We need to make this game more community focused to going forward

Community General Discussion
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The community in game has changed dramatically, and not in a good way

I remember when I first started playing BC, it was easy to find a guild, and more so, a group of friends to play the game with. Everyone was social, there was no group finder, and people had to talk to each other quite actively. Now, it is a completely different experience playing this game.

Most guilds are completely dead, any large guild you see in the guild finder with almost a thousand people has no one online, no one playing anymore, and they are usually spam invite guilds with no people that actually talk or form a cohesive bond with one another.

Lots of players have utilized the option to disable chat entirely, making it like fallout 76, or destiny where there is no text chat at all. This is great for avoiding toxic players, but it also means that they cannot have positive experiences with other players either. Can’t tell you how many players I have waived to, or said something friendly or nice to, only to be completely ignored because a lot of people don’t even use chat anymore… It’s really sad. Why is this option even in the game to begin with? You’re playing a massive online role-playing game, but you can entirely disable chat and mute it so that it doesn’t exist anymore.

The toxic players have made the few people who do interact with others afraid to anymore. I’m talking about the looking for group chat channel trolls and spammers who like to talk about politics and spew racism, things like that. Those people have made it so that anyone who actually still does talk, is very wary or cautious about saying anything to anyone.

Layering has made it so you will very rarely see other players except in large events like time rift or super bloom, where no one will be talking anyway because they will be focusing on the event.

a lot of players don’t actually actively play the game anymore. They are just raid logging. Login to the game, complete a couple weeklies, do their raids, that’s it, disappear until the next big patch comes

Finally, and probably the most relevant issue, People simply don’t have time for the game anymore, so they tried to minimize their time, and play other games that are more social. For example, I play pal world now with a handful of friends. None of my friends play World of Warcraft, so I’m far less inclined to spend time playing This game. I’ve been trying to play less addictive games and ones where my friends are playing because I like the social aspect…

Conclusion/TL;DR

  • guilds mostly dead with few small guilds remaining. Big guilds that spam invite have no chat

  • New chat options to completely filter out all chat Make the game even quieter

  • layering makes it so you don’t see any other players 90% of the time except during events

  • most players raid log and barely play the game outside of this, making it even more empty

  • lots of previous players playing other games with friends, example: Palworld, co-op games like valhaim, Minecraft, other survival games

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2

You answered your own question …

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I dunno about this.
I started now 2.5 years ago (I think Sept or October 2021) and it’s just been guild to guild and I’ve been in 4 active guilds with active discord.

There is more than just the ‘big revolving invite door ones’ and ‘tiny dead ones’. The one my main is in - Shadow Vanguard talks in chat and has people regularly talking and doing things from events to dungeons, I’m tanking on my BDK for normal raid this Wednesday for the newbies.

Not only this I actually had to choose between my friends and this - there was another guild who does really high end content but doesn’t really have low lvl support. I know for certain I also had other options but I limited myself.

When I remade Elk (my forum character) as a Death Knight I got invited to Paramount a few days ago. I’m already getting to know a few core guildies in the discord. It seems to have a high rate of turnover compared to other guilds I’m in but there is a lot of social engagement which seems to be conducive to a good time.

Now I think there is something to be said about being ‘over a game’.
I have friends irl who played WoW for 10+ years and who would only play with me, their energy for trying to bond with a guild is over for a game with WoW and they are happy living with WoTLK, classic, BC, MoP etc memories instead.

Likewise I feel the same about a game called Grand Fantasia which I played for 13 years - I have a lot of memories but I’m well and truely over the game. There are a ton of new guilds, I’m a famous name having been a game sage and occasionally get message from old friend to play it again. However the game is ‘dead’ to me even if there might be new guilds sprouting up.

As you play a game more - the energy you want to invest in rebuilding the memories of your greatest highs fade further and further till you get over the game.

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Lol, so instead of player moderation or some actual functioning system to remove toxic players for the game, let’s add a system to let people completely ignore 100% of people even the positive ones!

Think I’m getting there, to be honest. It’s exhausting hoping they change things for the better, and you hear about layoffs, ignored feedback, refusal to improve guildfinder… It’s a lot of things that are disappointing to me.

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5

My guild seems fine.

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Going tbh it’s a miracle RP servers still even exist at this point Blizzard don’t care about WoW being an MMORPG all they care about is trying to turn all their games into esports trash.

In short if you want socialisation playin the wrong game.

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I think it can be tough - a part of me wishes that the old, dead 2+ years with no activity guilds would automatically be deleted. Guild Finder can be improved and should suggest guilds, by guild activity.

Other side is that these might have a ton of guild gold, items and memories. Maybe it’s only on break till S4 or TWW.

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Yeah, but why should they be listed if they aren’t even active? It makes no sense. If you’re not an active guild but a skeleton from 5+ years ago, should NOT be listed in the guild finder.

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It’s tough to go backward.

The things that made the game more community-centric and got people to meet each other naturally by playing the game are also the things that made the game inaccessible and tedious.

They were things that were accepted by gamers in 2004 as just part of how MMORPGs worked, but are no longer accepted. And that’s not just a WoW thing – players in general have changed.

Which is why even in Classic, where a lot of those things are back, the community is just as much of a toxic mess as it is in Retail, if not even worse. It’s the same players. They haven’t reverted to how they were 20 years ago even if the game has.

Anyway…

This is because accessing other players to pug content is easily accessible via the Premade Group finder, making Guilds a purely social construct that is unnecessary to actually play the game. Changing this means removing accessibility to content.

There might be new options, I don’t know, but you could always go into settings and leave chat channels, so this isn’t really new. Most people are not doing this. At worst, you have a lot of people who leave Trade Chat, and that’s about it.

Somewhat true, but it’s also just that the game is so endgame-centric that a huge percentage of players don’t have much reason to do anything other than sit in cities queueing up for whatever content it is they do, then they beeline directly to the instance portal (or accept the queue if LFD/LFR/PvP). People who need the catchup show up for the Blooms and such so there are actually people there.

Given how Raid Participation is dead in the water compared to what it was anytime prior to BfA, I’m gonna say this is mostly false. The game is much less Raid or Die than it was before. I’m not gonna say people don’t do their 8 M+ and then disappear too, but it’s more spread out throughout the week for most people, rather than logging in for 1 or 2 days then waiting until reset.

This is just a thing that people do regardless of what is happening with WoW.

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How can you “Make” a community focus on anything ,when the social circles created in game for years remain the same. Let’s face it,you can’t get one circle to agree with another to be united in anything except for a disagreement. You wish to “make” an individual which comes to the game be forced to play with said groups well,that wouldn’t turn out successful.

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I get spammed more by Blizzard’s System Messages than I do other players. More and more those messages aren’t properly anchored to the filter settings so they can’t be filtered out.

Layering/sharding is broken as hell currently and only getting worse.

Guild things are hit and miss because Blizzard has allowed the entire system to rot and fester. Will have to wait and see what their Guild Updates on the roadmap have in store for us, although I have zero expectations.

WoW is an aging game with an aging playerbase. I’ve been playing games with my group of friends since before it existed. We’ve continued to play other games even through our time playing WoW. That’s just how things go.

The community of long ago won’t be returning, that ship has sailed. You have to find your own community now.

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