Originally Posted by
Jessani
Yes. Most of the people I know that DIDN'T actively raid or pvp on a hardcore level were still leveling their toon or leveling a Panda / Monk. I didn't hit 90 on my first toon until the 3rd week because I didn't feel like rushing it and wanted to enjoy the new content for once. Even after hitting 90, I pushed more towards finishing Pandaria Loremaster, rather than at the end-game content.
10 million does seem like a high total, but their snapshot was following the release of an expansion, which traditionally is higher than all other snapshots. I know 900k seems low when you look at it from an end-game raider / arena junkie perspective, but it seems pretty accurate given that the majority of players are actually very casual and don't really care about "I must hit max level ASAP!", playing at their leisure instead. If you spend more time around the people that are "noobs" you'll realize that there is a whole group of people that have a completely different approach to the game. Also, there are a lot of players that keep active subscriptions that just don't play. Those count too, because Blizzard is still collecting their $14.99 a month.
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If by worse, you mean dumber and dumber with the same idiotic redundancy, then yes they are. Its actually pretty sad. In the beginning of Wrath and most of BC, the only trolls I really saw were people picking on those that couldn't or didn't do what they claimed and would shut them down -or- people that were trying to flex their "epeen" by bragging about something others hadn't or couldn't do, which people mostly ignored. Occasionally, you'd have that person that just messed with people that acted dumb or talked about how their guild was better than the other guilds (in the case of #1 vs. #2 guild kills), but the troll was often witty and could actually respond with smart remarks that made sense.
It seems around ToGC and ICC, "trolls" started to change. Instead of the witty person with smart remarks, it became others trying to make a name for themselves by acting like complete jerks and wanting to fight ... no matter how stupid the reason was. Some of them were just plain retarded. Others loved to make racist, discriminatory, or hate-speech comments in an effort to fluster a few people, which only led to their own suspensions / bans due to EULA and TOU violations -or- people disassociating from them, forcing them to transfer, name-change, or main swap. Sure, a cleaver play on words like "Invincible" and "Invisible" is slightly witty and getting people to answer "6 - 6 x 6 =" incorrectly proves someone forgot or never knew Order of Operation, but considering that part of the player-base that frequently talks in trade either has no grammar, can't spell, has low reading comprehension, or terrible math skills, it should be expected that you'd get a few of them to screw up.
The real problem is that the newer trolls are just plain jerks or actually ignorant people trying to feel less insignificant and stupid. Their jokes are no longer witty, but blatantly incorrect, which they have to try to argue to get continued responses. By the time they've said something for the third or fourth time, almost everyone reading trade has realized that ... yes, they really are that stupid -or- sigh, this "troll" enjoys looking dumb. Some intentionally try to bring up one of the "two things one should never discuss in public – religion and politics." We all know where that is going ... /facepalm. The worst part is, half of them have to TELL you that they're trolls because they're so HORRIBLE at it.
Of course the occasional idiot in Halfhill stating "Sylvian Warparty is up" or "Gallon spawned" is both ignorant and counter-productive to the troll's actual desires (if Salyis' Warband / Galleon were actually up, they'd want into the raid). Instead, when Galleon actually spawns, the group gets filled by the select crowd that knows how to intelligently speak with each other and PUGs are often left scrambling and upset that they couldn't organize a raid because no one believed them until its too late (and the original group won't tag-share with QQing morons).
In short, yes, trolls are getting worse at being trolls ... and better at being ignorant and self-destructive. I would encourage people to handle them like this: Right Click > report for (whatever they did) -or- just /ignore them. If you have the Prat addon and don't often put in main names, set their main name to something like "Idiot" for a quick reminder.