Your worst WoW moment and what did you learn from it?

[aldahar]

Vanilla, and I'm an MMO virgin. Rolled a pally. Ignorant of add-ons or helpful websites; Thottbot, Wowhead, Elitist Jerks, etc. Got to around lvl 55, joined a pug for Scholo as a healer. Talents scattered across all 3 trees into what sounded fun/cool to play. First trash pull and I cast Holy Light on the tank, who dies, because HL was on a long cast time. So we re-enter and try again, same results. I get kicked. No chat, no whispers, nothing. Just...kicked out. I felt miserable. Worst. feeling. ever.

I loved the game, so continued, albeit without joining random groups. Got in a guild, learned from some very good players about using FoL as well as how to downrank. Challenged myself to become greatest dress wearing paladin in WoW, and by the time TBC and Kara rolled around, I could keep the entire raid (including pets; yes, they took damage) alive w/no worry about mana thanks to MP5.

That community support is probably what cemented WoW as my game of choice for many years. Shoutout to Eternal Force, a guild on Ysera, and to Sarcy, the paladin who first taught me how to heal.

[Utrrabbit]

Playing a DK. I still feel unclean.

[Unholyground]

Anytime I didn't win every piece of gear that dropped, because it's all mine!

[aldahar]

Anytime I didn't win every piece of gear that dropped, because it's all mine!

You must be a hunter!

[Chromell]

Not sure whether it's my worst moment but it's definitely something that made me feel real bad given the time I had invested in it. I remember rushing to finish the Shifting Sands questline because it was going to be removed in Cata and award a FoS if completed. I did everything except talk to the guy standing right beside the gong, it was literally just a talk and immediately turn in quest, and the final one of the chain. The problem is, none of the previous quests sent you there, you had to simply know that NPC existed and that that was the final quest in the chain.

So Cata came, the quest got removed and I got no FoS. I even tried multiple times opening tickets to see if I could find a kind GM to help me out with something so dumb. And to this day I don't have the Veteran of the Shifting Sands FoS =[

[Lochton]

Making a Night Elf.

I just can't do it.

I made one in TBC.. It is still there.. abandoned on a server, a hunter, with the new level adjustments, lvl 15.

I learned that I just can't play Night Elves.

I made a Night Elf Demon Hunter later on... Aaaand.. leveled it 10 levels and went "Nah.. I'm good"..

[dacoolist]

Back in TBC I mained a warrior and tanked pretty much the entire expansion. At one point I was supposed to stance dance to berserker stance so that I could clear something (I cant remember the entire process its been a long time, I have mained a paladin since end of mop so..) - but the point here is: I had never completed the quest to GET berserker stance so here I was in the middle of a raid, dropping group to go complete a quest out in BFE (May of been like dustwallo marsh or something) just to get the quest I should of completed flippin ages ago, just to get back to the raid to do my job.. Felt bad

[khazmodan]

Vanilla, and I'm an MMO virgin. Rolled a pally. Ignorant of add-ons or helpful websites; Thottbot, Wowhead, Elitist Jerks, etc. Got to around lvl 55, joined a pug for Scholo as a healer. Talents scattered across all 3 trees into what sounded fun/cool to play. First trash pull and I cast Holy Light on the tank, who dies, because HL was on a long cast time. So we re-enter and try again, same results. I get kicked. No chat, no whispers, nothing. Just...kicked out. I felt miserable. Worst. feeling. ever.

I loved the game, so continued, albeit without joining random groups. Got in a guild, learned from some very good players about using FoL as well as how to downrank. Challenged myself to become greatest dress wearing paladin in WoW, and by the time TBC and Kara rolled around, I could keep the entire raid (including pets; yes, they took damage) alive w/no worry about mana thanks to MP5.

That community support is probably what cemented WoW as my game of choice for many years. Shoutout to Eternal Force, a guild on Ysera, and to Sarcy, the paladin who first taught me how to heal.

Back in Vanilla I also remember trying to heal on my fresh level 60 priest in Strat and after failing horribly I deleted the priest and went back to playing Hunter. I later leveled another priest to 60 (in Vanilla) and used a healing mod to get some hope back that I could be in demand...then I got bitter about only being in demand as a healer and became a Diva. Through Vanilla, BC, WotLK and even some of Cata and MoP, I experienced the best gaming memories of my life and it's so sad to see the generic gameplay grind that it is now.

[Eosia]

Being in a guild with a pathological narcissist as a leader. Took one of the top guilds on the server and rammed it into the ground.

[arkanon]

The moment in SL when I realized I had played for 3 hours without having a single enjoyable moment. I stopped and thought for a bit, and accepted I hadn't had many enjoyable moments at all during SL, so I ended my sub and logged out.

A close second was watching all the DF announcement stuff, and not even cracking a smile at all - I hope DF is good, but there is nothing at all about it that appeals to me personally. Maybe when they show more I might change my mind.

[Woggmer]

Before Hazzikostas as Game Lead (I.e. before Legion): I was just starting out WoW in Wrath, not only as my first experience with MMOs, but my first experience with playing with people online in general. Two memories came to mind, one of which was I was around level 40+ and I was hoping to do a run through Zul'Farrak. I wasn't in a guild, I was just a loner, didn't really understand stats or talents all that much and was still learning and put points into Holy and Retribution trees... then I met with this gnome warlock who was telling me off that I had no idea what I was doing, and said "You should be putting points into Retribution. Stop putting points into Holy and get Crusader Strike you idiot." I wasn't looking at any guides or what talents to put in, so I ended up putting all my points into the Retribution tree. Was it the right way? I didn't know, I was level only 40, I wasn't even near level 60 and this was early through Wrath's lifespan.

Then I had another bad memory where I was able to do max content at level 80, and it was around the time that 3 Icecrown Dungeons came out. Everyone was trying to get gear from it and I was trying to get gear so I could bump up my Gearscore. I just started doing Heroics for those 3 dungeons and I only had this epic blue sword from the normal difficulty version of those 3 dungeons (FoS, PoS, and HoR). I'm doing my usual rotation and this Druid Resto was mocking me for my damage output and my sword being weak and how it isn't good for Retribution paladins. There wasn't anything that I could get that was better than the sword unless I got that weird orange two-hand axe from Pit of Saron... I learned a harsh lesson from that... Not everyone in the game wants to be your friend or to help you.

After Ion Hazzikostas became the Game Lead Dev (Legion to present day): Player mentality in Dungeons have changed both in the high end and even in the low end of the spectrum. Before, you could talk to people even if they were randoms from other servers. You could talk to them about who to sap, who to kill first, giving advice to players, yelling at ninja looters etc... Tanking and dungeon progression was slower (mostly because Spirit and Mana management are no longer a thing) now replaced with faster face-pulling tanks. That isn't to say these didn't exist in WoW before, but it was frowned upon to face pull large numbers if everyone else in the party was weaker.... but in this particular instance felt inexcusable.

I was trying to level a monk through Chromie Time, and I would play as a Windwalker in the open world, while playing a Mistweaver when I do dungeons. I was leveling the monk through Northrend and decided to do a dungeon in Utgarde Keep, I never did the dungeon on the monk and I was hoping to do the dungeon quest for extra EXP. I was given a tank who was from Illidan (A server well known for having some of the top hardcore mythic raid guilds in the NA servers) and I didn't expect him to pull so many mobs so quickly and all at once. I was trying to pick up an item as part of the quest for that dungeon, and the tank is pulling an entire hallway of Vrykul and an Abomination. Finally by the time I actually got a grasp of what was going on, I tried to heal him but he was overwhelmed that he just said "Healer dead behind keyboard, kick em" and he was only the one that died. He came back shortly after and things were going smoothly but without a word, I got kicked from the group at the very first pull.

Now, I could've very easily be blamed for negligence to heal the tank, but there's several things.
1. This happened in late BfA to early Shadowlands. When you die in a dungeon, you can release your spirit and return back at the entrance. You don't have to run back to the dungeon entrance.

2. As is with the previous point, he died on the first mob pack near the entrance. So it isn't like we've lost a lot of progress nor have we reached the first boss. He could've just ran while the DPS is pulling some weight to pick up aggro again.

3. This was in Utgarde Keep, Normal mode, It wasn't even a Wrath Timewalking Week at the time. So, I don't see the reason why he had to be go so hard on it and kick me that early on in the dungeon when I was actually trying to correct my mistakes.

Seems very unfair to get worked up after dying just once and recovering from the ordeal and being able to tank again at the start. Especially in a low level dungeon like Utgarde Keep with other lowbies just trying to get some EXP. If people want to believe it was my fault or not is their choice, but I'm not gonna forget the anger towards that tank and their pettiness for a perfect run in a casual dungeon.

Lesson in that story: If you mess up just once in a dungeon, regardless of it being a low level dungeon or if you're just trying to do a quest in that dungeon, you will be considered dead weight in the eyes of the tank.

[Al Gorefiend]

Joined a role play discord group. It was like a bunch of LARPers all simultaneously trying to play the role of the mysterious loner trope. You know that voice teenaged boys have when they try to talk deep and menacing? Times it by 4

(By the way yes, they were all blood elves)

[Fabled]

Was trying to play a fury warrior at the tail end of Wrath and for whatever reason, it wouldn't click in my head at all, rotation wise. I asked several other warriors at the time how they go about doing it, got told pretty much the same info all around, but one even thanked me because he was having a worse time of it than I was, somehow, and he had Shadowmourne. Ended up tunnelvisioning HC Lich King that night trying to do decent dps and got the group killed by dropping defile in the raid. Lead was yelling at me, people were upset and rightfully so. Learned to tone it down a bit, but the silver lining of it all, the dots on the LK got him into the RP phase, so it wasn't a complete wash... I'm still sorry, Brecha.

[Soon-TM]

My early BfA and early SL user experience. Gutted classes, horrible, broken game systems, overcomplicated, overengineered gameplay. Sure, it got better over time, so I learned that playing at launch is a huge mistake. Instead, the wise thing to do is to wait until the game is out of actual (not nominal) beta, which usually happens somewhere between X.2 and X.3 in order to buy and play.

[Finlandia WOAT]

Tried to get the Insane title before the Shrendalar were removed as a rep in Cata. For whatever reason i kept the librams in my mailbox, exchanging them between an alt and my main. I went on a two week backpacking trip without resetting the librams, they were all deleted by the time i got back. Didnt have the heart to restart, deapite getting revered with Bloodsail Buccaners and Exalted with the 4 Goblin cities.

[Eon Drache]

Seeing the OG ZG Tiger Drop back in the day before I cared about mounts and letting my friend have the mount. Then the mount got removed from the game a few months later so I could never get it. Taught me that every mount is my mount.

[ringpriest]

Cata. I'm healing as priest and well-geared, my guild is working on heroic Bastion at the time. Grim Batol Heroic. Pug. (Yeah, that last one kind of gives it away, doesn't it? )

Dragha Shadowburner. The dps kept running into the flame portals. I healed them through it. The dps don't kill or kite the flame spirits, so they detonate. I heal them through that. When Valiona shows up, they stand in her melee attack, and the tank stands in the fire on the floor. While the flame spirits home in on him and the melee dps, and detonate while they stand in fore. And I healed them through that.

But every attempt, the tank and at least 1 dps stand in the puddle of shadowflame on the floor, while the flame spirit detonates, while they're standing in Valiona's Devouring Flame. And then they die, and curse and complain that they didn't get healed. After three rounds of this, with me calmly and politely explaining after every wipe that they need to kite/kill the flaming spirits and not stand in multiple fires at the same time, and them dying from standing in fire while the flame spirits detonate and screaming at me for not healing them, they boot me.

What I learned was to only run dungeons with friends and guildies. (At least, when I was still playing at all.)

[33kamous3]

I have two that were similar and both from around the same time.

The first one that comes to mind was when they had Arathi Basin Comp Stomp for the first time. The first few days I played it, early in the week, it was super easy. Word got out that it was free honor (or conquest or whatever), so as the week went on you had more people queueing up for the free ride. I've seen some speculation that the bots were hotfixed to hit nodes a little more aggressively (especially the stealth classes) mid-week. Anyway, by that time there were a lot of players in there either with no gear, or no intention of paying attention or playing the objectives. They had heard about free honor, so they queued up to get freebees. So there was one match where we opened with the usual 4-cap or 5-cap, and everybody ended up just wandering around, not guarding or calling out, and basically giving the bots free caps. Some people were losing their minds in chat. We actually ended up losing the comp stomp...I remember seeing people rushing to /afk and dip out to avoid the "L" that they'd earned. The whole thing was pretty shocking.

Somewhere around that same time, there was a raid encounter in LFR that had the boss in the middle, and a hallway on either side where one or two players had to dunk an orb into a hole or something. I remember in chat people kept saying, "ok who's on orbs," and it was just silence. I'd done the encounter before, but not the orb part, but I knew that with Arms talents I had the tools to do the orb part (and even solo one of the sides), so I volunteered to do one side, and watched videos etc while we waited. Nobody else would speak up and volunteer to try; there was almost no speaking at all. People started leaving the raid, and more people would show up, but it was the same thing...radio silence. Every member of the original group quit. At one point it was just me and one other guy. Nobody would step up and volunteer to actually play the game, they just wanted to get free rewards. Nobody was even being rude or abusive, it was just silent.

As to what I learned from those experiences, I'm not sure. I guess it's something about the dwindling number of people who actually want to play a video game, versus the rising number of people who just want to watch an interactive movie of their avatar receiving rewards.

I know there are plenty of times when I've made mistakes in battlegrounds and dungeons. I've had defeats, and I've had times when I made a mistake that cost my team the match. It sucks, but I can learn from those experiences. I also know that there's been times when I saved the day or made a winning play. That's just how it goes. But to lose or fail because people are afraid to try, or just unwilling to actually play the game...that's way worse, in my opinion.

[zysis]

For me it's a constant. Not getting a shred of credit for my contributions to the game, main tanking for a Blizz guild and rage quitting because many of the newbies to Blizz were "who is this guy" while if they had known, they'd be in awe of my creativity and dedication to the game. I still often say I have more /played than anyone at Blizzard. Watching Blizzard bungle my ideas and stuff up an entire expansion is very hard to endure.

[Eon Drache]

I have the mount but never ride it. In fact I have close to 400 mounts and only ever use the same. I once was a collector but in the end it's just a worthless +1. So just find the one mount you want to ride all the time and be happy

Im too deep at this point. Im at 543 mounts lol. I have all the rare spawn mounts and am only missing like 8 raid drops.