vocal and pleasant its a good bet you can snag a piece of gear your 891 mage carry doesn't give a shit about. And with incredibly easy voice communication nowadays I honestly am having a much easier time meeting and friending people.

Yeah, with the casual que design blizz has implemented you can choose to sit at the lowest bar of effort and ignore other players, but you can also choose to not do that. And now there are WAY more accessible tools to connect with players than there used to be.

This is a good counterpoint. I've found that if you're not a jackass, people tend to be more receptive when you ask if you can have that item they say is vendor trash but is a big upgrade for you. I've also found that people are more wiling to forgive wipes or rough pulls if you aren't going out of your way to make it a socially unpleasant experience for everyone involved. Sure, it's no "X of <Guild> just ninja-looted Onyxia, don't group with them" shotgunned over Trade, General, and LFG, but it's still a pretty good incentive to break the ice and be nice in Mythic+ pugs.

[Echo of Soul]

Yeah it was a great time. It spilled over to services outside the game too. It was almost as the game raised us to behave a certain way online. I still do but it's kinda disheartening when it rarely gets reciprocated.

Being loud and rude get you more attention, being calm and nice get you the right kind of attention. Today, if you're a complete asshole not a lot of people think much about it and I think that's kinda sad.

[Lime]

You never had to be nice and anyone who brought up the "blacklist" threat was generally mocked for doing so. Most players didn't care enough about the drama of others. Sure, you might get declined every now and then if people didn't like you, but it was certainly not anything common. Jerks would even often make their own guilds / friends with each other. There's even YouTube videos of people crashing weddings / funerals and do you really think those players were affected by the "blacklistings"?

The only reputation that mattered is if you were a known ninja-looter, but even then, people would simply be careful with you if they even cared.

I still have friends to this day that took some jokes way too far back then. I can't say I recall a moment of them ever complaining about not being able to do content, especially considering that they kept up with me gearing-wise.

The only people who thought rep mattered that much were the people who thought way too highly of themselves. Most didn't care what did/didn't happen to you.

[Echo of Soul]

I find this to be empty rhetoric. And I think this "era of trolling" is a result of this rhetoric. "you are nice because someone is watching" = just be bad. "be yourself" = don't work on removing your flaws and making other people comfortable with you. Do what you want, it's their problem, not yours. All this together with emphasis on individualism instead of community.

When we are born we are practically animals with only our lowest instincts. Other people, society, teach us everything that makes us human. They do that by watching and correcting our behaviour, even when we are adults. Noone is born "nice" or "not nice". It's always taught. Some people may be taught to treat "being nice" as a goal, others as a mean. In most human-human interaction (which is with people we dont or barely know) it doesn't matter that much. I still would prefer a person to be nice because someone is watching, rather than being bad because he won't "lower" himself to act against his "nature".

Amazing answer

[Mad_Murdock]

When we are born we are practically animals with only our lowest instincts. Other people, society, teach us everything that makes us human. They do that by watching and correcting our behaviour, even when we are adults. Noone is born "nice" or "not nice". It's always taught. Some people may be taught to treat "being nice" as a goal, others as a mean. In most human-human interaction (which is with people we dont or barely know) it doesn't matter that much. I still would prefer a person to be nice because someone is watching, rather than being bad because he won't "lower" himself to act against his "nature".

Ahh, the Nature vs Nurture argument. Two people grow up in the same house, one turns out to be a evil dick, the other is a great guy who helps people. How do you explain away the difference? I don't fully subscribe that we are only what we are taught. We are all unique and we respond to things differently, regardless of how we were raised. You might take an encounter and might respond positively, I may respond in a very negative fashion, despite how I was taught.

You are free to hand wave away the era of trolling, it is after all an opinion. But looking at StraightupKnivez CoD troll videos, he gets plenty of views and far more likes over dislikes. You see much of the same behavior in WoW and other games. Maybe instead of era of trolling, we'll just call it a fad.

[Doctor Funkenstein]

Funny how at the same time people are making bitch threads that they have to create mythic (+) groups manually. Seems not everyone agrees.

The fact that this is your conclusion says more about you than the reality of the situation. It's particularly hilarious given the quote you use in your signature.

- - - Updated - - -

Ahh, the Nature vs Nurture argument. Two people grow up in the same house, one turns out to be a evil dick, the other is a great guy who helps people. How do you explain away the difference?

And yet again, another example of people too thick to comprehend what's going on in the world around them.

Clearly because they grew up in the same house they had exactly the same experiences growing up. You nailed it! There couldn't possibly be any way imaginable that they still had different experiences. I mean, it was the same house!

Hell, I grew up on the same planet as you. Ergo, I must have had exactly the same experiences as you, too! It's amaaaaazing!

[ImpTaimer]

Funny how at the same time people are making bitch threads that they have to create mythic (+) groups manually. Seems not everyone agrees.

This has less to do with social stigmas and more to do with fundamental game flaw/changes in Legion. There's no reason for Mythic to not be queueable since Mythic+ offers near-infinite loot. However, at the same time, there's no reason for "normal" Mythic to exist except to inflate content with difficulty slider. Blizzard fucked the ilvl-power creep just for the sake of Mythic Dungeon inclusion. This was all complained about in Alpha/Beta and nothing was done about it, because post-merger devs are narcissist and incompetent.

Also: If you can only be nice with social pressure and are immediately an asshole in anonymity you deserve all the shit you get

Since we're generalizing based on nothing.

Everyone is this way. Everyone. Get off your imaginary high horse. What happens in the recess of your mind has no barring on the expectations of public behavior.

A video game or internet forum is not the same thing as walking around in public. It never will be. Never. For all intensive purposes, even MMOChamp is "private property" and does not remotely follow the same public guidelines everyday life does.

Blizzard ALLOWS behavior so there's no point arguing what is acceptable or not. They can choose to enforce it whenever they feel like it, because they have zero legal responsibility to do so. It's a private company.

However, the inherent problem with (post-merger) Blizzard is that they essentially removed all active duty moderating and resorted to back-seat monitoring their own game. Somehow a multi-million dollar corporation can't afford to have at least one GM on every server making sure to keep them clean from hackers and toxic chat-spam trolls. At least in vanilla they had active-duty GMs instead of worthless forum "community managers". They rarely even have GMs on PTR unless they're testing "closed-access" content to make sure people aren't hiding game-breaking exploits.

But I'm sure I'm wasting effort replying to you since you undoubtedly haven't an ounce of meaningful knowledge on what constitutes as public and private property.

[ComputerNerd]

You're wrong; it is a by-product of game-design. By adding certain features in a game you promote toxic behavior.

No, players choose to behave in a certain way.
It is them who make the last decision and are the only ones responsible.
You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
You can give a player an opportunity, but it is up to them how they utilise it.

[SL1200]

You never had to be nice. You just had to be social. Same as today.

[Rotted]

Yea I remember this back on our server,

I remember one specific instant, a guy was running a heroic dungeon with a pal of mine and they had a druid healer, leather BoE healing legs drop, this warrior goes "Lol thanks for the 600g" and wins the item on a need roll and dumps the group.

He thought he was clever, but he never got a group again on our server (especially with ours being a low population).

On the plus side of this system, even if you weren't a raider you could make a name for yourself, for example in TBC my cousin, me another warrior and a druid from another server we're all in the same battle group - we parked for over 6 months at level 60 playing AV. Grinded out 60 epic gear, and we were fairly well known, enough so that when ever we entered AV instantly 30+ players would listen to our directions - youd get the odd couple telling us where to stick it or trying to lead solo, but next game they'd be on our side.

Just a small fyi for the above example, like I said a druid from anotehr server, no way to communicate with him, just had to hit and hope we'd be online the same night, same time. Most of the time we were

[procne]

Ahh, the Nature vs Nurture argument. Two people grow up in the same house, one turns out to be a evil dick, the other is a great guy who helps people. How do you explain away the difference?

Sorry, but I did never buy that. It's so abstract. How can I explain anything when there is no real case, just a hypothesis? To even begin I would have to investigate their whole lives. But I cannot, because they do not exist.

While I do understand that our genes affect who we are, they still play lesser role than what we are taught. And for the case you mentioned you would need the people to be twins - that's the only way they are brought up in the same way (because they have to be born at the same time, by the same parents), so we eliminate genes' impact here.

conscience, empathy, moral code - I believe these values are taught by family or community. Or they aren't and you get trolls.

You are free to hand wave away the era of trolling, it is after all an opinion. But looking at StraightupKnivez CoD troll videos, he gets plenty of views and far more likes over dislikes. You see much of the same behavior in WoW and other games. Maybe instead of era of trolling, we'll just call it a fad.

I do not wave it away. I just look for the roots of it elsewhere.

[Deleted]

ooh I member

[FelPlague]

Any World of Warcraft players been around more than 10 years and remember the days when you pretty much had to be nice in game? This was before the days of Blizzard services like server transfers, cross-realm play, LFR, and faction and name changes, etc. You had to stay on the server where you rolled your character. This reinforced the need for cordial gameplay because if you were rude, a ninja, or other negative behavior, then word would get out and people would not run with you. You know when you log into the game and sometimes it says "if you are polite in groups, people will invite you back"? .... or something like that? It seems that doesn't apply anymore.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that server transfers, cross-realm play, LFR, and faction/name changes are a bad thing and, in fact, I've availed myself of them several times over the years as I was trying to find a raiding guild on another server that met my needs based school or work restrictions. I just wonder it it's politeness in general that has seemed to diminish over time ingame, the issues of all the cited Blizzard services that allow people to get away with being rude because they know they can just pay to change their name or server, or a combination of both.

I say this without pointing fingers at others because I too am guilty, I think. I have found myself less tolerant of others at times knowing that I likely won't run into them again, since it's LFR. Any way, I just thought I'd start a dialogue on this for those who are interested in the topic to hear other's thoughts, and I welcome them. I am curious too, if anyone has any viable solutions to how Blizzard could more effectively promote less nasty behavior than the current practices, or if it's just gone forever, or if people think everything is fine the way it is.

lol yeah no.. people have allways been assholes... just now its slightly easier to get away with it

[Darktbs]

If you need something forcing you to be nice, the problem is with you.

[Mad_Murdock]

And yet again, another example of people too thick to comprehend what's going on in the world around them.

Clearly because they grew up in the same house they had exactly the same experiences growing up. You nailed it! There couldn't possibly be any way imaginable that they still had different experiences. I mean, it was the same house!

Hell, I grew up on the same planet as you. Ergo, I must have had exactly the same experiences as you, too! It's amaaaaazing!

Too thick because you disagree? The statement was that we are either good or bad, purely based on how we are raised by society. That our genes, the things that determine if I'm short or tall, super smart or "thick" have absolutely, 100% no bearing whatsoever on the person I might become. It's purely based on that one time my bother got that extra hug that I didn't?

I don't agree that it's pure nurture that determines who we are. People with high testosterone are more aggressive-risk takers than those with middle- low testosterone , Your stance is that's just coincidence? If Bob is a risk taker it's because society taught him to be? I'm not arguing that society doesn't teach us, I'm agreeing in part, because the cult of celebrity worship, teaches people that doing things(good or bad) to be famous will get you followers and praise.

You are then agreeing with my original statement that people are more trollish now, because being trollish, is promoted in certain sub cultures of the gaming community. Nice that you can indirectly agree with a thick person.

[Lime]

He thought he was clever, but he never got a group again on our server (especially with ours being a low population).

Yeah... that never happened. Pretending that it does would rightfully have gotten you mocked.

I'm not even sure how you expect anyone to believe that. Spreading that back then was just simple fearmongering and nothing more. Along the lines of CoD players saying that they'd hack you.