Truth Behind the Toxic Environment in WoW.

[vitor210]

Toxicity in video games (like WoW) mainly occurs between strangers. Toxic environment most commonly involve people who don't care about each other at all.

Most of the threads in here about toxic behavior have one thing in common: They are all based on experiences from PUG'ing.

And PUG'ing is the main problem. A lot of people become very toxic when they play with strangers who they don't care about at all. Especially when it happens on the internet. You almost never see the same level of toxicity in a guild group or friend group that you see in a group of complete strangers. Sure it happens, but it's much less frequent.

A lot of people like to blame the content for the toxicity. "M+ is to blame for toxic behavior" and so on.. But the content is not to blame for people's toxic behavior. When you take 5 people who don't give a sh*t about each other and put them in a group, then the risk of toxic behavior will increase significantly.

The toxic behavior exists because you choose to spend time with people who don't give a damn about you. Instead of making friends and playing with these friends, you choose to play with strangers all the time. And many of these strangers don't care about you or your well-being. They see you as nothing more than a tool to get the loot. They see you as another NPC in the game instead of a human being. And if you make the smallest mistake then hell breaks loose. It's funny how much peoples behavior change once they use discord and actually talk with each other. I never heard anyone on discord say "Oh your f*cking noob, learn to play!". It mostly happens when people are typing behind their keyboards.

Most of the toxic environments in WoW are created by complete strangers playing together. You cant just blame the content for that. Do yourself a favor and remove yourself from these environments. Find a good guild and make some friends to play with and your own experience in the game will most likely improve.

I agree with this. You see , ever since we have this quarentine that I've returned to WoW, both Classic and BfA. Been leveling characters on both versions of the game and from what I can see, Classic has a much more friendly community. I play on a pve server on Classic , and bc there's no spergs ganking or being obnoxious, the comunity is really friendly and helpful, haven't seen a single event of toxicity in the game. BfA on the other hand, is toxic even on low levels. Just the other day I was tanking deadmines through RDF, healer decided to pull the entire dungeon which caused us a wipe , and started to insult me for being a shitty tank and how I was going slow (even though we were literally in the first room right after start)

[melodramocracy]

Shitty, scumbag PUG players are basically free advertisement for why guilds still matter. I'm fine with it. If someone simply refuses to play on any sort of schedule, then they really shouldn't complain about being exposed to this behavior

[Sansnom]

The toxic behavior exists because you choose to spend time with people who don't give a damn about you. Instead of making friends and playing with these friends, you choose to play with strangers all the time.

Well, that is a rather toxic comment to make.

Basically you are saying it is their fault for playing with strangers.

People who joins guilds simply to push contents are not making friends. They are looking for people with similar objectives to complete them in a regular manner. That is not making friends.

You have no idea what these people who pugs are like. They could be in a guild of real friends that just does not or cannot form a regular group at a set time and so their only alternatives is to pug.

Yes, PUG can be a horrible experience. But it does not have to be if people does not behavior like a-holes. But unfortunately, they do. And that in my view is the problems. It has nothing to do with playing with strangers.

[Hyeonh]

The game is changing the same way as people move from country to a big city. In the country you know everyone and they know you, you can either get along with them or try not to, but the place is small and word will travel around fast going back to you positively or negatively so you would rather pick staying positive. While in a city you will usually not meet the same person again so you will have less empathy and be more apathetic to anyone you meet.

The logic also applies to wow. In classic all the way to wrath, your party members are gonna stick around for a while. Instead of being an ass to them, you try to act civil to them so things can go more smoothly. You don't want to spend half an hour waiting for a replacement member after booting someone and getting the replacement to get from hillsbrad all the way into tirisfal for a scarlet monastery run: so you try to give them helpful advice instead of being an outright dick to them. In current wow you can speed through anything now any anyone you meet is basically a blip on the radar to you, got a tank that isn't doing well, you just kick him instead of try to help him. You can also act like an ass in the group and it won't matter, chances of you meeting the same people again are one in a thousand.

[NineSpine]

Actually the problem is that the game is designed in such a way that you do not need a constant group of people. If everything was much harder and would require grouping, the problem with toxicity would drive itself.

You have it totally backward. The difficulty of the content is the source of the toxicity.

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Mythic plus is not mindless zerging. It takes a lot of skill and coordination to complete a +20 key.

And again, Mythic plus is just content. You cannot blame content for the toxicity of people. People are behaving badly because they play with players they don't give a shit about. Don't blame the content, blame the people.

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But in the end it's still based on people's bad behavior. You cant blame the content. The problem is mainly that people think they allowed to behave in a bad way when they are dealing with random people on the internet and can get away with it.

This is extremely naive. A social game has social interactions as part of its design. The game encourages certain behavior, and M+ encourages being a douche because that’s the fastest way to success.

[Twdft]

The difficulty of the content is the source of the toxicity.

...

and M+ encourages being a douche because that’s the fastest way to success.

What? Fastest way to do M+ successful is to play with the same people all the time and learn stuff together. Being a douche gets you kicked out of steady groups so no success.

[Rustykeyboard]

i agree. Like Thorin said. toxic behaviour is when you ruin a players experience on purpose. if a player just says "fuck you" or something like that, that is verbal abuse, not toxicity.

[Nadiru]

You can choose between strangers being toxic to each other or cliques being toxic to each other. Hell is other people, and there is no mistake.

[NineSpine]

What? Fastest way to do M+ successful is to play with the same people all the time and learn stuff together. Being a douche gets you kicked out of steady groups so no success.

Sorry, but that just isn't true. Being a douche until you get successful carries up into higher tiers of gear is the path of least resistance for the vast majority of people. That is way easier than finding a competent group of people, scheduling things together, etc..

This is why the mechanical complexity of the content is itself the source of the toxicity.

[Alkizon]

The difficulty of the content is the source of the toxicity.

Don't confuse "effective" content with organization of specific system in game. If system has certain conditions, it creates certain problems. Content itself is only a filling part, just like that.

[Echocho]

Somehow pugging doesn't cause the same issues in FFXIV. I think that PvP and the whole "duel me brah" attitude is the root cause.

[crusadernero]

WoW is like the internet. Everyone has access to it, everyone gets to do and see most content without the need of anyone else. So instead of being nice and friendly towards most people you meet, you either ignore them, troll them or be toxic.

Just like alot of people browse around the internet and post toxic or troll comments(or in streamer chats), people behave like that in games. Its "me me me" focus and aslong as most content is there to do without the need to actually communicate in a decent fashion in order to complete and see content, theres up to each person how they want to be. Theres really no need at all to even say one friendly word in wow in order to complete and see content.

Today, if you want a nice time playing games you need to have friends, a community or atleast a guild. Outside of this bubble people behave however they want to, theres no punishment if you are a shitebag.

I also have the notion alot of people have these "bubbles" they live in with friends, community or guild. Anything or anyone outside of this dont matter and might aswell just be bots anyway.

[spalernTJ]

Anonomity is probably the biggest reason behind the toxicity.

[Alkizon]

spalernTJ
Anonomity is probably the biggest reason behind the toxicity.

If system assumes significance of your place within its functioning borders (in this case, it's organization of social interaction and all subsystems related to it), then "general" anonymity is not the reason. You aren't anonymous within the system (from a certain moment), you have “name” and “place of residence”, you have “neighbors” + “friends” + “reputation”, but if system consists of “random passers-by”, then happening this... with all consequences

So yes, that's true.

Iem
Of course anonymity is a huge part of toxicity.

Before cross-realm got introduced your character got a reputation on the server to uphold.
Now you will probably never see the people you just queued up with, and people utilize that.

Sorry, I'm working too slow

crusadernero
tbh it can be pretty toxic in classic to and that version of the game got nothing of those things listed. In todays day and age of gaming its alot about min/maxing everything. People strive to whatever is best, whatever is meta, even though most of them will never be good enough to justify it. People funnel to it while most gets left behind for X reasons. This in turn makes alot of players toxic.

Havingr layes from start and... further. Such a good start for the game, brilliant decision!

crusadernero
What? what does layering have to do with it?

It does something Time is not important, conditions are!

[Shakana]

Agreed @Kaver it feels exactly like that. Ofc the content is not always amazing but it's what you do, with who you do and how it's set up to be. I had more fun in legion cause of the pack itself was more appealing to me AND more of my friends were playing and many of them stopped in BFA. I feel a huge difference. And i cba to be with randoms all the time, even the new guild i joined cause the other one disbanded in BFA, is still somewhat strange to me.

[M1r4g3]

While i do agree that people should join guilds as a fix for most of the toxicity, saying gameplay/game design doesn't have anything to do with toxicity is just wrong, why on earth would all competitive games be extremely toxic then? do only toxic people play those games? or does that type of tryhard/competitive game environment make people more likely to be toxic? WoW was no where near as toxic as it is these days until they started adding things to bypass some social responsibility as well as making the game more competitive/tryhard(even for casual players).
Just look at m+
1. its a ''mandatory'' weekly thing
2. timed/loot tied to timer.
3. takes ~30+min
4. random people you'll never meet again
5. no consequences
Literally screams toxic environment, add that to almost any game and its going to get a bit more toxic.

Anonomity is probably the biggest reason behind the toxicity.

If that includes ''effective anonymity' as in lfd/lfr/xrealm/transfers then yes.
Other reason would be making the game more competitive/tryhard on even the casual level.

[crusadernero]

While i do agree that people should join guilds as a fix for most of the toxicity, saying gameplay/game design doesn't have anything to do with toxicity is just wrong, why on earth would all competitive games be extremely toxic then? do only toxic people play those games? or does that type of tryhard/competitive game environment make people more likely to be toxic? WoW was no where near as toxic as it is these days until they started adding things to bypass some social responsibility as well as making the game more competitive/tryhard(even for casual players).
Just look at m+
1. its a ''mandatory'' weekly thing
2. timed/loot tied to timer.
3. takes ~30+min
4. random people you'll never meet again
5. no consequences
Literally screams toxic environment, add that to almost any game and its going to get a bit more toxic.


If that includes ''effective anonymity' as in lfd/lfr/xrealm/transfers then yes.
Other reason would be making the game more competitive/tryhard on even the casual level.

tbh it can be pretty toxic in classic to and that version of the game got nothing of those things listed. In todays day and age of gaming its alot about min/maxing everything. People strive to whatever is best, whatever is meta, even though most of them will never be good enough to justify it. People funnel to it while most gets left behind for X reasons. This in turn makes alot of players toxic.

[Trumpcat]

Agreed with OP and this is what I've done. I've always played with guild and never encountered the infamous toxicity on such a scale. Sometimes one might turn to be a jerk and they get kicked/quit.

But I've also seen selfish, socially challenged and immature people failing to benefit from and contribute to any community and just keep changing guilds, transfer servers, ignore people, get new names.. Those people are always on LFG.

So it is very much a common sense to say that a big number of pug people are also those unwanted in guilds. Naturally the jerk concentration there is higher and the anonymity just enables them.

[crusadernero]

If system assumes significance of your place within its functioning borders (in this case, it's organization of social interaction and all subsystems related to it), then "general" anonymity is not the reason. You aren't anonymous within the system (from a certain moment), you have “name” and “place of residence”, you have “neighbors” + “friends” + “reputation”, but if system consists of “random passers-by”, then happening this... with all consequences

So yes, that's true.
Sorry, I'm working too slow
Having layers from start and... further. Such a good start for the game, brilliant decision!

What? what does layering have to do with it?

[Zephire]

Toxicity in video games (like WoW) mainly occurs between strangers. Toxic environment most commonly involve people who don't care about each other at all.

Most of the threads in here about toxic behavior have one thing in common: They are all based on experiences from PUG'ing.

And PUG'ing is the main problem. A lot of people become very toxic when they play with strangers who they don't care about at all. Especially when it happens on the internet. You almost never see the same level of toxicity in a guild group or friend group that you see in a group of complete strangers. Sure it happens, but it's much less frequent.

A lot of people like to blame the content for the toxicity. "M+ is to blame for toxic behavior" and so on.. But the content is not to blame for people's toxic behavior. When you take 5 people who don't give a sh*t about each other and put them in a group, then the risk of toxic behavior will increase significantly.

The toxic behavior exists because you choose to spend time with people who don't give a damn about you. Instead of making friends and playing with these friends, you choose to play with strangers all the time. And many of these strangers don't care about you or your well-being. They see you as nothing more than a tool to get the loot. They see you as another NPC in the game instead of a human being. And if you make the smallest mistake then hell breaks loose. It's funny how much peoples behavior change once they use discord and actually talk with each other. I never heard anyone on discord say "Oh your f*cking noob, learn to play!". It mostly happens when people are typing behind their keyboards.

Most of the toxic environments in WoW are created by complete strangers playing together. You cant just blame the content for that. Do yourself a favor and remove yourself from these environments. Find a good guild and make some friends to play with and your own experience in the game will most likely improve.

I agree partly. It's MOSTLY our own fault. Though removing yourself from it is just to flee, and do not solve anything but your own needs.

You also have to remember that most of the time, there's one person in the group that comes out as toxic first. Thats 20% in a group of five and even lower in a group of more. Most of the time the other poeople are pretty nice but it doesn't show, only the person spewing toxicity is noticed and that suffecated the atmosphere completely. So what can we do? Remove the toxic person? Well yes, but as some content (looking at you, mythic+) are constructed, you won't be able to replace that person. The group either suck it up and move on or disband.

I'm the kind of person who enjoy puging, you meet so many different people and as long as you show a friendly, understanding and chill attitude the toxicity have a hard time getting through. It does, sometimes but most of the times a showing of chill attitude and understanding spark a more constructive discussion which ends up in the players doing better and over all having a better experience while learning a thing or two.

I think at least 60-70% of my pugs have been a great experience where everyone had a decent time.

How do we change this? It's by steping in, showing that niceness is the dominant way and that toxicity does not have a place in our groups. People tend to adjust to the most accepted behaviour so we make it not about toxicity but friendliness.

TL;DR: it starts with you. Be nice