You hear about the “sense of community” in this game a lot: a network of relationships, forged in teamwork and new friends, each one long-lasting, with every interaction remembered and significant.
But how many of you don’t give af about that stuff? And, why?
Are you a lone wolf? Is your guild the only group that matters, everyone else might as well be a bot? Or are you a self sufficient players that simply doesn’t need anyone else?
The beauty of WoW: both types of players can coexist because there is no right way to play the game 
On topic: There are toxic players everywhere no matter what, so the community at large I ignore many times (check Barrens and Trade chat lol), but I typically try to find a guild that doesn’t bring those players on regardless skill level, and that’s the community I care about since we’re in it together.
It took five minutes of walking through Orgrimmar for the first time back in 2005 to realize that “the community” at large is genuinely awful for the most part. That’s no less true fifteen years later.
My guild is the only community I care about.
Can you give some examples of the awful behavior the community exhibited?
If you don’t want community, the better option might just be retail since it’s incredibly easy to do most things solo and group and raid finder for harder stuff.
Downside I guess is the cookie cutter classes.
I’m paraphrasing but in those days, it was usually some variation of this:
Player 1: “Hey guys, I can’t find the Cleft of Shadows, can someone tell me where it is?”
Player 2: “Look it up, gay slur”
Player 3: “Shut up, nub”
Player 4: “Its up your mom’s butt”
I won’t go into one of my first couple RFC runs and the horrendous things said to the poor level 17 tank who was trying to learn how to tank and wasn’t doing it perfectly enough for someone.
Yes. But I want a community because it makes the game better.
I’ll be Player 5: Head into the Drag from the Valley of Strength then hang a left after the Tailor and Leatherworker.
“It’s in Silithus” 
If I didn’t care about community, I wouldn’t be playing Classic. Not because it isn’t good, but because I’ve already played it. The community is what makes replaying this old game worth doing.
And yeah, there are going to be some doofuses on every server. When I say community I’m talking about friends and guildmates, and rivals.
Are we talking about the community that screams to nerf anything they personally don’t like until Blizzard caves and nerfs it for no good reason?
It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the community that’s what’s cool. You can still log in and do your thing. However for those who do want to make friends along the way retail does very little to offer than so classic will be welcomed
Pethaps the issue was you? And not the community.
An MMO is a terrible single player game. Without the Massively Multiplayer aspect, I would have ditched the game within a month, rather than play it for four years.
True, but there is a difference.
Retail says you can be as powerful as that other guy by playing the way you want, usually by yourself with minimal effort involved.
Classic says you can play the way you want, but if you want to be powerful, here are your options. All of those options require playing with other people.
The game forces you to be social in order to be powerful.
No it’s the community. Socially-retarded teenagers and 20-somethings develop amazing muscles when they’re protected by the relative anonymity a keyboard affords them and prove time and time again that they will take any opportunity they can to be horrible to people.
Which is the way its supposed to be. And someone would inevitably get there but you had to sift through the chaff before you got to the actual grain.
This could literalyl be applied to any group of size once it gets large enough. The idea is not to focus on what the awful parts of the community are other than to root them out and not be part of what they are doing. ignore blacklist them personalyl or whatever.
In the end though the Guild Community does became the best part of the game as you have the most contact with them in the long run. Though i would not take the first guild to spam invite you this time around.
My interest in Classic is entirely about my friends who may come back to play. That’s the community I will be interested in. The Classic Community at large? If these forums are any indication, it’s atrocious.
I will say, General chat in Classic beta was fantastic, but it was mostly vanilla players who knew what they were in for. I expect that once it goes live, chat will be the madhouse it always is.
Eh, in some ways, maybe not in others. You can be a solo PvP god (depending on your definition of depending on others/being social - you can q solo for bgs for example, but then you must work as a team to win) , you can level solo, you can craft and do profs on your own, you can gank people on your own, there are a lot of things you can do on your own in WoW if that’s how you prefer to play.
If you want to hit endgame content really at all, then yes you must be social. But some people don’t even want to run the max dungeons or PvP, just enjoy the ride. That’s how I see it anyway.
I do ignore them. I haven’t had Trade or General chat active in the cities in over a decade now. It’s just not worth it. The guild community is where its at. And it takes great effort to find the right guild.