Recently I decided to look at Reddit for the first time in my life. I naturally tried to look for subreddits for things I’m interestedin , and one of those obviously is WoW. So I found the WoW subreddit.
Lo and behold, it was the most toxic waste dump I’ve ever seen in my life. I didn’t post, but after reading through maybe 50 posts spread out over the past year, big and small, I think I have a solid idea of that place and it’s bad.
Here are my observations:
-
If you go on there and say negative things about the game which aren’t the “meta” things to say, you’re immediately harassed and sent horrible, insulting, vitriolic comments. It’s almost as if these people will defend Blizzard for anything, unless the community as a whole decides they’re upset about something, then it’s the exact opposite, you’ll get 20k upvotes and plenty of awards. But if you had made that same exact post even a week previously before it was popular to complain about whatever issue it is, you’ll get completely destroyed and hateful messages and comments.
-
If you go on there and even slightly suggest Blizzard banned you for something, you will get the most insidious, vitriolic comments possible of people telling you you deserved it, laughing at your misfortune (I 've seen tons of comments like, “how many hours and /played went down the drain for you? hahahahahaha”) and stuff like that. Even if it’s someone who’s just trying to get more information, or ask for advice.
-
If you go on there and say anything positive about any streamer whatsoever, you are toast.
-
Pretty much anything you post, in order to get positive attention, has to be something meta. For example, the WoW subreddit used to praise Shadowlands if the posts from a year ago are any indication, but once it became more mainstream to attack Shadowlands, suddenly it’s like they realized they want to do what the majority are doing and shifted their tone. Once a certain northern irishman and a certain bald man started complaining especially, you suddenly see them shift to a more anti-shadowlands sentiment.
From these conclusions it seems like people who go on the WoW subreddit are the most sheepy sheep there are. I don’t think I’ll ever go back. I certainly will never make a single post or comment there.
I think that the WoW subreddit shouldn’t be given legitimacy or attention the way that it is. It seems a very poor reflection of the community and seems to attract the absolute most undesirable types of player, whether they be toxic people, trying to take out their irl anger on others, or, more often, the sheepiest sheep you’ve ever seen.
Besides suggesting that we stop using it altogether or giving it legitimacy, I also have to ask, is there another alternative which is superior? I’d really enjoy a non general forums place to discuss WoW, and that used to be MMO champ although not it’s sort of died out, so now there’s really nothing besides that subreddit cesspit from what I can see.