its kind of crazy to me how bad the average wow gamer is , i dont mean to ragebit anyone with this post im just sharing my experience but i have been gaming for like 20 - 25 years or so say 20 years of it being online multiplayer etc games and i gotta tell this game and its audience is so bad compare to the rest its actually uncomparable …
i recently started playing again and i wanted to go on one of my alts and do some pug raid you know grabbing some gear stuff etc , i also did a HM tazavesh which failed on literally the first boss and then i did some 10s or i tried to i guess to get my vault open and i gotta tell you guys … the experience of doing those activities and the level of catastrophe that i witnessed was unreal it was actually to some level unbelievable to a point where i couldnt even tell if they are being serious or just trolling for example a mage ninja pulled 5 differnt packs in 1 dungeon ! thats just 1 dungeon its crazy …
i mean sure other games also have bad players i have played fps games mobo games board games etc … all of those games you could argue the skill disparity can also vary but in wow it only starts at a very low bar and then it continues to higher levels of the game i give you an example : i personally believe that even up to RWF some players were getting boosted and are STILL getting boosted … common example would be Gingi/Rogedrbrown/Scrype/Sco i dont usually follow NA but im 100% sure even on Liquid side you could find similarities , another example would come from my personal experience i tried to do a few 17s before reset the previous week with a dk friend of mine and we were having our 17s bein depleted due to players doing like minimum 2-3 mil below what they’re character was capable of ! on a 17 thats like top 100 territory and ur being boosted on a top 100 territory ! how ? how on earth can a game have a community that has this horrible of a playerbase im im mind blown
usually when you reach the upper echelon of a game when it comes to ranks atleast you would encounter some serious business for example when i first reached celestial1/eternity during S1.5 in Marvel rivals i was facing some Crazy players some prodiy level players to a point where i couldnt even tell how the guy does it , but in wow its just … a slow Stale its like the same thing that you would encouter in a regular 15 or top 200 guild but just a little bit more polished . idk maybe its just me but it certainly feels this way
honestly i think i agree with you , i know it sounds a little weird coming from me but this game literally has no competitive integrity … i mean other games dont either these days with EOMM and certain types of matchmaking being in place but rly just isnt a game for competitiveness
even PVP aspect of the game is a joke to an extensive level it was fine up untill shadowlands but ever since its been going downhill , wow should just be a casual game for casuals there is no need for mythic raiding or m+ it should just be simple normal / hardmode old school stuff with transmog and mount farming and stuff like that this game just isnt doing the right things for its right audience which is CASUALs
The game teaches you absolutely nothing when you level up and every bit of information that teaches you how to play your character better is only found from 3th party sites.
Most people never visit those sites as most mmo players are in fact just playing the game and those who actually do visit how to play sites then face the fact that a lot of those sites are written by out of touch of reality people who write them for people who actually know what they are looking and understand what they are reading fully.
Most people who visit 3th party sites like icy veins might look up whats my stat priority and go with that but that alone will not teach you how to play.
I doubt most people know where to how to or even care about addons so that too drops their know how what to do because the game itself does piss poor presentation on dungeons and raids what if going to happen when boss yells something and something happens.
I also really doubt most people watch any videos at all when it comes to how bosses are done on dungeons/raids.
As for WoW’s players being bad wow really isn’t any different from any other mmo when it comes to “bad” players. As someone who has played dozens of mmos and has been on the internet since the beginning the same pattern is on every single mmo i have ever played most people just play for fun and the fun for most people is playing the game how they want not read articles on 3th party sites and watch hours of videos of someone else playing the game.
You’re 3400 this early into the season, this means you’re firmly in the top 0.1% It’s safe to say you’re exceptionally good at the game.
Having said that, how can you see the same “bad play” year after year and have your mind blown every time? Just how long will it take to sink in? You need to find people at your level or temper your expectations, this isn’t complicated.
i dont play every season , last season i played was DF s3 thats like 4 seasons ago almost a full 2 year ( 1.5 ish ).
its not about the levels its about the players on those levels , regardless of where you are ppl always seem of like way of the railroads and i cant constantly find friends to play with my alts eventually im gonna have to play with some random folks , not that i have friends when im playing at my own level anyway even those are played with random ppl
but never the less the point im trying to make is why that why is the average wow player differs from other games ? i think the guy up there Fydron made a pretty good post about it , it makes sense base on what he says the game gives you little to no info on what the heck you need to do , and most of the good stuff comes from third party websites streams and addons so it makes sense to some extent anyway …
compare to other games say a shooter game or like a card game or something there are actually ways you can find to play the game without the need of multiple third party interventions
The issue is that WoW is very un-intuitive to learn, very little is explained in-game, specs can be very complicated (With all the procs and stuff), and there’s a lot of third-party website “Homework” to do to improve your gameplay.
And a lot of people just want to play the game, so they don’t want to watch somebody else play for a few hours to figure out the obtuse boss mechanics, or read in-depth spec guides, just to be “Good players”, in 90% of the game, it doesn’t even matter, just in high-level (Heroic+ or high M+) content do people even notice that they’re not playing optimally.
oh 100% im sure , there are many good examples out there , i dont play valorant or any tactical shooter games but when you look at someone like Tenz for example hes like a pro tactical shooter player or something dont know him much but when you look at hes gameplay and you look at some random valorant streamer or something in high ranks you can clearly see a massive gap between those players the average dude can never do what he does regardless of how much practice work etc … he puts into it
in wow you never really see that kind of stuff i mean you see great players but they are not out of reach its not like they are doing something thats completely on another level , they might come up with some good strategies and problem solving solutions for certain encounters that might seem clever and stuff but nothing crazy not from a gameplay perspective anyway but iguess at the end of the day its just wow being wow there aint much to do
all im saying is that there is a clear difference between the gameplay level of an average wow gamer compare to other games atleast for me it is i dont know about the rest of the community maybe others dont see it that way
Played WoW for 19 years and I can out of pure experience say that the most of WoW’s playerbase are incredibly unskilled.
With this in mind it’s why you form your own groups, and why you are picky of who you invite. So that you avoid these type of people if you want to succeed to let’s say clear a heroic raid fully, or to do a +10 with little or no issues.
My best guess is that the reason you’re noticing this in WoW is that the games you’re mentioning here all have a ranked system with automated matchmaking, with some sort of limits on the maximum rank difference in each match. WoW is free for all and anyone can play with anyone, so it’s much easier to get people of vastly different skill levels together in a “competitive” environment. There might be just as many bad players in Marvel Rivals or Valorant, you just don’t get matched with them.
Another thing that comes to mind is that WoW is not a particularly difficulty game and every time you do dungeon, it’s the same as it was when you did it last time. It’s then quite easy to get boosted by more experienced players even if you underperform as other players can very easily pick up the slack, unless it’s the tank or healer unable to handle the load. This isn’t as much the case in the strictly competitive PvP games you mentioned where being a player down means almost a guaranteed loss as you get outnumbered by the enemy team.
It’s just very easy to get carried quite high in WoW because even at the high-end, the content simply doesn’t require all members of the group to perform anywhere near their character’s maximum potential in order to successfully finish.
. I have had friends that have lost their title due to boosting, communities in Discord still boost title range keys.
In WoW nowadays there’s too much boosting and people just reroll to different specs they don’t even know how to play or what utility they have or how to use it and they still time keys because the spec disparity is too high. You can make the argument that ever single spec can make 10s and all, but some spec are just objectively easier to play and get more output without doing too much effort thus you get players that have more score but are worst or absolutely terrible for the level they are queuing for.
This is not a problem that started in TWW, just remember the Exodia comp? SP or Augs that didn’t even know they had dispersion or dispell?
In PvE there’s not really a MMR - score can give you an idea of a player but I feel like this is no longer true.
Would MMR system in M+ fix the problem? Probably not, in PvP people abuse MMR to boost players.
WoW players are bad and good, you can find many bad players at every level, etc. Personally, I think boosting has made the WoW playerbase even worse than before - Blizz allowed boosting in their game so GGs.
Just to add to this, resilient keys only exacerbate all the things you mentioned. When depletion is not a concern, it’s easier to boost high keys and it’s easier to get score in pugs. Score now means even less than it did before.
i agree with this , i inittially thought it might be the answer when some ppl brought it up in the community but now i can clearly see how terrible it would get if they implemented something like that
maybe with some sort of Skill based point System attached to it ! but then you start running into stat padding territory etc which it already exists in the game thanks to our trusty friends at Warcraftlogs which i personally believe has made the game extensively worse , its pretty much why i gave up on raiding some time around bfa . i did raid 1 tier in DF but yeah overall not a great idea
but with that being said i would say its worth a shot if the devs were not as lazy as they are
i think the situation has been made even worse with these boost for gold communities who boost bad players into territory where they have no business to be in . this is the only game where i have seen such behaviour atleast in mmorpg genre .
The people who played ‘competitive’ for ‘prestige’ have grown up and realized that it’s just a game hobby and not worth dedicating your life to.
Also the game is incredibly difficult compared to its rivals in the same category, you have a dozen spells that are intricately tied to each other and you need to be fully focused (“Locked In”) to complete non-trivial content.
Not many people can focus for 5-10-20-30-50 minutes at a time without break, that’s just how the world evolved over the past 2-3 decades.
I do agree that the general playerbase (outside the very high Mythic Raiders/PVPers/M+ers) look as if they are intentionally griefing if you pay close attention to them as a veteran. When Lost Ark was popular I noticed that the raiders there, although not incredibly skilled were still miles ahead of what I had gotten used to in WoW.
Also if you feel this way, don’t ever try classic, especially the first 3 iterations.
Where do you expect skill to manifest , when blizzard tries to make the game as scripted as possible and squash any form of creative gameplay .
This is especially true to Retail .
The PvE encounters are laid out in a pattern and you are supposed to go trough it . The one that does it best is the best player . You are not expected to adapt or innovate . You are expected to follow the script . The moment someone finds a way to do things off script , this is called an exploit and promptly removed .
For PvP it is also the same . You are expected to dps each other in the face and use cooldowns to win . All other types of gameplay people created back in classic , were promptly removed . You wonna kite ? Too bad everyone has 1000 gapclosers . You want deplete resources Too bad . You wonna play a tank . sorry .
And just in case you did not get it , we also put dampening in , to make sure that the game last exactly 5 minutes as expected .
You use bombs , potions , push people off cliffs , get them stuck in a wall , kite them around fences , fear them into mobs , drown them in water , Burn them in Lava . Too bad . This is forbidden . Sit and dps face to face .
I’ve had so many skillful shows in Vanilla and classic , where you just want to brake your keyboard , because the guy plays the same class as you , but simply outplays you so bad it is not even funny . But you look and learn and than try it on your own and get better in the process .
In retail I feel Like It is just a dps race , where someone constantly sticks to my face . Whoever executes their PvE rotation bet wins . Whoever is currently Flavor of The month and is over buffed , wins . No matter if the class is played by a monkey or a rank 1 tournament winner .
. I have had friends that have lost their title due to boosting, communities in Discord still boost title range keys.