Meanwhile in South Korea...

[Deleth]

Some of us just don't have the time, patience, or care factor to help improve the bottom-feeders.

Leave it to Blizzard to nerf content enough so they can see it eventually and pen them all together in one massive cesspool. This game is not hard.

Is this game hard? No, the majority of it isn't. What is making this game hard and unforgiving is the community. People have no patience whatsoever, they only care for themselves and are in general douchebags who blame their own shortcomings onto others. It's not even the hardcore bunch that is doing it, it's your average joe who while being "decent" or "average" isn't really good himself.

I recently introduced a friend of mine to WoW and because she wanted to heal and was afraid of messing up I took the role of the tank during our leveling experience so she could get used to it. In hindsight it was the right thing, not because healing itself is very hard but because people do make it hard. There were a lot of DPS pulling random mob packs during the leveling phase and then yelling at her for dropping below 50% hp (even though they most of the time did not die, untill I told her to stop healing them) and trying to kick her for being a bad healer, she really wasn't.
It was mostly DPS who were far below me in dmg, completely decked out in heirlooms these people couldn't do a damn thing right. They were backpeddling, often were dps in blood presence and some other nice things.

A great many people on this game are pseudo elitist douchebags who get a thrill from trash talking other people whom they deem below themselves despite the fact that most of them have nothing whatsoever to actually base their contempt for new/players the think are bad on. It's the whole 4-8k achievment baddie crowd with their 300 arena victories never having been able to break 1550 on any bracket and an RBG rating of 1,1k.


It's the same with the people feeling the need to camp low level players, often for hours, loling and spitting at them. These players are driving out new and old players by making their gaming experience horrible. Blizzards stance on this occurence alone is beyond retarded, pretty much giving free reigns to people who are usually A. bad and B. don't care about the game and community at all.
I always laugh when these people tell others to get off PvP servers and "deal with it", because it is the exact same bunch being douchebags in random dungeons/lfr and other places. They are not high rated PvPers, often they hardly do PvP at all having somewhere around 50-100 PvP achievments at most, never actually made it to 1550 arenas or RBG's these players get their kicks from being sadists against those who can't fight back.
Being told by some 300 arena victory scrub who never achieved 1550 when I am currently around 2,3k that obviously I ought to do PvE and get off a PvP realm because I disagree with their stance of tormenting low level and new players for hours is completly ridiculous but shows very well why it's so hard for new players to actually get into the game.


These people are destroying the PvE community, they are wrecking PvP players killing off badly needed new blood by bullying them out of the game and in general do the game no good. Sadly it's exactly those people that seem to get what they want because they cry the loudest on the forums.

[Zanthos]

We have a guy like that in our raid guild, he ist hated as he is a really nice guy but he isnt a spring chicken so suffers alot on DPS but we all really like him as a person and he has come alone way.

I can only reinforce community and helping others, don't be a dick to people, as bill and ted once said "Be excellent to each other".

[Kubiszot]

Story of this Korean guy is not sad... Story of all those pro-hater-players is! I don't know why, and I don't know the reasons but this game is not fun anymore... People don't enjoy playing with others helping them, looking for social aspect of the game. Today there are "more important" things like: progress, items, progress, ilvl, progress, gold, pro-style, 100M dps and of course - progress. What I see in my guild and I think also takes place in other guilds - ppl do not even speak with each other. Only ocasion that they "say" something is raid... and most of this is "you don't know tacts! what are you doing?! look at your dps! we need more pro players!!!". OMFG what the hell is this?!
Games should be fun. Ppl saying - "there is so much noobs"! But start thinking! If you'll treat them like trash - there will be more of them - not noobs (I hate this word!!!) but players who maybe just start playing today and need your help! So take out your head from your ass and behave like a human beeing! As for me - well I think I'm not pro-player or even good, maybe average. What surprised me is that when I needed help with fixing my dps, warriors from my guild didn't help me, players from my server didn't help me. Who helped me? Pppl on this forum and they are players too. So I just wondering WTF?!

[Spraytwist]

right in the feels

[SamR]

Some of us just don't have the time, patience, or care factor to help improve the bottom-feeders.

The perfect example of the kind of poor attitude that the OP is about.

[NRL1515]

I appreciate the OP sharing this on the forums as it's awesome to see a story like this. It really pulled at my heartstrings a little and made me think back to the time that I was new to this game. I remember running around Dun Morogh on my dwarf paladin whacking boars and troggs with my sword, not having a clue in the world what I was doing. Back then, 99% of us didn't know any better because this game was new to all of us.

But after really thinking about the story, it made me reflect on my time on this game and my contributions to the community and I have mixed feelings about it all. While its great to read something like this, the cynic in me thinks that things have changed too much for the negative, community-wise, to really make a difference. I consider myself a great player, PVE wise, and while I've never really had the time to commit to a HC raiding guild, I've seen most of the content this game has had to offer (when it was current) through many different toons, specs, and roles. I derive my enjoyment from this game by performing whatever role my guild needs at the time and by being able to do it quite competently.

However, it's sad when I see a Monk tank running around fully stam gemmed, or more extreme, a shammy wearing cloth or leather (above level 80), and when I offer some advice, I am met with hostility and general jackassery. Are people that hard headed they don't want to receive help from anyone? Or has being a part of the community of this game beaten down people enough that they're not willing to trust their neighbor for fear that they might be a troll? I even joined a server on an alt for new players just so I could help people out and try to be part of the solution and not the problem. Even then, people couldn't treat each other with respect and I stopped playing that toon.

On the other hand, I believe Blizzard has made it very easy for a player who may not be as seasoned as others to get them on the correct path. With just a minimal of time behind the keyboard, a new player can be somewhat indistinguishable from an average player at first glance. It is very difficult to gear WRONG (granted, you can gear suboptimally), as you can be a prot pally in ret gear and perform fine, or dps as a shadow priest in healing gear. Gone are the days where hunters can wear int gear because it's not even an option anymore. It's nigh-impossible to die to the average mob, because auto attacking is enough to kill whatever you need to kill.

Am I a bit naive to think that this game can become the game of wonder and enjoyment it used to be? Maybe. But this story will always be with me, and next time I see a 'noob' running around, I'll treat them like a human being first and go from there depending on how they respond. I guess that's about the best that one can hope for.

[Fmr]

sorry sorry but you say u need skill in wow what the hell is so hard to understand LOL all made up sorry that is just laughable and hilarious

[Hedleyazg]

Yeah no. Vanilla was never like that and I'm starting to think anyone making these claims never played back then and just simply parrot something they read from a blog without it having any basis in reality at all.

Been playing since 05, I played Vanilla, I remember it well. Maybe your server was not like that but, mine was.

[Mulgore Sweet Potato]

I get it I understand his point

You don't understand his point at all

Everyone is different. As long as you keep judging people and expect things from them according to what you think is hard and what isn''t, and see them as a value on your personal acceptability scale instead of human beings with their own strengths and weaknesses you will keep contributing to the downfall of WoW and indeed the real world

[Grocalis]

Everyone is different. As long as you keep judging people and expect things from them according to what you think is hard and what isn''t, and see them as a value on your personal acceptability scale instead of human beings with their own strengths and weaknesses you will keep contributing to the downfall of WoW and indeed the real world

Bingo.

Long ago I actually uninstalled my damage meters. I actually wish Blizzard would ban them, because they lead to a outlook in which people equate others by the numbers they produce rather then the personality they bring. Does it really matter that 5 people "carried" the rest of the raid? They were going to play at that insane level anyways, so why start crapping on those that don't play as well as you? What if he is a kid? What if he has a mental disorder? What if he is just more comfortable clicking his icons with his mouse? Get the hell over it. This is a game, not the World Series.

[Enosh]

You don't understand his point at all

Everyone is different. As long as you keep judging people and expect things from them according to what you think is hard and what isn''t, and see them as a value on your personal acceptability scale instead of human beings with their own strengths and weaknesses you will keep contributing to the downfall of WoW and indeed the real world

again, he wanted to join a raid, that's playing with 9 other people
the other people just want to have some fun too and I really doubt repeated wiping due to 1 person not pulling their weight is fun for the majority of people
especially since before joining said person didn't even do the bare basic research about his class

his fun isn't worth more than the fun of the other people he is grouped with is it?

[Firecrest]

I have really mixed feelings on this.

On one hand I do feel pity for the outsider. People not cutting him a break and failing time and time again and now got himself in such a hole that he can no longer dig himself out of.

On the other hand he has all the tools he needs to improve and get better. He has websites available to tell him what stats to have and everything he needs to do step by step. Anyone who wants to get better can. Even a semi good rotation is going to net you decent DPS with the right gear.

When I played vanilla yes I was a terrible player by today's standards and didn't even know better. Coming from the perspective of humility he should be able to improve and get better. I think part of my callousness is that humility is such a rare trait nowadays and especially in MMO's. Most people who you even attempt to help just tell you to F' off most of the time so I've become cynical about the whole thing and don't even bother anymore.

The outsider in this post is someone whom I'd be happy to instruct due to his willingness.

The people who hate him are very shallow people and people who weep are the people who have come to realize their own shallowness in this instance.

So mixed feelings all around. In the end if I had seen that I would take it upon myself to teach the man how to fish.

This sums up my thoughts well. The game is not that hard. And further, the number of resources out there are ridiculously vast. I understand that things like rotations and combat reactions can be a challenge. But questions like, "What should I gem?", "How should I reforge?" and "Which stats are the ones that benefit my class/role?" can be answered, literally, with seconds of searching.

Getting from "bad" to "decent" requires next to no effort. People who are failing at the basic questions listed above are almost universally not trying. In my opinion, most bad players deserve what they get. If you’re not willing to put forth the modicum of effort it requires to figure out that SP Plate is no good for your DK Tank, then you really do deserve to be shunned from decent groups of players who have put in the time and who expect the same level of commitment from the people they play with. In that, this story is an oddity. An extreme outlier.

That said, I agree that the community as a whole has become a lot less tolerant. And I agree that it is a very very bad thing. Players that have spent years and years honing their skills are not content to play with someone who’s merely “decent”. That happened often in my guild. Players who were the top DPS in their old guild would come to ours and be chewed up and spit out. Being “good” wasn’t enough. Hell, being “really really good” wasn’t enough. If you didn’t walk on water, you were bottom of the meters and were cajoled, mocked and laughed at until you quit.

There are plusses and minuses to this. On the one hand, we worked as a well oiled machine. Our runs were quick, our errors were minimal and we didn’t waste any time having to teach people how to play the game. On a mass scale though (I have to imagine pretty much every guild out there is giving their poorer players a hard time “great” guilds putting pressure on their “good” players, “good” guilds putting pressure on their “decent” players, etc) we’ve lost nearly all sense of community and willingness to help each other grow.

I doubt there’s any solution here. There’s definitely no turning back the wheels of time and all the sob stories in the world won’t have much of an effect on your average WoW player who just lost another 15 minutes of his life to some idiot standing in fire.

This was a good read. It made me smile and think. But, ultimately, not much more than that.

[blackblade]

On the other hand, I believe Blizzard has made it very easy for a player who may not be as seasoned as others to get them on the correct path. With just a minimal of time behind the keyboard, a new player can be somewhat indistinguishable from an average player at first glance. It is very difficult to gear WRONG (granted, you can gear suboptimally), as you can be a prot pally in ret gear and perform fine, or dps as a shadow priest in healing gear. Gone are the days where hunters can wear int gear because it's not even an option anymore. It's nigh-impossible to die to the average mob, because auto attacking is enough to kill whatever you need to kill.

I don't think that's a fair assumption. While you won't be dying 1-on-1 that wasn't a massive issue in vanilla either, even in terribad gear.

Problem now, is more that players are expected to have a sort of "boot camp" level of knowledge about their class (and other classes, if they pvp) and outside of 3rd party websites, there isn't really a good place to go in game to figure your problems out.

Rookie players aren't going to know what to spend on gems, and what gems to buy. They certainly won't have access to the raw mats (unless they're a JC, Enchanter, ETC.) and it's tough to get your hands on mats without a couple tradeskill alts (that a lot of players do have access to.) Then there's the spreadsheet priority of what to gem. There's nothing stopping you from gemming wrong. There's no "You're a hunter. Hunters like agility." at the beginning of the game, and really, when you're out in the world, having more hit points for you and your pet might seem lucrative to a newer player.

The OP mentions he gemmed solid stam. That was very much the WLK style of gemming. Tanks gemmed solid stam. Dodge/Parry were sort of deprecated in ICC, healer mana was mostly unlimited. Someone probably told him that was how tanks gemmed and nobody ever bothered to tell him that times have changed.


It's kind of an amusing situation. On one hand, you've got a large group riding the razor's edge of progression, and that's a great place to be. I've done competitive progression in TBC/WLK and it was a superb feeling. You spend a lot of time focused on other guilds' roster and progress, you get some credit.

On the other hand, elitism runs rampant, and the people who aren't so up-to-speed get trampled, shamed, and blacklisted.

It's like watching two classes of people grow further apart.

[Firecrest]

Bingo.

Long ago I actually uninstalled my damage meters. I actually wish Blizzard would ban them, because they lead to a outlook in which people equate others by the numbers they produce rather then the personality they bring. Does it really matter that 5 people "carried" the rest of the raid? They were going to play at that insane level anyways, so why start crapping on those that don't play as well as you? What if he is a kid? What if he has a mental disorder? What if he is just more comfortable clicking his icons with his mouse? Get the hell over it. This is a game, not the World Series.

There are two problems with the "stop caring about the numbers" approach.

The first is that, without numbers, you eliminate the drive to improve (or, at least, a way of measuring it). Numbers are how we determine performance and how we track their trends. In a world where no one cared about numbers, what incentive is there for me to try to better myself? And, even if there was, how would I know if Rotation X was better than Rotation Y?

The second is that underperforming players waste the time and hamper the fun of those they are with. In my opinion, there are two (equally important) parts of this game. The social and the progressive. Socially, we like to hang out with each other and share the experience of the game. Progressively, we like to kill bosses and get loot. Each player will put different emphasis on these two aspects, but I think most people will put an equal about of importance on both. An underperforming player impedes the progressive half of why we play this game. They can be great socially, but even if they do manage to tell funny stories and great jokes, they're still screwing over half of the reason why I logged on in the first place.

[Vellerix]

Gah, the nurturer in me just wants to find this guy and teach him everything I know D:

And hug him.

[Firecrest]

The OP mentions he gemmed solid stam. That was very much the WLK style of gemming. Tanks gemmed solid stam. Dodge/Parry were sort of deprecated in ICC, healer mana was mostly unlimited. Someone probably told him that was how tanks gemmed and nobody ever bothered to tell him that times have changed.

The Warrior in the story was DPS, not Tank. As a Tank, it's understandable to consider Stam as a possible gem choice. It's something any casual player might do. As a DPS, gemming Stam is completely befuddling. It's something that a very bad player would do.

This actually proves the point of the person you quoted. Mastering the very basic parts of this game is all that's required to get you from "complete newb" to "alright". Putting on the right gear and putting in the right gems is not difficult.

[Beriohtarion]

Nice story and thanks for the translation
I think we all know 1 or more PERSONAS like the warrior from that story, hell when i starte in vanilla i made a Hunter thinking that was the only way to get to ride a awesome wolf as mount.

The Warrior in the story was DPS, not Tank. As a Tank, it's understandable to consider Stam as a possible gem choice. It's something any casual player might do. As a DPS, gemming Stam is completely befuddling. It's something that a very bad player would do.

This actually proves the point of the person you quoted. Mastering the very basic parts of this game is all that's required to get you from "complete newb" to "alright". Putting on the right gear and putting in the right gems is not difficult.

While this is true, this is an issue that generally is easiest fixed by blizzard.
Because the game as is now doesn't tell you stamina is for tanks and haste is for dps for instance. Since other games like shooters and such are easier to understand. The amount of time a new player of wow needs to put in research out side the game is stunning.

[Pisholina]

I am considered the knowledgeable one in my guild, and whenever someone asked me a question about any topic (rotation, stat priority, boss mechanics, profession skill ups...), I would give them an answer. In an occasion when I don't know, I will google is myself and tell them the answer. I got my cousin to play WoW in late WotLK and he hit the max level only 1 month after Cataclysm release. His first character was a Boomkin and he couldn't DPS properly to save his life. I spent a lot of time with him reading the threads on various forums and gemming / reforging / enchanting his gear and trying to improve his performance. At Dragon Soul, he was doing decent DPS, but switched to being the main offtank for my guild.

I could say that I am finding myself in the exact same position because I started playing Starcraft 2 like 2 weeks ago. I tried playing 1v1 with the Protoss (the only ones I actually knew something about) but a lot of times, my opponent would just laugh and tell me how stupid I am. My friend introduced me to Day[9] and HuskyStarcraft and told me to check their videos, and now I am training ro play properly.

I will always help a person if he asks for help and is willing to listen and learn. I could laugh at him if he makes a bad choice, but I will still tell him how he should address the issue. My friends played LoL together against other people, and after some time, one of them said "You two are bad and I am not going to play with you until you learn how to play properly." I don't really care about performance in a game because I play it for fun. If I care so much about winning or losing, I wouldn't have as much fun anymore.

[Cle]

Why blizzard dont just tell in tooltips that what stats are important for all specs and classes in general. Also more advanced theorycrafting should be done also by blizzard in game. It doesnt serve any real purpose to let players figure out how important different stats are. Blizzard is the only source for 100% reliable information because they know this game in and out better than anyone else.

[Shiinji]

Before LfD and all that cross server dungeon stuff everyone on the server knew everyone. It was more enjoying back then because grouping with your own server was better than random strangers.