What has happened to the community?

Community General Discussion
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I cannot accurately remember what it was like back in my WoW heyday, but the modern behavior also struck me quite negatively when I returned.

I’m not even participating in anything higher than LFR, mostly random BGs and leveling dungeons as I try out the different classes. Still, I managed to see more insults flung around in my first week of returning than in the, like, 4 years on a different game prior.

The most bizarre case was a tank and healer just insulting and constantly trying to 1-up each other to make their respective life more difficult while we DPS were just desperately trying to salvage the run by blowing all our CC to ruin their wiping plans. We ended up having to 3 man the last boss.

I dunno. Doesn’t seem to be a Retail thing either, because after the (admittedly awesome) honeymoon phase passed, I got to witness the same in Classic. Had a group where our tank got kicked for not skipping a trash group, which lead to the group disbanding due to not finding a replacement within 30 minutes.

Like, what the actual…? I think that was my breaking point actually. I haven’t logged into Classic in a while and that’s my last memory of it.

Thankfully, the last couple days (in Retail) have been quite pleasant. I suppose all the angry people are too busy on their mains to sour the leveling dungeons.

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friendly people are there, they are just lost in a maelstrom of embittered people who think they have a right to be downright nasty to complete strangers because they can hide behind a mask of anonymity called the internet where the maximum punishment is a ban.

Just look at these forums and try to disagree with a thread full of people all parroting each other. You’d think you had just stated your intent to invade Poland.

1 Like
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“LFD and LFR made me antisocial!!”

Yes of course it did and the invention of sidewalks made me want to never drive a car.

Stop blaming tools for people being ignorant. They did that themselves.

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Find friendly people to play with. A guild or another form of community. It takes a bit of social effort if you don’t already know people from fifteen years ago, and I imagine it’s harder now to make friends because there is less need for social reputation (everything is cross-server, more anonymous, more fast-food-like).

Toxic loudmouths can give the impression that everyone is like that, but I believe that the majority of players are still nice folks. They may just stick to their existing social circles because they’ve played for years.

There is a stickied thread at the top of this forum section for making friends. This might be a good starting point.

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What happened to this community?
Hah! I’m glad you asked.
The good community is having fun in WoW Classic :wink:
Seeya there

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Hey Doombearer,

I completely agree with you, over the years ive been playing WoW i noticed the same. An increase in apathy and general rudeness to your fellow player, maturity declining and people being more and more impatient and abrasive towards one another.

i still love the game at its core, but try to avoid any contact with other players, i tried before to “fix” the problem. I always greet players, say thank you, try to make a bit of chitchat, well you know the drill. But you can only be ignored so many times or simply being asked to shut up and keep dps´ing

i don’t really know who to blame, not that i want to point fingers, just trying to wonder what’s the reason for this. maybe this doesn’t really mater.

well, with all this said i find myself quite lucky. i mainly do arenas and my friends list has gone from 41 friends back in MoP to a total of 6 now. My brother, my gf and 4 dudes ive met over the last 3 years to do arenas with each season.

Currently i avoid any sort of social interaction because in a way ive lost “hope”, if you will.
i left general and trade chat, too many childish or outright offensive jokes on these channels and if i wish to buy something there’s always the AH.
Not everyone takes it this far, nor i am suggesting this to you.

Simply put, do you like swimming against the tide? this is what it feels for me regarding this community.

Anyway, if you ever wanna play or even talk, i have chars on both factions feel free to add me :blush: Marreant#2406

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Well that is just false. You get unpleasant people in both games. In my personal experience, more unpleasant ones in Classic, but then, that is just my personal experience.

Essentially what happened is the Internet, like most technological innovations it is both blessing and curse, people can communicate with other people across the world in real time. Unfortunately this also gave rise to people’s ability to be absolute muppets and say things they would never dare to say to a persons face, which is down to a variety of factors, one of which is not how old an MMORPG is. This idea that Classic is some sort of lovely paradise where everyone is nice is simply a fairy tale.

I think that is just a misconception on some people’s behalves. If someone RP’s even rarely, then they are on the right server. Walking around in stealth and watching RP is a thing, but firstly, the RP’ers aren’t actors getting paid to entertain you, and secondly, depending on level, they can detect you, and there where are you? I mean if Brigante here suddenly noticed a Rogue or Hunter with Chameleon sneaking around him, you can be damned sure he would have some questions, questions he would expect answering. “Who are you?” “Why are you here?” “Did someone pay you to spy on me?”. I mean similar happened the other night, having an animated conversation, about seven or so of us, and someone was just loitering in earshot, they were playing Nightborne, so we swapped to Orcish to be polite, and someone even said “That fellow over there, are you wanting to join the conversation?” they said “no” so we just left it at that. I mean sometimes people do that. I write a lot, I find it helpful to write sat in a pub, just to be surrounded by conversation and people, rather than a pristine austere environment with no sounds about me. I’m not joining in the conversation, unless some of my friends walk in, and I’ll talk to anyone who pops over, but I am quite happy to just do my thing.

That’s how I generally assume people visibly watching RP are. They’re not sinister, and I will make an IC approach like “You alright there yourself? notice you were hanging around…anything we can help you with?”

Sometimes people are just wanting to RP but don’t know how to initiate RP, especially when a bunch of people are just nattering away in /say.

Thing is, you don’t -know- that, all you can go by is what is seen in game, so hells yeah, if I detect someone Stealthing around me, either because of level, or they got too close, damned right I’m going to react badly.

IC…

Not OOC, OOC that’s all groovy, IC as I say, I’ll have questions.

Some people come to RP realms for the perceived maturity of the populace, which in fairness, is not an undeserved reputation, you do tend to get a lot of players who are older, or a bit more switched on than the “go-go-go” archetype, or the “Git gud scrubs” mentality.

Equally, some come to grief Roleplay as if it was somehow weird people acting as different characters, then going away to watch TV or a DVD as if they weren’t watching people act as different characters (That one always makes me laugh) and those are the types of OOC players that we as Roleplayers rightly dislike. The ones who hang around, don’t disrupt, but don’t engage are not themselves per se the problem, its more like…how can I put this…

Say you have a glass of wine, right? That’s Argent Dawn. That’s your Roleplay realm. it is 100% wine. (I wish it were, but work with me here) You then add 10% OOCers, or ‘water’ in this analogy. Its still mostly wine, but not quite as much wine as it was. Now add another 30% water. Its now pretty much 40% water, and 60% wine, either way, its not really wine, or ‘an RP Realm’, its more sort of ‘Watered down wine’ where some people don’t RP. Add another 20% and you end up with 60% water, 40% wine.

Now if you tried to sell wine that was only 40% actual wine, you’d get done under Trading Standards laws…

Its not the fault of the -water-, Water in itself is a perfectly good liquid and vital, but a bottle of wine should contain wine, not wine and water.

The more OOCers on an RP server, the more your bottle of wine, turns into a bottle of water, with a dash of wine.

And that’s how RP servers die.

That’s why people get protective of them.

That’s my take on it anyway.

How much water is allowed in wine, before it is not classed as wine anymore?

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I sit stealth on my druid on the roofs of stormwind …

And ik, but its more like when people come watch me play wow, i dont see how thats rude, i would not tell them to piss off because they watch me play wow exactly

I dont like to push myself into others Rp’ers, specially with my little knowledge of the lore

BTW i dont mind people telling me off, its just how people are so freaking rude about it

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https ://media.giphy. com/media/UT85cPM4MnNks/giphy.gif

In all seriousness the design of the game for the most part doesn’t require people to be social. As you level nearly all quests can be done solo and LFD requires 0 communication. The only time you even need to speak to someone is at max lvl to organise a M+, raid or rated PvP.
It’s really sad to see the difference from classic to retail in a social manner. I really struggled to get anyone to tell me where a certain mob was in /1 when I was trying out the invasions in 8.3. Whereas in classic i’ll always get several replies and multiple whispers when asking for help/advice.

(somehow lost post privs so had to put spaces in my gif…)

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The game is designed around being competitive.

And competition tends to bring people who are lacking in courtesy. Not to say that competitive people can not be nice, but there is a tendency.

Furthermore, gaming has also become mainstream over the years. It is not just the kind, bullied nerds playing video games anylonger, it is also the bullies of the nerds.

And think, nerds were already way too arrogant for their own good to begin with, and generally lacking in any desireable qualities.

There.

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