whats wrong with wow?

[Abriael]

FFXI has bad apples too, it just didnt seems THAT many because FFXI didnt have THAT many players compare to WoW.

The "wow has more players, so it has more bad players" is a commonly used excuse, but a flawed one. Ststistically, having more players will increase the absolute number of bad players, but it shouldn't increase their percentage.
The problem is that the percentage of "bad apples" in wow is much, much higher than in any other MMORPG (or online community at that) I've ever been part of.

I could write an essay on the reason for this (it's actually a quite interesting marketing related study case), since there are multiple, and all conspire to create a quite complex scenario that leads to the horrible community everyone can see. Some come directly from the gameplay, some from the marketing behind it.

1: WoW inherited directly a large part of the old battlenet from Diablo and Warcraft. One of the worst dens of cheaters, exploiters and generally immature players to ever taint the net

2: wow's art direction, graphics style and environment seem to be made on purpose to appease the lower end of the age spectrum. Walt Disney wouldn't have designed Azeroth any different. The horde has so many mitigating factors to their savagery and malice (more often than not reduced to comedic relief) that they could easily be renamed "the fruity horde", and so forth. The Masters of the Universe had a more grim and realistic backstory than WoW. And that says it all.

3: Every mechanic up to the endgame in WoW has been honed and refined to a single goal: no matter if you're a fifth grader or a soccer mom whose most complex gaming experience has been waving a wiimote around. You'll still be able to thrive and prosper in the game (this is what people normally refer as catering to the minimum common denominator of the gaming scenario). This means that the community is largely impacted by a wide percentage of people that simply lack the background and preparation to interact with an online social environment. Any possible (very relatively) challenging element that would normally weed out or discourage those categories of people is purposedly concentrated in the endgame, where players have already invested too much time and money on their characters to actually considering quitting without very compelling reasons.

3a: the above point creates a radical divide in the endgame between "core" gamers and casual gamers. The first category tries it's hardest to exclude and ignore the second, and the second reacts by trying their hardest to troll and annoy the first

4: between the fact that any player can easily solo to the endgame, the ease to switch servers and even to change names, players are not nearly encouraged to keep a respectful and friendly attitude towards each other. WoW is probably the MMORPG out there that gives you the most chances to behave like a complete prick with your fellow players, and still be able to get by, or even start anew with a clean slate. This means that the ones with a natural aggressive or rude inclination will not have any eelement discouraging them from letting it run amock, short of actions that would require GM intervention. And there's plenty behaviors that don't go as far as warranting the intervention of a GM, but can still be extremely annoying and disruptive.

There are many more factors, but listing them all would really turn this post in an essay. So I'll stop here. I think the scenario is already grim enough without filling further a glass that's already overflowing.