More toxic than ever.

[Gimlix]

Welcome to World of Warcraft in 2020.

WoW is still one of the least toxic games i played. I don't know what ur on about?
OP is whining over nothing.

[shimerra]

I also have a friend who only recently finnished his education and got a job.
He "never has time anymore".

Meanwhile i juggle a fulltime job, a wife and 2 kids and still have time to get heroic cleared in the first few weeks of each new raid.

Grownups know how to manage their time and they dont come up with excuses for why stuff is beneath them and they dont have "time" for it.

"Grownups" also generally don't get butthurt when others don't place the same value on activities as they do. I can't tell if you're trying to make a semantics argument or are just mad that others don't value playing WoW as highly?

Sure I could work in a 4-5 night raid schedule like I used to. Or even the 1-2 night team I played with for a while. But fuck that noise. I "don't have the time for it" because there's simply plenty of other things I'd rather do with my time in addition to actual obligations. And if someone considers an activity beneath them so much so that it's not worth doing they've made that exact choice to manage their time by not doing the thing they don't feel gives them value and instead doing things they do feel give value and you're just getting personally offended because of the exact wording used.

[skonsubolti]

I doubt whichever guild you were in was any good if you brag about ,, a few realm firsts ". Could be a WR 10k guild on some dead server for all we know. Sounds like a you problem bro

[erifwodahs]

And this is the norm, yet it is not the norm in wow. Virtually the opposite is the norm in wow. I have a lot of reasons I think why, which I can back up with design based arguments, but a lot of people here denying the issue are insane.

You can't back it up with design based arguments because you mentioned it like 4 times now about your game dev. work and nothing besides that.
WoW is exactly the same in pugging with us - few friends pugging remaining party members for m+ or raids. Again. I don't need to my both hands to count how many bad encounters I had in half of BfA. WoW is as toxic as other games where multiple people has a stake in. PvP games might have more toxicity but there are more People involved than in PvE.

[chiddie]

And here we see the root of all toxicity in its purest form: A crybully mentality that the rest of the world needs to conform to your anti-social horseshit or else you are *sniff sniff cry cry* the REAL victim here.

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Then why isn't this a problem in other cooperative games?

Because they are not gear based and/or do not value time you take to complete content that much?

As I said countless times, take away timers from M+ (or make them so large to make them become almost trivial) and 90% of rudeness will fly away like a bird in the sunshine.

[NineSpine]

You can't back it up with design based arguments because you mentioned it like 4 times now about your game dev. work and nothing besides that.
WoW is exactly the same in pugging with us - few friends pugging remaining party members for m+ or raids. Again. I don't need to my both hands to count how many bad encounters I had in half of BfA. WoW is as toxic as other games where multiple people has a stake in. PvP games might have more toxicity but there are more People involved than in PvE.

You can't advocate and make excuses for toxic behavior, and then claim that there isn't toxicity. Pick an argument, because the two you keep going to contradict each other.

Other MMOs don't have this problem. You don't see it because YOU ARE the toxic element, as evidenced by how much work you've done to make excuses for toxicity.

[Aristai1723]

I heal casual dungeon pugs since legion launch and I’ve seen my share of bad stuff.

So far I got all heroics some normals and 5 mythics. 20 runs total 2 toxic groups one successful one kicked me. Nothing has changed. Time of day and how the group is posted matters a decent bit.

Going with the flow is vital. Heroics will be a cesspool in no time.

[NineSpine]

You can't back it up with design based arguments because you mentioned it like 4 times now about your game dev. work and nothing besides that.
WoW is exactly the same in pugging with us - few friends pugging remaining party members for m+ or raids. Again. I don't need to my both hands to count how many bad encounters I had in half of BfA. WoW is as toxic as other games where multiple people has a stake in. PvP games might have more toxicity but there are more People involved than in PvE.

Here is some of the design-based argument:

Players roughly break down into four categories:

Achievers - They want to push the game and be the best
Socializers - They want to interact with other people
Explorers - They want to interact with the world
Killers - They want to grief people

We can usually leave Killers out for this discussion because the game isn't made with them in mind. If you look at other successful MMOs or even older versions of WoW, the design pushes these players into sections of the game that work best for them. The current design of WoW, which is unique among MMOs, pushes every player into an Achiever playstyle even if they really don't belong there. Here are a few of the ways it does so:

1. You gear up extremely quickly and gear resets are very frequent, so players are constantly kept on a relatively even field.
2. You grow out of casual content extremely quickly, so players run out of non-Achiever things to do rapidly, often within days of hitting max level in some timeframes.
3. All content has a scaling system, so players feel compelled to treadmill their way up the ladder because there's never a sense of completion until you are at the extremes.
4. Player interaction has been mitigated as much as possible until you get to more difficult content.
5. All of the systems for grouping make it far, far easier to boot someone and replace them than deal with even a minor amount of friction.

By pushing players into an Achiever framework, when many of them don't belong there, you not only put them into a situation that is naturally toxic for them but you also put them in a position of grouping with genuine Achiever players who generally have very low tolerance for non-Achiever players.

EDIT: Ultimately there is one thing to look at that shows the issue here: Watch any Q&A with the devs and see how much time is spent talking about endgame progression systems. It's about 80% of the time. It is their singular focus. It is all they care about. Endgame progression systems are the province of Achiever players. Nobody else cares that much about that. It's not an important part of the game to anyone else. And is it a coincidence the man helming this, Ion, got his start writing raid speedrun guides? That's the mindset the game is being designed within.

[Elkfingers]

Step 1 to successfully pugging: be on proper power
Step 2: be following the meta
Step 3: be good at the game and know what's going on

If everyone did those 3 things, there wouldn't be any toxicity because you wouldn't ever get randomly paired with scrubs who make things take 10x longer than they need to with their failness.

Oh boy. This isn't true at all. Almost all of the toxicity is from tryhards who massively overestimate their own competence. They all think they're doing those three things well. They aren't doing them well.

Most of the problems I encounter are with players who are mediocre-at-best who blame other people for their own fuckups because their personality disorder doesn't leave room for the possibility that they could stand to improve on a few aspects of their game.

Players who are actually good are more concerned with working on their own performance than caring what a couple of randoms are doing in a +12 key, my dude.

[NineSpine]

Oh boy. This isn't true at all. Almost all of the toxicity is from tryhards who massively overestimate their own competence.

Most of the problems I encounter are with players who are mediocre-at-best who blame other people for their own fuckups because their personality disorder doesn't leave room for the possibility that they could stand to improve on a few aspects of their game.

Players who are actually good are more concerned with working on their own performance than caring what a couple of randoms are doing in a +12 key, my dude.

A good example of this is a recent experience I had. Someone I know who is a huge WoW tryhard was raging out of his mind because he could not progress in Torghast. He streamed so I could help him figure out what he was doing wrong. He was obsessed with treating Torghast like a M+, pulling as much as possible and trying to pull off his AoE rotation. Every time I tried to correct him, he got mad and said that this is the rotation so THAT'S HOW ITS PLAYED. He would not change anything in response to anima powers. He would not strategically pull anything. He would not consider altering his rotation based on the situation. All he did was continually get angrier and angrier that the DIVINELY ORDAINED ROTATION wasn't working.

[BeepBoo]

Players who are actually good are more concerned with working on their own performance than caring what a couple of randoms are doing in a +12 key, my dude.

Nice no true scottsman fallacy. I've given an example of my own and I have another. I joined a mythic EN farm run back when EN was the current raid. The guild was a top 50 us guild. The entire time the whole raid voicechat was people shit talking each other, calling each other out on every little fuckup, along the same lines as that old wow meme video "MORE DOTS!" Everyone and I mean EVERYONE was vitriolic. It was amazing. Clearly they were competent people, so you can stop with your "all people who are good are universally this one way in regards to social stuff."

[T-34]

Because they are not gear based and/or do not value time you take to complete content that much?

As I said countless times, take away timers from M+ (or make them so large to make them become almost trivial) and 90% of rudeness will fly away like a bird in the sunshine.

Plenty of people enjoy mythic+. And the timed aspect is what sets mythic+ apart from other content.
If we take season 4 in BFA then raidier.io registered that 1,75 mio. unique characters completed a mythic+ run in time.
And if we take the total number of runs then it is over 10 million timed mythic+ dungeons.
I don't know if there are some timed runs that aren't registered, but it is an impressive number.

Mythic+ is a huge success story. And I am perfectly aware that some people are unable to handle, what I and others find fun, namely the timed pressure.
Should Blizzard remove the timed aspect of Mythic+ in order to satisfy the hurt pride by those who can't handle this content?

I truly wonder what brings people to demand that Blizzard should remove some content. Why do they care that others can do and/or enjoy something they are unable to do or enjoy?

I absolutely loathe PvP, but I don't demand that Blizzard should remove it. I just let the War Mode button rot, I never do BGs or Arenas and I happily accept that I will never get gear, titles or other stuff from that activity.

[tehealadin]

I have yet to hit max level, so I can't say too much. I tend to pug, even when in a guild. Generally it is fine. Every now and then I will get cunts in the group, but it is a minority of times. Not enough to not pug. Guild runs are fine, but I like the pugging option and have gotten a lot out of it.

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Plenty of people enjoy mythic+. And the timed aspect is what sets mythic+ apart from other content.
If we take season 4 in BFA then raidier.io registered that 1,75 mio. unique characters completed a mythic+ run in time.
And if we take the total number of runs then it is over 10 million timed mythic+ dungeons.
I don't know if there are some timed runs that aren't registered, but it is an impressive number.

Mythic+ is a huge success story. And I am perfectly aware that some people are unable to handle, what I and others find fun, namely the timed pressure.
Should Blizzard remove the timed aspect of Mythic+ in order to satisfy the hurt pride by those who can't handle this content?

I truly wonder what brings people to demand that Blizzard should remove some content. Why do they care that others can do and/or enjoy something they are unable to do or enjoy?

I absolutely loathe PvP, but I don't demand that Blizzard should remove it. I just let the War Mode button rot, I never do BGs or Arenas and I happily accept that I will never get gear, titles or other stuff from that activity.

Agreed, feel exactly the same way. Love the M+ concept, gave me a great alternative to raiding, work etc meant it was hard for me to raid on a serious level (lockdown allowed me to, but that was an outlier), meant I wouldn't fall hugely behind but also didn't need to treat the game like a second job.

Feel the same about PvP too.

[Clozer]

Oh boy. This isn't true at all. Almost all of the toxicity is from tryhards who massively overestimate their own competence. They all think they're doing those three things well. They aren't doing them well.

Most of the problems I encounter are with players who are mediocre-at-best who blame other people for their own fuckups because their personality disorder doesn't leave room for the possibility that they could stand to improve on a few aspects of their game.

Players who are actually good are more concerned with working on their own performance than caring what a couple of randoms are doing in a +12 key, my dude.

Na, this is nonsense. People at the highest level are just as toxic as mediocre trash. The amount of people being mediocre trash is just way higher than the number of people at the top.

[erifwodahs]

You can't advocate and make excuses for toxic behavior, and then claim that there isn't toxicity. Pick an argument, because the two you keep going to contradict each other.

Other MMOs don't have this problem. You don't see it because YOU ARE the toxic element, as evidenced by how much work you've done to make excuses for toxicity.

I have made excuses for toxicity? Check again.
I have never said it's ok to be toxic. My argument is that wow is not any more toxic than any other MMORPG or competitive game, it's there, but it's not a icon of toxicity. You are confusing yourself.
Only thing that I said which would even come close to that is that elitism is not toxic but toxic people can be elitists.

You compared wow with you D2, but it came out that you actually played with a established group with some pugging. Similar to my experience in WoW so either both of our experiences are invalid or WoW is not "toxic waste" as you claimed so.

WoW has way more things to do for non achievers than it does for achievers. Achievers only have mythic+, rated pvp and Mythic Raids. Non achievers have everything else.
Saying that WoW pushes people into playing Achievers content is same as saying that faceroll D2, FF14 content, GW2 content pushes them into achievers content. Which it does by your theory, because that low difficulty content is as hard as normal raids in wow if not easier. By your logic, just because the hard content for good players exist, it is then pushing players to participate. Which then means it's the case in every other MMO.
While WoW has RP, casual pvp, collection of pets, mounts, achievements, transmogs, leveling alts, several ez dungeon levels, several ez raid levels, secret finding, exploration. WoW has accumulated 16 years of content.

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Na, this is nonsense. People at the highest level are just as toxic as mediocre trash. The amount of people being mediocre trash is just way higher than the number of people at the top.

Not true. People who thing they are good when they aren't are the toxic ones. Toxicity drops to the floor when you go above 20+ keys or when you go to pug mythic raids who are doing more than 3/12 bosses. Good players leave the low brackets in days.

[Mirishka]

So im playing on and off since day one.
Used to play in a very good guild pushing content hard with a few realm first boss kills etc [ive grown up since and dont care for trivial stuff like that anymore] more power to those that do but its just not for me anymore, life is too busy for that.
These days im a lot more casual, no interest in raiding but do like to do mythics.
My guild have died off so im pugging content but my god is this game more toxic than ever.
Every single mythic run there are arguments, toxic abuse, really bad stuff not just blame game etc.
Its actually got to the stage where im questioning playing anymore as im holding my breath every time i join a mythic group, its just too stressful.
Maybe its a society thing but im not so sure as i play other games and few are this toxic.
Grow a thick skin you might say but ive grown a very thick one over the last 16 years but right now im finding it hard to log in anymore.

This is not new behavior. It is not 'worse' in SL. People want to get stuff done and move on with their day. Yes, it sucks, but it isn't the game's fault - this is a people issue and no, the game did not make them that way.

[Clozer]

Not true. People who thing they are good when they aren't are the toxic ones. Toxicity drops to the floor when you go above 20+ keys or when you go to pug mythic raids who are doing more than 3/12 bosses. Good players leave the low brackets in days.

Just watch some high end players then. I'm not nitpicking here there are TONS of toxic high end players, first that come to mind are: Tyler1 or RTZ. They blame their team for each and every mistake they do. Same goes for m12 players or 2200 cr arena dudes.

[NineSpine]

Plenty of people enjoy mythic+. And the timed aspect is what sets mythic+ apart from other content.
If we take season 4 in BFA then raidier.io registered that 1,75 mio. unique characters completed a mythic+ run in time.
And if we take the total number of runs then it is over 10 million timed mythic+ dungeons.
I don't know if there are some timed runs that aren't registered, but it is an impressive number.

Mythic+ is a huge success story. And I am perfectly aware that some people are unable to handle, what I and others find fun, namely the timed pressure.
Should Blizzard remove the timed aspect of Mythic+ in order to satisfy the hurt pride by those who can't handle this content?

I truly wonder what brings people to demand that Blizzard should remove some content. Why do they care that others can do and/or enjoy something they are unable to do or enjoy?

I absolutely loathe PvP, but I don't demand that Blizzard should remove it. I just let the War Mode button rot, I never do BGs or Arenas and I happily accept that I will never get gear, titles or other stuff from that activity.

There's a difference between "Take out this thing I don't do" and "Change this thing I don't like because then I'll like it". We are talking about the latter, not the former. Mythic+ is a breeding ground for toxicity. It's the most destructive thing they've ever added to the game since arena. Having it timed is fine. The key system is fine. Both together are a disaster. They combine to create a horrendous set of perverse incentives and negativity.

A huge mistake in game design is saying "People are doing it, therefore its good for the game".

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This is not new behavior. It is not 'worse' in SL. People want to get stuff done and move on with their day. Yes, it sucks, but it isn't the game's fault - this is a people issue and no, the game did not make them that way.

Then why aren't other MMOs like this?

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I have made excuses for toxicity? Check again.
I have never said it's ok to be toxic. My argument is that wow is not any more toxic than any other MMORPG or competitive game, it's there, but it's not a icon of toxicity. You are confusing yourself.
Only thing that I said which would even come close to that is that elitism is not toxic but toxic people can be elitists.

You compared wow with you D2, but it came out that you actually played with a established group with some pugging. Similar to my experience in WoW so either both of our experiences are invalid or WoW is not "toxic waste" as you claimed so.

WoW has way more things to do for non achievers than it does for achievers. Achievers only have mythic+, rated pvp and Mythic Raids. Non achievers have everything else.
Saying that WoW pushes people into playing Achievers content is same as saying that faceroll D2, FF14 content, GW2 content pushes them into achievers content. Which it does by your theory, because that low difficulty content is as hard as normal raids in wow if not easier. By your logic, just because the hard content for good players exist, it is then pushing players to participate. Which then means it's the case in every other MMO.
While WoW has RP, casual pvp, collection of pets, mounts, achievements, transmogs, leveling alts, several ez dungeon levels, several ez raid levels, secret finding, exploration. WoW has accumulated 16 years of content.

I play with my clan in D2 but I also do a ton of pugging. Both things can be true.

GW2 doesn't even really have achiever content. It's a pretty flat game. It's a game for socializers and explorers.

Your entire point here is about difficulty, and if you read what I said again you will notice that I said not one single solitary word about difficulty. This isn't about difficulty.

Saying "Go play old expansions" which is basically a summary of your list of non-achiever content only demonstrates my point.

[Krakan]

Why do all these toxic threads start out with "I joined one of the hardest difficulties without knowing how to play..."

[Progenitor Aquarius]

By playing this game I've learned that you can't change the world around you but you can chose how you react to it. So I learned to not react at all and that's the best thing you can do when experiencing toxicity. You stop feeding parasite and it dies. This will save you a lot of time and energy in the long run. I actually went a litte bit deeper and read some psychology books to help myself dealing with negativity then I observed what happens when I get angry and this is how I improved myself in dealing with such situations and in result the game and life experience has improved for me.