lemonsquidsec: The original Cataclysm broke me with the community. Those 5-man heroics were something else. Instead of helping people learn their class and guiding them with builds, if you had one talent point out of place or made one mistake, just... Flame and kick. It was really tiresome.
CubaSmileSauce: 80% of the playerbase trying to emulate streamers does not help.
Jumbleman5: Because somewhere along the line, just having fun in a game wasn't enough any more. It became about winning or earning as much as possible.
mikfhan: Remember to take things in moderation, even World of Warcraft.
sendL546: Its just.. people wanna rush everything these days. they dont wanna play to have fun. they wanna have everything fast as possible. which concludes problems in raids and what not. and some rage
skrabio: WoW is the video game equivalent of an entry level job application requiring 5 years of experience.
ginosalazar7391: The real Warcraft was the friends we made along the way
Knight-Time_Smoke: Tanking in any MMO is a risky venture for your enjoyment.
txnafish: it's always been about the feeling of superiority, a lot of people nowadays in general have an inflated sense of grandiosity but especially in competitive spaces a lot of people want to put others down for the sake of sating said feeling of grandiosity. it's kinda sad honestly, sometimes certain people forget that the people they are shitting on have feelings too
kibble-net: WoW: $4000 to play for 20 years
Magic The Gathering: $4000 to play for 1 year
Both are toxic in their own special way!
kozmo7: From someone back in vanilla, I’d argue it’s always been toxic. Now all the friendly regular people left, it’s all just bile
teej143: It’s not the game. It’s the people
circusstory: In Vanilla, people spend ALL DAY just camping low levels. It's insanity
petequesada2936: Been running a leveling guild for over 4 years in Classic. Though we are small and still have a few charter members, the guild is nothing but a home for the most casual players. Several of us are well geared and raid on a regular basis with a sister guild that share our love of having fun. We have three rules #1 - play when you can (no pressure), #2 - have fun, #3 - help when you can. Many are former retail players and insist on doing EVERY quest available while leveling and we run a lot of legacy dungeons for fun when we have the toons logged. Anyway. I find many forget it's a game.
paganflute3989: simply said, we dont play games anymore, we work games!
haunted5311: We definitely don't have enough "free play" nowadays. Too many tryhard sweats scoffing at the idea of spending any amount of time "doing something fun" instead of constantly grinding and getting gear/collectables/gold in the most efficient way possible 100% of the time.
Then the said sweats complain about the game being boring once they got everything they wanted to get. They completely forgot the fun aspect of gaming and it's really sad.
undisclosed.professional: In TBC, I ran a dwarf hunter with a pet crab. Groups I joined were at awe and cheered for little Krabbie to go. Even did some raids with him. It was amazing experience.
marydanielle7183: 3 things:

1 - mythic players raging at players who are trying to learn m
2 - trolls (not) answering new player questions in general chat
3 - mythic players bleeding their behavior into leveling dungeons (follower dungeons all day)
matthewlawton9241: It's honestly really simple; at every turn, blizzard made choices that benefits the individual at the expense of the community. Back in the day, if you were a jerk or a known ninja on your server, your game was over at level cap. Your rep would keep you out of decent groups.

But that only works in a world where servers are insular, closed systems. In modern wow, you have cross-realm guilds and zoning, you have weird sharding, you have LFR, you have multiserver auction houses. I can act like history's biggest jackanape on one server but it doesn't matter because those people will cross a boundary, zone out into another shard, and they'll never see me again. If I ruin one guild's experience, I have literally the whole game's worth of guilds to jump to. Servers are porous now, and your reputation just drains out like waste water, good or bad.

If there are no consequences for your actions, then there's literally no way to stop an online culture from going pear shaped. And I don't mean bans or silences. Blizzard can't realistically be our mommy, and I doubt many in the game would really like the scenario they'd have to create to do it in the first place. These consequences have to be organic, as a product of being at least semi stuck with the people in our server. Blizzard needs to abandon this cross realm stuff and plug the holes.
jangranqvist7092: i hate that in wow there is no longer social grouping, and people are like one of the NPC. Truly has world changed people
Dot_Skeith: Cata ruined everything, hence where I quit. you didnt have a CERTAIN build by 1 talent point, you got kicked or not invited. Was a joke.
AgentOroko: When Blizzard began designing and turning around the World First Raiders, that's when the game turned worse. They should have never began to ignore the casuals who make up the other 99% of the player base.
benellis8844: Mythic is the most toxic aspect of the game. Which makes sense because there is such pressure to perform. A timer, limited resource(keys).
chrism3562: Many of the toxic players react like junkies when you get between them and their fix. They lash out and push you away. Their fix is gear and rep. If you're not helping them get it quick you're beneath them.
spectrumsucks1607: I started playing wow again after about 10 years when the icc raid came out in wrath classic. I started from nothing , and made my way to level 80 and doing heroic raiding. When classic cata classic came out , I hit 85 in 2 days and cleared all the raids the day of release. By the third week of the expansion, i was parsing high and pursuing heroic raiding, I realized how toxic the game was and the time investment needed to play at a high level. I haven’t played since and don’t think I ever will.
Taylor-bw4zg: Anyone wgo thinks its only recently become toxic clearly forgot about when world pvp was a thing in classic.
usedcolouringbook8798: TLDR Fanaticism in any form breeds toxicity.
LadyBlair.S: I was bullied terribly in WoW during the Burning Crusade and Lich King. I was just a kid.
I did not fully understand how to properly play my class and character, and I was bullied for it terribly. NOBODY tried helping me get better at the game. It was just hate.
I was even kicked out of a guild i had been in for a long while because i was a bad look for them. I somehow became "famous" on the server due to apparently being the worst player on the server.
Random people i had never met would bully me through whisper chat, pr inviting me into groups just to bully me. I was just a random kid trying to just play the game.
The experience gave me social anxiety or at least worsened it.
goskawow1943: MadSeason talking about shaving balls was not something I knew I needed
mentalmadness9783: Everything in life feels like instrumental play when you get older. Some times when I use my mirrorless camera I feel like I should try to make it a side hustle so I try to portray my photos in ways that I think would suit any future customer. This has made me think that I don't like photography anymore. But as soon as I try to "Free play" it starts to get fun again. It's the same with the dancing that I enjoy, I want it to have some basic rules so everyone that is doing the dance know the expectations. One day I decided that I should join a competition and sooner than later I was a competitive dancer and every training was focused on trying to please the judges. I was starting to dislike the dancing, so I took a step back, quit all competitions and now I just dance for fun again. Somethings are just not meant to be taken too seriously. Even the most fun and passionate hobby you might have can easily turn into a side hustle or even your main job which can easily kill your passion.
Doomshade: This really hit home for me. I remember exploring the barrens as a level 7 night elf hunter back in BC, discovering the horde, and realizing that I'm not supposed to interact with them. Then just going all over the place. It was the most fun i've ever had in a game. As I got higher level, and as time passed, I stopped having fun. It's hard to explore when everything is explored. The raids and dungeons required hours of running the same content, over and over, until eventually, you can quote every line from every npc in every dungeon. It became an obligation to show up for raids, a requirement to participate in dungeons, and for every victory, there was countless losses. Constant talks about getting better, both to me, and me giving them to others. Before I knew it, 15 years passed, and I was no closer to feeling accomplished. There is always something I had to accomplish, without ever accomplishing it, because there is always something new and more challenging. I was 12 when I first started playing. I never cancelled my sub, until my girlfriend broke the chain monotony. The day I cancelled my sub made me feel like I was 12 again. Instead of exploring a game, however, I was finally exploring my freedom from the game. I do miss the old days, and the fun I had with my friends, but I'm not that person anymore. I want to thank every WoW player. No matter how long you've been playing. You guys are an amazing community, and I am proud to have spent some of my most important years with you all. For Azeroth!
DrewPicklesTheDark: Blizzard making the game cater to the top 1%, and bottom 1%, of individual players doesn't help. They ignore things that foster community, and the majority of people in the middle. This is why I swapped to a RP server even when I didn't RP, they are the only ones that still have any semblance of community.
ninnoofthelastunicorn2693: if you wonder why Yoshida and the gang over at XIV crack down hard on any sort of out of line talk or behavior, this is why.
That said, the 'ultra-friendly' player base in XIV becomes something...else.
Patrious_WoW: It's been toxic since day 1
pousoix: Players make an easy game hard with undeserved ego and an obsession with doing content as fast as possible so that they don’t need to play the game any longer than they have to.

The pervasive mentality that “anyone who is slower than me is wasting my time” is the core of the toxicity, or at least in what Classic has become. 2019 is the best we’ll ever get.
googleoperationcyclone: I guarantee veterans don't enjoy the game the same they used to, they only play because wow is all they know.
jurpo6: I got kicked from a cata guild for getting a blue parse by the officer that got a green parse. Wow sucks.
Ar1AnX1x: I think people who are in the community have become mostly toxic, they've become old, bitter and jaded and they don't realize it because they project it on everything else but themselves
AzureRoxe: It's been toxic since like Wrath.

Blizzard has always nurtured a toxic community, especially when the WoW fans always went berserk and attacked every other MMO and Blizzard themselves constantly released their big patches at around the same times others did.

Sep 23 2024

Buy WOW Classic Gold (lvl60)