How did the community become this toxic?

[Souljacker]

It amuses me how the very first response to this thread is someone blaming WoW and 124+ people agreeing with them. So far in my experience, the bulk of the people I have met are old XI players who switched over at some point, a scattered few that are burned out on the Pandaria expansion or from other games, and many, MANY more brand new to mmo players than I would have expected. I think this is mostly the console crowd coming in that are brand new to mmos. They never picked up XI because of the bad press and by the time this game was on Playstation it was mostly fixed.

So the idea that somehow a toxic WoW community came over here and is shitting all over "your" game is absurd. Toxic people are toxic no matter WHERE they came from, and blizzard has done a lot over there to help curb some of the more obvious trolling that happens here. Over there you don't just get a blacklist option, you can report someone at the same time without filling out a long form. You can replace people in your dungeon with friend if someone loses connection - you don't have to ask someone to fish for an in progress and hope its yours. There is a lot more to foster a community feeling across servers, so no, WoW doesn't "breed" toxic players. If anything, the environment here and the focus on playing with strangers rather than friends is what breeds the toxicity.

A lot of things are broken here. The market economy is a joke. Systems that should be intuitive and automatic are for some reason convoluted and manual. Content that is being added is only half-finished (if that) and frustrations are mounting at not being able to just... play the freaking game.

I blame SE more than I would blame any one group of people that has come to play the game. We all have the same goal: to be entertained and enjoy a world apart from our own with our friends. The systems should facilitate that, not rail against it like the ONLY way to properly play is by pairing 4 complete strangers together.

[Kallera]

Lack of accountability, along with the rat race that is weekly clears and timers, is, if not all, that at least part of the issue.

The inability to recover during endgame may also be a factor. This game is touted around as being so easy and casual, so whenever a failure occurs, it is always "someone's fault", someone is the bad, someone is wasting our time.

"If we had a proper player, this would be easy again."

And so the community becomes vicious, and the person behind the screen is dehumanized. "Why should I teach these people or talk to the whom? I won't see them again."

[Nadrojj]

The only part of the community that is "toxic" is this forum. People come here to whine about how things aren't fair or how they don't like something and demand sweeping changes, not realizing they look like immature children. Most logical discussions devolve into name calling or arguing. In game I've had very few problems outside of a few bad apples but they are easy to ignore.

[Skinypupy]

I've had a few bad experiences, but most of the time I am impressed by how many nice players I have met in ratio to the not-so-nice. Many players I've found are extremely helpful.

This has been my experience as well. The vast majority of folks are nice, with the occasional a-hole...just like any large group of random people. I will admit that ratio tends to skew when you get to the higher level content (the three LoA runs I've done have been cesspools of bitchiness), but I find the community to be very welcoming for the most part.

[Fendred]

Just an observation, but it appears that the Duty Finder somehow concentrates toxic players into one place at max level. You simply can't do an ex primal fight in Duty Finder without having a handful of toxic players in group. It only takes one to derail the entire operation, especially on tough fights like those. I haven't tried Twintania on Duty Finder yet, but I doubt it would be much better if random people are involved.

Edit: And I am specifically referring to randomly assigned groups, where it should be assumed one or more people will be new to the fight. Honestly, what do people expect if they are trying to do an EX primal with a randomly assigned group?

Also, the vast majority of the community is nice. Rather, the tools sometimes backfire and concentrate all the combustibles into one place.

[Dwill]

It amuses me how the very first response to this thread is someone blaming WoW and 124+ people agreeing with them. So far in my experience, the bulk of the people I have met are old XI players who switched over at some point, a scattered few that are burned out on the Pandaria expansion or from other games, and many, MANY more brand new to mmo players than I would have expected. I think this is mostly the console crowd coming in that are brand new to mmos. They never picked up XI because of the bad press and by the time this game was on Playstation it was mostly fixed...

Blaming WoW is still the thing to do for people stuck in the early 2000. If any of them had actual knowledge about social behavior in MMO, they would know that this type of community exists in every single MMOs out there. The game is not even remotely close to being half as toxic as people claim it is and that supposed high toxicity of the community is blown way out of proportion.

[Kienkarajo]

You have absolutely no way of qualifying that statement and it is absurd, nobody would leave WoW to play this game anyway

I left wow to play this games because I think it's better and also WoW it's not the best game ever it's just the oldest.

[Tupsi]

I left wow to play this games because I think it's better and also WoW it's not the best game ever it's just the oldest.

It's an older one, but plenty of games came before that were more popular (and well designed for its time) - which brings up the point as to why people blame WoW and post WoW era.

[DoctorPepper]

You simply can't do an ex primal fight in Duty Finder without having a handful of toxic players in group.

This is just wrong.. maybe with the exception of Titan EX. Aside from that I've cleared all the other Extremes multiple times in DF (solo queue) pre-echo. I'll admit that not all the groups are good enough but as long as people are patient and don't bail out after one wipe it's not that bad.

Personally I don't really agree with the whole "toxic community" argument. Aside from the occasional rude player in DF it's really not that bad from my point of view. I've met a lot of nice and helpful players in game and they greatly outweigh the bad ones in my opinion.

[Zantetsuken]

A toxic community is the side effect of 'accessibility'.

The more accessible a game is, the more entitled, easy-win people will be attracted to it.

The less accessible a game is, the more those types will be driven away due to the difficulty of obtaining items and maneuvering around the game's systems -- at the same time, high-level players in those games are more likely to be helpful as there is prestige in imparting their own discoveries and hard-earned knowledge on others.


But accessibility is considered the safest route for AAA developers as you can attract a larger audience with dumbed down systems and a lower skill threshold.

Thankfully, games like Demons/Dark Souls may be showing developers that challenge, reward, and discovery are more powerful engagement tools than scripted 'theme-park' experiences.