Why does wow's community come off as so entitled?

[Celement]

I am entitled to be entertained by entertainment products, just like I am entitled to have my plumbing work when I pay for plumbing services.

This is the clearest example I have ever seen on this forum where the brain rot that comes from building your entire personality and ego around difficult content in a cartoon video game about talking cow ladies makes people unable to engage with even basic concepts and reality like "If I pay for something I am entitled to it."

Except your not... you understand that right?

You are paying for access to it. Just like buying a model kit. You are not promised you will be entertained to a completed model because you bought a model kit.

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They apparently believe that once you start playing WoW, you can't ever stop if you don't like it, because that would be "entitled".

I mean no but there should never be the expectation the game plays itself.

[NineSpine]

Are you suggesting, in combination with your other post, that you actually believe most of your customers better understand what a statistician does than a statistician? If I'm inferring what you do from your description correctly, that's functionally what you are suggesting.

Is this a mad libs?

I can assure you the last people that know what our business actually does is our data engineers. They are so far removed from sales and service.

So, you are paying for something designed in a certain way, and then are upset that you have paid money for something designed in a certain way? You can't make it that simple and laconic. You need to give details.

It used to be fun, and now it feels like Im paying for Netflix but they started making me do quizzes and take tests to watch what I want.

[Adamas102]

I mean no but there should never be the expectation the game plays itself.

No one believes it should. Unfortunately this is one of those all to common statements that comes from gamers who feel that more difficulty should entitled them to better rewards. They typically think that any content that is more accessible or easier than what they do is undeserving of giving as enjoyable an experience. And of course that then devolves into the silly “these people don’t even want to play, they just want to get rewarded for nothing”.

[NineSpine]

Except your not... you understand that right?

You are paying for access to it. Just like buying a model kit. You are not promised you will be entertained to a completed model because you bought a model kit.

Do you think entertainment products are advertised as "You might have fun if you finish it"?

[Ashana Darkmoon]

But there IS a reason to take that hunter--it's called kindness. You can make someone's day and enhance their enjoyment of a game you both love at virtually no cost to yourself...or be a misanthrope and ruin that person's experience just to shave a minute off your easily completable run time.

Alas, I suspect the idea of being a decent person and treating WoW like a game instead of a hypercompetitive job will probably fall on deaf ears.

Sure, and people do this sometimes. But the guy was asking for an explanation of why.

You can't wave a magic wand and magically change people's behavior. Not everyone is suddenly going to take the worst player in queue.

[NineSpine]

Sure, and people do this sometimes. But the guy was asking for an explanation of why.

You can't wave a magic wand and magically change people's behavior. Not everyone is suddenly going to take the worst player in queue.

That behavior is a product of design.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I am entitled to have Netflix entertain me if I pay them for entertainment services.

Again, Netflix or any creative thing is not a water heater. Whether it works or not is subjective, not objective. I don't think it's reasonable to claim that every show is entitled to entertain you.

You can expect it to entertain you and be disappointed when it doesn't, but your only entitlement is to have access to the service in exchange for money (and to leave a bad review and stop paying)

That or maybe people have wildly different definitions of entitled here

[Ersula]

"Join a community" - What community? Never seen a single one willing to help. The "community" that exist is toxic.
"Join a guild" - Not everyone has the ability to join guilds, people have IRL that makes regular play impossible. Guilds are for Mythic raiding only, that's not even what I am asking for.
"Play with friends" - And what if you don't have any friends or the ability or interest to make friends? This should not be a requirement to play the game.
"Start your own group" - Mentioned it many times, only a few % of all players can be the leader, whether it's 1 in 40, 30, 25, 20, 10, depending on expansion/difficulty, can be the leader. The vast majority will not be the raid leader, hence it's a poor solution. AND many people are terrible leaders. I NEVER in my life played a tank or healer, how can I possibly assign tanking and healing etc then? You shouldn't be required to know more than the character you play to actually play the game.

This is what I say when I criticize Dragonflight: It seems to be an expansion designed to tackle the problems WoW had 6 years ago. The above are the problems WoW is having right now & the developers haven't acknowledged them at all.

Acknowledge how it's basically impossible to get into a low level key after the first week of a season because nobody is running them anymore. This is a huge obstacle to players wanting to get into the game & everyones just ignoring it.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

That behavior is a product of design.

It's a product of design to some extent, sure (bad or good is subjective). But other designs have other tradeoffs.

For example, if skill and ilvl make no difference, then it doesn't matter who you take to do anything. That might solve problem A, but it introduces many other problems along the way.

Policy and design do not exist in a vacuum!

[Azharok]

But there IS a reason to take that hunter--it's called kindness. You can make someone's day and enhance their enjoyment of a game you both love at virtually no cost to yourself...or be a misanthrope and ruin that person's experience just to shave a minute off your easily completable run time.

Alas, I suspect the idea of being a decent person and treating WoW like a game instead of a hypercompetitive job will probably fall on deaf ears.

No, I'll take a hunter if I need a hunter, it's my key, I want to time it, I'm taking the people I believe will fill the role best. This applies to 5s, 15s, 25s.

What if I take him, and he makes the group deplete the game on some dumb mistake ? He's wasted everyone's time (including his/her). If we time ? I just drop group and relist with the next key. repeat till bored.

[NineSpine]

Again, Netflix or any creative thing is not a water heater. Whether it works or not is subjective, not objective. I don't think it's reasonable to claim that every show is entitled to entertain you.

You can expect it to entertain you and be disappointed when it doesn't, but your only entitlement is to have access to the service in exchange for money (and to leave a bad review and stop paying)

That or maybe people have wildly different definitions of entitled here

That's right. People want "entitled" to mean "wants different things than me". My demands are reasonable and your demands are just you being "entitled".

[Celement]

No one believes it should. Unfortunately this is one of those all to common statements that comes from gamers who feel that more difficulty should entitled them to better rewards. They typically think that any content that is more accessible or easier than what they do is undeserving of giving as enjoyable an experience. And of course that then devolves into the silly “these people don’t even want to play, they just want to get rewarded for nothing”.

If wow had no gear progression or harder modes were tuned around gear capping far earlier I would agree with you. I do believe in some sort of cosmetic reward myself but I get what you are aiming at.

The problem is wow is designed for gear progression and difficulty progression to go hand in hand even if people only seem to focus on the extreme ends of it.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

I look at the opposite and don't understand how people can accept the elitistic game that this has become. And the insane requirements that people ask for.

- People asking for Ahead of the Curve for Normal raids
- People asking for Keystone Mastery (+15s) to join +10s
- People asking for full Heroic gear to do Normal raids

etc etc, it's become a joke.

all of those 3 "porblems" you listed could have bieng solved with a guild or you know making your own grp with your own rules but this would be to easy im right? better complain on a 100 users forum about it, dont be bad and you get a inv

[NineSpine]

It's a product of design to some extent, sure (bad or good is subjective). But other designs have other tradeoffs.

For example, if skill and ilvl make no difference, then it doesn't matter who you take to do anything. That might solve problem A, but it introduces many other problems along the way.

Policy and design do not exist in a vacuum!

There's a lot of area between the current design and "kill and ilvl make mo difference". Content COULD be designed to encourage learning and increasing skill, but it currently isn't. The effect of ilvl COULD Be scaled down and make the game much less ridiculous. All of these things can be changed.

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If wow had no gear progression or harder modes were tuned around gear capping far earlier I would agree with you. I do believe in some sort of cosmetic reward myself but I get what you are aiming at.

The problem is wow is designed for gear progression and difficulty progression to go hand in hand even if people only seem to focus on the extreme ends of it.

Yeah, and that's a great design in 2008. It's time for the game to grow up or it is going to keep falling.

[Celement]

Do you think entertainment products are advertised as "You might have fun if you finish it"?

I mean I build models for fun and the fun is in building it but I admit I would be frustrated if I couldn't complete a model I bought but I would blame the company making them that clearly labels what skill level the model is at...

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There's a lot of area between the current design and "kill and ilvl make mo difference". Content COULD be designed to encourage learning and increasing skill, but it currently isn't. The effect of ilvl COULD Be scaled down and make the game much less ridiculous. All of these things can be changed.

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Yeah, and that's a great design in 2008. It's time for the game to grow up or it is going to keep falling.

I admit I am curious as to what a wow without gear progression would look like... I know it wouldn't appeal to a lot of current players but it would appeal to me.

It's a real what if question.

[NineSpine]

I mean I build models for fun and the fun is in building it but I admit I would be frustrated if I couldn't complete a model I bought but I would blame the company making them that clearly labels what skill level the model is at...

What if you were buying models from them for years and then they didn't change their advertising or public promises, but started to make the models obtuse and unfun for all but a tiny, tiny minority of builders who enjoy things like "This model secretly doesn't come with the right screws"?

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I mean I build models for fun and the fun is in building it but I admit I would be frustrated if I couldn't complete a model I bought but I would blame the company making them that clearly labels what skill level the model is at...

I admit I am curious as to what a wow without gear progression would look like... I know it wouldn't appeal to a lot of current players but it would appeal to me.

It's a real what if question.

I don't think WoW needs to get rid of gear progression, but it does need to get rid of the insane amount of gear inflation they have. It's not good for anyone and only works to artificially gate harder content. Is keeping players out of harder content through artificial gear walls really valuable? Does that make the game better?

[m4xc4v413r4]

I look at the opposite and don't understand how people can accept the elitistic game that this has become. And the insane requirements that people ask for.

- People asking for Ahead of the Curve for Normal raids
- People asking for Keystone Mastery (+15s) to join +10s
- People asking for full Heroic gear to do Normal raids

etc etc, it's become a joke.

People want to be carried. They do those things with people of their level and fail or have a hard time completing, so they obviously think it's everyone else's fault, "I'm clearly better than them, I did a +18 the other day with my friends" (forgets his friends do +20's for warmup).

[MoanaLisa]

I don't think WoW needs to get rid of gear progression, but it does need to get rid of the insane amount of gear inflation they have. It's not good for anyone and only works to artificially gate harder content. Is keeping players out of harder content through artificial gear walls really valuable? Does that make the game better?

I don't know. It very well could be that the developers and team leaders, including and perhaps especially Ion, see the game as something other than fun. Ion has commented before on content that was 'important' (M+, Raids, PVP which in the moment was entirely dismissive of everything else) and other developers over the years have described the game in all sorts of ways. The single word missing from their descriptions is usually 'fun'. I think the game, the developers, and the community all feed on this and have become self-important in ways that does not allow much for the simple quality that is usually thought of as 'fun.' A sense of self-importance is just a short stone's throw from an attitude of elitism.

True, fun is subjective but it's sort of startling how the word rarely comes up at the developer or customer level. You're to make "meaningful choices", watch lore characters engage in soap opera stories, etc. It's all-encompassing and likely has major effects on other systems such as gear progression which resembles being promoted through job titles at a place of employment.

Professed bias: I loathe the fact that progression is lodged less in what the character does and almost entirely on what the character is wearing so take that for what it's worth.

As for rewards, anyone that saves up enough can buy a Ferrari. You aren't restricted from obtaining the best products because you haven't demonstrated skill with other inferior products. Developers could take a lesson from that.

[NineSpine]

I don't know. It very well could be that the developers and team leaders, including and perhaps especially Ion, see the game as something other than fun. Ion has commented before on content that was 'important' (M+, Raids, PVP which in the moment was entirely dismissive of everything else) and other developers over the years have described the game in all sorts of ways. The single word missing from their descriptions is usually 'fun'. I think the game, the developers, and the community all feed on this and have become self-important in ways that does not allow much for the simple quality that is usually thought of as 'fun.' A sense of self-importance is just a short stone's throw from an attitude of elitism.

True, fun is subjective but it's sort of startling how the word rarely comes up at the developer or customer level. You're to make "meaningful choices", watch lore characters engage in soap opera stories, etc. It's all-encompassing and likely has major effects on other systems such as gear progression which resembles being promoted through job titles at a place of employment.

Professed bias: I loathe the fact that progression is lodged less in what the character does and almost entirely on what the character is wearing so take that for what it's worth.

As for rewards, anyone that saves up enough can buy a Ferrari. You aren't restricted from obtaining the best products because you haven't demonstrated skill with other inferior products. Developers could take a lesson from that.

This is the most truth that's been posted this whole thread.

[Adamas102]

If wow had no gear progression or harder modes were tuned around gear capping far earlier I would agree with you. I do believe in some sort of cosmetic reward myself but I get what you are aiming at.

The problem is wow is designed for gear progression and difficulty progression to go hand in hand even if people only seem to focus on the extreme ends of it.

I didn’t say the solution would be to remove the gear/raid difficulty progression. I think that system works just fine. To your second point though, only PART of the game is designed around gear progression.

Gear progression acts as a tool for things like raiding, but it also acts as a reward for playing the game which in turn can be added to any system regardless of whether it progresses in difficulty. That’s why the “but it’s not NEEDED in X content” is a bad argument.

This is why WoW design runs into these issues. Gear progression is the reward for all of WoW, but the people who play the relatively small portion where gear progression is required as a tool think they should be the only ones entitled to it.