Should WoW adopt a tougher stance on Toxicity in-game?

[TheRevenantHero]

Ahaha... FFXIV is the game with the most toxic atmosphere I have ever played.
People wilfully play bad to bait people in to criticizing them so they can report them and have them banned.
It is a heaven for people that feel entitled to waste other people's time.

And when all those "wholesome" and "helpful" people get outside their totalitarian state simulator it is quite telling how the language used by FFXIV-players and WoW-players differ....

But in the grand scope of things I find it good that we have 2 games that cater to people with wildly different world-views on what is toxic and respectful behaviour.
This ways those 2 incompatible groups are mixing less and less and that can only be a good thing.

You are such a blatant liar when saying this. What you are describing doesn't happen. You're just so desperate to try and justify the rampant toxicity in WoW that now you're even bold faced lying to push that narrative. Face it. WoW has an extreme toxicity problem and the devs just don't fucking care.

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Yeah sure. That could be. Not sure if i would like that anyway. Bunch of people getting offended left and right. But i highly doubt that. It just moves from direct insults to passive agressiveness and overly sarcastic stuff which has the exact same result without being banable
Toxicity just went to somewhere else like discord.

There will never be a toxic free space in an online enviroment. NEVER. Unless you use RealNames. Which opens another can of worms. I never really met toxicity in wow either. Maybe i am not as thin skinned as others who start crying if someone calls them an idiot.

So much whining about toxicity in wow. And who are those people? Nearly always people who don't really want to play with others. Only youse groupfinder and Pugs. Don't go looking for a guild and in other threats demand endgame loot from basically WQs.
Go to FF14. STay there. It obviosuly is a better game for many people here and they say it every 5 seconds. And i donÄt blame them. Play the game you have fun. But don't act all high and mighty because of it. Wow is not more toxic than FF14.

FF14 just has way less hard stuff where you just get bunched up with many random players you will never meet again.

The reason people keep leaving WoW is because despite harassment being against the ToS, Blizzard rarely ever punishes it. the number of times I've seen people slinging ethnic slurs and other disgusting language without ever seeing them get punished is staggering. There is rampant toxicity in WoW because the people in charge just don't care enough to punish it. Hell, with devs being boost sellers, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they don't punish it is because they do it themselves.

[NineSpine]

You aren't arguing in good faith here, but thats for the course. No one is actually saying saying calling children slurs is fine. But WoW already has multiple ways to deal with that. Most/all the scenarios you keep bringing up are the ultra extreme and I would say no common at all. You can already report people and ignore them for saying slurs. If enough people report they will be silenced and eventually banned\suspended. Playing since early 05, and the amount of times I have seen someone say the n word is very low. Some of the other examples you are mentioning are straight illegal in most? countries, and should be met with the law. Its definitely a fallacy for your reply to "I don't trust one persons example of basic toxicity" to then be "Oh so you're fine with sexual harassment, online stalking, and saying racial slurs to children?"

I wish I could live in the same fantasy world as you where the rules are enforced, but they aren't. One guy made multiple accounts, harassing my wife nearly every time she logged in and he was never banned. We kept track of him. No ban. Nothing. Blizzard never even responded to our requests to do something about it.

Mainly because those things are already against the ToS and result in bans, and no one here that I have seen is advocating for that threshold to lessen. In my opinion, routinely arguing in bad faith is toxic, while others in this thread have literally said would consider mentioning player performance at all is toxic, and that you should instead leave the group if you are upset that someone is playing badly instead of commenting on it, at all. "What is toxicity" isn't something that can really be answered easily. But like, 12 year olds can also use the profanity filter and not even be aware of what words were used.

Besides stifling so much freedom, my other problem with this point is how truly fake it is. We can all applaud FF for its rules, but most/many of those player sonly listen because they have to, as you basically said. I don't think at all its a culture issue. FF fans on this very forum are often nasty, and places like Reddit and Twitter are pretty awful too. You can see just as much "toxicity" on those subs.

I'm sure that when you go into a restaurant you act all high and mighty with the knowledge that "the waiters aren't spitting in my food BECAUSE OF THE RULES so it is DISINGENUOUS that my food isn't full of spit!" Codes of conduct exist basically everywhere in the world. I can't go into a courtroom and shit on the floor. I can't go to the park and show people my dick. I can't walk into a bakery and stand there screaming at a 13 year old girl.

By your logic, these rules are all bullshit because they just make people be fake civilized. It's a silly argument on its face. Should we make flashing legal because the flashers are only "fake" keeping their dong in their pants because of the rules?

[shise]

I do think that developers of online games should do a little bit of parenting. Kids interact with others in completely different ways than they did 20-30 years ago and they interact with them more often.
The developers should stomp down on tantrums the same way as a parent would. Kids throwing tantrums unpunished will lead to them becoming adults throwing tantrums and that's when the become toxic.
Just because someone is not as good as you doesn't give you the right to verbally assault them. A grown up at least try to help them improve so that they can get through the content and if they don't want to you just politely excuse yourself and leave the group, there's no nerd to fly off the handle, it's a video game.

I see your point. But I fear a lot of those toxic people are well over their 30s as well.

[LTN]

I can't see how ignore doesn't solve this issue. Feels more like people want to inflict harm on people who annoy them more then any genuine good.

[NineSpine]

Well, I mean in the example of screaming the n-word repeatedly... that has generally been dealt with pretty swiftly from my experience. (Had a buddy try to see how fast he could get banned because he wanted a reason to quit.) Obviously there are exceptions to every rule and I would be hesitant to call for full automation; humans are still necessary for any type of behavior system to work. The distinction I'm concerned with isn't so much with words (though these are an important factor) so much as it is general player behavior and the negative ramifications an overbearing system may bring with it. I know critics will be quick to say that a system which encourages kindness amongst all players is the goal of any such system but the degree I've seen it in action from the FFXIV community almost seems to intentionally lend itself to a seemingly unwarranted level of (what seems to me to be borderline disingenuous) positivity.

I completely understand what you are getting it, but I think the reality is that the positivity in the FFXIV community, which I will agree can edge into weird defensiveness at times, is actually a product of the player base being happy, liking the developers, and the rules in place encouraging a positive atmosphere. When people are frustrated with a group, they tend to just leave. They don't typically throw a fit and leave. They just leave. Advice or constructive criticism rarely results in some fight and argument. What's important to note here is that ALL PARTIES come out ahead in this. Toxic people aren't making themselves happy by being toxic. By being "forced" to control themselves, they have more pleasant interactions and come out feeling better.

A good example is I have a friend who recently started the game. He was a very, very hardcore WoW player, a +20 key pusher for years, and he has a temper. He was terrified and full of anxiety with having to do trials/raids in FFXIV. Why? Because WoW had conditioned him, a competent player, to feel like he could only step into group content if he had spent weeks practicing and being perfect, and since he was used to the toxic frustration he felt playing with people who weren't up to snuff, he didn't want to make other people feel like that. After he ran a few, he chilled out when he realized that nobody was overanalyzing him. Nobody was going to freak out on him. The handful of pieces of advice were dealt out in a friendly way. His attitude changed in the way that he approached other players as a result. Not because he was afraid of breaking the rules, but because the cultural norms created. by the rules created an atmosphere that was less tense even for him, an extremely competent player prone to getting mad.

One of the big high end, theory crafting, min-max people in FFXIV is Xenosys. He has a YouTube channel and the way he talks is very, very aggressive and what some would consider toxic. However, what he also does consistently in his videos is repeatedly tell people not to be toxic in game. He tells people they are assholes if they use a DPS meter to harass people. He tells people not to talk like he does on his channel in game. He doesn't say "Because it is against the rules". He says "Because it makes you an asshole".

Side note: Never knew what your avatar was, but I'm playing Xenogears for the first time.

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Yeah sure. That could be. Not sure if i would like that anyway. Bunch of people getting offended left and right. But i highly doubt that. It just moves from direct insults to passive agressiveness and overly sarcastic stuff which has the exact same result without being banable
Toxicity just went to somewhere else like discord.

There will never be a toxic free space in an online enviroment. NEVER. Unless you use RealNames. Which opens another can of worms. I never really met toxicity in wow either. Maybe i am not as thin skinned as others who start crying if someone calls them an idiot.

So much whining about toxicity in wow. And who are those people? Nearly always people who don't really want to play with others. Only youse groupfinder and Pugs. Don't go looking for a guild and in other threats demand endgame loot from basically WQs.
Go to FF14. STay there. It obviosuly is a better game for many people here and they say it every 5 seconds. And i donÄt blame them. Play the game you have fun. But don't act all high and mighty because of it. Wow is not more toxic than FF14.

FF14 just has way less hard stuff where you just get bunched up with many random players you will never meet again.

FF14 lets you use group finder to do the hardest content in the game. So, you are just factually wrong, as usual.

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Ahaha... FFXIV is the game with the most toxic atmosphere I have ever played.
People wilfully play bad to bait people in to criticizing them so they can report them and have them banned.
It is a heaven for people that feel entitled to waste other people's time.

And when all those "wholesome" and "helpful" people get outside their totalitarian state simulator it is quite telling how the language used by FFXIV-players and WoW-players differ....

But in the grand scope of things I find it good that we have 2 games that cater to people with wildly different world-views on what is toxic and respectful behaviour.
This ways those 2 incompatible groups are mixing less and less and that can only be a good thing.

In this very thread, one of your glorious, friendly wow players told me that my wife had it coming when she got rape threats.

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You are such a blatant liar when saying this. What you are describing doesn't happen. You're just so desperate to try and justify the rampant toxicity in WoW that now you're even bold faced lying to push that narrative. Face it. WoW has an extreme toxicity problem and the devs just don't fucking care.

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The reason people keep leaving WoW is because despite harassment being against the ToS, Blizzard rarely ever punishes it. the number of times I've seen people slinging ethnic slurs and other disgusting language without ever seeing them get punished is staggering. There is rampant toxicity in WoW because the people in charge just don't care enough to punish it. Hell, with devs being boost sellers, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they don't punish it is because they do it themselves.

It's pretty par for the course here for the people who haven't played any game besides WoW since 2004 to tell everyone else what every other game is like. It's insane how much of their identity and self worth they have wrapped up in this game with talking cow ladies in it.

[Aucald]

Let's also not bring "Game vs. Game" rhetoric and derailment into this thread (e.g. WoW vs. FF14). Keep to the topic of the thread as it concerns WoW.

[Traveler Voltin]

stop caring about money and actually ban toxic people.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

stop caring about money and actually ban toxic people.

Rich, coming from the guy who has their forum signature saying a group of people suck. Minus 10 self-awareness points.

[LTN]

stop caring about money and actually ban toxic people.

How does ignore not instantly solve the issue?

You just right click go down the list and hit ignore and bam they are done.

There is a profanity filter as well... I admit ignore should work on the account level but this screams of people going out and making a problem to fix.

[Relapses]

That would mean they would have to ban all boosters, the wow token and half of the raiding guilds. Well, and they had to get rid off esports.

Thank god we have people like you to define everything they don't like as "toxic."

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How does ignore not instantly solve the issue?

You just right click go down the list and hit ignore and bam they are done.

There is a profanity filter as well... I admit ignore should work on the account level but this screams of people going out and making a problem to fix.

As of 9.1.5, it does.

[TheRevenantHero]

How does ignore not instantly solve the issue?

You just right click go down the list and hit ignore and bam they are done.

There is a profanity filter as well... I admit ignore should work on the account level but this screams of people going out and making a problem to fix.

Because the ignore feature doesn't get rid of the problem. It would be far better to ban toxic people so they stop shitting all over the community. But we all know that will never happen

[LTN]

Thank god we have people like you to define everything they don't like as "toxic."

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As of 9.1.5, it does.

If it does what could possibly be the issue anymore?

[LTN]

Because the ignore feature doesn't get rid of the problem. It would be far better to ban toxic people so they stop shitting all over the community. But we all know that will never happen

How does it not immediately stop the problem?

[Relapses]

Do you want to pretend the competetive raiding community is not toxic due to selection and elitism nowadays? Or the boosters, which turn group play into gold making? Or that esport in inherently part of a RPG? While it should focus on teamplay rather than competition?

No, it's not. You're free to not like any of those things but just because you don't like them doesn't mean they're toxic.

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How does it not immediately stop the problem?

Well, you see, a lot of people who complain about the game on forums don't actually play the game...

[TheRevenantHero]

How does it not immediately stop the problem?

Because they're still in the game being toxic. Telling everyone to just "put them on ignore" is lazy as fuck and doesn't fix the problem at all.

[Traveler Voltin]

Rich, coming from the guy who has their forum signature saying a group of people suck. Minus 10 self-awareness points.

my signature is aimed at the mmo-champion mods.

[LTN]

Because they're still in the game being toxic. Telling everyone to just "put them on ignore" is lazy as fuck and doesn't fix the problem at all.

I just think the grand majority of people just don't really care. I admit I am not a huge fan of moral busybodies so I might be biased but if it is annoying you just ignore them and the problem is solved forever.

[Relapses]

They are detrimental to the RPG genre itself, as esports and competition need comparable specs and comparable class power, while RPGs and role playing in general focus on diversity and unique class abilities and roles.

Competition kills class diversity, diverse gameplay, diverse group competitions and diverse gameplay in general in a role playing game.

The only thing that kills diversity are players who think that their preconceived notions about what does or doesn't constitute a legitimate RPG matters to anybody but themselves. Again, you're free to have whatever opinions you want about the game but the fact that WoW has competitive aspects does not make it any less a RPG today than it ever was in the past.

[Karawaka]

Bring back early 2000s cod and halo lobbies

[TheRevenantHero]

I just think the grand majority of people just don't really care. I admit I am not a huge fan of moral busybodies so I might be biased but if it is annoying you just ignore them and the problem is solved forever.

So basically you're saying nobody should ever be punished no matter how shitty of a person they are to other people in game? Yeah it doesn't work like that. Saying "just ignore them" solves NOTHING because they'll just aggravate someone else. Harassment is against the ToS. Blizzard just doesn't give a shit most of the time and it's why WoW's community has become a toxic cesspool.