I have played wow since Vanilla. Wait! Don’t go. I know a lot of dumb posts start out that way, and I hope this isn’t one of them, but after reading, you can decide for yourself. Anyway, I took a break once or twice but always came back because I love the game (some xpacs more than others). My primary interests are raiding and running mythic plus dungeons. Toxicity has always been a problem to one degree or another in this game (as it is in pretty much any mmo) and has been discussed ad nauseum already, but after having some truly disheartening experiences in mythic plus during Shadowlands (an xpac which I rank among the best despite the many, many glitches and lack of polish), I felt the need to chime in here about what I see as a fundamental mistake that Blizz made with respect to mythic plusses - the lack of loot.
My problem with the downgrade in loot from mythic plusses isn’t what you probably think it is - it isn’t what most people’s problem with it is (which is that… well, we get less loot). I can understand why blizz made the decision to have raids and mythic plusses drop less loot than they did in BfA, and I don’t have a beef with it in principle, although I do feel they came down on it far too hard between having dungeons/raids drop far fewer items and getting rid of bonus rolls. My problem with it, however, has less to do with the quantity of loot directly and way more to do with the indirect consequences - namely, toxicity in the community.
The dearth of loot in mythic plusses has made many people who participate in them far, far more toxic than I’ve seen before. Not only are people way more likely to drop group if they think the dungeon won’t be timed, they are also way more likely to act like complete jerks if they think a mistake has been made. I’ve been on the business end of this, both when I made mistakes and when people wrongly believed I made mistakes, and I’ve seen people treat others really poorly for the same reasons.
I’ve loved the mythic plus system ever since it was first introduced. I really enjoy the new Shadowlands dungeons themselves and was looking forward to running tons of keys during this xpac, but I am now considering hanging up my mythic plus hat altogether because I just don’t enjoy playing with a**holes. I’ve seen it in pugs, and I’ve seen it in tight-nit communities with people who six months ago would not have behaved this way - even just reading people in various communities in-game rage and complain about whatever group they just ran with because they didn’t time it or whatever - groups that I wasn’t even a part of.
I’m just tired of it. I hope Blizz dials back their loot-limiting decision, not simply so we get more loot, but after looking at how it’s affected the interactions of the player base. You guys are welcome to chime in/disagree/whatever here. I may or may not even check back with this thread. I mostly just wanted to post it to write about my experience but have no desire to get into an argument with anyone who disagrees.
