A feature Retail WoW desperately needs!

[Science451]

sorry for rambling. just remember the number one rule of the universe: "Don't be a dick."

Tehlaserwolf for President!

[Snackpack]

sorry for rambling. just remember the number one rule of the universe: "Don't be a dick."

Bless this post.

[Syrah-the-Old-One]

I'm 50+ and I've been playing MMOs since the very start. The core of my guild has been together since EQ. Sometimes people come and go, but we recruit new people as needed. Sometimes old people return. Etc. etc. I've never had to resort to pugging, though sometimes we have randoms in the groups (selling runs etc). It takes some effort. But then again, maintaining any community does.

I've never understood the "entire playerbase is homogenous community" requirement. It's very clearly not that and treating it as one will lead to very strange results. That doesn't mean the community has "gone down in flames" - it just means it has grown and diversified beyond just ONE community.

You just need to find one that fits you.

I totally agree, and I did find a part of the community that fits me : the roleplay community.
Like me, most are still playing because they love the Warcraft Universe more than the game itself. But let's be honest : the vast majority of the WoW community is here for the PvE/PvP side of the game, and both can lead to "douchy" people having the behaviour we discussed previously..

Well, I see your point, and you're right: this behaviour business is also IRL, and gets amplified on the Internet. But getting back to the game, I have to tell you: I am experiencing a different community in WoW Classic. I used to think I would never play Classic because Retail is the game I thought I liked, but after trying it out of boredom, I have changed my mind. ?

Well, I didn't get the whole "Classic hype" to begin with. I mean, I started back in mid-BC, as I said earlier, so the levelling was Vanilla-like.
Also, I chose to roll an Orc Warrior (which is still my main). Hardest levelling experience in the faction with lesser quests.
I did try Vanilla when it came out, and it was somewhat nice to see old Orgrimmar again, but most of the fun I had faded by the time I neared lvl 25. Vanilla was painful to me, and I don't feel like I have the patience to level up another character this way anymore.
I only blame this on myself though, and I can totally understand why people play Classic. It's just... not bringing back enough good memories for me, I guess..

[Halyon]

Fun fact Instagram is actually working on a cyberbullying recognition that will flag things that at face value aren't inherently toxic, but could be inteoreted as such, at which point a human makes a decision on whether or not.it qualifies.

It's going to fail, unless they have a very based bunch of moderators. Now, I love Warframe as a game, but the moderation and a lot of the community is...notoriously PC (and ridiclously pervy at the same time, bordering into hypocrisy on occasion), and people have been chat banned for rather minor things. I can understand some of them, but some of the moderators will swing the hammer relentlessly, no warning.

- - - Updated - - -

sorry for rambling. just remember the number one rule of the universe: "Don't be a dick."

The problem is also that these people tend to be very loud, while more moderated people aren't. No, change won't happen if nobody bands together to actively combat it.

For the individual person, putting assholes on ignore is the simplest short-term solution, long-term is a whole 'nother can of worms. It's community work and/or Blizzard who have to set up a report system and manually review it (and they won't with their current cost-cutting procedure). On the community side, it requires either a ton of dedication, or being just as extreme as the opposition...and neither of those are fun to have around anywhere.

Great post though, and I agree, but I am also an old jaded idiot, so...

[rrayy]

Yes, the game desparately needs more systems against negativity and toxicity in it, because it's pretty rampant, especially in pugs. All the incels will tell you that it's fine and you can just ignore someone, but that's a pseudo-solution. Someone who is ignored (and the ignore option is broken in many ways btw) can still function in the community and spread their toxicity.

Rating system that you mentioned is one of those things that should have been added long ago. Maybe not necessarily a negative one, but a positive one for sure, so you would know if someone received a lot of positive scores before, when adding them to your group. That would help a lot.

No it wouldn't and this thread tells you why it wouldn't. There is no way it will not be abused.

[lummiuster]

"I had a bad experience yesterday and the game designers need to spend resources, time, and respond to this so I feel happier"

Welcome to online gaming.

People have been "toxic" in this game since this game came out. This is also a one sided post where we cannot confirm the actions of this player nor can we tell if you were the cause of his frustration. I hope this post gets flagged or at minimum edited to remove the players name and server you mentioned.

This is ridiculous. Also, what does your personal life have to do with this? You're a mature soon to be dad who has never encountered an asshole or been trolled before? How can you consider yourself mature afer making this post?

Imo there is some truth in what he is saying. Even though i disagree with the feature he is proposing. The issue is that retail wow is full of "chores". They are difficult and boring as hell, people are not happy to do them but they have to. It makes them super toxic. I'm sure it happened to you that you are used to clear a M+15 flawlessly for weeks on 2 alts and then one week you join groups that keep failing and youve wasted 3h trying to do it and at the end you lowered it to +14. It is frustrating, youll want to bash all the innocent noobs in the group who are just playing to have fun.
They havent designed the game for people to run dungeons for fun, they made it a chore and now people are sick and becoming toxic.

[Ezyah]

Have you ever played league of legend ? There is a report systemn and those exact same toxic people will report you for ANYTHING , like if you are a good guy but have a bad game boom, you get full report. That's why such a system would not work

[Shakana]

Mythic+, and the entire speedrunning fest of everything appeals more to these toxic players, this is why they are more strongly represented and this is why BFA, for regular players, is beyond saving. Just find another game, you won't change anything since Ion and co do not see their entire game's direction leads to this.

Pugging 5mans with people you never see again also leads to this. I'm sure everyone played shooters back in the day in some way or form, always joining the same servers, meeting the same people, it's like playing vanilla wow. You knew your fellow players and would spend 10 hours a day on mp_dawnville and mp_carentan just chatting away and trying to rule the scoreboard in public servers. The moment queues, or today called matchmaking systems were introduced your fellow players turned into inpersonal bots, ready to be abused by these sad little nerds. The entire lack of community in BFA combined with a race for performance/speed/rankings leads to this. Vanilla does well because it's #1; piss easy to play so no matter who the hell joins your group and #2 doesn't revolve around bots, aka people you never meet again. It's also slow paced enough that sociopathic performance-based nerds often flock back to retail.

That has a name, and it's called "elistists". People that think just because they do nothing else in their life, that others need to as well be like them, and who doesn't they call you names and say you suck. They don't just call you noob or newbie anymore, they say "you fucking retard". And other ones even worse than this. THIS IS WITH NO DAMN DOUBT toxicity. And happens on Mythic raiding + mythic plus with pugs and sometimes even with guilds.

People don't have humility anymore since Raider.io, item levels, gear, and mechanics that are quite hard is out. We don't want a super easy game we like challenge but that much challenge, apparently makes people get salty.

Example: They don't know you from anywhere, when they are making a group for a m+, they see your R.io score and say: "pfff no way that im gonna invite this guy".
So what? The guy maybe this expansion didnt do much, ye he doesn't know, but maybe he has more skill from playing wow for long long long time ago, or even the previous expansion and it's a god like, that you just need to explain a single tactic and he does it so good you get impressed, but you know what? Nope, that same guy is automatically declined. There's no space to improvement if you don't have the nowadays requirements.

They want everything rushed, less comunication possible and to not explain ever anything. They don't want wipes, first wipe is like for elitists showing them you're not good enough and they will just drop you off.

I remember before on armory people got inspected but at least it's not a score that you accumulate on a season that can even be a score from low keys spam cause you do nothing else rather than m+. Mythic raiding at least makes sense looking at r.io tho. a person on a season with 9/9 bosses in mythic done, /kneel, but i mean, why you need to be rude when you're good at the game, can't you just be more humble with people?

This is a era problem, not just in this game tbh.

[Science451]

Well, I didn't get the whole "Classic hype" to begin with. I mean, I started back in mid-BC, as I said earlier, so the levelling was Vanilla-like.
Also, I chose to roll an Orc Warrior (which is still my main). Hardest levelling experience in the faction with lesser quests.
I did try Vanilla when it came out, and it was somewhat nice to see old Orgrimmar again, but most of the fun I had faded by the time I neared lvl 25. Vanilla was painful to me, and I don't feel like I have the patience to level up another character this way anymore.
I only blame this on myself though, and I can totally understand why people play Classic. It's just... not bringing back enough good memories for me, I guess..

I fully agree with you, I never got the "Classic hype" either - at all. Infact I was completely contrary to the whole concept, and always believed it would never work. But as I said, out of boredom I tried it and the community for whatever strange reason seems to behave differently, which in turn makes the game a different, more enjoyable experience. I play since end of Vanilla (so pretty much like you), I never got to raid MC or Onixya back then but only Zul Gurub when it came out. I have great memories of that past, sure, but playing Classic for me was not to bring back old memories, but just because I was bored of the same Azerite / WQ / EP farming sessions. And I have to tell you, apart from the fact that of course leveling zones do bring memories, I don't personally really care about those. What I care instead is the fact that people just act differently, most players are soooo much more friendly than in Retail. At least that's my perception. I am an old fart myself too, married with two grown up kids, I met my actual wife in WoW back in Cataclysm. She plays too and she has the same perceptions. We met some friends we play daily now in Classic, something that didn't happen in Retail for a loooong time. Anyways we de-railed from the Topic a bit I gues, I'll leave it here

[Shakana]

I fully agree with you, I never got the "Classic hype" either - at all. Infact I was completely contrary to the whole concept, and always believed it would never work. But as I said, out of boredom I tried it and the community for whatever strange reason seems to behave differently, which in turn makes the game a different, more enjoyable experience. I play since end of Vanilla (so pretty much like you), I never got to raid MC or Onixya back then but only Zul Gurub when it came out. I have great memories of that past, sure, but playing Classic for me was not to bring back old memories, but just because I was bored of the same Azerite / WQ / EP farming sessions. And I have to tell you, apart from the fact that of course leveling zones do bring memories, I don't personally really care about those. What I care instead is the fact that people just act differently, most players are soooo much more friendly than in Retail. At least that's my perception. I am an old fart myself too, married with two grown up kids, I met my actual wife in WoW back in Cataclysm. She plays too and she has the same perceptions. Anyways we de-railed from the Topic a bit I gues, I'll leave it here

I have heard many people saying people on classic behave alot like in retail so i don't think that is 100% true. And i played there myself and i saw toxicity on the first day, and you know with what? "RETAIL PEOPLE, GET OUT!" "ADDONS ON CLASSIC!!!!! OMG! SHAME", etc etc etc, no they try do behave to show vanilla is much better than retail when deep inside, it's same people here and there

[lifteez]

Honestly, it seems like WoW is a lil more tame out of the games I play, in terms of stranger toxicity. I might go 4 hours of pugging 14-15s before getting a teammate flaming someone else in the group, but I cant go more than 2 hours of league of legends, counter strike or overwatch, without that happening haha. its just a super common thing people do who pug 'competitive' gameplay.

I feel like a lot of people forget to realize just how negative and toxic a substantial portion of the people are online, its sad but you cant let it get to you, especially as someone whos been playing videogames for so long. finding a constructive way to not allow them to impact your personal time, is the only effective strategy. There isn't much game companies can do IMO, short of swinging penalties heavily at offenders, which they wont do.

[Flurryfang]

I would love to be able to rate people, not to get the toxic people about, but to promote players really being good at leading LFD runs. If i could get a bonus of some sort, does not have to be worth gold or anything, i would so much love to just lead unexperienced groups through LFD/LFG for the hell of it. Give me some fame, give me something i can proud of and i will gladly take the mantle of helping the less experienced through things.

But that said, if you can rate people, it will abused like hell and trolls will take over.

[Mirishka]

much like in real life there are more good people than bad but the bad are far more noticeable and memorable so we end up feeling like they're the majority. it'd be great to have some kind of system that did reward the good and penalise those who are abusive, but not only would designing such a system be a huge task, it would inevitbly wind up being abused anyway

Very well said.

[hulkgor]

Nice blog post buddy.

[Science451]

I have heard many people saying people on classic behave alot like in retail so i don't think that is 100% true. And i played there myself and i saw toxicity on the first day, and you know with what? "RETAIL PEOPLE, GET OUT!" "ADDONS ON CLASSIC!!!!! OMG! SHAME", etc etc etc, no they try do behave to show vanilla is much better than retail when deep inside, it's same people here and there

Well I never said it's like that for everyone on all realms - perhaps some realms are different I dunno..... I just stated my experience, which I can confirm here. Wether you want to believe me or not is up to you, but why would I lie about my experience lol? I am a player just like you i have no hidden agenda or interest to lie about a videogame

I believe you when you say you experienced something completely different - as I said perhaps it's different realms with different people. I too am very surprised I have found a different community, as you said people should be the same everywhere.

[Quintalos]

So I was just thinking about a few things after my WOW experience in BFA. I am a mature working father-to-be who has played WOW since it's release and its a game that is incredibly sentimental to me and is where I found the person I am spending the rest of my life with. The one and only thing that completely destroys WOW however, is the toxic community. It is a game that is unique in that there is a far larger ratio of toxic people than there are nice people.

More often than not if you pug content and often even in guild environments you come across people who have so much hate inside of them that they feel nothing to call people garbage, useless, and swear endlessly at others. For example: Today I was tanking +14 Kings Rest and we had this mage named --- snip ---. He must have trash talked every person in the Mythic, calling everyone such horrible things and left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Eventually everyone left even though the dungeon could have been done in time because the environment was just so unpleasant that arguing made it seem 'not worth the while'.

This is so common amongst the community and it left me thinking, is he a angsty teenager full of hate and is a bully at school or does his parents treat him horribly, or does anonymity give him some perception of authority that he feels he can treat and talk to others however he likes... I don't know. But I was talking to some people and were wondering why Blizzard hasn't introduced some sort of rating system like Uber where you get to rate other players based on the experience you had with them. So when you are looking for people to join you in a dungeon you can see if they are rated as toxic or friendly or whatever the case is. I can guarantee that if that was to happen people would start magically appearing more friendly based on the fact that they might not get invited to content because others can see that they are a terrible human being.

Imagine a system that encourages friendliness, that encourages people to finish a dungeon even if it didn't go the way you wanted it to. I would love to rate people after they downgrade your key for leaving because of one wipe. The system could be implemented in a way that if you leave a key that isn't complete you cannot rate anyone but the people that stay can. Suddenly people would get rated and known for being 'leavers'. I would love someone to create an addon like raider IO but instead you get rated by other players based on attitude. I would like to see toxic people leave wow because they attitudes and general outlook on life towards other people becomes public and they are forced to go play single player games or forced to improve their manners towards others.

Anyway, its something that can only be constructive and healthy for a game that is in desperate need of a purge of toxicity. It's one thing to be a player learning the game or getting used to harder content but to see someone being called a f***ing piece of Sh** for not being as pro as others might want is very sad.

Mod Edit: Naming and shaming is not allowed on these forums.

I love this idea. No doubt it'll be abused but to me, it feels like a decent step in an appropriate direction.

[Nathanyel]

Imagine a system that encourages friendliness [...]

And then you describe a system that's based around the fear of being labeled a "leaver", a bad player. That's not to say it couldn't work, and it's ultimately easier to punish wrongdoers than reward positive actions, and I'm not saying this shouldn't be implemented, but it wouldn't be "a system that encourages friendliness", at most it would be a system that encourages biting your lip, stomaching the wipes until the dungeon is finally finished, no matter how stupid or trolling "that guy" is.

[Tehlaserwolf]

I am also an old jaded idiot, so...

Guide to getting out of the jaded funk in three easy steps.

1. Make a genuine effort at least once a day to do something for someone that makes you feel good.
2. Do something for yourself that makes you feel good.
3. Stop and appreciate how insanely beneficial the first two things can be for literally everyone.

[Halyon]

Guide to getting out of the jaded funk in three easy steps.

1. Make a genuine effort at least once a day to do something for someone that makes you feel good.
2. Do something for yourself that makes you feel good.
3. Stop and appreciate how insanely beneficial the first two things can be for literally everyone.

Bless you.