Why is WoW so toxic?

Community General Discussion
1

I just started playing again after being absent from the game for about 6 years. I bounced during Warlords because I wasn’t into the whole garrison/solo instance content. What I always loved about the game was collaborating with other players to accomplish goals, like spending hours in Icecrown, Dragonsoul, and Siege of Orgrimmar. Did it suck when we wiped? Sure, but it was part of the learning experience, and it was even sometimes comical.

Of course, there have always been players who challenged others to do better, but I am astonished by how rude and unkind players have been as I learned new game mechanics while coping with new features intended for the e-sports crowd.

Because so much changed, I decided the best way to understand the game would be to roll a new character and level from 1-120 and I chose a mage, a difficult class with lots of cool downs to manage. I was looking forward to running my favorite dungeons as I leveled, but was immediately confronted with players kicking me from dungeons as early as level 45. Was I AFK or standing in fire? No, the problem was that I wasn’t doing enough damage according to Details or Recount or whatever series of addons were being used to grade DPS. I began to start dungeons by explaining that I was still learning, but then the kicks came even faster, with no players willing to run a low level dungeon with someone who wasn’t doing max damage. I turned to solo questing, but I find this game boring when I can’t interact with other players so I left Jazzystar in Legion and got back on my main.

With my damaged increased by my previous experience playing as a Hunter, and the general ease this class provides, I managed to get to 120 and found a guild that I hope to raid with, but I’m stuck trying to raise my IO so that I can meet my guild’s requirements to run mythic raids. I attended a meeting a few days ago with the guild, and there seems to be a lot of interest in helping out new players, but many guild members continued to speak up, insisting that anyone not doing 50K damage in a mythic dungeon be kicked.

What happened, guys? The real world is harsh enough and I came back to WoW for an escape, just to find the community hounding me about performance and metrics more than my manager does at my demanding, productivity-focused tech job. The list of addons we must use to accomplish goals in M+ indicates that we might be better off letting AI play the game for us, and that really sucks when the company I worked for just furloughed 33 people so they can test out automation as a replacement for our labor. Do we really want gaming to go in that same direction?

Why isn’t there any room in this game for people to make mistakes and learn?

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2

I don’t know, why do people on the forums continue to use their own anecdotal evidence as fact everyone does or doesn’t do something?

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Because it’s full of people, and people are the worst.

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4

it’s toxic because each patch is soaked in mercury before being deployed onto their servers

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Because people who have no success in life like to confuse the delusion of victory in game as some skill achievement and use that as their self worth which results in extremely toxic and insecure attitude since their only source of self esteem comes from spending time in a video game that doesnt even require much skill since they wouldnt be able to compete to truly high skill based games.

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Theres no reason to be nice in WoW. Youll never see those people again and it doesn’t affect your character :slight_smile: If it did WoW would be heading in the right direction imho

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Because pugs aren’t there to teach you. Pugs just want to get things done fast.

Want to learn, especially this late in the expansion? You should join a guild.

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Do you think that group-based progressive content (such as M+ or raids) should have a set minimum level of expectations or should anyone who is interested be able to join?

Furthermore, is it the expectations that are toxic or the way people are delivering those expectations?

Edit: re: the pugs in leveling content, that’s pretty lame & I’m sorry that happened to you.

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Because anonymous people tend in that direction.

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This attitude is the exact problem. If our personal experiences in the game don’t matter, why does this forum even exist?

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I have no guild that do content

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12

That’s an excessive requirement for any mythic key under 11. 40k dps is fine in keys 10 and below. Anything 10 and above, you should be breaching the 50k mark on a regular (or higher). If you’re on a hunter, this should be no problem at all if you’ve got the right azerite traits, at least one decent essence, and an appropriate ilvl.

Other than that, it sounds like you joined a guild at the top end of the content when you’re just dipping your toes back in after a long absence.

You’d have done much better with a group doing heroic content for finding the learning atmosphere you’re wanting.

Having said that, however, the leveling dungeon poison surprises me. I’ve been in a few nasty pugs leveling in dungeons, but most of them are full of people on alts, people who’ve never played before, and people who are learning after a long absence.

I think you just hit the bad luck lottery in a huge way during your leveling experience. It isn’t typically that universally nasty.

I hope you find a more friendly group of people who are more interested in being a part of your team with you.

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You are looking for a free carry sir.

So you hit 120 and want to attend Mythic Raiding and upset that people insist you should do 50k DPS min.

Well guess what, maybe you should be interested in doing some Normal then Heroic encounters. Because indeed if you want to do Mythic Raids you should be able to do 50k DPS, otherwise you are getting yourself carried, not contributing almost at all.

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I wouldn’t say it’s a wow problem, more of a people problem. Unfortunately most games have quite a bit of toxicity in their player base. There are good folks out there though, hopefully you link up with them.

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This is so hard for me to believe. I’ve been leveling a lot of toons recently (entirely through the dungeon finder), and out of the last hundred or so runs, I can count on one hand the number of people who have been vote kicked. Every one of them has been offline.

While I understand disliking how many addons and weakauras are required at a high end, the game is mechanically harder than it’s ever been. Addons are not playing the game for us.

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Please stay on topic ty

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Listen OP some of us didn’t take “breaks” and don’t have the time or patience to wait for quitters who come back to learn from their mistakes. You can easily find guides and videos online to learn about the content you want to do before wasting everyone’s time by failing it.

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^^

You’ll note that he’s the only tough guy in the thread so far, and I’m finding that this is roughly the ratio.

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Not enough kale and avocado in its diet?

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Imagine thinking expecting basic competence makes someone a “tough guy”.

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