The Fel/Tram flamewars of Ultima Online.
No contest.
TBH, I think part of the problem might very well be that for many people, the perception of âwasting peopleâs timeâ itself changed.
When the game was new we actually had the necessary patience for each other to onboard new players. We better tolerated even things like having to afk in the middle of a dungeon (I still remember one very standout case in TBC where we took a break because the tank needed to AFK during Shadow Labyrinth for very personal reasons which I shall not repeat here). If somebody had to leave we didnât demonize them over it.
In short, we were much more willing to be laid back about how long things took, at least as long as it wasnât deliberately destructive behavior. We were much more human.
Nowadays? If you arenât virtually clinically efficient (pretty much treating all group content with the mindset that it is work rather than entertainment), omg. Suddenly youâre wasting, disrespecting peopleâs time. Being too new, or not having a business transactional mindset is almost lumped into the same category as griefing or inting.
Itâs almost like we stopped playing a game and started thinking in terms of checking off a to do list.
The heck happened to us? If we really donât enjoy the tasks, why are we even still doing them, and making the folks for whom things are still shinier and newer feel like they are the problem? Especially when we see how the status quo also naturally plays out: we shoo away the new blood because weâre so fixated on saving time, not having our time wasted, etc. and what happens eventually? A whole lotta grumbling about how the game is dead, nobody plays anymore, etc. etc.
To me, thatâs just a surprised Pikachu face moment: what did you even think was going to happen when you played hardball with the newbies and returners?
To the mainstream, itâs just another troll trying to stir up trouble.
Add to that the fact that itâs much harder to successfully spin up an alternative community for anything on the platforms of today than it was in the olden IRC days and you amplify the problem.
If only we actually had thriving communities, large enough to source PUGs (part of the issue here is that for many people, PUGs are the best practical option, and a community that hopes to source PUGs reliably in a game like this more or less has to be public, with all the duties attendant thereon, to hope to get enough members) but with the old, laid-back approach to time. But far as Iâve ever seen, such communities pretty much never succeed in the Discord era - either they never get off the ground or they collapse in drama during the growing pains phase. And the primary communitiesâ moderators are very invested in ensuring that the âhardcore time efficiencyâ mindset continues to shoulder out anything else, labeling anyone who doesnât fall in line as a troll.
FWIW, to me, âtrollsâ are properly those who come to the community with an actively antisocial intention: political agitators, people who want to post TOS-violating content to communities in an attempt to have them shut down by the platform, that kinda thing. Someone who disagrees with you and wonât recant their opinion? Unless you can demonstrate that their opinion is actually wrong, and not merely a different mindset, itâs a disservice to everyone to treat these as trolls. Personal attacks are kind of a gray area here: arguments tend to devolve into them a lot, and unfortunately moderators in many communities at that point often like to shut down the discussion altogether rather than specifically deal with the folks who are getting out of hand. I used to come a cropper to that one a lot. Wouldnât personally ad hominem people, but would still have something to say about the actual topic. But nope. Moderator would put a big fat TOPIC OVER sign up and silence that too âŚ
In other words, maybe if we had less overmoderation again so people didnât feel like dissenting opinion was so heavily suppressed? But apparently, modern platforms wonât have that, either âŚ
I will counter that when the game was new, it was also trivial.
Nowadays, there are still trivial pieces of content where ânew playersâ are still welcomed. But you are specifically referencing the harder content.
If you want to have an apples to apples comparison, then youâd compare running a normal/heroic dungeon to your shadow labyrinth example. And people are much more lenient and patient there.
Once again. This is only relevant in certain areas of content that did not exist in your previous examples. Where content similar to your previous examples still exist today.
You are making the incorrect assumption that people do not enjoy the tasks.
I greatly enjoy M+. I enjoy pushing challenging content and attempting to complete things that are harder and harder. This means I look for like minded people interested in doing the same things. What you are suggesting is the opposite. That people with different goals should be somehow coerced into playing with each other.
Yet we still have multiple avenues for newbies, returners, whatever to learn the content. We have N/H dungeons. We have m0. We have communities. We have guilds.
All of these allow a person to learn content, typically with people that have the same mindset and goals.
Your issue seems to be that you cant force strangers to do it. That you want to remove the social aspect from people that need/want help.
But we do. And this is my largest issue with people talking about communities.
People dont want to participate in communities. People dont want to do any work to locate such. They want the social aspect given to them in a nice and neat box, with no effort on their end.
Yet your suggestions are completely anti social.
You know what would happen if people were âforcedâ to group with whoever applied to their groups in group finder?
Theyâd stop using group finder. There would be less social interaction within WoW.
who is we?
iirc even when i was a legit child people were rough on new players. and we were only running DM/ RFC / WC etc
but then again iâd rather not be told that iâm doing great if iâm a detriment to the group.
Yeah, part of this does seem to have been dependent on the server you were on.
When I first joined, in TBC, I first played on Turalyon and it was almost impossible to find a dungeon group at all pre 70. Took me weeks just to cobble together a party for Scholomance for my warlockâs mount quest. At 70? I think I found maybe one dungeon group for a normal, and IIRC it was on Easter Sunday, when an exceptional number of people are home from work. Heroics? Not a chance, unless you were an active raider with T5+ gear. I could get nowhere on that server for the rest of expansion, it was clear, so I moved (when I came back for Wrath, the server was much, much more laid back. I donât even remember any issues getting into groups then until ICC and gearscore garbage, in 3.0 it was mostly just about how quick you were on the button to PST when someone asked for people).
On Quelâdorei? It was much easier to get into heroics. Occasionally groups sucked and you didnât complete, but you still usually at least got something out of it. As I previously noted, better to attempt and get something, right? There also indeed was a lot more patience with things. Thatâs where that Shadow Labyrinth run took place, for instance.
Another QâD hijinks tale? ⌠I still remember the time I joined a group for Auchenai Crypts heroic in progress. First time in there (which was common for heroic versions of TBC leveling dungeons, because who ever really got much chance to do the dungeons leveling up?). Went in and started making my way to the party when I saw this glowing red ball all of a sudden and, as Iâm trying to register what it is, it turns out to be an uncleared mob. With a knockback attack. Off the side of the bridge I gooooooo ⌠and I made a good laugh of it and walked back again, this time making a point to be careful. I expect now-a-days though I would have been greeted with a loading screen and a stern âyou have been removed from the groupâ with some homilies about not wasting peopleâs time ⌠See what I mean here?
I also played Guild Wars 1 around the same time, and I remember PUGs there being just as laid back about oopsies - even though Factions especially was virtually a proto M+ with rewards level for almost all of the Missions being based on completion time. Once I even got to go along for PvE Tombs (which was almost completely uniform about meta builds) with an offbeat build, and everything actually went quite nicely. The only time you really saw pickiness was with Heroesâ Ascent PvP (which was indeed almost impossible to get into if you hadnât been playing since launch to accumulate Fame points âŚ).
It has seemed to me that in those halcyon days, then, the norm was like how GW1 and the Quelâdorei players handled things. As for âpeople that werenât greatâ I mostly remember damage meters primarily being used by people who were #1 that run or boss to boast about how great they were, not so much concern about the rest.
And now, you can hardly find that spirit anymore outside of pretty much rigid scheduled runs within a guild, assuming you have got a schedule that lets you do that on a regular enough basis to be worth paying a subscription for. What used to seem a small minority of hardcore players has basically succeeded in painting the entire more casual community as a nuisance, an interference, a drain on their precious time. Damage meters now more routinely get used to berate or justify kicks than to playfully brag.
And with the MMO industryâs steady focus on removing grouping barriers between servers, the HC players insist that their way must be the default way for all pick up grouping. Everyone else should go hide their time-wasting butts within a guild. Or a community thatâs dedicated to old school laid back gaming but as I said ⌠for MMOs, those are like trying to find unicorns nowadays. They are almost never publicized, and I am not even sure it is practical to publicize them (which is a big problem, because like I said: given the number of people MMO groups need, if you want to actually have a large enough pool to draw PUGs from on an unscheduled basis, you gonna need to publicize) due to problems such as trolling (plus the fact that even if you do succeed, I usually saw that as soon as a few higher-performing people in the community realize theyâve got the stones to go hardcore, they tend to start to try and dominate things, and the place either breaks up in acrimony or becomes yet another samey MMO community like what you had attempted to get away from).
Is this it then? Fun has become limited to closed groups of people on almost exclusively a strictly pre-scheduled basis? Youâre not allowed to have fun (as in, the focus of the run is enjoyment rather than employment) on a pick-up basis anymore? The experiences like I had on Quelâdorei are gone forever, and either I must aspire to being a hardcore efficiency obsessor or hide my scrubby shame?
Meanwhile I donât even see how the âjob-likeâ PUGs are even particularly enjoyable, for that matter - and it seems like this is concurred by much of the community given how ubiquitous complaints about âchoresâ are.
Even the N/H dungeons that Akston mentions are affected. How many complaint threads do we have here about the default for basically everyone but the tank being to be dragged behind the bus at Mach 5 with minimal opportunity to weigh in, and any disagreement with Almighty Tank tends to mean a vote kick and deserter debuff for your trouble? Eventually, that stops being a thing, but that usually also comes with N/H dungeons no longer popping (thank goodness in Legion I leveled my Warlock before my DK: I hate to even think what 108.5-110 wouldâve been like the other way around, queue pops by that point in the xpac were painful even as tank).
That is hardly a satisfactory outcome, and I canât see a reason why we shouldnât consider some backpedaling.
But the community usually sees it as too heated, indeed.
Iâve just been playing the game for 15 years and donât overthink normal and heroic/ leveling dungeons.
brain is off. move forward. not much more to it.
you canât like force players to regress
Oh, I jumped right into the fray of the WoD Flying Fiasco. The announcement was made at, like, 4:30 pm on a Friday afternoon (of a 3-day weekend)⌠through a third party.
I was busy on the forums that weekend. 
I also made a few new BattleTag buddies from that!
Other than that? I normally avoid heated debates, although occasionally Iâd wade into certain topics whenever I feel like theyâre overlooking a big point.
By that, I mean the melee Hunter issue.
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talking about the true dead zone where the game breaks on the hunters?
in og classic
I think the most heated gamer debate iâve ever had was on a now super dead dota forum where people claimed mmr meant nothing and that valve was literally putting them in some hidden pool of super bad players that couldnât accept their greatness causing them to lose every game.
I miss that forum sometimes, there were some really cool hecks on there all that aside.
Quite possibly during the big posting events, when it was being debated whether or not Blizzard would bring Classic to life.
A lot of GD posters were dogpiling on anyone who supported Classic, even people who had resubbed, simply to have their voice heard. It was some of the worst behavior I have ever seen on here ( I wasnât around for the Tseric thing, so I wonât count that since I never personally saw it).
Seriously, GD was acting like a pack of rabid dogs. It was stupid.
Thereâs some wild heated discussions on RDF in wotlk if you ever want a laugh on the classic forums. Idk if they started to moderate it but at the beginning of wotlk just saying your opinion was a bad idea.
Tseric dug his own grave, he had issues with warriors for some reason. The warriors had a right to complain about no rage generation when TBC launched.
When Some Near Me said Half-Life and COD were one and the same.
It wasnât Shams? I thought he was doing the Shaman class?
idk
Mine was debating with some blood elf here on the forums that it was possible weâd get high elves on the Alliance someday or some iteration of them. Literally went back and forth for months, where she was convinced it would never happen. Well needless to say about a year after our debate, Void Elves were both implemented and got their high elf customization lmfao.
Thatâs not even a debate. Scarlet Witch wins. âNo More Kratos.â
I did have someone try and argue that Phoenix Jean Grey could take Infinity Gauntlet Thanos (the comic version not the massively dumbed down MCU version). I had a hard time convincing this person that if IG Thanos could take Eternity, Death, Galactus, a pair of celestials (Ziran the Tester and the One Above All IIRC), Love, Hate, Lord Chaos, Master Order, Epoch, Kronos, and Mephisto simultaneously that Phoenix would be small potatos by comparison.
As long as there are no melee hunters, there is no issue?
He was the rep for warriors on the forums, what I can remember I think he flipped out from all the warriors signing off with a signature similar to V for Vendetta.
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you dare talk smack about the mighty gen 1 magikarp?
Mine was whether or not Jim Beam was better than Jack Daniels. For a Marine, thatâs a gaming debate.
Jim Beam is better.
Semper Fi! 
