I would like write about the current state of raid leaders during the new Season 2. Since the new raid Undermine was released one week and a day ago, I’ve seen an increasing number of toxicity from raid leaders. Since yesterday after the weekly reset I have been in a total of 8 groups where the raid leaders are behaving unquestionably selfish, greedy and general toxic behavior which is frowned upon by society.
7 out of the 8 groups I was in before I left before the raid started, the raid leaders thought they would not invite any of the classes that shared the raid leader’s tier set token. This is easy to notice because we were for example in one group 11 people who were supposed to share the same token, while the raid leader was alone on theirs.
The 1 of the 8 groups I was in, the hosts of that raid attempted to boost 4 people for gold. This was very obvious because they were massively undergeared with no Undermine experience at all, as well as that they were placed in a separate group than the raiders. After I exposed the boosters for attempting to boost, the hosts whispered me in rage-mode writing “you just destroyed our raid”; “you have no proof”. The fact that they wrote as they did was proof enough that I was right.
So I have to ask is this unbelievably toxic behavior from many people the future for WoW? In my 18 years of playing WoW I’ve seen a few leaders reserve loot when Master Loot was an option, truth to be told I’ve even reserved a few myself, but never has it been done to today’s extent where many raid leaders seem to think it’s acceptable behavior- when in reality obviously it’s not.
The only way I can think of is to report those raid leaders and miraculously hope that Blizzard do something about them, because it’s not acceptable behavior. In the meantime I can heavily recommend that you leave the group if you feel the same way I explained in this thread.
I’ve written this thread with hopes that one day things will go back to descent behavior, and I hope we as a community can help WoW become a more friendly game as well as with the help from Blizzard.
RL puts the effort of creating the PuG group the way he sees fit. You dont agree? Dont join. Or better, make your own group with whatever rules you wish.
And then, I call your whole coment pure and simple BS. Because you contradict yourself.
If you have seen this behavior before. YOU yourself admitted to doing it, then why are you surprised to continue to see it ?
And then, the context. The stories YOU tell are probably within a Guild. Not a PuG group. Which changes the reality a lot more.
I remember in WotlK pugging Obsidian Sanctum and stuff like this happened ALL THE TIME. It has been a part of wow since the start.
And when people in WotlK complained about this, their answer was: Dont waste your time Puging raids. Find a guild and go with them.
That is what I tell you: Dont waste your time with PuGs. Find a guild to raid. With your 18 years of playing wow, you should know this better than anyone else.
You should know WHY guilds exist, WHY its such a benefit to join one if you plan on raiding.
Maybe add a ingame boost system that cuts off all the drama.
Like a virtual trade window, the booster puts a goal up like “finish raid X kill bosses a, b, c” and add a price. The “boostee” customer puts in the cost as gold, both click accept.
Also add a timer, like idk how many hours something takes, 1-3h ?
If the booster fails to finish the goals, or time runs out, the boostee gets his gold back from the “virtual table” which it has been sitting on.
Nobody loses but some time, which the booster now has to make up for himself since it hurt his reputation. “One star uber delivery” leave a comment.
The boostee gets his gold back and can try another players service.
Btw there should be a “match maker/ social profile” system too, like a “guild finder” but for individuals.
Anyone can make one, for their entire acc or char specific only, add custom pics related to their service catergory, raid/dungeon assistance, low lvl quest help, noob tutor, pvp trainer, rp, achievement / mount farming whatever. Check a ton of boxes, send them mail messages in offline mode with timestamps, allows people to find players to help them with whatever it is they want to do in the game. I think FFxiv had something like this.
This is selfish of course, but in no way toxic. If you or anyone else have a problem with it there’s always the option to look for another raid group or make your own raid. It’s his raid, and he’s free to be as selfish/strategical as he’d like when forming it, he’ll just have to deal with the consequences of less people wanting to join his raid so it’ll take longer to form.
Again:
His raid, his choices. He’s free to run it as he likes. He’s wrong for the rage-mode behaviour when you didn’t play along though, he should’ve just accepted the consequences of his choices.
Sure the second example was of a toxic raid leader due to how he responded to you, but it seems rather unreasonable to say that it is a common thing when it’s 1/8 in a small sample pool.
Toxicity is bad, but leaders forming groups on their own terms isn’t toxic, just strategic/selfish.
My suggestion would be to run with a guild. You’re always going to run the risk of clashing with strangers if you engage with content through the group finder. You can, however, curate your experience by finding a guild that approaches content in a way that accounts for mistakes and doesn’t indulge drama.
I’ve been playing for ages as well, even in the beginning it was a complete catastrophe of ninja-looting, people giving gear to their friends even when you won the roll, or just being outright removed.
Being in a Guild wasn’t much better. People vying for a spot in the raid. Staying silent against things even if they’re wrong because they don’t want to upset the RL or stay in his good graces. Raid taking hours to get organized and started. Only to after the first wipe for people to start dropping the raid, maybe 2 or 3 attempts, waste of time…but people had no patience, they still don’t. They want instant results/rewards with the littlest amount of effort, even after investing so much time into checking everyone out in terms of gear/xp for it just to fail.
I just don’t get how people enjoy raid content, unless you’ve just got a group of the coolest people who don’t think/act like the general population. It’s not the content that’s the problem, it’s the people, the mentality, the way they’re emboldened because they’re sitting behind a screen, because they would like that in person. It makes it super toxic at times. People whine. Block you after sending you a message. It’s just cowardly, unaccountability.
It’s kind of like the Undermine in real life. Blizzard talks about the best memories being shared with friends, random people. It was that way in the beginning and maybe even for a few expansions, but it was always toxic and elitist in the background.
That’s why I’m so glad there are delves and I can do my own thing. I hear a lot of people saying that people don’t interact with each other anymore and do things together, well, it’s often for the better, IMO.
I’m more of a personal skill kind of person anyway, I don’t really want to depend on other people. You can now get solid gear without anyone. I like it that way.
when i still bothered with raiding i rememebr over a decade ago , when i organized stuff/pugs i always made sure that i dont invite anyone who needed loot which i needed
you cant be accused of ninjaing if nobody but oyu need X or Y and it drops
thats why classic is more honest about this stuff - they just put everything they do need on HR so people who also need it - just dont bother joining.
well i really really enjoyed raiding ICC in wolk classic - was soooo refreshing to be there after so many years
retail raiding ? i given up complelty on it in SL - SoD literaly broke me with how fast and oversaturated with mechanics it was - im just to old for raiding and its ok
Meh I’ve seen some cases where HR was advertised and told in DM’s before and then once the raid was full and spreadsheet linked so people can give pref or solo reserve they still attempt to fill in their name at the HR’d items lol.
Everytime I read some bashing on wow playerbase like “community bad” etc, I think that the community is what we self make it to be. If dont like the community, instead of complain about it, try and be part of the change.
Good luck with that. People will rather whine their hearts out on how bad stuff is than actually do something about it. While we dont have these topics(yet) but some are willing to rather spend 3-4 hours complaining on the forums on “how those evil gatekeeping elitists is stopping them from doing m+” instead of make their own groups, and have group ready in 5-10 mins(or socialize…wont repeat the same ol same old again) and if you confront them directly then they have 101 excuse ready on why cant they make their own groups.
So if you think the average WoW player will actually stand up and do something about his situation…well you have better luck at wishing at a falling star for “better humanity”.
