The Toxic Syndrome

[LemonDemonGirl]

Because on the internet, people can hide behind a screen and say anything they think they're able to say. It's sad really.
And I find that WoW has a fair amount of toxicity due to this

[kranur]

So, this may be a devisive post, but I'm curious what the general wow community thinks about it. In the decade plus I have played wow, I have experienced good interactions...and some really really toxic ones. Here too. But I'm curious why you-you being the WoW player, or the forum goer- why do you think people are so toxic? I mean, it doesn't help. It doesn't add to the fun of others. Its not conducive to a healthy game or forum environment. So why then?? Why be toxic. Either on WoW or in forum.

To be hones there's a small percentage that are truly toxic. Generally there are just people .. some have a short temper, some are just bad. If I am to make an analysis, most of my grouping experince in retail, classic and eve private servers were positive.

As to why some are toxic .. that's just who they are.

[bluesock]

Well combine anonymity, fragile egos and complete lack of any social skills and not sure what you're expecting to get.

Now imagine if all of those people had a name and face attached to each comment they've made, what a place the internet would be then, being held accountable for their actions.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Some people take anonymity as an excuse to drop a their facade of being a decent person, some are just people who've lost their temper at that moment, and others just write off other people on the internet as "not being real people" because they have don't keep in mind that the internet is just a tool while everyone using it is an actual person.

That third category really isn't helped by the existence of spam bots and the development of AI, that creates a scenario that is tricky for even me despite having grown up with the internet always being there.

The internet is a very odd tool, and too often people use it like a cruel 13-year old with a magnifying glass burning ants to death. They don't think of their words as being harmful, or the targets being worth caring about. Add in people foolish or ignorant enough to think that words can't be dangerous, and you have human behavior on the internet.

[Echo of Soul]

Testosterone?

[Bbrigham]

Some people take anonymity as an excuse to drop a their facade of being a decent person, some are just people who've lost their temper at that moment, and others just write off other people on the internet as "not being real people" because they have don't keep in mind that the internet is just a tool while everyone using it is an actual person.

That third category really isn't helped by the existence of spam bots and the development of AI, that creates a scenario that is tricky for even me despite having grown up with the internet always being there.

The internet is a very odd tool, and too often people use it like a cruel 13-year old with a magnifying glass burning ants to death. They don't think of their words as being harmful, or the targets being worth caring about. Add in people foolish or ignorant enough to think that words can't be dangerous, and you have human behavior on the internet.

I'm tired of toxicity in the general WoW population, and with more newbs coming in for shadowlands, I'm afraid they will get mistreated, and leave. We need new players if WoW is to have a long future

[MoanaLisa]

Let's be honest: It happens because a certain rather large percentage of humans enjoy being assholes; even more when they can be assholes anonymously. I mean just look around. It's everywhere. You see it every day in multiple ways, not just related to gaming.

In some respects it's about establishing dominance. That happens somewhat more frequently in situations that are competitive.

It's one of my criticisms of Blizzard and they way they've handled WoW generally that they have emphasized the competitive aspects of the game over the co-operative. That goes all the way back to allowing DPS meters, which can be very useful for informing a player about how they're doing and where they might improve, but generally they're used as a measuring stick so someone can boast they top meters or whatever. If Blizzard wanted to I imagine they could find a way to keep damage logs private to the user and force add-on creators to follow suit.

This is one area where Blizzard could step in and make a difference but from what I can see they encourage it. Why else would there be a /spit in the game. Who thought that was funny or even a good idea for a game that is for kids 12 years and up?

[Zantera]

I think mostly it boils down to the fact that people will act like assholes IF they can get away with it. It starts in school already when you had those kids in your class who would go crazy and mess shit up when the teacher left the class room, and that kind of behavior remains through the ages. If everything you did/said on the internet came with a picture of yourself, your real name and where you lived, it would be a very different situation.

[Scrysis]

My own personal theory is that you're seeing more and more people with poor upbringing and/or savage personalities. If you were taught as a child to respect people around you and the teaching stuck, then you'll carry it into adulthood. And I've long since learned the sad truth that frequently people don't change much from the children that they were. If a person was cruel as a child, they're apt to be cruel as an adult. And bullying isn't just a childhood thing.

It costs nothing to be civil on the internet, even if you strongly disagree with someone, and yet, you'll find so many belittling people and calling them pejorative words even as doing so serves no purpose. I don't understand why someone would go the extra length to be mean and disrespectful, but there you go.

[Daedius]

There are far more good players than toxic players... I ain't going to let the few ruin it for me.

All that being said, WoW's toxic players are like carebears compared to those you'd find in LoL and World of Tanks. Fact is toxic players exist everywhere.

[Vargrik]

Testosterone?

Irascible men tend to have very low testosterone levels.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

I'm tired of toxicity in the general WoW population, and with more newbs coming in for shadowlands, I'm afraid they will get mistreated, and leave. We need new players if WoW is to have a long future

I get it, but unfortunately I don't think there is any way for the playerbase to actually address that issue. I think it would require Blizzard actually taking a stronger stance against poor behavior, and frankly speaking I don't think they're willing to put the time and effort into doing that. It doesn't help that Covenants are basically setting up a scenario in which specific spec/covenant combinations will be discriminated against by the community because it is objectively terrible.

Poorly balanced systems combined with Blizzard's usual rigidity, I don't have any hope for SL being enjoyable to play unless they make drastic changes to the Covenant systems before putting it on live. The tone and behaviors set by the community in the first few months are likely to hold throughout the entire expansion, even if they do fix the Covenants it will be impossible to repair the social damage done by them.

[Dziubla]

Anonymity is obviously one thing, the other being political correctness/cancel culture/getting rid of freedom of speech, connected with human contrarian nature. If snowflakes weren't as sensitive and easily triggered as they are, the assholes wouldn't feel the need to troll them and be assholes in the first place. Just look at how lately things are getting "worse" (according to people in this thread, at least), which kinda proves my point - lately there's much more complaining about "toxicity", therefore people ramp up their toxic behaviour even more. If there wasn't as much outrage, the assholes would get bored. Psych 101.

[T-34]

So, this may be a devisive post, but I'm curious what the general wow community thinks about it. In the decade plus I have played wow, I have experienced good interactions...and some really really toxic ones. Here too. But I'm curious why you-you being the WoW player, or the forum goer- why do you think people are so toxic? I mean, it doesn't help. It doesn't add to the fun of others. Its not conducive to a healthy game or forum environment. So why then?? Why be toxic. Either on WoW or in forum.

"Toxic" is a word selfish minority like to use in WoW when other people refuse to play and act like those selfish people want them too.

It is a insidious way to try to guilt-shame people to behave in a certain way.

[Thage]

It's called the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or GIFT, as coined by Penny Arcade. The basics are: when you take a normal person, introduce an audience, add anonymity, and subtract all meaningful consequence, this person will oftentimes develop into a seething jackass online. People tend to adhere to social norms in real life more often because being a reeking asshole in real life typically has very immediate, very undesirable consequences even without threat of violence.

[Karnak]

I've played since launch. I have seen a decline in cooperation and social activity, but that seems to have been paralleled with tools added to the game to allow you to play without actually being social. Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, catch up gearing methods that can be easily accomplished without talking to anybody. I am as guilty of it as anybody else and I have certainly used the tools, other than Raid Finder which I dislike, as I can't devote blocks of time to the game like I could when younger.

As to the rudeness, I have been responsible for both good and bad experiences of others. Anonymity coupled with real life stress can encourage one to be snippy when it feels like others are taking advantage of them in the game, but it isn't always that way even if it feels like it.

what i said also applies to you lmao

his original post has absolutely no substance

it is "this is a thing"

no example, nothing

it's the same type of argument used by leftists

trump 2020 btw get mad about it

Why insert politics where there wasn't politics? You don't have to make everything into an attack on you. Sometimes a question is just a question.

[Mirishka]

This made me laugh, not because I disagree-this is almost exactly how I hope I behave, in reality and wow- but because I DO have a hurt butt, not from LFR, but from riding a horse up a black basalt mountain. But thank you, for confirming my thoughts.

Horseback riding is such an amazing experience, just a freeing and 'wind in your hair' awesome time, but yeah... it takes a toll on the backside for sure.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Why insert politics where there wasn't politics? You don't have to make everything into an attack on you. Sometimes a question is just a question.

I advise against responding to posts like that, it clearly was an off-topic post intended to derail the thread. Responding to the post only feeds the poster attention and allows them to make further inroads into steering the thread off-course.

[Mirishka]

Nothing like a little sexism to prove you're not toxic...

Sorry if that offends you, but spend a day on Twitter looking through the thousands upon thousands of 'OMG U FUCKING RETARDS RUINED MY CLASS/FAVORITE GUN/ETC, FUCK U HOPE U DIE' type messages that are sent to game developers day in and day out, and let me know how many of those come from women. I did a paper on all the harassment and death threats sent to some of Bioware's writers, messages that numbered in the hundreds and literally every single one of them came from a man or someone presenting as a man. And the vast majority of those messages were directed at female employees.

Meat objectively kills more people than vegetables, and saying that doesn't mean I'm 'meatist' - it means that I refuse to alter a factual statistic to spare the feelings of meat lovers.

[Srg56]

So, this may be a devisive post, but I'm curious what the general wow community thinks about it. In the decade plus I have played wow, I have experienced good interactions...and some really really toxic ones. Here too. But I'm curious why you-you being the WoW player, or the forum goer- why do you think people are so toxic? I mean, it doesn't help. It doesn't add to the fun of others. Its not conducive to a healthy game or forum environment. So why then?? Why be toxic. Either on WoW or in forum.

Toxicity is a meme. It's called being rude or a mean/selfish person. As for why they're being like that, it's because there are no repercussions due to blizzard's decisions. You don't have server communities anymore, so people don't care about how they behave. They don't behave like that irl because people will just stop interacting with them and they will get marginalized and ostracized.

I don't know who said it but the true measure of a man is what he does when he is sure nobody is watching. Anonymity provides exactly that. You see people for who they really are online, because nobody is watching them.