The Toxicity Has To Stop; Why Would New Players Stay?

[Tequima-eonar]

Perhaps there also needs to be a change to the LfG tool. The options to choose whether you want a chatty/chill/hardcore/fast run?

[Bukachu-argent-dawn]

Leveling dungeons and whole “lower” difficulties are a joke tbh.

there’re multiple issues with it.

entry level is 0 - meaning you can get everyone and anyone unlike say m+25 group where most people you’ll play with will be about the same level as you or mythic raids most people in a guild are on a similar level.

that creates first issue where people of different skill are matched together, and dont fit well together. I mean im giga gamer, I did 26-27 mythic keys when I felt like it, atm just chilling in 22-23s and even when I join lower difficulty content, I get people telling me how to play. “pull less” “i need mana” “go slower” “go faster” bla bla bla, and biggest joke is the fact that people teaching me how to play are people who spend entire tiers clearing heroic raids and doing 15 weekly keys

that’s just how it is because balance in lower lvls is nonexistant, and some guy doing decent DPS at lvl 27 thinks he’s a hot thing because other classes cant do the same and what not.

and blizzard isnt able to fix it because they’re incapable, even tho its an extremly easy issue to fix

[Airadax-khadgar (Airadax)]

@Tequima-eonar

Perhaps there also needs to be a change to the LfG tool.

I think an added option to choose Current Realm or Cross Realm.
To (re)build realm community an higher set of rewards for selecting current realm.

[Thedarksteel-ravencrest]

What new players?

[Sélune-draenor]

@Asinga-silvermoon

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.

the toxicty cannot stop because game is build on inherently toxic build by punishing yu extremly severly for failing timers or wiping whole raid because 1 person makes mistake.

old wow didnt have it. but since Ion took over game is overtuned to the sky and beyond.

and htis is breeding toxicity.

wow in classic-wolk era has nothing to do with how game is since post mop era.

and thats why it has fallen . not because of lfr or m+ - but because of how unnesesarily hard game is.

its not fun anymore

[Elahri-silvermoon]

@Sélune-draenor

but because of how unnesesarily hard game is.

This is how you know it’s lilith posting.

[Sélune-draenor]

@Elahri-silvermoon

@Sélune-draenor

but because of how unnesesarily hard game is.

This is how you know it’s lilith posting.

yes true words will always be recognized thnk you

[Skaar-bladefist]

Wow doesnt have toxic community only alot of trolls. And also who plays that anima final fantasy b*****? I wud rather play tetris.

[Elahri-silvermoon]

The game is nowhere close to as difficult as you seem to think.

[Jadzía-cthun (Jadzía)]

@Sélune-draenor

the toxicty cannot stop because game is build on inherently toxic build by punishing yu extremly severly for failing timers or wiping whole raid because 1 person makes mistake.

old wow didnt have it. but since Ion took over game is overtuned to the sky and beyond.

and htis is breeding toxicity.

wow in classic-wolk era has nothing to do with how game is since post mop era.

and thats why it has fallen . not because of lfr or m+ - but because of how unnesesarily hard game is.

its not fun anymore

There is a way to stop toxicity. A punishment that makes people afraid.
The game could have been build towards that, but ultimately that doesn’t justify toxicity. Insulting others is not okay under no circumstances. Even if player A fails, and that makes the whole group fail the timer and lost both gear and keys, insulting him and calling death threats, is not okay. And no matter how is build the game, people won’t call names of others if they knew their account could be terminated for it.

What Blizzard needs is to grow balls and terminate the account of those who do those things. Even Blizzard could give people a second chance. So, next time someone insulted other players on Mythic or LFR, they should receive a temporal ban with a warning that the next infraction will have a permanent ban on their account. And when that player returns from his temporal ban, if he does the same, that gives him a permanent ban, making her lose everything he has played for.

If people are not capable of not being toxic due to being the right thing, then make them not being toxic due to fear of losing their account.

The toxicity in this game disgusts me so much that I stopped playing group counter years ago. I only play every dungeon and raid one time on a lower difficulty to see the story, mostly heroic dungeon and LFR, but every time I play one of these, it disgusts me how ramping the toxicity is, how easy people call names if someone fails something.

But the thing that makes me more disgusting is the fact that the impression I have is that Blizzard tolerates that toxicity with their silence. Yes, on paper all of this is against TOS, but Blizzard does nothing, and looking at another side when bad things happen is no different than allowing it. Blizzard is an accomplice necessary for the players’ toxicity.

[anon66707849]

@Thedarksteel-ravencrest

What new players?

[Elahri-silvermoon]

@Jadzía-cthun

So, next time someone insulted other players on Mythic or LFR, they should receive a temporal ban with a warning that the next infraction will have a permanent ban on their account.

Not even exploiting gives you a permanent ban.

@Jadzía-cthun

The toxicity in this game disgusts me so much that I stopped playing group counter years ago. I only play every dungeon and raid one time on a lower difficulty to see the story, mostly heroic dungeon and LFR, but every time I play one of these, it disgusts me how ramping the toxicity is, how easy people call names if someone fails something.

Funny, it’s quite rare from my experience.

[Murthàg-nemesis]

Dont want people to be toxic? Reward people fir not doing it.

[anon20309957]

@Murthàg-nemesis

Dont want people to be toxic? Reward people fir not doing it.

Its not a problem that throwing rewards at will fix and simply throwing rewards at people is a very short-sighted approach.

Before Blizzard can make any real changes that will affect everybody they first need to recognise what the problems are so that they can do something to try and address them. Right now I don’t feel like they’ve done this, that is unless the datamined social contract comes with other stipulations noted elsewhere (like a change/adjustment in the TOS or something) that strengthens their approach to what is considered toxicity and what actions they will take to combat this.

[Felßear-kazzak]

Toxicity toward others is always driven by personal imperfection. It’s the same why some people react agressively when ‘someone cut them off’ while others just think “oh, that wasn’t that great” and move on with their day.

You can be a toxic elitist, but you’ll just end up on peoples ignorelists. I instantly ignore anyone I see being unfair to others. Post dungeon run or raid I do often whisper people to tell them what I think of their performance. I do it in a positive way, I often receive tips myself too.

You learn something new every day. Be the change, not the hater…

[Lavii-saurfang]

Someone had a similar problem it seems

Freehold Dungeon has to change

TLDR, You want blizzard to force everyone to play the dungeon the way you want… got it.

And the first reply was a toxic answer. Beautiful.

[Dejarous-draenor (Dejarous)]

@Lavii-saurfang

Someone had a similar problem it seems

Freehold Dungeon has to change - #2 by Malikypewpew-twisting-nether

And the first reply was a toxic answer. Beautiful.

No it wasn’t. Toxic isn’t “things I disagree with”.

[Lavii-saurfang]

Of course the answer is toxic. And that’s the huge problem in WoW. If I ask you a normal question, would you answer with “lol, check the internet” or try to answer it as good as you can?
It isn’t disagreeing. It’s a intentionally misinterpretation.

[Dejarous-draenor (Dejarous)]

@Lavii-saurfang

Of course the answer is toxic. And that’s the huge problem in WoW. If I ask you a normal question, would you answer with “lol, check the internet” or try to answer it as good as you can?

The thread title sets the tone. They made a statement saying it has to change. Then they acknowledged that the majority do it that way but “it still has to change”.

So its perfectly fine to insist that how the majority do it is wrong and it HAS TO change to how the minority would prefer it?

Theres no intentional misinterpretation here. And if you think thats toxic, get a thicker skin or stop looking to take offence.

[Lavii-saurfang]

tldr
bla bla