How can the WoW community fix the obsession with meta?

Community General Discussion
1

Was reading through this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/1litmew/dps_output_on_retail_is_more_balanced_than_its/

Some comments stood out to me:

This right here is a concept I’ve tried to drill into all players. None of you are playing any of the specs optimally

And they never even hit the point, either in terms of content difficulty or their own abilities, where the spec is actually holding them back.

And these are all very true. The overwhelming majority of people in this game are both not doing the level of content where the meta even matters, and aren’t even playing any class optimally enough for class/spec choice to even matter.

So why is there such a crazy adherence to the meta in this game from so many people who play it, regardless of skill level or the content they’re doing?

Something I’ve always thought was kinda weird is that if you talk to other people in this game who are fine with just playing this game kinda casually and are fine with being kinda mediocre themselves and not doing the highest level of content. If you actually do said content with them, they will still be like “let’s get these specs for it, it’s the meta right now”. Or they will say “I have to play this spec, it’s the meta right now”. Huh???

They might even say “I know it doesn’t matter for the content I’m doing but I’ll still stick to the meta anyway”, and I’m assuming it’s mostly because they’re worried about struggling to get invited to groups or something, too. I completely get that, I feel it, too.

But like, where does this end? When do people finally be the change they want to see where if we’re doing content where none of this meta slave religion is even required or matters, when do we, as a whole community, just stop caring and adhering to it so strictly?

I really don’t think there’s anything Blizzard can do at this point outside of a few specific exceptions (like giving Brewmaster more love). This is clearly a community made problem, so how do we ever fix it as a community? I certainly think it’s always been a problem for sure, but I don’t think it’s ever been as bad in this game especially with how much more balanced the game is now than before.

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i dont think its possible unfortunately, you cant fix stupid.

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Because people are stupid, and just do whatever their favorite streamer or youtuber tells them to do.

I mean just look at these forums. Daily we have threads of people asking questions that would take 5 seconds to google, but instead they submit it and drool on their keyboards until someone here answers them.

Content creators need to stop putting out tier lists. It literally would start there.

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I’m really not sure which Youtuber/streamer is saying this, because all of the WoW content creators I watch who even make tier lists and stuff still say something like “at the end of the day this only applies if you’re doing the highest tier of content, so just play whatever you want and enjoy the most”

Like they all literally say this, I can’t even think of someone I’ve seen who is a streamer/Youtuber who doesn’t say this lol

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Just because people want to play a spec that gives them an advantage, that doesn’t mean they want to do all the work to maximize their DPS. If BM Hunter is the “meta”, the “best bang for your buck”, of course people will play it.

However turning your life’s work into the life of a wana-bee eSport champion is nowhere close to being the same thing.

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Someone in that thread brought up another good point that I think is also important to remember:

I don’t disagree necessarily, but I think the main complaints are about how miserable some specs are to play, especially optimally. Button bloat etc are more often complained about than actual output in my experience.

I remember looking at how so many people were playing ret paladin despite them not being necessarily “meta” just because the spec was so enjoyable to play and wasn’t overly complicated/bloated just to be able to do the content they wanted to do

I think that also plays a role, as well

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That doesn’t matter lol. People see “disc priest best” and that’s where they stop. It’s not the streamers’ fault, like I said the community is stupid.

But if the streamers and youtubers stopped doing it in the first place, it would fix the problem.

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What it boils down to is people will usually blame anything but themselves. The other part of it is maybe they value the achievement over sticking to a class.

America is actually pretty good if you compare it to something like China where it’s even more skewed towards the meta and you’ll get even fewer invites.

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Not playing at the highest level doesn’t mean people don’t want to do as well as they can for their personal skill level.

Someone peaking at KSH on a spec with good damage, defensives, and CC may not have hit KSH had they been playing a worse spec. Could they if they just played better? Sure, of course. But some people, myself included, just aren’t great at the game. A better spec will still get you further.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t adhere to the meta and think people should play what they want. But how good your spec or build is matters to anyone who is trying to do as well as they can.

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Well yeah, but I mean, if those Yotubers/streamers didn’t make those tier lists, someone else would just make them anyway

I think the demand being there for tier lists to be made and the strict adherence to those tier lists from the community plays a bigger role than the people who go “okay I will make a tier list for people asking me for one”

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I’m not sure what the complaint is here. Sure, out of millions of players you will find people who struggle with a difficult spec because it is meta but do poorly anyway. That doesn’t mean everyone is doing it.

I think many, if not most casual players just play what they want to play. If they hear that a spec is “meta” they give it a try. If it’s too hard lots of them they probably just go back to what they find is fun.

But in end, with millions of players you will find lots of people doing just about anything.

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That will :100: happen even if just for statistics/popularity.

Honestly don’t even need people to make it, they can just check WCL/Raider IO.

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It’d be in the theorycrafting discords still but those are far less popular.

All streamers have to do is say “they’re all equal, play what you think is cool” and boom, problem mostly solved. Then it’s just the super sweats in the discords arguing about the .1% difference between two talents or daggers like it used to be.

See this is where you’re wrong and contributing to the problem. “Better spec” isn’t a thing unless you’re literally pushing for title.

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Shut the servers down.

Problem solved.

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Do you think that has more to do with you having a better chance of getting invited to keys because of the class/spec you’re playing, or because the class/spec you chose is just better?

And by “better” does that mean like, relative ease of play to do good damage, or do you mean that it has better damage potential? Like would you rather play something like an Arcane mage because it does better damage on paper despite it being more complicated to play and you might struggle to put out the damage it says on paper? Or would you rather play something that puts out decent damage on paper, but you don’t struggle to put out that damage because it’s easier for you to put out that damage?

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So a spec with higher damage, better defensives, an immunity, no target cap, better utility, etc isn’t better than one without those things?

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Doubt it. They wouldn’t lie and people would be able to tell anyway when they play.

Thoooooooooo one point I’ll concede is ignorance can be bliss sometimes.
I did Brewmaster monk with my friends at the start of S1. I didn’t notice it was an issue until after they quit because suddenly PuGs weren’t being as favourable to me.

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You can put a 3600io player on the “worst” spec and they will dumpster a 2k player on the “best” spec.

As said above, people in lower levels aren’t playing the specs well enough for the mathematical output differences to come into play.

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The complaint is more about people struggling to get into groups because of the strict adherence to meta. And I think in return, this causes more people to play the “meta” because they don’t want to struggle to get into groups.

I don’t mind if people do choose to play the meta, that’s their own choice and they can play whatever they want. The problem comes when you’re doing content where it doesn’t even matter and people only invite what is “meta” and the cycle continues forever.

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This is completely irrelevant to what I’m saying.

The 2k player, assuming they put similar time into learning both, will do better with the “best” spec than the “worst” spec

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