Was the WoW community ever good?

[exochaft]

Yes, it was. I don't know when it changed, but back in the beginning, people were generally decent with a few exceptions.

Things started changing around when people became disposable for content, no longer requiring social interaction to complete most content of the game (exactly the opposite of what an MMO is supposed to be). For example, Group Finder (especially where you're put with random people) is very convenient, but it also removes almost any social interactions you can have. Much of the game's content has been redesigned so that grouping isn't needed, kind of like when Blizz made a pass to nerf the hell out of group/elite quests to all of them basically being soloable. The concept of "server identity" keeps getting thrown around occasionally by Blizz, but that concept died long ago for various reasons (ease of server hopping, sharding/cross-realm, etc.).

The mentality change was that game design shifted from player friction and game restrictions forcing players to be social to making players able to avoid social interactions completely. In the past, you could have really good social experiences, as well as really bad social experiences... however, they were all social experiences that you likely remember even to this day. In the past, you had a reputation to maintain because you were stuck on your server and said reputation would stick with you. Nowadays, aside from my guildies and a few friends, everyone else on my server and my random groups could be NPC's, as there's very little/no social interaction, let alone any impetus for maintaining a reputation for most players.

[msdos]

I think it was better. People didn't take WoW super duper seriously and it wasn't nearly as competitive.

These days you have people trying to have streaming careers and literal raid careers, kind of unheard of back then, it definitely affects how seriously people take the game.
Just look at Classic. They want world buffs even though you don't need them. It's all tests of devotion, no test of skill or fun. If it doesn't pass the fun test, why even do it? People will try to answer that and their answer will be so super serious and will have nothing to do with fun or the video game.

[Ange]

Basically as someone who joined the game around MoP I often see people reminisce on how good trade chat used to be or how people were much nicer back in the day so I am posing the question of was the WoW community ever good and if so when?

The community was more mature and enjoyed playing the game with other players.
The trimming for e-spots, ratings, achievements brought in a lot of young players with a different mindset to the game and commununity, that there is a loss with that kind of gamers is obvious.

People were proud what their guild did in Vanilla.
People are only caring about personal achievements, ratings, things in BfA.

Thats why raiding and the forced raiding in shadowlands wont really work anymore for community building, because raiding is just seen as ANOTHER achievement/rating/performance booster for single characters and nothing else. The community part of raiding is long dead.

[Chonar]

Back when servers weren't mixed, you could make a name for yourself.
If you were a c*nt, that was the name you made for yourself. And you were treated appropriately.

[La]

I played since the very start of TBC and in my experience the game has always been toxic and unpleasant. Even people in guilds can't get along when raiding because there's always that one person, or that one clique, that just makes it suck.

The only difference I can tell you is that pre dungeon finder the game forced you to be more social, which made you interact with more people, specifically people on your server, and it lead to something far more enjoyable than the 100% disconnect of everyone today. Now you just go to a website to look at someone's numbers for how fast they did a specific dungeon and invite them and your interactions are just consistently negative, even when they don't have to be.

It's one of the worst communities I'd been a part of

[Relapses]

I played since the very start of TBC and in my experience the game has always been toxic and unpleasant. Even people in guilds can't get along when raiding because there's always that one person, or that one clique, that just makes it suck.

The only difference I can tell you is that pre dungeon finder the game forced you to be more social, which made you interact with more people, specifically people on your server, and it lead to something far more enjoyable than the 100% disconnect of everyone today. Now you just go to a website to look at someone's numbers for how fast they did a specific dungeon and invite them and your interactions are just consistently negative, even when they don't have to be.

It's one of the worst communities I'd been a part of

Go play some League of Legends then get back with us.

[Cyanu]

ofc not, all gaming communities are filled to the brim with anti-social jerks, arrogant, entitled, not quite as good as they believe themselves to be and always casting blame on anyone but themselves

[TheRevenantHero]

Back when servers weren't mixed, you could make a name for yourself.
If you were a c*nt, that was the name you made for yourself. And you were treated appropriately.

OR an influential guild leader could get you blacklisted on a server because you called him out for funneling gear into this girlfriend rather than being fair about loot distribution.

[Personman]

Not in my experience. Day one of playing back in BC I ran into mean spirited people non stop.

[Devilyaki]

My answer is sort of.

[Chonar]

OR an influential guild leader could get you blacklisted on a server because you called him out for funneling gear into this girlfriend rather than being fair about loot distribution.

We sure live in a society.

[music49]

The community has its good side and bad side as it's always been. The only difference is the good side was easier to find and get involved with opposed to now where you join a random listed group and cross your fingers they are the type of people you are looking to play with at the time.

[T-34]

I think it was better. People didn't take WoW super duper seriously and it wasn't nearly as competitive.

These days you have people trying to have streaming careers and literal raid careers, kind of unheard of back then, it definitely affects how seriously people take the game.
Just look at Classic. They want world buffs even though you don't need them. It's all tests of devotion, no test of skill or fun. If it doesn't pass the fun test, why even do it? People will try to answer that and their answer will be so super serious and will have nothing to do with fun or the video game.

So your definition of "fun" or how a "video game" is supposed to be played is the only true definition?

Could you please link me where Blizzard states that your definition of "fun" is mandatory for all to accept?
Or maybe just link me Blizzard's definition of fun?

My opinion is that the community has gotten better as it is easier to avoid bad players today and the bad players are very upset about that they find it increasingly difficult to find people to carry them.
Many of said bad players express their feelings with words like "toxic", "elitist" and "worse community".

[Swnem]

Back before social networks and during the thottbot era, yes.
Then at some point everything became serious and then very toxic. I can't put my finger on when. Maybe towards the end of wrath.

[goldlock]

Back before social networks and during the thottbot era, yes.
Then at some point everything became serious and then very toxic. I can't put my finger on when. Maybe towards the end of wrath.

I would say wrath era would of been the turning point. Before that most of the different communities didn't really interact with one another.

You need familiarity to breed true contempt.

[BrintoSFJ]

Yes we were very good at pretending to be good people back then because we were forced to directly communicate with people for anything we wanted to do. After the arrival of LFG, we no longer had any obligation to play pretend, so let ourselves be free.

[unbound]

Vanilla and BC weren't quite as toxic as it is now. I would say, from my experiences, that things started getting more notably toxic in Wrath.

Wrath was the point where the simple majority of people started embracing things like gear score and dps meters (derisively and appropriately called epeen meters). This was the first point that I would regularly encounter the "Go Go Go" crowd that is so very pervasive on WoW today.

Certainly those things existed even in Vanilla, but it just wasn't nearly as common...mostly just the elite and some curious people had those things. The vast majority of players back then were simply playing the game to enjoy the game. Similarly, min/maxing was a thing even back then, but the simple majority of people didn't really start doing that until Wrath.

[Krothar]

The game used to be smaller. It was easier to avoid your servers toxic players to the point they'd run out of people to play with and have to move servers if they were interested in progression.

You never "ran out" of Toxic players but when everything was done through either having a group of friends to do content with or having to have some amount of good rep to get into groups not being an asshole mattered at least a little bit.

[Tarba]

Nope, communauty as a whole has allways been shit.
Drama, ninja, leavers, teenager spam. Was what you would see in classic. Think that a m+ leaver is a plague ? Think about how fun it was to lose 1 hour to build a group, run to the instance and having one guy who leaves.
People you met and play and have fun with have always been there too. But no communauty has allways been pure shit.

[Personman]

Yeah I don't get why everyone keeps attributing the community falling apart due to lfg. I ran into non stop elitism, trolls, drama mongers all through out BC. when my guild fell apart I pretty much just played BGs exclusively because it became impossible to get a group going for even the easiest 5 man without two hours of bickering and shit slinging just to get a group formed. The gearscore mentality didn't appear in wrath, that's just when it got to the boiling point.

Maybe Chromaggus was just a really, really bad server. For me lfg improved things since it encouraged people to get in, get out and keep thier damn mouths shut.