adjusts glasses You see, most of us are, what we refer to in the community as “blatantly average derps” or, B.A.D. For short. If I didn’t have a guild with people I knew personally, I’d probably just LFR and pvp lol.
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Exactly - the problem is the community of raiders, not the raid itself.
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the title of thread answered its own question ![:thinking:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
This guy is so mad he can’t tell heads from tails.
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Feeling superior to someone doesn’t mean you think you’re important. That’s why they are two different words that aren’t synonyms.
Difficult is not the right word, time consuming and having to make a commitment like a second job is the true bugaboo IMO. All for a video game which for most is quick cheap entertainment after a day of real life.
Mostly, the fact that the rest of the game has no real learning curve anymore. Overworld mobs don’t threaten you anymore (most are almost incapable of getting through a 30s az trait shield). Normal and Heroic 5-mans are a joke, and M0 is trivially easy to overgear to the point that you ignore mechanics. So until you hit the ilvl wall there’s literally no incentive to figure out how to play competently because nothing until then requires it.
Then WQ and emissary gear puts you at an ilvl wall equivalent to Heroic raid or M+10. So the natural gear path moves you directly from pelvic thrusting in the general direction of unfailable daily chores, to timed runs and raid bosses that can actually mess up your day.
In earlier expansions, casuals would learn basic skills just questing around because they could actually kill you if you messed up (hunters often earned the huntard reputation because the pet was strong enough to let them bypass a good deal of that risk), and the 5-mans weren’t total facerolls. We learned and taught each other – modern WoW gives no incentive to do either (and in the case of M+, actually prevents you from teaching people thanks to the timer) unless you commit to a dedicated guild.
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Probably a lot is expectation and anxiety.
The game doesn’t prepare you for mechanics to matter. A lot of people avoid organised group content simply because of the fear of failure.
I don’t think it’s a lot to do with people not being able to do the content. They just aren’t prepared for it, and the social punishment for making a mistake is simply too high with a lot of the PuGs that are created.
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This is, by far, the most likely reason overall. Most people, even the least skilled, can learn something via sheer willpower.
It’s a very common trope to suggest that the majority of people don’t raid because they’re bad. For the most part, however, people don’t raid for their own reasons. Most of my friends don’t raid, and I’ve asked why or why not before. The answer varies but usually boils down to a lack of time, a lack of interest, or a lack of desire to do it repeatedly.
As above, a lack of fun. If they don’t find it fun they have no reason to “go through all of that”.
The lack of interest and experience makes them worse at the content, which only furthers the belief that they don’t do it because they’re bad. As opposed to being bad because they don’t do it. It also reinforces their desire not to do it.
The takeaway is that most people don’t want to do stuff they don’t want to do on the off chance they might like it later on.
Sure, but compare that to games with multiple endings.
There are games that require you to play very differently, in multiple play throughs, to experience all the endings. Some of those games don’t have conflicting endings, either, sometimes those endings are just more story from different perspectives.
Personally, I’ve never played again for another ending because it seems like a whole lot of work. I don’t want to run Normal to see what’s different from LFR, and I don’t want to run Heroic to see what’s different from Normal and LFR.
I just don’t care what the boss does differently because that kind of game play and mechanical movement aren’t interesting to me. If I don’t find navigating a boss fight fun, why would I care about the boss having new abilities? That’s like playing a game on New Game+ that gives enemies new AI. It might be really fun for some people, but there are loads of people who don’t care about New Game+ and only want to play the game the once.
Not sure what dictionary you are reading. Maybe you are superior to dictionaries and I should just take your word over the Merriams and Websters of the world. According to them they are in fact synonyms.
Not that it actually matters what words you want to use, the quality of your character is palpable, and you are exactly the kind of person that I try to scrub from my life before they can worm their way in.
I would say to beware, that feeling superior will lead to being complacent, but apparently it already has.
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The main issue is that people join and expect to be carried because they did not take 4 mins to google / youtube what to do for a specific boss then are surprised when they die in 5 secs.
For example: Operation Mechagon
Trixie & Naeno - You get 1 shotted with mega taze if you do not go into the smoke cloud that the bike makes when he charges across the room.
Gunker - Need to dps the water bots and stand in their safe zone so when we cast toxic wave the entire group doesn’t get slimed and wipes
I’ve seen so many forum post of people complaining about how “Hard” Operation Mech is and how they’ve spent up to 3 hours wiping on the first or second boss.
If people weren’t so lazy and entitled then spending a few mins looking up what to do will save you hours of headache and you can actually have fun.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
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Mythic raiders call everyone a casual if they don’t mythic raid and get a 9/9 on it.
Mythic 10+ dungeoneers call everyone a casual if they dont do Mythic 10 + keys.
Same mentality.
For me it’s this exactly, I raided intently for vanilla and FFXI before that, or HNM watch for hours. Then worked jobs or had life commitments or other games and never wanted to get back into set time raiding
For me it’s just my anxiety, back in the golden years of wow I would raid with a small group of people I knew rather well. Today all those people quit and I don’t do well in social settings full of new people more specifically when I know they are counting on me. LFR takes that burden away some.
And how many hours over the years have you spent honing your skills and knowledge? Yet you expect a casual who has never stepped in a raid instance before to understand all the ins and outs of raiding, be as skilled at their class as you, and understand the restrictions and requirements of the commitment that serious raiding comes with.
The idea that a player at that level should be able to just step in is something any realistic player new to raiding in that position would understand they are not ready for.
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You sir gave the best reasons why LFR is great to have in the game. Not everyone can commit to a guild or time to raid.
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Ive got a few theories on this.
First, guilds. This is a two parter. Part 1: The guildfinder tool release. Part 2: Raiding communities.
Part 1: The guildfinder tool.
It didnt come out of a vacuum. Guilds were already losing standing during its release. The intention was to make guilds important again in the wider community. Unfortunately once they became established, they became a hoover sucking up unsuspecting players with the possibility of those guild buffs (in particular the 30 minute hearthstone). For the GM, the incentive was clearly to fill out the roster as much as possible. Every quest finished resulted in a bit of extra cash dropped in the guild bank. It was basically free money on their side. They didnt have to organise anything, they simply had to provide the buffs. The result was massive cess-pool guilds and players languishing inside them reluctant to find a progressing guild (maybe with fewer perks). This became normalised in game and guilds simply stopped having that social function they once had. Thus player inclination to socialise also went out the window. In addition most of these cess-pool guilds have incredibly toxic guild chat. At least, thats been my personal experience hopping around.
Part 2: Raiding communities. I remember a very dramatic issue occurring in wod where raid communities were so determined to find their people. So they did a bit of research and a few servers ended up becoming the best place to find the folks doing the same content as you. This isnt new by any stretch, but given the walls being put up in WoD between the hardcore and casuals and the heavy policing through ilvl for pug raid spots (see point 1 why this became the norm over guild raids), they chose to leave. In so doing this limited the opportunities further for guilds to find players and establish themselves, but also for players to break through.
Second: The LFR lightshow.
To appease the hardcore of the hardcore, raid mechanics multiplied around panda and have gotten significantly more ludicrous as the years have gone on. However, during panda LFR was in a superb place. Here me out! Mechanics did matter. Not ALL mechanics. But some were crucial. The trinkets also did their part in mixing both casual and hardcore (this is crucial in things like talent spotting for bringing players into the hardcore game). Once you hit around 135, you’d pretty much finished the LFR experience.
Fortunately you then had an amazing bridge: Flex raiding. Flex added a couple of extra mechanics but if you peaked LFR in terms of gear, you could handle yourself with the basics. The focus became the new mechanics. It introduced the light show piecemeal and gave players looking to progress into raiding some training wheels without overwhelming them with the full light show.
For reasons that escape me, they completely ditched this in WoD instead going to PUG raiding (which became farm raiding very quickly). Thus not only was your gear completely capped out (i forget the number but it was x10 (610?)) and way below the requirements set by those groups, you were also went from a complete lightshow of mechanics that did absolutely nothing in LFR, into a normal proper raid. There was no gently-gently system (vanilla for example had attrition/poaching/gearing where mistakes were tolerated). You also had significant individual responsibility in certain fights. You went from nothing mattering to everything mattering and your avenue was unforgiving. I think the experience of spamming groups for hours just to get a chance to attempt the raid, and being unceremoniously humiliated and called out/kicked when you werent amazing in your first try really put people off the whole experience.
This period fostered hardcore/casual dynamics and i think most players just gave up. Youre supposed to enjoy playing the game. Raiding in vanilla was more friendly, less stressful, more explorative. If you screwed up, it wasnt the end of the world. There was always a guild at your level. The cleaving of the community with the formalisation of LFR, its then gutting as ‘tourist mode’ and the constant increase in mechanics with fewer and fewer opions to find that guild for you created a sort of perfect storm. Why raid in a game you are supposed to be playing for enjoyment when youre met with abuse, humiliation and stress? Thus you have the legendary system, emissaries, benthic gearing and a thousand and one other ways catering to your ‘progression’ outside of this. The game is now cleaved in two. And instead of trying to find ways to bridge the gap, the devs have simply given up. To give you an illustration: I loved dungeons right through vanilla and TBC. I stopped loving them when they became super AOE in wrath. And now, i get a knot in my stomach just queueing for them. I appreciate this is my personal issue and it isnt borne out by my experience any time i step in one (where no one cares and they just want to finish the run asap). But its still that call-out culture that gives me terrible anxiety doing something i never remotely worried about in the first two iterations of the game (and something i was genuinely good at). Im so used to avoiding all social aspects of this game, that something that used to be a core part of my player identity now fills me with dread. Mythic dungeons arent even on my radar.
This is lunacy (on my part). But its now how i experience and play the game. I only hope when classic drops that i dont carry over those issues the game has helped foster in me. I know its not how the game is supposed to be played for a rounded, full, engaging, social, and fun experience. But its how ive played the game for at least two expansions. And that kind of sucks.
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You upkeeping your electrolytes?
If you can see a doctor, though, definitely see one.
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I’ve put this off for a while so you may have hit the nail on the head
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I don’t know about other people but when I see “Link AOTC, 5+ million IO rating, only mythic champs, link your social security number, and anyone who didn’t play vanilla wow will be kicked, anyone who is stupid will be kicked” I don’t even go near those groups.
But on the other hand, if I see “Let’s do mythic KJ and expect to wipe 500 times and have fun” I would do that again in a heartbeat.
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