The "WoW bubble"

[Mercarcher]

So I came back to WoW yesterday and I've really noticed this bubble that seems to form around the WoW community. It's like stepping back in time, or to a new isolated world. Some examples would be that Ventrilo is still a thing. Outside of WoW almost everything has switched over to Teamspeak 3 for years now, very few people still use Vent. Mumble seems to be catching on as well in WoW now, but its also become quite a rare thing for other games.

There also seems to be a lack of knowledge of other games. I was talking to some of my friends about some of the games I've been playing recently including Civilization: Beyond Earth, Path of Exile, DotA 2, Payday 2, Star Citizen, and Dark Souls 2, but a lot of them didn't know anything about these games or haven't even heard of them. They are all quite popular games too. It's just weird how isolated the WoW community feels. Sure they play other things such as Diablo 3, but even Diablo 3 has pretty much died as a game to the outside world while it still remains quite popular amongst my WoW friends.

Has anyone else noticed this situation when returning to WoW?

[Bathory]

I think your examples are just as "isolated" as your post.

There are die hard WoW players sure, but just because someone doesn't know what Civilization is, it means they are isolated? I know what the game is, and it looks pretty stupid to me. Not my type of game, neither is DOTA, or Dark Souls.

[Zolav]

I have recently returned but there isn't one person I know, not one ! so I rarely talk to people. But I have been talking to some lately and I was actually shocked how many were nice and not complete asshats.

[Mercarcher]

just because someone doesn't know what Civilization is, it means they are isolated?

Isolated in the fact that basically the only gaming they know or care about is WoW. The gaming community is pretty large, but I've noticed quite a few people that exists solely with in the WoW bubble of influence. They don't even know or care about other games. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't something you normally see in games.

[Deleted]

Disagree with the whole "wow bubble" thing. It's mostly like a "gaming bubble" and I guess your friends who don't play, your parents, relatives, everyone you know that doesn't play has more or less said that to you. WoW is just a more addictive game than others, it's not a separate bubble though.

[Gimlix]

I have recently returned but there isn't one person I know, not one ! so I rarely talk to people. But I have been talking to some lately and I was actually shocked how many were nice and not complete asshats.

WoW players are actually pretty nice helpful players, just avoid most of the "wanna be pro people" :P

OT: No, i don't believe that's 100% true, playing wow for years and ventrilo isn't a thing anymore since what begin cata?
It's either TS3 or Raid call nowadays.

[shoc]

I haven't seen anyone using Vent on my server for a good while, man that is so 2007. The standard now seems to be either Mumble or Teamspeak.

And on the topic of "other" games, I totally agree. There seems to be this sentiment in the WoW community that a WoW player only plays WoW. It's weird and I'm not sure how to explain it, but I know so many people who treat WoW as their primary source of entertainment. No TV, no movies, no mobile games, no console games, just WoW. I know I was like that for most of the time I was playing WoW. It wasn't until I took some time off during the SoO lull that I went back and played some of the "big" games. Like Halo 3 and GTA:V and Civ. 5, it's like I had missed half a decade of game releases.

I dub this phenomenon the "Warcraft Exclusivity Bubble". May some researchers in the future stumble upon this thread and cite this as a source in some paper on some obscure topic.

[Bropollo]

I very rarely see Ventrilo anymore. Ever. Not sure what you're talking about.

Also Teamspeak is incredibly overrated.

[Deleted]

So I came back to WoW yesterday and I've really noticed this bubble that seems to form around the WoW community. It's like stepping back in time, or to a new isolated world. Some examples would be that Ventrilo is still a thing. Outside of WoW almost everything has switched over to Teamspeak 3 for years now, very few people still use Vent. Mumble seems to be catching on as well in WoW now, but its also become quite a rare thing for other games.

There also seems to be a lack of knowledge of other games. I was talking to some of my friends about some of the games I've been playing recently including Civilization: Beyond Earth, Path of Exile, DotA 2, Payday 2, Star Citizen, and Dark Souls 2, but a lot of them didn't know anything about these games or haven't even heard of them. They are all quite popular games too. It's just weird how isolated the WoW community feels. Sure they play other things such as Diablo 3, but even Diablo 3 has pretty much died as a game to the outside world while it still remains quite popular amongst my WoW friends.

Has anyone else noticed this situation when returning to WoW?

You do realize that to us, you're part of the "Outside world" bubble.
This is the same with every game essentially, everything has its own "bubble".

[Darsithis]

Isolated in the fact that basically the only gaming they know or care about is WoW. The gaming community is pretty large, but I've noticed quite a few people that exists solely with in the WoW bubble of influence. They don't even know or care about other games. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't something you normally see in games.

I'd say it's just anecdotal. I very, very much doubt that most of WoW's playerbase has never heard of other video games

[Futon]

A lot of people only have time for one game. So while you quit wow you had time for another game. They didn't quit so they only played wow. Myself I just came back to wow and once again it's the only thing i'm playing. While I was away though I played Diablo 3, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Path of Exiles, and Solitaire. My attention span is just not big enough for multiple games usually unless a game is really casual and then I get bored easily.

[Mercarcher]

Also Teamspeak is incredibly overrated.

As a plain user its pretty much the same as any other VOIP I'll agree with you, but as an admin of a large 500 person server that regularly has 400+ people online, I can tell you that without the admin powers offered by teamspeak it would be a cluster fuck. The user privileges and user groups simply aren't robust enough in other VOIP programs to handle it.

[Bropollo]

As a plain user its pretty much the same as any other VOIP I'll agree with you

Well, considering you dismissed ventrilo as being so outdated that it was worth making a thread about... If Teamspeak's primary advantage is that you can host an enormous community on it then I can see why a majority of this player base, who only need ventrilo for guilds or for groups of friends, wouldn't need to use Teamspeak. Yet you bring it up like the WoW community is in some sort of "bubble" for not using TS and still using Ventrilo (mumble and TS are both more prominent in WoW from what I've seen). How did you not anticipate this coming off as a "holier than thou" ego bump for yourself?

Not like anything you've said is actually true. I see people talking about different games all the time and like I said, Vent is probably the least used VOIP service I've seen in this community for the past 2-3 years, and that's including Skype.

[TheWindWalker]

I just chalk it up to "WoW is a hobby that happens to be a game, Dark Souls is a game, full stop." People don't really have the time for multiple day-to-day hobbies as time consuming as WoW so if you're talking about another MMO or something that's very time consuming if you want to unlock all the "get good" material. (such as Payday)

It's kind of like going to an archery range and asking people about bowling. Sure many of them might have done it but almost no one is really interested in talking about it.

[Deleted]

Isolated in the fact that basically the only gaming they know or care about is WoW. The gaming community is pretty large, but I've noticed quite a few people that exists solely with in the WoW bubble of influence. They don't even know or care about other games. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't something you normally see in games.

I disagree, it happens to nearly any game which survives to such an old age.

Every popular game reaches a point in its life where it ceases to attract new players, and the ones who remain thereafter will typically form a very "insular" community who just enjoy that game, and aren't interested in playing anything else.

When a game is new, it gets all the publicity and hype - the majority of players who buy it will drop it within 12 months once they're bored, to move on to the 'next' game, and the next one, etc.

You can't compare WoW to any game released over the last 12 months, because those all have the 'wow! new! shiny!' factor attached to them - but you could compare it with Counter-strike, Eve Online, SimCity 4, etc (all of which are over 10 years old); just on a much, much larger scale.

The real unique factors of WoW are that its community remained so large for such a long time, and it attracted millions of new players for over 6 years. WoW stopped attracting many new players a few years ago now, although most games which survive 10+ years will maintain a small dedicated following in the tens-of-thousands rather than the millions.

[nessfalco]

So I came back to WoW yesterday and I've really noticed this bubble that seems to form around the WoW community. It's like stepping back in time, or to a new isolated world. Some examples would be that Ventrilo is still a thing. Outside of WoW almost everything has switched over to Teamspeak 3 for years now, very few people still use Vent. Mumble seems to be catching on as well in WoW now, but its also become quite a rare thing for other games.

There also seems to be a lack of knowledge of other games. I was talking to some of my friends about some of the games I've been playing recently including Civilization: Beyond Earth, Path of Exile, DotA 2, Payday 2, Star Citizen, and Dark Souls 2, but a lot of them didn't know anything about these games or haven't even heard of them. They are all quite popular games too. It's just weird how isolated the WoW community feels. Sure they play other things such as Diablo 3, but even Diablo 3 has pretty much died as a game to the outside world while it still remains quite popular amongst my WoW friends.

Has anyone else noticed this situation when returning to WoW?

No, I think it's just you. I've talked to people about Bayonetta 2, Smash Bros, Arkham, and a bunch of people have invited me to play other games with them that I'm not really into (mostly MOBAs).

[Tziva]

I'd say it's just anecdotal. I very, very much doubt that most of WoW's playerbase has never heard of other video games

I don't doubt it, but that's just because WoW has such a broad appeal that many of its playerbase are not people who would otherwise be gamers.

Otherwise, the rest of this just sounds like anecdotal disparaging nonsense.

[foxHeart]

Yeah, all the WoW players I know have walkmen cassette players and pagers.

/sarcasm

[BenBos]

A lot of people only have time for one game. So while you quit wow you had time for another game. They didn't quit so they only played wow. Myself I just came back to wow and once again it's the only thing i'm playing. While I was away though I played Diablo 3, League of Legends, Hearthstone, Path of Exiles, and Solitaire. My attention span is just not big enough for multiple games usually unless a game is really casual and then I get bored easily.

Interesting thread and indeed a lot of people simply have no time to play all games the OP mentioned.

Most things have been said, but here are my few points:

1. WOW is a game with long term playing goals and value. If you play it seriously, your other gaming activities are limited.

2. WOW is played by more older players than you think. Our Guild master is 44 years old, his father 65 and I would guess half of our 120+ member Guild is well over 30. The simple fact you need adults to organise a Guild and let it flourish for years is a clear sign elder people stay much more committed to just one game.

3. LOTS of garbage comes out every month. In fact after 35 years of video gaming I can state that "epic" new games that last for years are very limited in number. 99% of the new games die a very quick death after just a few weeks of hype.

So it is only natural that IF you find a good game you will stay much longer with it, once you find out that not all that is promoted is really good in YOUR eyes.

Most older WoW players these days have a wait and see attitude. If there is anything really worthwhile coming out, they'll look into it a few months later. Mostly the hype already died out and we saved money on the thing.

tldr: older players simply don't jump every few weeks on a new hyped bandwagon.

The rest is pure personal preference. I dislike Civilization, certainly the newest space variant. In fact very few games I tried had a lasting appeal on me. Year by year, WoW seems to climb higher and higher in quality against the duds.

The only real alternatives to me are some board games (mostly wargames), but the present day video games are trivial in 99.9% for my taste. That's just personal opinion of course.

[Thimagryn]

Isolated in the fact that basically the only gaming they know or care about is WoW. The gaming community is pretty large, but I've noticed quite a few people that exists solely with in the WoW bubble of influence. They don't even know or care about other games. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't something you normally see in games.

You're still picking at an isolated few and calling them the 'community', when they do not necessarily represent that at all.

Hell I talked to a guild mate who I haven't talked to in 2 years, and he told me about Five Nights at Freddies, which I had never heard of before then.