I’ve played this game now since Vanilla and as my main MMO since Wrath of the Lich King all the way up through the end of Battle of Azeroth, I’ve seen this game at its peak and I’ve seen this game at its worst. The community has always has long had a reputation for being toxic but I had my guild and I enjoyed the game itself, even if going into pick-up groups and random matchmade content seemed like a bit of a lucky dip as to if you’re going to get a nice chill group, or if someone in that group is going to be a power-hungry maniac who thinks they’re Gods gift to the game when they’re barely above average.
I took a break at the end of Battle of Azeroth to go and play Final Fantasy XIV, but I knew I’d be back, I love both games and believe that both communities are stronger when both games are thriving, so this is not an Us vs Them tribalism thing. Final Fantasy is now my main game, and a big part of that is the community. It’s also where I met my girlfriend. She is an incredibly player, a Red Mage who raids Savage difficulty and constantly pushes herself to be better and better, she would be an asset to any game and an improvement to any community, and I’m not just saying that because I’m her girlfriend, she is consistently one of the best players on my raid team in Final Fantasy XIV. However, she plays on Controller and has difficulty with Keyboard & Mouse, she’s trying her best to learn and has an alt on that game where she plays with Keyboard & Mouse and shes steadily improving.
Recently we decided to take a short break from Final Fantasy and play other MMO’s together, and ofcourse World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was suggested. I let her know about the console port and she decides against it, says she wants to learn how to play properly, and so she makes herself a Human Rogue. And off we go.
We get to the end of Tiragarde Sound with no issues, and queue up for Freehold, she’s nervous, its her first time in a World of Warcraft dungeon and she doesn’t know what to expect, shes already finding the relatively less flashy animations compared to Final Fantasy hard to parse and she’s getting hit by things she knows she wouldn’t be if she was more comfortable with the game.
We get into Freehold and the tank has a God complex. Slams through the instance incredibly quickly and if someone accidently pulls something he leaves them to tank it by themselves and die. My girlfriend doesn’t have a clue what is going on and is getting confused by the open layout of Freehold, and with the tank blasting through the dungeon, she gets lost. I try to help her but the tank gets annoyed and tells them to hurry up, though a lot less nicely than this. She’s embarassed and quickly starts to get stressed, she thinks shes holding the group up and thinks shes bad, when ofcourse she’s just new. I explain that they’re new and the tank throws back saying they don’t care. Nevertheless, we make it through Freehold but my girlfriend is understandably shaken by this. I calm her down and off we go on the questline.
Eventually we unlock Tol Dagor and I explain that this dungeon is more linear and its easier to keep up here so she should be okay, and indeed she is able to keep up, but her damage is low - she’s new to the game and does not have access to heirlooms, so ofcourse her damage is low - nobody says a word but a vote kick is initiated because of her low DPS, I write “oi, no kicking my girlfriend” and the vote fails. The tank and the healer then both stop dead in their tracks and refuse to go on. I say that shes new and besides its a leveling dungeon and we are not struggling, we are getting through the dungeon nicely and she isn’t messing up on mechanics. They don’t reply and continue to halt the dungeon. Eventually the other DPS player speaks up and says lets go, and just starts pulling, this causes the tank and healer to wake up and continue with the dungeon but they purposely lock my girlfriend out of the third boss fight, which seems odd to me - why kick for low DPS when you clearly don’t need her? We finish the dungeon and my girlfriend is yet again upset, she thinks that she held the group back and her bad DPS is causing her to make things harder than it needs to be, and questions if she should stop playing, I manage to calm her down yet again and off we go to finish Stormsong Valley and unlock Shrine of the Storms.
This one was the worst one yet, we get in and at first all is well, we get to the first boss, kill it, move on, get to the trash up before the second boss and the tank starts shouting at the healer, asking why they keep dying - they’re dying because they have aggro - eventually the healer just leaves and a new one joins. My girlfriend is already stressed and is wondering if she should be doing more to help the group, I say its not her, its the tank. We get to the third boss and after a brief explanation the boss is pulled. My girlfriend is picked for the mind control mechanic, and I say “okay its you being mind controlled, run through the orb.” She waits and doesn’t go through the orbs, I don’t really know why, but eventually she gets fully mind controlled and we wipe. She explains to me that she heard “mind controlled” and waited until she was because to her she wasn’t mind controlled, she just had a debuff, but she was fully in control of her character. This to me, is reasonable. But not to the other group members who go absolutely mental at her. She made one mistake based on a misunderstanding and we tried to explain this but they continued to say she was bad, her DPS was bad and that she was wasting peoples time. I eventually just pulled the boss again, and she was picked for the mechanic twice (she was the only person to get picked on both pulls) and of course this time she successfully did the mechanic, both times and the boss died. This still wasn’t good enough. The other party members exclaimed how finally we had done it, if only people could listen the first time around, though with significantly worse language. We continue onto the last boss and kill it easily. And again, my girlfriend is upset, she’s just had this group berate her and call her bad and insult her for making a single mistake because she misunderstood something, which in my mind was a reasonable mistake to make.
Three dungeons, three terrible groups and my girlfriend finally says to me “Can we go back to Final Fantasy? Everytime we play this I just feel like garbage.” And ofcourse why would she want to play this game when the community reaction she’s had to her being new at the game is like this? When even explaining that she’s new doesn’t matter? When we know that when she learns the game and when she knows more about it, that she has the potential to be an absolute beast at it? She raids Savage in Final Fantasy after all, she understands how to dodge an AoE and how to run into orbs.
I don’t feel like I can reasonably say to her now “Hey, wanna play some Warcraft today?” after all this. She doesn’t want to play the game anymore, and it’s because of the community. And can anyone blame her? The toxicity has to stop, because it is killing the game and stopping its growth. So much is put on Blizzard about the story or about the game systems itself and sure we can’t excuse that stuff, but even if Blizzard were to fix the story, make it better and make the game perfect in some peoples eyes, that will only stop the bleeding of players, new players who have heard about World of Warcraft and its amazing gameplay and its awesome story and systems will log into the game, and be greeted with these three groups and they will leave.
The game cannot start to grow again like this. My girlfriend would have been a genuine asset for this game and now its unlikely that she’ll be coming back. After three dungeons.