will TBC bring us back the non toxic community and non min/max culture?

[T-34]

You seem to be, as usual, willfully missing the point despite how many times it gets repeated to you:

If min maxers did just play with other min maxers, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

You are like the guy that agrees with a pick up basketball game at the gym, and then takes it too seriously, yells at everyone else, tells his team how to play, and thinks he is in the fucking NBA.

That’s the type of player we are talking about. If someone like that goes to a league and plays with other people like him, the conversation about his bad behavior at the pick up game *doesn't happen*.

So you are making an example where people with different attitudes to a competitive game get annoyed at each other?

Your example is actually quite good. It explains very well why those players in WoW that care about their performance use various tools and indicators to find like-minded players to play with and filter out those that don't have the same attitude.

I can assure you that the last thing a player in WoW who has competitive spirit, takes pride in doing his best and who has respect for the effort and time of his fellow gamer is to become involved in a pick up game (a pug) with players that don't share his idea of fun.

This is why we in Retail have useful tools like Raider.io, Warcraft logs etc.
And today in Classic people also use various tools to ensure that they play with people with a similar mindset. And people did the same in Vanilla.

And regarding your example:
What if the guy at the gym said: "Who wants to play? I only want to play with people that don't slack and give it their best." And then people joined who as it turns out didn't gave their best and obviously slacked. His anger in that case seems well founded and the "toxic people" in this case are the slackers.

On the other hand if that competitive guy joined a game where it was stated: "we just goof around" and he then got angry then he would be irrational and wrong.

So that leads me to my question once again:
What stops those players that just want "to goof around" to find other players that just want "to goof around" and exclude those players that have different ideas and values from their group?
From all the posts in this thread it seems that it is only "the goof around"-players in WoW that have issues with grouping up with like-minded people. And I am curious why it is so.

[crusadernero]

So you are making an example where people with different attitudes to a competitive game get annoyed at each other?

Your example is actually quite good. It explains very well why those players in WoW that care about their performance use various tools and indicators to find like-minded players to play with and filter out those that don't have the same attitude.

I can assure you that the last thing a player in WoW who has competitive spirit, takes pride in doing his best and who has respect for the effort and time of his fellow gamer is to become involved in a pick up game (a pug) with players that don't share his idea of fun.

This is why we in Retail have useful tools like Raider.io, Warcraft logs etc.
And today in Classic people also use various tools to ensure that they play with people with a similar mindset. And people did the same in Vanilla.

And regarding your example:
What if the guy at the gym said: "Who wants to play? I only want to play with people that don't slack and give it their best." And then people joined who as it turns out didn't gave their best and obviously slacked. His anger in that case seems well founded and the "toxic people" in this case are the slackers.

On the other hand if that competitive guy joined a game where it was stated: "we just goof around" and he then got angry then he would be irrational and wrong.

So that leads me to my question once again:
What stops those players that just want "to goof around" to find other players that just want "to goof around" and exclude those players that have different ideas and values from their group?
From all the posts in this thread it seems that it is only "the goof around"-players in WoW that have issues with grouping up with like-minded people. And I am curious why it is so.

It goes both ways. Different folks, different strokes. Those who value min/max, doing theyre best in every shape and form to clear content to the ones that doesnt care about performance at all. Some do pet battles, others raid mythic. Inbetween those two activites theres a whole lot to do and a whole lot of different goals, priorities and desires.

This is why there are guilds and communities. To find like minded people. Everyone is at fault for playing with someone they dont want to play with.

Problem is - Everyone is shuffeled into the same type of endgame activity in order to progress your character. So no matter what kind of player you are, but still want to feel character progression(get better gear etc) - everyone is jammed into the same place: raids & M+.

So in one way or another, people that rely on pugging must in the end either suck it up and deal with people OR find someone who are like them and never interact with someone else whatsoever. Ever.

[Prag]

You are mistaken. Min-maxing is done out of competitive spirit. A competitive person wants to become as good as the best.
Measuring yourself against those that aren't as skilled/experienced as you won't make you better and therefore it would be a complete waste of time.

But even if your claim would be true that min-maxers exist so they can shit on someone still doesn't give an answer to my question:
Why don't these people not find people like themselves to play with and shun the evil min-maxers? If you are in a guild or a pug that has no min-maxers then all should be fine and dandy, right?

I don’t know what version of the game you’re playing but these silos you keep talking about don’t exist outside of guild recruitment.

Many people rely on pugs to some extent, min-max crowd included. That’s where the toxicity comes in. What, are you suggesting people include “no min-maxers allowed” in their LFG spam? Lmao.

Min-maxing is fine. Trying to play well is fine. Learning is fine. Toxicity is in the attitude, exemplified clearly in your attempts to paint the entire crowd with some innocent “we’re just trying to be good” brush and everyone else as some kind of intruder.

[Super Kami Dende]

People that think TBC wasn't full of toxic People, likely either don't remember TBC or never played it.

[exsanguinate]

Min/max and the toxic people existed back when it first released and they will be there when it comes out as classic. If any believes TBC was free of those things has done a great job of blocking it from their memory. The private server community has been min maxing the TBC for years and you can guarantee it will be part of it.

Not only that they will wipe out the whole content on day 1. 10 years of private server training more or less lets go.

[Stormdash]

The only reason tbc would be less toxic than retail is that you have to maintain a reputation.
But that won't stop toxic people from playing the game. Nor did it back in the day.

That hasn't helped in Classic, because a certain amount of toxicity is actually expected and respected among the kinda garbage community of 2020-2021

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That is just not true. Not even Nihilum did that. They sometimes coordinated their own buffs.

Edit: [Source - Preach Interview of and Nihilum officer]

I've heard they had their mains logged out for weeks before the KT kill to keep the DMF buff... but even if, it was the meta among the top 0.1% of players for a raid that only 4% of the players got into really.

I've listened to a lot of "old stories" about vanilla and not one of them was about not being able to play your own favorite character for most of a given week because you were buff-locked. The WB meta is private server trash that spilled out onto the official Classic community.

[Mahogany]

No more worldbuffs, no more dispell trolls
The only "minmax" that will happen will be: Are you a leatherworker & bring drums + a flask!

[T-34]

I don’t know what version of the game you’re playing but these silos you keep talking about don’t exist outside of guild recruitment.

Many people rely on pugs to some extent, min-max crowd included. That’s where the toxicity comes in. What, are you suggesting people include “no min-maxers allowed” in their LFG spam? Lmao.

Min-maxing is fine. Trying to play well is fine. Learning is fine. Toxicity is in the attitude, exemplified clearly in your attempts to paint the entire crowd with some innocent “we’re just trying to be good” brush and everyone else as some kind of intruder.

There are plenty of groups in LFG where the key-holder writes "weekly", "chill", "will finish even if we don't time" etc. which is code for that the maker of the pug doesn't have a competitive attitude to his key.

Much rarer, but you do see them, you someone make a raid pug where the leader writes "chill" or "Learning group" which also is an indicator for the leaders interest in people who have a similar mind-set.

I am most certainly not trying to pain anyone as an "intruder". I am 100% in support of that people should play the game like they find fun. But at the same time I simply can't understand why people would want to play with people that have a completely different definition of what fun is.

And I believe that it is my own responsibility to find like-minded people to play with and my own responsibility to ensure that I have a nice in-game experience. I have always done that myself and when I very rarely get to play with people I don't like then I kick them if it is my group and leave the group if it isn't mine. Thereby I take my own in-game experience in my own hands: It is my fault that I invited "bad apples" and it is my fault that I joined the wrong group.

I want to understand why a part of the player-base doesn't take matters in their own hands and ensure that they have the in-game experience that they want.

[Nite92]

I've heard they had their mains logged out for weeks before the KT kill to keep the DMF buff...

How does that make sense when you are progressing, and wiping on bosses. That sounds pretty unrealistic.

[Darkimpact]

You can be in a competitive guild and still find non toxic players. We were top 30 NA for almost all content and very few members were elitist. As a GM I actively squashed that kind of behavior and even removed multiple high performing raiders due to shitty attitudes. The first page of our on-boarding literally states raiders and guild members represent the guild and any bad or toxic behavior will get you booted. Keep looking my man, the guilds exist out there!

[Nestoras]

I will continue to play vanilla classic mostly, and my guess is that all those things that are being asked all those months by so many, non inflated economy from bots, no speed runs, no world buff meta to an extreme, actual dungeon runs and non mage boost runs, will be happening more often than not, now that TBC is launching. And i dont expect vanilla servers to be desolate, since we re going to transfer to new ones, thus they will be fewer available than the "progression servers"!

I actually played through TBC, even though i never did Sunwell or even Mount hyjal or Black Temple but i was there most of the time, and even though i got addicted to it, i don't feel the urge to revisit. Just to level a toon and dunno after that. I could happily play classic for the forseeable future though, and i intent to! I used to play 25-35 hours a week back then, now i dont even play 25 hours a month and they re usually long sessions once or twice a week at a very relaxed pace.

I wouldn't call the ones taking it seriously and minmaxing the hell out of it toxic though, and they don't affect me to the slightest, since i made up my mind early on, and i am not even on the look for a pug for Blackwing Lair. Maybe because i am old, and i know were it may lead. I cant afford to get addicted to wow right now, i am just enjoying the parts i can with minimum investment!

[NineSpine]

There are plenty of groups in LFG where the key-holder writes "weekly", "chill", "will finish even if we don't time" etc. which is code for that the maker of the pug doesn't have a competitive attitude to his key.

Much rarer, but you do see them, you someone make a raid pug where the leader writes "chill" or "Learning group" which also is an indicator for the leaders interest in people who have a similar mind-set.

I am most certainly not trying to pain anyone as an "intruder". I am 100% in support of that people should play the game like they find fun. But at the same time I simply can't understand why people would want to play with people that have a completely different definition of what fun is.

And I believe that it is my own responsibility to find like-minded people to play with and my own responsibility to ensure that I have a nice in-game experience. I have always done that myself and when I very rarely get to play with people I don't like then I kick them if it is my group and leave the group if it isn't mine. Thereby I take my own in-game experience in my own hands: It is my fault that I invited "bad apples" and it is my fault that I joined the wrong group.

I want to understand why a part of the player-base doesn't take matters in their own hands and ensure that they have the in-game experience that they want.

The problem is how many people join groups or start groups and then impose their min max attitude on everyone else. For example, inviting people to group and then booting them when you realize they aren’t the min max spec.

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This does not happen, and you are confusing category of players, you are describing "Shit players that think they are min/maxing while remaining shit" than actually good players.

You are being toxic towards people without actually knowing to tell quality of players apart.

The mix of players is Blizzards fault by forcing the better players into daily/weekly non-skippable grinds (Badges in WOTLK, Legendary Questline in WoD/MoP) that forces players of different mentalities and skill levels to play together.

Actually decent players dont waste their time in game doing irrelevant stuff ,and they for sure "DONT PLAY WITH OTHERS JUST TO BULLY THEM", like what the hell? Dont mix the cesspool of wannabee's because of your personal gripe with anyone thats better than you.

No, what you are doing is committing a no true Scotsman fallacy by saying that true min maxers wouldn’t act like that.

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So you are making an example where people with different attitudes to a competitive game get annoyed at each other?

Your example is actually quite good. It explains very well why those players in WoW that care about their performance use various tools and indicators to find like-minded players to play with and filter out those that don't have the same attitude.

I can assure you that the last thing a player in WoW who has competitive spirit, takes pride in doing his best and who has respect for the effort and time of his fellow gamer is to become involved in a pick up game (a pug) with players that don't share his idea of fun.

This is why we in Retail have useful tools like Raider.io, Warcraft logs etc.
And today in Classic people also use various tools to ensure that they play with people with a similar mindset. And people did the same in Vanilla.

And regarding your example:
What if the guy at the gym said: "Who wants to play? I only want to play with people that don't slack and give it their best." And then people joined who as it turns out didn't gave their best and obviously slacked. His anger in that case seems well founded and the "toxic people" in this case are the slackers.

On the other hand if that competitive guy joined a game where it was stated: "we just goof around" and he then got angry then he would be irrational and wrong.

So that leads me to my question once again:
What stops those players that just want "to goof around" to find other players that just want "to goof around" and exclude those players that have different ideas and values from their group?
From all the posts in this thread it seems that it is only "the goof around"-players in WoW that have issues with grouping up with like-minded people. And I am curious why it is so.

The idea that someone who demands ideal spec and full enchants and shot to do a M+2 s just trying to be his best and is therefore justified and screaming like a deranged monkey at everyone is absurd.

[Ielenia]

I just hope TBC will be non toxic. Like people won't care if your normal 5 man dungeon takes 3 hours to clear and you keep wiping, you'll just laugh at it and try again.
No more "gogo" or "wtf why you died" yelling. Thats what will make TBC more enjoyable is that people will behave like back in the days.

That is not going to happen, and I would go even further and say that believing otherwise is borderline delusional.

The exact same thing was said about Classic WoW: "Classic will bring back the community!" "Classic won't have min-maxers!" "Classic won't have this 'gogogo' mentality!" etc, etc. And yet... it does have all of the above. It's almost certain that the exact same thing will happen to TBC: you won't have your "community" from the olden days. You will have min-maxers. You will have this "gogogo" mentality.

Classic WoW and Classic TBC will not bring anything from the past. Because it's not a time machine. This isn't the early 2000's.

Honest question: to all of you that either believe or hope that Classic TBC will "bring back the community" or "won't have min-maxers/gogogo mentality"... what makes you think it'll be any different than how it was for Classic WoW?

[NineSpine]

That is not going to happen, and I would go even further and say that believing otherwise is borderline delusional.

The exact same thing was said about Classic WoW: "Classic will bring back the community!" "Classic won't have min-maxers!" "Classic won't have this 'gogogo' mentality!" etc, etc. And yet... it does have all of the above. It's almost certain that the exact same thing will happen to TBC: you won't have your "community" from the olden days. You will have min-maxers. You will have this "gogogo" mentality.

Classic WoW and Classic TBC will not bring anything from the past. Because it's not a time machine. This isn't the early 2000's.

Honest question: to all of you that either believe or hope that Classic TBC will "bring back the community" or "won't have min-maxers/gogogo mentality"... what makes you think it'll be any different than how it was for Classic WoW?

These issues are not even close to as bad as they are in retail. The world buff thing is the only part of classic that is really bad. Also, classic does have community, way more so than retail.

[Ragedaug]

TBC was very much the min/max culture, it increased the trend that's kept on growing over the last 15 years. The raids especially initially required extreme class stacking, not just for the top guilds but I remember it percolated down a lot longer (looking at you Shamans...)

Today there's no reason to think it won't stay like Classic is, people know all the content already and therefor have optimised the hell out of it

Basically this. There were low-tier and mid-tier feeding guilds that feed the top end guilds who definitely min-maxed. The higher level the guild, the more demand for min-maxing. The reason those top end would only attempt to recruit my resto shaman and none of my other alts who were not optimal raiding specs.

I can remember seeing the "requirements" to join one of those guilds including you running the talents that your class leader dictates, your gear having all top end enchants for every applicable slot, and you coming to raid with a plethora of consumables that they also dictate (as well as a couple pages of additional requirements).

The good news for everyone afraid of the "toxic" community is that you only need join a low-tier feeder guild and no one will care if you min-max. You can play how you like. Those guilds will still exist in this iteration of BC as well.

[Tumile]

Hmm. What a toxic thing to say! Maybe join a toxic community of toxic people who toxically does not accept people who play the other way than the toxic community wants them to play?

Imagine there being a thing where you can create a voice + chat community for such toxic non go go community. Or In-Game feature where those toxic people could circle jerk themselves under single name about how much better their toxic approach to the game is than that other gaming style!

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Yeah, I can remember being declined on my guild application because of my AGE and CLASS I was playing. At least no one gives a fuck about age or gender if you are good in those "toxic" min maxing communities.

was about to say, the people who cry about the "toxic" min max culture because ppl dont want to play with dead weights, it absolutely blows my mind, I was 11/12 during TBC, I also remember struggling to get into guilds due to my age. and I remember being forced to Off-tank because I was a warrior, and you only brought 1 DPS warrior for the phys dmg debuff. the min max community was always there, I remember being unable to play my Ele shaman in our alt Kara runs because the dead weight tanks couldnt hold aggro in their full defensive setups, so not only did you get discriminated against for your Age, Gender, AND Class, but you also had to deal with the dead weights at the same time. atleast now adays they are mostly split, so you only get the short end of 1 stick instead of 2.

[Heathy]

the community is a bit more interactive than it was in the old days because of discord, you have a bridge between guilds. my server discord has a lot of channels for various things, but buffs are organized through discord, pugs, guilds or groups that run pugs can post their discords so you can find groups easier. how much you choose to actually interact with it though is. ofc down to you. but because of discord I would say that it is a substantial improvement over the realm forums that existed many years ago and was likely the primary method of communication out of game. discord is just 10 times better at being a mediator. similarly there is more cohesion around doing things like popping buffs at the same time. rather than ppl popping them whenever they feel like and having that help. no one.

there is definitely toxicity, all competitive games are to some degree toxic I doubt anyone can name a game that isn't.

surprisingly though I would say my server is more wholesome than toxic. I tip ppl who offer up cleared DMT runs, I join dungeon runs that I don't need to help ppl get a full group. the most toxic thing I think that can happen on a pve server is someone steals your mining node or herb when you're killing a mob. if i see someone going for a thorium vein I don't tend to try to steal it off them, but ofc not everyone is like this.

when it comes to min max. most ppl are going to try to get the best gear they can get, i've reached that point now where I can barely get better gear as a tank, i'm 'done' so to speak its just farm now, picking up the last couple of useful bits of gear before BC. min max is just inherent when you have the best gear you can get. you are min maxxed at that point.

in terms of community, more ppl pugged this time, there was more interaction.
in terms of world buffs, its time consuming getting them but you're either in a guild that tries to get them or you're in a guild that doesn't care. I can get away with not having rend or songflower, my guild only gives bonus EP for the 2hr buffs. but its not difficult to get the full stack of buffs before a raid. its just about planning a route so that you minimize wasting time on any of them, for me its DMT>ZG>Ony/Rend>Songflower> HS to LHC. i tend to waste about 20 minutes usually off my DMT buffs but I can generally be at naxx with 55 minutes on rend and songflower. for me this weekly buff dance just becomes second nature, throughout the phases you just have your HS set to different places.

[Sorrowseer]

No the community was always toxic, people just forget.

[Echocho]

min/maxing = toxic? Isnt expecting people to play and behave the way you want them to play and behave, kinda toxic?

Neither are actually toxic in themselves but the way people treat each other because of minmaxing or entitlement can be toxic.

If you minmax in silence you're not being toxic. If you however start verbally assaulting people for not living up to your standards you're very toxic.

[NineSpine]

Neither are actually toxic in themselves but the way people treat each other because of minmaxing or entitlement can be toxic.

If you minmax in silence you're not being toxic. If you however start verbally assaulting people for not living up to your standards you're very toxic.

Don’t forget the demand for everyone to min max in content where it is absolutely unnecessary.