Toxicity in the community

Community General Discussion
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I’ve played WoW steadily since close Vanilla Beta. I’ve been invited to nearly every closed Beta/Alpha since the game was released. I’m one of the lucky ones who was sent the Orc statue by Blizzard for their anniversary several years ago.

Needless to say, I’ve been a die-hard WoW fanatic since 2004.

I’ve played through all the highs, all the lows, and through all the screams by internet trolls saying " THE GAME IS DEAD ". Hell, I made it through WoD without so much as a blurp in my steady play.

But now…

Now is so hard to log in. I’m honestly starting to feel like all the overly negative internet trolls and really want to scream " THE GAME IS DEAD ". Ugh.

In the last couple of months, I’ve been trying several other games out there. I’ve maxed myself out in Division 2, been playing some Divinity: Original Sin 2, good bit of FFXIV, and other single player games here-and-there. Having played a good bit of FFXIV I learned a really valuable lesson regarding WoW. It’s just so toxic compared to other games out there. FFXIV, for example, has an incredibly helpful, polite, and kind community where everyone understands people are new at times. They know people make mistakes. They know people just aren’t perfect. Mistakes are made, everyone moves on without drama or emotional outbursts, and life is good.

Then I logged back into WoW to heal an LFR. Yeah yeah, I know what you’re going to say, LFR is probably the most toxic of toxic places in WoW and should be flogged for it’s crumminess, but ya know what, other games have “LFRs” too. And they just aren’t as toxic or negative. While in the LFR, someone made a mistake, not sure who or what mistake was made, but a mistake was made and a couple people died. A good portion of the people in the group immediately became irate and starting berating this person endlessly, not bothering to “Vote to kick”, they simply wanted to vent their frustrations in the most toxic and overly negative and harmful way possible. They WANTED to “hurt” this person on a very personal level. When I brought up everyone’s toxicity in chat, I was essentially berated myself.

This very well could be an extreme example, but it’s the one I’m stuck with.

I’m a big boy. I’m 46, retired military, and spent most my life in emotionally charged and “tough” situations while serving. Now I work with legal mediation services as a volunteer, and have extensive training (as part of my Master’s Degree) with online bullying. I’m used to it. I can take it, I can dish it, but not everyone is like me. This behavior can really have a lasting effect on people. And the ambiguity of being behind a computer monitor allows this type of bullying to occur with an unsettling frequency, without consequence to their actions.

After this happened, I went back to some other game communities and posted similar stories, asked in-game regarding this situation, just to see how others would react, and for the most part, the answer I got, resoundingly, was “that’s why we don’t play WoW”. WoW as a game might be going through some tough times with its content droughts, it’s lack of interesting game mechanics, or whatever else you can pin on the development team behind the game. But time and time again, it always comes back to the general level of toxicity that exists within the WoW community as being the key factor that drives people away from the game. Sure, many of you will/could give me numerous examples of personal triumph over the internet trolls of the world, or how that’s not at all what drove you away from the game, but the fact remains that MANY people ARE being driven away from WoW due to the community negativity and toxicity.

NOTHING will kill WoW more than a toxic community. Not bad mechanics, lack of content, or crappy raids. People will still show up for those. There are die hard’s out there, like me, who will always try to “make it work”. But when it comes to toxicity and flagrant negativity, nothing more could be the signal of the downfall than the community turning on each other. Eventually WoW will be good again (hopefully!). But without players coming in, trying to pick the game up, learn it for the first time, or even trying to see what all the the hype’s about, WoW will never succeed.

This is a systematic issue with more than just a select few within the community. For the love of the game, be kind. Be patient. Be forgiving. Teach, foster, and mentor others around you. It’s easier to achieve success through positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement. If we want a robust community, we have to do OUR part to encourage others to come here. Blizzard does their part, and we do our part.

TL;DR - Stop being a douche (if you are), or stop others from being douches.

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Think the best most people can do is just refuse to play with such people. As you’ve so wisely pointed out, this is the internet, and as such, the only behavior we can control is our own.

I’ve bailed on raid groups (and guilds) mid-raid due to crappy behavior toward puggers, but nothing I can do directly will stop the people who enjoy acting in such a manner from doing so.

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This is something I miss about Vanilla. There was FAR more constructive feedback and suggestions and not so much of the garbage we have today.

You can blame the Devs for how the game has changed but it’s also the players who’s attitudes get worse each generation.

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There has always been “toxic” (/eyeroll) players in every game, and there always will be. This isn’t new, nor is it any worse than before. You cannot fix it, nor should it be.

Fixed.

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A lot of the wow community left when the game became more about a few endgame content. Only diehard fans and elitist are pretty much left. The elitist just want to finish this repetitive and tedious content grind as fast as possible, hence the toxicity.

I’m not defending it, just explaining the reason and I don’t see an answer to it.

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Yes for a while I rage quit over this fact. Bringing it to light means good on you for doing so. Dropping a like.

The other thing to note, is that Alliance is 3x more toxic than Horde. They will abandon your raids/mythic+, and tend not to handle failure well. So they choose to go the casual route and have fun the wrong way.

Alliance will also do stupid things like take a 340 ilvl tank into a mythic +.

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I think being driven away from a game for it being toxic is idiotic, you’re obviously looking in the wrong places. Of course there’s going to be a toxic community in any game and just because you had the misfortune of running into some of those types of people doesn’t mean the entire game is toxic.
Although I can see there’s a fine line between being toxic and being an elitist. My schedule is flexible but I average 60+ hrs a week with my job minimum, yet I still clear mythic content and do everything I feel is entertaining in the game today.
My point being is there are people that only allot themselves an hr a day or even a few hrs a week to play and they want to get things done and complain when people are incompetent and prevent them from doing so.
I’m not saying one specific persons time is more important than another, but you should be considerate of others even if you play 24 hrs a day or an hr a day.

I also understand that there are a lot of people that feel that this is a game and you shouldn’t be so serious about it, that’s your prerogative, just because you feel like they shouldn’t care doesn’t mean you should have the right to waste their time either. Just kind of explaining the elitism/toxicity that may happen in group content.

As far as it affecting people, who cares, why would you care about what someone said on a video game. They have ignore/report features for a reason, if you’re too soft that you can’t deal with confrontation then just delete or bring up your combat tab or even better create a tab and adjust it only for those you want to listen to.

This is sort of a decent example in my opinion, people consistently complain about sale runs and bots etc. in trade chat, well /leave 2, ignore them, report them. There are many other options as well like addons that block spam. It’s not going to change where ever you go there will always be some sort of toxicity out there. If you’re incapable of doing something about it so it doesn’t affect you then my last recommendation would be to play something else that’s single player.
I for one used to suffer from stress and it would make me sick a lot, eventually I just stopped giving a crap and it went away, do the same about those people being toxic.

There are guilds/groups out there that are laid back/chill and are family oriented non toxic, you just have to look for them.

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It’s brutal. Years ago when I was learning tanking It was horrible.

DPS are sometimes still nasty but the difference is I am a legend tank now. :smiley:

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And I present exhibit A of what the OP was talking about.

On the whole the community was extremely different to what it is now, and most games had much less bad behaviour than they do these days. It did not always exist, stop trying to make excuses for your poor attitude, and trying to reassure yourself we are all like you.

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I’d agree more with Wuzeh than I do you, just because you personally didn’t experience it is what it sounds like doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I do agree the community was different and it might not have happened as much as it does now but it did happen.

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This is less a consequence of people changing so much as it is a consequence of usage of the internet as a whole becoming more mainstream and publicly acceptable, which resulted in the same Chads and Karens that caused problems for nerdy introverts in real life joining in and causing problems online as well.

Or at least, that’s my theory. People didn’t spontaneously become crappy. They were always crappy, and just joined the space that previously carried with it a stigma that they avoided.

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I take issue with much of the nonsense the OP spewed onto this forum, but this especially:

WoW has succeeded. If they shut down the servers tomorrow, WoW would have been a success. It had a highly profitable run, had a dull but profitable film, and had millions of fans as well as name recognition almost everywhere.

It is on the decline and will never reach the heights it once did, no matter what. The logic the OP uses is crazy.

Thats like going to Mohammed Ali when he was old and in a wheelchair and telling him he will never be a success because he was toxic… WoW and Ali had their success. It has come and gone, and all things decline. Time eventually erodes everything.

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I never said it didn’t happen now and then, but compared to today’s spoiled brats, it was vastly different.

And prior to WoW it was even rarer still. You know, when being a newbie was an affectionate term, and an elite simply meant someone was extremely good.

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I don’t know I started playing in wrath and although I really liked this game and have petty thick skin I couldn’t believe how toxic some of the players were. I’m pretty casual and just log on to mess around and do some bgs but I rarely see the toxicity in bgs that I used to.

On my first account I knew nothing about this game when I started and was running around Ashenvale in greys and I couldn’t believe the psst I was getting calling me every insult possible lol. This game has always been toxic to a point.

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what is a chad and karen?

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This is what I predict responders here to say (this is not my opinion but have used these forums enough)…

  • If you don’t like it, stick to FFXIV. GTFO.
  • This is rooted in confirmation bias, wherein you’re only remembering the most negative players (who tend to be the loudest) and not the ‘good’ folks who play this game.
  • As you said, it’s LFR. It is what it is (albeit a fair representation of the WoW community).
  • Don’t be so sensitive. You proclaim to have training in bullying.
  • Posting here is not going to reduce the community’s toxicity.
  • I actually enjoy this expansion.
  • I reached item level 400 without doing a single dungeon nor raid. I’m not complaining.

Now that I’ve said all of that, I agree with you completely. It’s hard to have a different perception of the community as being toxic after playing for any amount of time right now. I feel many players play in a bubble, namely the guild they happen to be in that isn’t toxic. This causes many players to not realize the issues socially because they’re not in trade chat, often are not PUG’ing, and so on.

At any rate, what do you think would help to solve this problem? Open question.

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I agree this is what killed the majority of wow though. I understand casual players run this game but it’s gone a bit overboard. You can literally skip lfr/norm/heroic raid content through world quests/warfronts. Then for those people that only like those two things which apparently is a lot, them in turn skipping said content lose all of their gear progression and aren’t able to improve on their character doing the same old stuff other than hoping for a titanforge, but this could also be said of mythic raiders.

Like in vanilla gear sometimes would take months and months to get an upgrade worthwhile. Bfa they hand it out freely for little to no effort and it’s gone even further that they need to pull back. Gear barely means anything anymore and it’s literally the only reward worth acquiring in raids at least for me other than mounts.

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It’s probably a good thing that you don’t know.

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Its the second time i hear someone say Karen this week, i just hadnt heard it before

is it like a “bye felicia” type thing

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Memes of how people act, I rarely ever watch chad youtube vids. I’m not sure of their exact definition but a karen is basically a name people identify someone in a story that is stuck up/ignorant usually in a shopping setting. They don’t listen to anyone and they request a manager almost immediately, drama queens type of people.