The real reason why WoW's community sucks

[Notdev]

Anonymity of the internet + the likelihood that you'll never come across people that you play with in LFR/LFD or even cross server flexes/normals ever again.
Also, in LFR/LFD you have little incentive to actually behave yourself due to the huge amounts of kick protection. And the worst thing that happens when you actually are kicked is just a loss of time, you can just queue right back up and be a douche in another run.

Sure, there are other factors. But that by far is the main one.

[wych]

The removal of server communities and reduced need to interact is the main issue.

People have complete anonymity now and don't need people's help

[Deleted]

Real reason is Humanity, humanity is filled with idiots, be it online gaming, skiing, football, whatever.

[wych]

Care to exaggerate a little more? >_>

Unless you were on a crazy populated realm, or never bothered to read any chat or talk with a few people, I think everybody knew the main server assholes

[StationaryHawk]

The real reason is that everyone thinks they know the real reason for everything.

[Computed Lamb]

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.

You do realize you completely contradicted yourself there, right?

I'm not sure about people who want to claim that the old days and new days were identical as far as community is concerned. Don't know what games they were playing, but server reputation mattered back in the pre-LFD days. I can recall several people who were chastised by the server community for being assholes, so much so that over several weeks, I would run into these people, inspect them, and see that their progression had come to a standstill -- ultimately causing them to either start acting like a human being, transfer servers, or quit.

On the other end of that spectrum, you had people who were well known and well liked and were probably on more friends list than they could count. I wasn't a server star or anything close to it, but I remember being able to get pug groups 24 hours a day courtesy of my friends list and friends of friends. It was extremely common to log into game at any time of the day and get bombarded with whispers "Want to heal this? want to heal that? what you doing in an hour?"

Everyone says they waited and spammed trade for hours on end, and that everyone was big assholes back in the day, but I imagine most of those people either had poor reputations or refused to try and build a friends list. I rarely remember ever having to wait to find groups.

I guess that's a really long way of saying, yeah, in my experience, the community was much different then than it is today.

[Djuntas]

Yep, inn TBC you also got to know and play with alot off people on your server. I ran alot off 5 mans, and often later inn TBC pugged karazhan on 1-2 alts and my main, and honestly...I know, I know random numbers on the net, but I feel like I knew atleast 200-300 people on my server...Like really knew, knew them...How they played etc. I to was also known on the server...Often spoke inn trade, did some random stupid things sometimes...etc. Basicly back then...You had you rep following you everywhere...Somebody saying ill report this to your guild, or somebody going inn trade saying "X ninja looted" was bad.

I don't think I had it like that inn all off Cataclysme, and only inn WOTLK I had it during ICC when I pugged it on normal mode alot.

[KCguy]

Much of it has to do with when a game is new. Generally everyone has no idea where or what to do, so they help each other out. That was the feeling during vanilla and BC. But as time went on it changed the game grew in popularity and with that, many people expected everyone to know everything about the game and exactly what to do. If not, they would bring down the rude hammer. That's what I think anyways.

[wych]

You do realize you completely contradicted yourself there, right?

I'm not sure about people who want to claim that the old days and new days were identical as far as community is concerned. Don't know what games they were playing, but server reputation mattered back in the pre-LFD days. I can recall several people who were chastised by the server community for being assholes, so much so that over several weeks, I would run into these people, inspect them, and see that their progression had come to a standstill -- ultimately causing them to either start acting like a human being, transfer servers, or quit.

On the other end of that spectrum, you had people who were well known and well liked and were probably on more friends list than they could count. I wasn't a server star or anything close to it, but I remember being able to get pug groups 24 hours a day courtesy of my friends list and friends of friends. It was extremely common to log into game at any time of the day and get bombarded with whispers "Want to heal this? want to heal that? what you doing in an hour?"

Everyone says they waited and spammed trade for hours on end, and that everyone was big assholes back in the day, but I imagine most of those people either had poor reputations or refused to try and build a friends list.

I guess that's a really long way of saying, yeah, in my experience, the community was much different than it is today.

One issue on these forums is for some strange reasons, a fair few people seem to pretend or act like they played during Vanilla/TBC/WOTLK and just either make stuff up (to defend their favourite expac despite not playing them all) or regurgitate bollocks that other people have said on the forums.

Hell, I saw somebody post about lack of Paladin balance in TBC the other day, despite him saying a few posts before that he joined in WOTLK.

[TheWorkingTitle]

It's a combination of the LFG/LFD/LFR as well as being able to Server Transfer/Name Change. Those 'Quality of Life' changes have absolutely ruined any sense of community and reputation within servers.

Speaking as someone who has played since the beginning, yes -- the community is way more toxic now and has been on a decline ever since the aforementioned implementations.

If you trolled/ninja'd/were discriminatory/etc, the greater part of that community/server knew you were and you would not be able to find groups or guilds to join.

You became known on each server for your accomplishments/exploits and how you held/conducted yourself as a human being. This was further compounded by how long it took to hit the level cap and how unforgiving it was to have to re-do all of that if you ruined your reputation doing something perceived as negative.

There were blacklists - raiding guilds had them as well as the abundant forum chatter and name collection that went on in the WoW forums as well.

TL;DR - Anonymity and the removal of social consequence is the real reason WoW's community is abhorrent now compared to Vanilla/TBC

[Deletedaccount1]

WoW is much more free than most games so it promotes bad behavior in its nature. I can't really say its worse than any other online game that I've played or am currently playing. LoL, any Steam or Blizzard game, Xbox or any console, w/e. As long as it's a big community its going to attract a lot of people who just want to fuck with the game or the people playing it.

[Amerrol]

It is most certainly the queueing. Before LFD you had to behave or risk becoming a social pariah on your server. Sure, some people didn't care and were assholes, but it kept your average player in line. Now there is zero consequence for ninjaing loot, or just being an asshole, since you just can requeue.

[Deleted]

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.

Ye Blizzard implementing such a system that would work would solve A LOT of the toxicity atm. It sucks that you always get the ''reported'' in chat, but it's better than the toxicity there is right now.

[Computed Lamb]

100x reporting for flaming? [Insert Name] The Asshole title enforced for a month

Lol, I'm pretty sure people would be falling all over themselves trying to secure this title.

[Deleted]

100x reporting for flaming? [Insert Name] The Asshole title enforced for a month

You say that as if it was a bad thing. I'm sure there will be people going out of their way to obtain that title, so they can be a special snowflake and have a title nearly no one else has.

[Orange Joe]

Unless you were on a crazy populated realm, or never bothered to read any chat or talk with a few people, I think everybody knew the main server assholes

People read the chat and ignored it. Seen it happen many times.

[MoanaLisa]

See, I remember the opposite. I remember people getting put on blacklist websites and people telling GMs about the asshole in their Guild. Back then Guilds didn't even want people like that in there with them, they valued their reputation. Nowadays Guilds are just here so we level them to 25 for the perks. Few Gullds actually care about the people they have in them.

I remember that too. I remember as well people trolling others by doing the same thing for no reason at all except they decided they didn't like them for some reason. In both cases it was pretty rare to see any fallout from it. Realm reputation and its importance has always been overstated. It was never as important as most people think it was. At most, people rarely know more than a few dozen people on a realm; little more than a good-sized and active guild.

It's all irrelevant now that realms are being combined.

[Facerockker]

Every major online gaming community has its share of people who "suck." It just happens, especially with how accessible WoW is.

[Yakshamash]

So, just because person is asshole, immature, idiot, we should blame LFD/LFG/LFR? Just as someone posted on 1st page, no one looks at root of the problem, it's easy to blame tools.

[Nachturnal]

People are just inherently dicks. Plus it's the internet. It really is that simple.

Why does every thread about the matter try to break down the game into some psychological study of some sort, as a way to fuel their personal agenda. People are dicks, have always been dicks, will always be dicks, LFR/LFD/LFG does not change that. It is just more apparent now that we have more access to other players across realms and such.