I used to play WC3 back in the day on my old Windows Vista PC. Every summer I’d come back for a few matches. I’ve also been big into StarCraft and Age of Empires over the years. Recently, I decided to give Reforged another try after refunding it at launch because of all the issues.
After just a few days back, I have to say it: the level of toxicity here is brutal especially toward new or less skilled players. And that’s a serious problem.
This isn’t a game with millions of active players anymore. Every single person who tries to pick it up matters. When they get driven out by toxic behavior. That shrinkage leads directly to the things everyone complains about:
Fewer players → longer queues, worse matchmaking.
Less engagement → fewer tournaments, less community content.
Less revenue → fewer patches, less support, no improvements.
It’s a slow death spiral, and toxicity is the push that starts it rolling.
We all love this game, or we wouldn’t still be here. If you genuinely want WC3 to survive and thrive, stop chasing away the people who might actually help keep it alive. A little patience and respect go a long way. Don’t be the reason someone uninstalls for good.
I can assure you there are nice people in this community. There are some Discord servers where you can find help, replay reviews, custom leagues, and much more. I am willing to help new players and I helped already few of them. If you need help let me know or discord servers links.
Well said. Unfortunately this is a common theme in older games. The old, dedicated guard are happy to be unashamedly toxic to new players. I cant speak to the exact psychological mechanisms behind this, but in part, it is due to the fact that this hyper vigilant player base have played this game for 20+ years with the same other dedicated people. They know that the game can exists with a small, hyper dedicated player base, and they think newer player base wont be sticking around for long anyways so why bother. This problem is even more concentrated if you try to play custom games. You will be called every name under the sun if you reveal in the lobby that you dont actually know the custom map, and then you will be kicked out and put on a watch list.
Unfortunately this elitism and toxicity eventually spills out on the forums. I have myself been a victim to this. If you try to invite discussion on balance issues, you will simply be insulted on the premise that you are a new player, dont know what you are talking about, and dismissed without the arguments put forth never actually having been contended with. However, there are rules on this forum so you cant do strict insults, instead you have to double speak, and hide your insults using snark and plausible deniability. Sometimes they dont even bother doing this and just straight up insult you because they have large post counts or are known and know the moderators wont touch them. If you give as good as you got or call out the double standard your posts will simply be removed while the perpetrators continue their toxicity.
Problem is new players now play difficulty “Story mode” which was added in Reforged and then after go play Versus. It would be best if “Story mode” difficulty was deleted from campaign. You should not play versus if you can’t even beat the first campaign map on “Normal” difficulty.
See Dani, that itself also becomes a roadblock that disincentivizes someone trying out versus. Having as low a barrier for entry to the multiplayer as possible is critical to attracting new players in a game so community-oriented as WC3.
Well, that and the community actually being welcoming to newbies. Which it isn’t for a large part, as mentioned. The problem isn’t that the new players don’t play well. The problem is that they don’t feel welcome. They get treated like invaders.
the only way to really fail the first mission is to not be able to figure out how to move your units. you can beat it easily just attack moving across the map.
Unfortunately Dani you have the wrong of it. While I’d technically agree people shouildn’t try to do versus before getting a good grasp of the basics, if this were any other game you wouldn’t be seeing 5k and 2k MMR players in the same game. the game routinely pits wide ranges of skill levels against each other and, in general terms, people tend to have a low tolerance for anyone less skilled than themselves. Even though when you sign up to queue you do so with the understanding that it can happen.
There’s nothing wrong with bad players trying to learn by the seat of their pants in versus games. If the matchmaking worked properly they’d simply lose MMR til they see other players like them and then they’d have good games.
But if more people actually reached out to obviously weak / new players instead of berating them the community would actually grow and those players would improve.
New players are new players, they don’t “love” “ruining” anything.
You need to accept that they don’t know any better and Deal With It™. When you harass and berate them you are helping to kill the game.
I do get where you’re coming from, but the real problem is that high skill players and low skill ones are being matched together in the first place.
But… an important step on the road to fixing that is a larger playerbase. Which we can’t get if someone starts playing and the first multiplayer game they get into someone’s spamming N words and trash and obscenities.
In games like Dota 2, when you’re a complete beginner, you need to finish the tutorial and play five co-op matches against bots. On top of that, you can’t pick from all the heroes—you’re limited to simpler ones—before you can play PvP. By contrast, beginners in Warcraft III don’t have any equivalent training. So in that case, the negative consequences (like being flamed by teammates) are entirely their own responsibility.
Is this for entering ranked mode? Because as has been discussed numerous times on this forum, 4v4 is a casual gamemode with a non-function matchmaking system. Like playing a battlefield or call of duty game – games that match veterans with total noobs.
This is peaky comedy. Worst part is that i know you are being serious. God, how i want to know your circumstances.
In Dota 2, you actually have a separate queue for new players where, indeed, there’s less heroes to choose from. But playing against bots is not strictly required. Just playing a few matches in the new player queue.
And it’s also a bit of a misnomer - you’re able to queue in that mode whenever you want even if you’re a veteran, though I suppose standard MMR systems still apply.
As for being flamed by teammates, that also exists in Dota 2 in every single mode barring playing against bots. That is not the fault of the new players, that’s just the community being, as described here, really nasty. To suggest that the new players are somehow responsible is just victim blaming.
I’m not saying this is a bad idea (and WC3 should have matchmaking co-op mode) . But this is only part of the problem. The main problem in WC3 is the matchmaking algorithm is currently happy to put highly experienced players together with newbs on the same team which is basically guaranteed to cause friction.
That being said, the community could be a part of the solution rather than part of the problem by being more tolerant of inferior players and encouraging them to learn and improve rather than spew obscenities at them which will just make them give up and quit instead.
Of course the main problem with a co-op mode in this game is the AI is not very sophisticated and the “insane” AI basically just gives the AI near unlimited resources, rather than making it tactically superior. SC2’s AI was considerably better.
Just had someone bail at the start of the game because they didn’t like my starting build order. Like seriously, there are trash players on both teams, you don’t know what’s going to happen.
This community is disgusting. Sorry for inconveniencing you with my lack of skill I guess?
But again, you can’t be sure that 2k MMR guy on the other team isn’t just as bad or worse. Play the damn game out.
Actually, Warcraft’s AI is not bad. If you don’t exploit its weaknesses (like constantly using units to attack buildings under construction), being able to beat Hard AI should mean you can win against about half the players in 4v4.
Yes, but without a resource advantage, it’s very difficult to make a powerful AI, because it’s hard to set a unified logic to control its units. I’ve played against a lot of AMAI, and in normal mode they’re actually not much different from the standard AI. The main difference is that in hard mode they use up their resources efficiently and produce a lot of units, and they’ll also train so-called counter units based on armor matchups. But in actual games, the results are pretty mediocre.
For me learning the game was the opposite, I struggled with beating ai before having access to internet and playing versus 1x1. After 2 days of online games I had learned to do surrounds & kite and focus. Before that I guess I just a-moved, casted spells etc.
So I think grubby’s advice to learn through playing against AI is very wrong; you’ll gain knowledge of the units’ abilities, but no useful micro or strategy.
The actual issue here is the mmr matchmaking. The old battle net that used levels rather than elo did a better job regarding new players.