The "Wow Refugee's" impact on the FFXIV Community?

[Stirix]

Former wow players are not affecting this game in a negative way, i speak as a former wow player myself that came back to this game over half a year ago after getting sick of 'Boring Farming Azerite' expansion. I have been switching between wow and ffxiv for years, and the level of toxic players now is no different than before the wow mass exodus.

Every game has it's percentage of toxic players no mmo is without them. Some are just impatient and expect everything to be perfect every time, some take advantage of being behind an avatar to behave like that because they like it and would never dare do it to people faces in real life. That's just two reasons there are many not gonna list them all.

The main reason the toxicity level is much lower here is because people simply will not tolerate it and the player base will take action and self police to stop this sort of thing, the last time i saw it was about two weeks ago.

I was in an alliance raid, we were on the second to last boss and we wiped, not a big deal. Straight away one of the group starts kicking off about the fact that after this raid being out for a couple of years everyone should know what to do and we should not be wiping. So another player in the group a healer points out that not everyone is the group is a veteran, we had a fair number of sprouts and also had the notification that one or more were new to the duty and as such not everyone can be expected to be experts.

Well this toxic player did not like that, so he inspects the healers gear, next thing he is posting in party chat slamming the healer for his choice of melds by name, saying that he obviously does not have a clue how to play his class since he is using stupid melds, and is calling on the group to check out his terrible melds and saying how useless this player is. Of course the rest of us ignore this player and concentrate on the boss fight.

Now you would think this player would take a hint after we ignore him, but no. He switches to alliance chat and starts the same thing over again posting the healers name in alliance chat and slamming him in alliance chat just the same as he did in the party chat. Again he is completely ignored by everyone in the alliance party.

So we down the boss on the second try, one boss left and it is done. Shortly after the boss is downed vote kick pops up, reason harassment. The toxic player was kicked, so after half an hour in the run only one boss left he was booted and had to do another alliance raid from the beginning for his behaviour, so he lost half an hour of time over it.

Now i cannot say if this player has carried on in this manner in other runs or learned their lesson, but if they carried on doing this repeatedly the reports would end up getting him banned.

That is why toxic behaviour is more of a rare occurrence here and will continue to be. It will never stop completely, this again is true of any mmo. It is simply not tolerated here.

[CazzT]

Former wow players are not affecting this game in a negative way, i speak as a former wow player myself that came back to this game over half a year ago

I am also a former WoW player. Just because you, and I, are not toxic does not mean that there are not a lot of toxic players coming from WoW.gonna list them all.

The main reason the toxicity level is much lower here is because people simply will not tolerate it and the player base will take action and self police to stop this sort of thing, the last time i saw it was about two weeks ago.

It IS tolerated, even celebrated, in WoW. And the more toxic players a community has, the more likely it is that such behavior is tolerated. WoW's community has earned a reputation for being toxic. It's because of this reputation, combined with the sudden surge of WoW players coming to FFXIV, that people in this community are so concerned. It risks shifting the balance from "polite, decent, friendly" to toxic.

So we down the boss on the second try, one boss left and it is done. Shortly after the boss is downed vote kick pops up, reason harassment. The toxic player was kicked, so after half an hour in the run only one boss left he was booted and had to do another alliance raid from the beginning for his behaviour, so he lost half an hour of time over it.

Glad that this was the result. And so far I have not seen a marked increase in this type of behavior. But my DC seems to be one of the better ones in terms of quality of community (if the stories i read on the forums are anything to go by). But the concern is still there about a mass influx of WoW players. The friendly, helpful players, please do join us!

That is why toxic behaviour is more of a rare occurrence here and will continue to be. It will never stop completely, this again is true of any mmo. It is simply not tolerated here.

I definitely agree that it's less common here in FFXIV, and this is a large reason why some are concerned about the sudden influx of WoW players.

[mario710]

I am also a former WoW player. Just because you, and I, are not toxic does not mean that there are not a lot of toxic players coming from WoW.gonna list them all.

It IS tolerated, even celebrated, in WoW. And the more toxic players a community has, the more likely it is that such behavior is tolerated. WoW's community has earned a reputation for being toxic. It's because of this reputation, combined with the sudden surge of WoW players coming to FFXIV, that people in this community are so concerned. It risks shifting the balance from "polite, decent, friendly" to toxic.

Glad that this was the result. And so far I have not seen a marked increase in this type of behavior. But my DC seems to be one of the better ones in terms of quality of community (if the stories i read on the forums are anything to go by). But the concern is still there about a mass influx of WoW players. The friendly, helpful players, please do join us!

I definitely agree that it's less common here in FFXIV, and this is a large reason why some are concerned about the sudden influx of WoW players.

This has got to be the most passive-aggressive attitude that I've seen on these forums in decades. Where is this paranoia of yours stemming from?

Has there been a sudden surge of negative threads - specifically from WoW refugees - as of late? Has there been a surge of DOCUMENTED toxicity in-game in the past few months? If you cannot provide any evidence of these crippling issues aside from your anecdotal experiences then your passive-aggressive behaviour is superfluous.

Does anyone ever wake up and say to themselves: "Oh no, the national debt is 22 trillion dollars and rising! What am I going to do?!"

No.

[Nixxe]

This has got to be the most passive-aggressive attitude that I've seen on these forums all week. Where is this paranoia of yours stemming from?

Has there been a sudden surge of negative threads - specifically from WoW refugees - as of late? Has there been a surge of DOCUMENTED toxicity in-game in the past few months? If you cannot provide any evidence of these crippling issues aside from your anecdotal experiences then your passive-aggressive behaviour is superfluous.

Does anyone ever wake up and say to themselves: "Oh no, the national debt is 22 trillion dollars and rising! What am I going to do?!"

No.

I've been here since ARR, and the community has definitely changed to be more like the WoW community in that time. How much of that is the effect of a steady stream of WoW players coming to this game in a period of time in which WoW was greatly declining and how much is a nigh inevitable effect of a game's community becoming more experienced and overall better I couldn't say, but it has been very noticeable.

[mario710]

I've been here since ARR, and the community has definitely changed to be more like the WoW community in that time. How much of that is the effect of a steady stream of WoW players coming to this game in a period of time in which WoW was greatly declining and how much is a nigh inevitable effect of a game's community becoming more experienced and overall better I couldn't say, but it has been very noticeable.

Yes, because you have empyrical data backing this 'stream' of WoW players pouring in overtime, right?

An undefinable number of non-deterministic factors have caused the attitude of this community to shift over the course of time. That is inevitable for ANY community. Change is undefiable.

[Nixxe]

Yes, because you have empyrical data backing this 'stream' of WoW players pouring in overtime, right?

An undefinable number of non-deterministic factors have caused the attitude of this community to shift over the course of time. That is inevitable for ANY community. Change is undefiable.

An utterly vacuous comment. There is no empirical data for the overwhelming majority of happenings in our daily lives, yet humans manage to navigate them successfully through inference and simple observation. Indeed, it is critical that we be able to do so. Certainly there is a limit to the value of anecdotes, but in the absence of better data–as is the case here–there is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to collectively work out what may be happening through exchanging those anecdotes and trying to form a broader picture. One must be careful not to become overly attached to a particular conclusion hastily, but it is necessary to do this, even in science, which muh le logic types tend to treat almost as a religion (ironically making them hazardous to good science, which they claim to be advocates for). Hypotheses are formed from observations and then tested, yet often it's not possible to test them at the time they are formed, but they may have some particular value or interest as an explanation and continue to have influence until years down the road when it's finally possible to actually test them.

Here, where the stakes are quite low, there is little risk in discussing our collective observations and trying to tease out what may be happening. For instance, I have played FFXIV since ARR and played WoW from BC through Legion. From both sides of the fence, I have observed many of my own friends and acquaintances leaving WoW for FFXIV or playing both simultaneously. I've also participated somewhat actively in both communities and seen time and time again people saying on the WoW forums that they were done with WoW for one reason or another and at least stating an intention to go to FFXIV. Maybe they never did or maybe they quit and came back. However, on the FFXIV side of things, I know many people who did in fact leave WoW and become permanent residents of FFXIV, myself included. I also see plenty of talk of WoW from people who obviously at least used to play it in a variety of chat channels in the game, as well as in the forums. There is an abundance of evidence for the claim that many WoW players have begun playing FFXIV over time, and if you really think that is a contentious claim, then you have utterly abandoned reason for an overzealous and likely crippling dependence on empirical data.

[mario710]

An utterly vacuous comment.

There is an abundance of evidence for the claim that many WoW players have begun playing FFXIV over time

Provide me with this abundance of evidence on a neat spreadsheet.

[Schan]

Yes, because you have empyrical data backing this 'stream' of WoW players pouring in overtime, right?

An undefinable number of non-deterministic factors have caused the attitude of this community to shift over the course of time. That is inevitable for ANY community. Change is undefiable.

Do you have empirical data to prove otherwise? You see, your argument goes both ways.

I think i've seen you posting several times demanding for this "empirical evidence" and "studies". It is quite frankly getting a bit annoying now to keep reading the same arguments over and over.

It is a fact that companies run their own numbers but said numbers are never ever known to the players. At best we do have anedotal experience and "guesstimates".

Toxicity has always been here. Usually on a lesser degree as other games but that also depends on the nature of the game and the type of behaviour devs promote. FF14 is largely a cooperative game. It also requires of you to have some sort of endurance / patience to stomach the MSQ (b4 skips) since it doesn't really let you power through to max level.
WoW... well you have 2 factions that are at war with each other and you can technically kill people from the other faction so by its own nature if foments a bit more of that tribalistic "us vs them" behaviour gamers tend towards (console wars anyone?), which in turn turn people more into trash talking and toxicity if taken towards an extreme.

Not saying that traits of them don't overlap. you can see way more toxicity in FF14's pvp mode (i don't fully understand why competition in general turns people into asshats in games...) and raiding in wow requires people to work together but im rambling at this point...

[mario710]

Do you have empirical data to prove otherwise? You see, your argument goes both ways.

I think i've seen you posting several times demanding for this "empirical evidence" and "studies". It is quite frankly getting a bit annoying now to keep reading the same arguments over and over.

Toxicity has always been here. Usually on a lesser degree as other games but that also depends on the nature of the game and the type of behaviour devs promote. FF14 is largely a cooperative game. It also requires of you to have some sort of endurance / patience to stomach the MSQ (b4 skips) since it doesn't really let you power through to max level.

It doesn't go both ways. Everything I have stated has been objective in nature.

I avoid stating opinions in these threads for this very reason. Flipping the narrative on me is useless.

It is indeed factual that any number (undefined) of factors will influence a community for better or worse. You ask me to provide evidence of human nature, however, I won't do that. What I will do is restate my point that change is inevitable.

Despite our efforts, everything evolves over time. To claim that WoW immigrants are the problem child of this community infecting everyone is hyperbolic without any semblance of evidence that ISN'T anecdotal.

[Vahlnir]

I've been here since ARR, and the community has definitely changed to be more like the WoW community in that time. How much of that is the effect of a steady stream of WoW players coming to this game in a period of time in which WoW was greatly declining and how much is a nigh inevitable effect of a game's community becoming more experienced and overall better I couldn't say, but it has been very noticeable.

I played WoW from 2009 till early this year. I have also played FF XIV since ARR launch. There has been no noticeable increase in toxicity because of WoW players moving over to this game. None. Any toxicity that occurs here is the result of people being people, and knowing they can be anonymous jerks on the internet. More people = more jerks, but that isn't exclusive to WoW players. It's everywhere. Our community is overall decent but it has its fair share of jerks, and WoW has very little to do with it. Honestly? This needs to stop.