Was the WoW community this horrible a year ago?

[Deleted]

I thought long and hard whether to create "another whine thread" about the WoW community, but it baffles me too much not to. I stopped for over a year (shortly after MoP released), but i can't remember it being THIS bad, even with LFR during cata. It's like morals are gone and everyone is coming close to being socially retarded. The only reason to "team up" is for loot or not able to solo.

Few examples:

- 540 ilvl seems to be the minimum to do flex, 560 for normal (which is logical because it only requires u to have full flex/normal gear, in order to clear flex/normal derp.) Apparantly everyone feels the need to overgear everything, skill doesnt matter anymore, everyone wants it to be over quick, without communication, etc.

- People don't care to invite anymore for anything, be it quests, rares, etc. People have become so poisoned by trolls, ninja's and dicks that they turned into anxious lootwhores. Trust is gone entirely.

- No1 "chats" anymore. The closest thing to chat is "hi" and "bye", with the occasional "f*ckig retarded noob [insert random player name]".

- Trolls have been around since the internet began, but damn?! It feels as if 20% is trolling and 30% is trying too. Intentional ninja pulls, screwing up achievs on purpose (19 barrels on ook and then quickly burning him), flaming, afking, auto attacking, the list just doesnt end. The worst thing i found was that fellow raiders dont even care anymore. They rather kick the person calling out afkers / auto attackers and bots than the actual bots, afkers and AA.

- The majority seems to know fuckall what to do. On ready checks everyone just clicks ready, and brainlessly dps's, tanks and heals. No1 watches video's, reads the journal, no nothing. No1 speaks up when unsure about tactics, partially because they will get an immediate kick (easier than explaining the fight right?), partially because the "i dont give a shit" attitude people have these days.

Now i know this is a reflection of what todays society strifes to create and be. Egocentrism and narcism has been the hype of the past few years. But has it really gone down hill this fast? That over the span of a year someone like me (and i have played ALOT of online games, some including COD, LoL and Dota) thinks the community has gone to shit this badly?
And maybe more importantly, How and Why?


Discuss!

[hakujinbakasama]

Yes. It has always been like this. The only difference is that technology and additional features have pushed it to being more in your face. I can't speak of Vanilla but for those of us during the TBC days we all remember "LFM Heroics, Season 2 or greater required."

[Jonexe]

The game has been like this since as far back as I can remember. In BC everyone expected you to out gear Karazahn to do pick up heroics.

PUGs always expect more than is necessary. Some because they expect people to not try and not care. Some because they're bad players that want everything to be easy. Some because they simply don't know any better.

[MatadorMedia]

Sounds like you are talking about PUGs and Trade chat. The only noticeable difference is there is less positive communication in PUG groups.

[NuLogic]

Yes and thanks to lfd and lfr you see them more often now. Before they where doing who knows what.

[Velfar]

Its the randomness, nobody cares too much for conversations when you're probably not going to see that person ever again. LFD/LFR is a great tool, but it turned much of the community into a shittier state. Same with the cross-realm zones, why would you start to play with someone from a different server when there are so many limitations on what you can do together (trading etc)
I still like the game a lot, but it requires you to have a nice and friendly guild more than ever before. Hope the connected realms may fix some of it, but I doubt it.

[Deleted]

Community was greatest during vanilla. Had a couple of great years, TBC was ok too. Of course there were jerks about but in general the community was cool.

Forward wind to now and it's horrible. Toxic. People completely bored out of their minds, running around insulting, griefing the hell out of each other, really actually just wondering why they bother to play. It's sad. I stopped. I really hope Blizzard hand the game back to the fans. If they don't, not many will come back this time (next exp), look at the charts for realms and for MMO-C hits, it's all in freefall.

It's very sad. People get major nostalgia (which hurts), but also people get annoyed, the game was GREAT at one point. Sure time marches on etc but we didn't ask for all those changes and the annoying thing is that at one point, there were millions that were happy paying and could have gone on for years but changes were ENFORCED, bad changes (that blizz regret now) and we could do nothing about. And can we rewind? No we can't. This is why many reach and dream of classic realms. The changes happened to fast without enough thought. It's ok to not like the changes Blizz brought in over the years but unfortunately we are the guinea pigs. And some turns were made that were not very good for the actual gameplay aspect. Much backpedaling by Blizz now. Let's see if they have enough in the tank to turn this 180. Many fans have given up at this stage.

[McNeil]

It got shittier because of LFD and LFR, you can be a jerk as much as you want and there's nothing that can happen to them. Already seen plenty of ninja pulls on Immerseus and Iron Juggernaut this week, a single person caused half a raid to disband, and when he ninja pulls even more the raid is eventually empty. If you did this on your own server, you gained yourself a very bad reputation and nobody would invite you anymore.

[Deleted]

Here come the waves of "Vanilla/TBC community was best" and "It got awful 'cause of LFD/LFR".

I have been playing since Wrath,honestly the WoW community has always been mixed.There were always,and still are,great members of the community.And there always were,and always will be,damn trolls.

Just like in any community after all. *rolleyes*

[Deleted]

yes it has since vanilla....

[Yarathir]

Yes. It has always been like this. The only difference is that technology and additional features have pushed it to being more in your face. I can't speak of Vanilla but for those of us during the TBC days we all remember "LFM Heroics, Season 2 or greater required."

This is really all I could say. Damn you for stealing my words! xP

[Littleshashi]

OP: Yes, I agree with you 100%. This game's community has been destroyed. I would say it's best days were 2005-2006.

My little anecdote: I ran a heroic LFG the other day with a DK tank who said nothing to anyone, pulled the entire instance at once, and needed no healing to stay alive. As the healer, I was powerless to influence anything. The DPS were even more angry. The game has become not just a social failure, but a technical one as well.

I'm sure it is no coincidence that most of the "original generation" of WoW players have left, they are the ones that piled on during the game's stunning growth in the first 3 years, and generally the people who were the most invested in it as a community.

Of course all the other technical explanations are true as well. LFR, guild perks, removal of non-instanced group content, etc. But these are things the game probably had to do to survive financially.

[Aphrel]

join a guild and you never have to be at the mercy of randoms ever again.

as for puging there are more then enough pugs with lesser requirements then what you mentioned. Its the natrual ladder of progress, ppl with good ilvl team up with other ppl with good ilvl. while ppl with less ilvl are stuck with other ppl with less ilvl. addons like Oqueue are excellent if you are looking for flex pugs. and once you got flexloot/craftitems/worldboss loot/legendarycloak in pretty much every slot or close to it, then you can start looking for normal pugs. u might not be able to get into a 560+ normal pugs that aim for a clear but there are plenty of less successful pugs that still clear 10/14 that requires less ilvl.

if you dont wanna climb the progression ladder, then find a guild.

as for how social ppl are nowdays. Pretty much anything you do ingame that requires a grp takes less then 20min and you do it with ppl that you most likely will never meet again. With everything being xrealm and even crossing language barriers there is rly no point in making freinds in dungeon/lfr pugs. again, get a guild and make friends there!

about kicking ppl that calls out afkers, i see that you ran into the bad-players-union. gz Blame blizzard for putting lfr on the gearprogression ladder. They said lfr was just for "seeing content", the fact that every1 is forced to do it to get gear determined that was a lie. If lfr had truly been optional content ppl whould afk throu them to gear up their alts.

as for the last point, you dont need to know what to do in lfr, hence ppl dont bother to find out. and the ppl that know what to do usually afk autohit dps because boss will die anyway.


you can blame the mentality of ppl on the game. The game is designed so that even the worst player in the world can beat it (see that vid of the guy afking his way throu the game), and natrually the crowd it creates is a crowd that are litterarly the worst players in the world, they dont only play bad but also behave bad because they can do so without any conseqenses. If blizz wants a game where ppl communicate with eachother, treat eachother with respect and strive towards becoming better. then they need to change most aspects of the game so that its required of players.

[Valeron]

I stopped playing (other than a few free weeks here and there) in WotLK when gear score really became forefront in the game. At that point I noticed the community really declining. I believe that is when the piss poor community really started.

[Arbs]

It got shittier because of LFD and LFR, you can be a jerk as much as you want and there's nothing that can happen to them. Already seen plenty of ninja pulls on Immerseus and Iron Juggernaut this week, a single person caused half a raid to disband, and when he ninja pulls even more the raid is eventually empty. If you did this on your own server, you gained yourself a very bad reputation and nobody would invite you anymore.

I have to agree with Mcneil, here as much as I think LFD was needed, it really screwed things up. an LFR made things worse.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

It has been like that since lfg was introduced, so yeah its been a few years now. Achievements, LFG, LFR, gearscore(back in wrath), Ilvl, removing rare quests(quests that required a group), blizzard not punishing trolls. Those are some of the things that made the community the way it is now...

[Vulpei]

I didn't play WoW for a long time because of the reputation of the community being the worst of any game. That has moved been on to being LoL now, but people saying that WoW was a beautiful commune back in the day need to take off their rose coloured glasses.

[Deleted]

Yes. It has always been like this. The only difference is that technology and additional features have pushed it to being more in your face. I can't speak of Vanilla but for those of us during the TBC days we all remember "LFM Heroics, Season 2 or greater required."

surely there was nothing wrong with asking ppl to have gear that u could obtain by afking at alterac valley (the good old days of honor leeching)

[MoanaLisa]

Well, can't say really. The forums have been this bad forever. As for the social game, I'm in a great guild on an RP server and don't socialize outside of it much except for realm RP events. Your guild is the best community and has been for a long while now. Much longer than a year.

[Krolikn]

Same old community.