Now that Asmongold has decided to play, anyone worried on the server he will choose?

[ElciaDeiLinus]

I can't speak for anyone else's experience, just my own, but when I came over at the end of Stormblood from WoW it felt like night and day between communities. I'm sure there's bad actors out there, this being the internet and all that jazz, but every single time I join DF I expect to complete it without issue, and with people being positive.

In WoW, I expect groups to break down, I expect if we wipe in LFR to see people leave and others start calling others slurs, if I join a partial premade in dungeon or island expeditions I expect to get kicked right before the final boss/last bit of it and earn a deserter debuff on top of gaining nothing for the run, and for Blizz to do zilch about the people who join in premades with the intent of kicking the pug at the last moment. If people find out I'm a girl I expect long term harassment, being stalked to discord. In classic people abuse the automated ban system so hard at one point so many guilds going for scarab lord got banned because competitors were using the system to remove their competition. If you say anything negative in classic you get told to go to retail, when I bring up retail beta issues I get told off and people accuse me of being negative- then after launch those same people get furious that we beta testers didn't do our (unpaid) job and find the bugs we told them about months ago.

WoW's community is such a miserable experience it took me until deep into Heavensward to accept that the positive chain of DF runs was the norm and not just some fluke. I felt nervous watching the Ifrit cinematic because in WoW I'd have been kicked for doing that, I felt wary dying to mechanics like the Angry Mwahai? in WoD cuz in WoW, I'd have been kicked for daring to not know a fight before I do it the first time. Now, I don't feel any worries about doing casual DF content in this game, because it feels like learning things by doing them, messing up, sometimes not being optimal in a game that's meant to be fun isn't some sort of crime deserving of harassment.

I think having a positive, non toxic community is not the same as having an extremely toxic one that encourages bad behaviour, and if there are some in FFXIV who abuse the report function and that actually works, of course that's bad. Some seem under the impression though that WoW players, because they're outwardly toxic, don't do 'subtle' toxic things... which is incredibly wrong. The scarab lord is one incident, but all through classic it was a constant problem with players abusing squelch to silence others trying to sell rare items (enchants, LH helm, devilsaur leather, cloudkeeper), with top raid guilds targetting other top raid guilds with mass reporting, with guilds putting spies into other discords to cause trouble/headhunt/harass players.

I wouldn't be afraid of being assaulted or spit on if I went to a FFXIV fanfest live event- I'd expect it if I went to Blizzcon with an Alliance shirt.

[znushu]

I'd expect it if I went to Blizzcon with an Alliance shirt.

Yeah and that's one of the major issues with how Blizzard conducts itself with World of Warcraft. Over the years they've done effectively nothing but praising the Horde at events while just using the Alliance as more of a target for the Horde. Sure it's toned down abit in recent days but it's still very evident they prefer the Horde more even in 2021. This behavior has grown a issue at there cons where being a fan of the blue team over the red effectively puts a target of aggression on your back from the attendees. I remember one of my friends saying they had to pretend to like the horde at blizzcon so they wouldn't get harassed because they liked the alliance over the horde.

[GrizzlyTank]

Yeah and that's one of the major issues with how Blizzard conducts itself with World of Warcraft. Over the years they've done effectively nothing but praising the Horde at events while just using the Alliance as more of a target for the Horde. Sure it's toned down abit in recent days but it's still very evident they prefer the Horde more even in 2021. This behavior has grown a issue at there cons where being a fan of the blue team over the red effectively puts a target of aggression on your back from the attendees. I remember one of my friends saying they had to pretend to like the horde at blizzcon so they wouldn't get harassed because they liked the alliance over the horde.

Ah... the faction tribalism. A system that purely exists for advertising, while Blizzard themselves goes out of their way to ignore it when making their stories.

And unfortunately people in WoW still clamour to it even though it has always been killing either faction across the realms in the entirety of wow's history.

[Nepentha]

I'm sorry but who? And why are we worrying about where he plays?

[GrizzlyTank]

I'm sorry but who? And why are we worrying about where he plays?

He's WoW's top streamer and got a bit rowdy persona when streaming as his Asmongold alias, as well as having a quite expressive chat/following.

Basically people are fearful that mmo players play more mmos...

[Jojoya]

Yeah and that's one of the major issues with how Blizzard conducts itself with World of Warcraft. Over the years they've done effectively nothing but praising the Horde at events while just using the Alliance as more of a target for the Horde. Sure it's toned down abit in recent days but it's still very evident they prefer the Horde more even in 2021. This behavior has grown a issue at there cons where being a fan of the blue team over the red effectively puts a target of aggression on your back from the attendees. I remember one of my friends saying they had to pretend to like the horde at blizzcon so they wouldn't get harassed because they liked the alliance over the horde.

I remember watching the 10th Anniversary retrospective that had a lot of developer interviews. One comment from Samwise that stuck with me says a lot about how the WoW community ended up where it's at. He thought it was the most awesome thing that they developed a game capable of generating so much player hate for each other over something like a faction choice.

How can anyone think that generating hate is a good thing?

And of course there's the infamous "there's no rule against being a jerk" line that Customer Service reps would repeat over and over when players complained no action was being taken when other players were intentionally disrupting other player activities and events. Was that Blizzard didn't care? Of course not. They cared very much because they enjoyed watching it happen. They fed on those negative feelings.

The atmosphere in the WoW community is very much a reflection of the mindset Blizzard wanted nurtured, one of hate. There are absolutely nice and helpful players there, just as there are here, but they have to stay under the radar or get targeted by the hatemongers because Blizzard is on the hatemonger side.

Here it's the opposite. SE wants all its players to have an enjoyable experience, and hate doesn't fit in that picture. That allows players in FFXIV to be openly nice and helpful, which is going to seem really impressive to players coming from a game that was the opposite.

Long time WoW players have grown up. The hatemongering has lost its appeal for most of them. It shouldn't be a surprise that they're now finding games like FFXIV enjoyable where 10 years ago they would have felt nothing but contempt.

He's WoW's top streamer and got a bit rowdy persona when streaming as his Asmongold alias, as well as having a quite expressive chat/following.

Basically people are fearful that mmo players play more mmos...

I'm not seeing anyone fearing that.

What they fear is Asmongold's viewers will make the FFXIV community extremely unpleasant if they follow him here. Some of us have personal experience with the drama his viewers created over the years in WoW because Blizzard looked the other way as long as they weren't crashing the servers.

Personally, I'm not worried. Most of those who do decide to follow Asmongold are going to be using the free trial, which is restrictive enough to hamper most of what they might do. Those who do manage to pull any stunts will get reported then can sit in the gaol for a few days while the GMs work on processing their bans.

There might be some minor short term unpleasantness while they come to realize SE runs this game very different from the way Blizzard runs WoW but it won't last.

[Nepentha]

He's WoW's top streamer and got a bit rowdy persona when streaming as his Asmongold alias, as well as having a quite expressive chat/following.

Basically people are fearful that mmo players play more mmos...

Oh. Well thank you for explaining. I'm not terribly worried. FFXIV has a pretty strict, some would say heavy handed, approach to people being toxic in the community. I guess I hope he enjoys it?

[Theodric]

Yeah and that's one of the major issues with how Blizzard conducts itself with World of Warcraft. Over the years they've done effectively nothing but praising the Horde at events while just using the Alliance as more of a target for the Horde. Sure it's toned down abit in recent days but it's still very evident they prefer the Horde more even in 2021. This behavior has grown a issue at there cons where being a fan of the blue team over the red effectively puts a target of aggression on your back from the attendees. I remember one of my friends saying they had to pretend to like the horde at blizzcon so they wouldn't get harassed because they liked the alliance over the horde.

In my experience it was often the opposite. Alliance players would spent a lot of time positioning themselves as the 'good guys' and claiming that the various Horde races had absolutely zero ground to stand upon and should have just rolled over and died instead of daring to oppose the Alliance in any and all capacities.

I don't think the faction model was a mistake so much as it should have maybe had a third faction to allow the various playable races to be distributed in a way that made more sense for their mentality, methods and goals.

As for FFXIV, I think it's actually hurt significantly by the lack of any meaningful faction based choices. I find the selection of playable races to be very bland, since any racial lore present in the background never shows up in any prominent way. There's also no unique starting zones for each playable race, so many just don't feel as though they're an actually part of the game world but just a different 'glamour' that can potentially be used when the player character makes their way through cutscenes occasionally nodding in agreement with whatever the Scions want from them next.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It might get a sudden surges of players and crash from the pressure

Jokes aside is there anyone curious about the craziness that will follow him, he has a lots of followers.

Not really. I’m actually excited for the influx of people he’s going to bring in. WoW players seem to be very blunt with critiques and all that and it would probably do our community some good to have blunt feedback and critiques in both content and reviews. Players here have grown far too used to having thin skin. I hope him coming here changes that.

[linayar]

Players here have grown far too used to having thin skin. I hope him coming here changes that.

I hope not having thin skin doesn't mean people would tolerate blatantly rude behaviors and words.