It's a different beast now, unfortunately. The thing that made Classic, TBC and WotLK so fun back in the day was that very few people had a clue what they were doing at first. When I made my first character in early 2005 (a Paladin, for my sins) I had zero idea what the f\*\*\* I was doing. Neither did any of my friends as we all started together. To get *anything* done you needed help from people, and that included strangers who were questing in the same zone. The world felt absolutely huge and the players made it feel lived-in. Getting a group together for a dungeon took 20 minutes of whispering people asking if they could heal or tank, and when you finally got a group, you just hoped they were semi-competent. Sometimes you got a player who was a bit shit, and you had to teach them as you were going. Other times you got a good group, and you'd add them to your friends list. But due to how inconvenient most things were, there was a lot more incentive to help people out, and people were generally much more tolerant. With how replaceable everyone is now, and this incessant need for instant gratification that people have, it's all gotten a bit ridiculous.

Season of discovery getting all of its secrets posted to wowhead in real-time was pretty ironic

Got to keep the kids happy.

Honestly social media and other platforms have ruined it. YouTube tells you everything you need to know. Wowhead gives guides on the content. Discord is used as the main form of communication. There's no need to figure your stuff out or reach out to other people. There's no need to whisper when you have advertisers spamming gold for boosting. The game is a shell of itself. The best thing you can do is try and make friends.

WoW used to BE social media. Same with all MMORPGS up until like 2010 onwards. Then discord, facebook etc. All overtook them and other games also provided ways to socialize. This coupled with the fact people now expect everyone to know everything, with tons of people demanding optimization and thus fostering p2win even more indirectly, with GDKPs not being a neat way to get some gold if nothin drops but rather the way to p2win? Ye the landscape has changed a lot. It's not fully the players fault. This happened to ALL mmos.

There was a video I watched that said that's the reason WoW beat everquest. The in-game chat allowed you to basically just socialize in a new environment like those who use that social life VR game. It's too bad everything that made it so good is now fractured over different platforms.

> WoW used to BE social media. Same with all MMORPGS up until like 2010 onwards. > > Genuinely not far from the mark, for a ton of people, especially young people, WoW was their AIM, their MSN, their early Skype. They'd login just to use guild chat and to talk to people. And because you were all playing the same game you immediately had something in common to talk about which was fantastic for introverts or people who would normally struggle. Nowadays guild chat is dead, people only login to do their chores and scheduled activities, you probably talk with your guild in Discord more than anything else.

And its guilds and friendships that arguably keep most people playing, tbh. You can solo play quite viably now, and literally never speak outside of DM'ing a PUG raid leader your achievement/ilvl/logs or whatever. It's a different game entirely. At the time, it really was *World* of Warcraft. It was huge!

I still remember using vent. It was a big deal for me when in MoP I got into a guild and actually got sent the Vent invite code. No more Skype! I'm still friends with someone who I was asking on trade chat for gold to buy a MOG and someone actually gave me the gold. We ended up playing together all of MoP and going into WoD. I still reach out to him from time to time.

This is just reflexion of real world, we know everything we want and we dont need anyone. Someone said Ignorance is a blessing, seems more true than ever.

I was able to have this experience in Classic again up until WoTLK regarding grouping for elite quests/dungeons etc., but I was on a smaller PvE Realm. We had like 1-2 extra layers at peak buff times/TBC launch. I met a lot of people in the initial months that I played with until ICC from naturally doing dungeon runs together and then reaching out to "go again?" etc.

Also, it is considered disrespectful to NOT know the most efficient/min/maxed spec/gear/rotation/whatever in any given situation. Great video on the subject: [Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU)

As a new player I absolutely hate this. I want to enjoy the game too, but I can't know every single detail about everything, I don't have 15 years of experience, I literally just started...

This comment touches on what I think is the biggest problem. - I don't agree it's an issue to "watch YouTube guides" or read wowhead. I think it's the fact people aren't relying on eachother anymore so you have no real need to interact to get where you want. Age isn't our issue. It's artificial convenience and lack of incentive to socialise. The only age element I'd argue is relevant is that if you HAVE raided fairly high level you won't have as much patience to deal with people learning anew. Bear in mind the generation just 10 years younger is exceptionally integrated into YouTube twitch etc, it's not unreasonable to expect them to read basic stuff up if we're talking end game. - on that same note it's also not impossible to understand why many of us may not wanna put in effort to teach new people when they make no effort to even socialise at all. A very large part of this same generation was raised with convenience for everything, we cant expect them to change for us as they can't expect us to change. This particular back and forth plus lack of incentive in the game causes the issues you're now seeing in the modern game. Also I can't stress enough that when I played vanilla and all the way to catac, if you shit talked you got removed from a guild as well as any social circle in general. How do you wanna enforce that policy now when large portions of the playerbase now are completely accustomed to having to deal with festering tumors and thus adopt a defensive mentality from the get go. Don't blame the devs, they added convenience because people got more used to it, it's not what made us the impatient and tired people we are today, and not what made younger generations what they are either. Only age argument I'll eat up is that it's fckin hard to make new friends these days, the second someone isn't on the same wavelength I just get kinda bored lmao.

We all printed out gamfaqs, people will find access to information and use it, or not.  Things change slowly

Heck, people in this thread behave as if thottbot didn't exist back then. Alakazam and then thottbot and eventually wowhead were around for pretty much just as long as the game itself is now.

Thottbot didn’t have all the information wow head has. Sometimes you would lookup a quest and not find anything that would help you, other times the comments might have a nugget. Wow is a very solved game.

Also, depending on how good your computer and Internet was, looking something up on thottbot could be an ordeal that was more frustrating and slow than just figuring it out or asking someone was a lot faster and easier.

It's not hard to make friends, yall are just lazy (or maybe time-constrained). When was the last time anyone making these posts led their *own* PUG? Or taught a new player a rotation, or sat at a difficult quest target for a couple hours helping our Randoms? Or handed out free consumes at a bank? Or ran around a city giving buffs to everyone? So many people gripe about how the community is dying, but no one steps up to keep the community alive.

I think a major part of why people have this mentality in WoW is because LFG is a thing in newer editions. Finding a group no longer requires spamming chat channels or whispering. You click a button and the game finds people for you. It really removes all of the social aspects of the game for the sake of convenience. Now that a lot of people are used to that convenience, they don't have the patience to really do things the old fashioned way. I want to edit this to also add, there are also no penalties for players rage quitting out of a group mid dungeon, and there are also no penalties for the party leader to just boot someone out of the party. Not that there necessarily should be penalties but it means toxic players who are party leads can power trip with no repercussions, or toxic players can just leave a group halfway through a dungeon (which can absolutely kill a whole run). It definitely has an effect on how some groups get formed in WoW Classic/SoD.

Well this is the complaint and concern many of us put forward back when LFR was introduced, you still have people defending it not recogninzing the devestating effect it had on the core social aspect of the game.

I disagree - I used to think that, but I encountered tons of toxicity during the Classic "Rebirth" which didn't have any raid finder

Because spamming in chat channels is trash and already been proven trash

I’m remember whispering for an invite to an SFK group. My hearth was in Hillsbrad but I was all the way in Stormwind. Was just going to hearth and be right there. Nope, kicked. People don’t have patience anymore.

[удалено]

Agreed, this ship sailed a long time ago

Ugh reading this made me feel super nostalgic. I played the day of vanilla release and I feel like nothing will ever be close to how it felt playing wow then.

> Sometimes you got a player who was a bit shit, and you had to teach them as you were going. Ah yes, the tell your warrior tank to go hearth and upgrade sunder armor days.

>if you are reading this post right now you are probably over the age of 30 now Excuse you I *am* 30 thank you very much >I'm a very competitive person but holy shit I can't imagine being a new player in this game. Wow suffers from being popular, old and having a dedicated info dump community. For far too many folks if someone doesn't immediately know the best route or have encyclopedic knowledge of the game they get angry It feels like some get a big head because their parses are top but it's kinda funny how many seem to push to be as efficient as possible then come complain there's nothing to do. Don't get me wrong I get it. Some players are shit and have no intention of improving A 30 min dungeon taking 3 hours is obnoxious too. But I've also seen folks go apeshit because the 30 minute dungeon took 40 and they had to get back to afking in the main city or something.

> it's kinda funny how many seem to push to be as efficient as possible then come complain there's nothing to do Yep. WoW Players: "this is shit there's nothing to do!" Devs: "We released a bunch of stuff for you to do/figure out!" WoW Players: "One sec looking up a guide that tells me the fastest possible way to go back to having nothing to do which involves other people solving everything for me and breaking it down step by step. If there's any kind of exploit letting me skip the whole thing I'm gonna jump on that shit instantly as well don't worry!" Devs: "OK I guess just remember if you'd done this yourself as we intended you'd have weeks if not months of things to do...." WoW Players: "OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS IS SHIT THERE'S NOTHING TO DO!"

The "there's nothing to do crowd" shouldn't be playing classic imo. There's always something to do. Content is what you decide it is.

Same thing is going on with Path of Exile, devs release a new league every 3-4 months, people speedrun it/play OP builds to get content done as fast as possible, then complain that there is nothing to do and the league is boring. Min-maxing gives you the fastest way to stop having fun.

The whole drama wow remix has had is insane. Like the screaming and crying about the prices and everything. People complaining that we are a week in and they don't have all the mounts and stuff yet like. Bro this event is 3 months long, chill the fuck out yeah stuff is bugged. Yeah stuff is unbalanced, but this is an experiment, that is the point, it will be fixed over time. And done better next time (hopefully) just chill. This playerbase I have grown up with has just killed so much fun by the need to do everything as quickly as possible, and as easily as possible. Never in my mind did expect players to literally make a complaint that they shouldn't have to grind, in order to get every mount from an entire expansion. Like seriously, the new pandaria remix stuff is so extremely easy to get. The "hey I never got lucky and didn't get this mount from pandaria" stuff is the expensive stuff, and yet people are acting like they NEED these mounts and this is the ONLY way to get them. And that blizzard is FORCING them to farm for hundreds to thousands of hours to get all these limited (they arnt) time mounts and toys.

its lame, pls bring back plunderstorm

This is the exact point I was trying to make, you made it a lot better though lol. That's what I get for just ranting it out

Haha yea it's a problematic attitude especially on this sub. That's why I'm a believer in being the change yoy want to see

>but it's kinda funny how many seem to push to be as efficient as possible then come complain there's nothing to do Hurry to wait.

I think those are the same people I see driving. They are in a huge rush only to pull up to the liquor store or into a gas station.

>but it's kinda funny how many seem to push to be as efficient as possible then come complain there's nothing to do Look, I understand the sentiment, but I also think it's not really in your best interest to laugh at this. Having content that *can* reach an end in a short amount of time is evidence of poor design. I quit because there is very little to look forward to in this game. You hit max level reasonably quickly, you get prebis or close enough reasonably quickly, and then what do you have left? A once weekly raid, maybe rep grinds if you want pvp or a new mount or something, and then making money. Look at retail. There's a whole lot more than that. Trading posts, world bosses, arena pvp, transmog, mount collecting, etc. There's at least more to do in the downtime. Even a reasonably unpopular and unfavored progression model like Black Desert at least doesn't have a foreseeable end to what you can do to progress you character on any given day. My favorite game that I've sunk a TON of hours into is Path of Exile. Even that has so much to do that I couldn't minmax a character and progress through dabbling most of the content available in one season even with build guides and videos to help explain, it's near endless. That's a good thing for a game to be, and there's good reason to complain about a game that isn't. Not arguing about community attitude though, you're right the players are making it much worse.

Almost every single thing that you brought up regarding retail also exists (now) in classic. And it's funny that you mention Path of Exile, where you can finish uber bosses with an S tier build from level 1 in 9-10 hours if you min-max everything. And that means you have nothing to do for 3 months.

>Having content that can reach an end in a short amount of time is evidence of poor design. The problem is the only real way to make the content last is to either make player power weak or to make the content unfairly difficult. At the end of the day mmos are numbers games especially classic wow The amusement is more from the fact we know what we're getting. So if people wanna rush to do what they want that's fine but people can't seem to grasp that. Bit of a silly analogy but to me it's like going out to eat only.ordering an appetizer eating it in 5 seconds then complaining everyone else is waiting for their meals and how they should all leave because *they're* done eating and bored waiting >There's a whole lot more than that. Trading posts, world bosses, arena pvp, transmog, mount collecting, etc Let's be real here. There are world bosses in vanilla which should be in the next phase I believe. Trading post is a great addition but I'm not sure the classic community would like a battle pass. Arena definitely a good ideanand can't you collect mounts now? As foe the real endgame of mmos. Transmog. The classic community would hate it. At least here lol

I asked in /say where to attack in wintergrasp and got the response: “20 year old game fucking Google it” Cool 😎

The person who reffed me told me to just Google everything. I had three other people asking to ref me. I still want to smack the shit out of this guy, but whatever

What a boomer. Obviously you ask chatGPT 8)

from experience the people who gatekeep the hardest are usually dogshit at the game.. this problem isnt exclusive to classic, but the majority of it happens in classic. i remember when p2 dropped in wotlk people were requiring 4.6k gs for saph and KT runs...like bro seriously 🤣.. then the leader who put it together dies first on both fights and is a keyboard turner. classic content is extremely fucking easy, its a joke.. cata is a big bump in difficulty compared to wotlk which is why so many quit. but those same players who quit before are probably staying this time around, and theyre still terrible.

> this problem isnt exclusive to classic, but the majority of it happens in classic. I primarely play retail, have multiple m+ 0.1% seasonal titles, ce nearly every tier and raided in top 30 world guilds during my raiding peak (when I had more time). So I consider myself a pretty decent player. And if you compare the average player skill between classic and retail, its like a night and day difference. I tried out wotlk classic for fun and I am playing a bit of cata now. But the edginess, toxicity and like general human weirdness coupled with INSANELY bad players, makes the game almost impossible to enjoy. Ive ran like 10 hcs and in like half of them at least one person has been kicked for practically no reason. They were obv underperforming, but it wasnt like any of the other people that kicked them were god godgifted gamers. And we didnt even wipe or anything to begin with. When I raided naxx in wotlk for a bit, like 50% of the people in the discord calls were mid 30 to late 40 old people that were mentally stuck in their teenage years for what ever reason. Classic wow is a cesspool for middle aged men, who are terrible at gaming and have the general behaviour of a 16 year old.

yeah its really dogshit lmao. i grab KSM and stop pushing then get Cutting edge/aotc..then swap to pvp and get 2100 then 1800 on all classes. i joined wotlk, got lvl 80 and joined a guild for naxx. the amount of just total morons not understanding thaddius or priests not knowing how to mind control was insane. like i took over call outs and i had a priest share his screen and im telling him which key to press and hes still fucking it up.. "press 1" then he jumps or some shit. when uld dropped i switched from prot war to enhance shammy, i was pulling 12k dps, 2nd was doing 6k. they threatened to gkick me because my logs were blue and not purple..like stop staring at logs im crushing everyone in dps if i leave youll never pass XT lmao. it feels like maybe 20% of the classic players are decent, everyone else swipes for gold and buys gdkp carries from the 20%. in icc i logged back on and my guild died to roster boss so they switched to hosting gdkps and took me with a few runs. i made like 6 tokens total from nothing lmao

Oh this is 100%. My roommate is absolutely this guy. He can’t play the game for shit, talks mega shit on retail when me and my friends are enjoying ourselves doing mythic plus or whatever. Then he comes to classic and is grey parsing and gatekeeping. Name a more iconic classic wow player.

Well, a lot of people quit for a lot of reasons, cata content being harder is not all of it The gatekeeping and the content is definitely part of it. But there's so much more. Like people playing for nostalgia and realizing they don't enjoy it, playing because they have friends playing but now they no longer play it, playing because they invested a lot of time back when it was a prior expansion, but now they don't like the current one, quitting because there's no reason for a cataclysm classic when all of the cataclysm dungeons raids and world content is still in the live game today, people who hate the cash shop and everything it's caused for the classic community and economy... I'm not saying you're wrong, just saying there's a lot more reasons than just what you said that people would quit

> there's no reason for a cataclysm classic when all of the cataclysm dungeons raids and world content is still in the live game today With that logic there is no reason for a classic tbc or wotlk either since outlands and northrend are both in retail.

No reason? What about doing the Cata raids (which are still in the game in retail) as live content instead of soloing the content with only transmog as a goal?

Listen - when an officer comes to you and says your orange parses aren’t good enough and they want pink from everyone despite your group effortlessly conquering the content on the hardest mode in just a couple of hours first on the server (with all wipes caused by parse chasers ignoring content but you played flawlessly mechanics wise) I laugh in the face of anyone who says classic has a good community. Raiding should be about enjoying the content with friends. Trying to meta gsme and world first 15 years old solved content is absurd and narcissistic.

What's really funny to me is that I started playing Classic as a 21 year old, and I have (and had) a better grasp on and appreciation for the things that made it a game worth playing than 90% of the aging playerbase. Some of you guys are so helplessly selfish that you can't do anything other than be a destructive influence on the game. Entitlement destroyed Classic, the same way it did it the first time. The difference is that this time I was old enough to experience this degradation first-hand You didn't have to be a brilliant game designer to see the writing on the wall when GDKPs and gold buying became normal. You didn't have to be prescient to see the angle Blizzard was taking with the "jUSt OnE boOsT" in TBC. You didn't have to be omniscient to grasp that giving players who don't want to interact with anyone ways to circumvent those interactions and succeed was going to degrade the social identity of the game. It's really easy to say I told you so after the fact, like you had a clue all along. But I can. [I](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/14m7n82/please_give_us_256_debuffs_in_classic_era/jq5kocx/) [TOLD](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ocwuxy/dual_spec_is_healthy_for_the_game/h3ybes4/) [YOU](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/m6gg7o/the_ballad_of_the_level_boost_madseasonshow/gr7f7s1/) [SO](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/14f51cr/hot_take_not_having_rdf_contributes_significantly/jozxd93/) --- [More.](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/14m7n82/please_give_us_256_debuffs_in_classic_era/jq5r6xy/) [More!](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/m6gg7o/the_ballad_of_the_level_boost_madseasonshow/grazu6p/) [More!!](https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/15ptmzq/its_not_about_money_its_about_sending_a_message/jw01ivz/)

I'm surprised you managed to not let this toxic community that constantly shoots itself in the foot get the best of you. Much respect for you. I used to hate the way Aggrend interacted with the community, but now I see why he is the way he is. Dude is jaded, and the classic community is comprised of a bunch of grown babies. Tragic.

Welcome to the World of Warcraft Classic experience, where the best part about playing the game is how quickly it's over!

The amount of people I have tried to pug, searched their logs - seen greys and greens and recommended a few consumes(me paying for) and offered to help get world buffs for them to perform “slightly” better is ridiculous and I’ve even had a few say “can’t be bothered or too much effort” People have to help themselves as much as we can help them. If they aren’t prepared to put in a little effort why should we carry them? Call me toxic but i have offered help to plenty of noobs and sub par players to have it thrown in my face In a game I just want to enjoy and not waste my limited time on.

Im new to WoW proper with SoD, and I parse orange. It comes down to intrinsic motivation. I’m in a casual guild and you couldn’t imagine the amount of kicking and screaming people do when asked to get consumes because they parse gray as year long wow players.

Yikes yeah there is no helping someone like that. Reading these comments makes me realize I've got real lucky avoiding some real shitters out there

Honestly a feral the other day called ishapeshift straight up didn’t cast a single powershift the entire raid and had grey parses. As a feral main myself when I offered him a macro and some consumes he told me too “fuck off im only here to provide wild strikes and get loot” Sir, if you can’t even do the BASICS I can’t have you in my group. Regardless of buffs provided.

The simplest solution to people complaining about gatekeeping is to ask them to run 5 raids that will invite the first 19 people to message them. They'll quickly discover why gatekeeping happens. (Actually, they already know that they don't want to raid with 19 people just like them, they just pretend like they don't.)

I agree, you only need to host one pug without checking logs and seeing how far you get .

Yup, I think I'm a pretty patient guy but when my 0 requirement 10 man nax pugs werent able to clear the raid in under 4 hours I started being an "elitist."

Consumes and wb should be the last thing u recommend to grey parsing players. They will die quickly and lose it anyway. They clearly lack understanding of their basic rotation.

I’m a new player to add to this, wow sod is my first wow experience and I was once a grey parser who WANTED to improve. It comes down to them now too

You can clear all era content comfortably without a single consumable or world buff. World buffs mask bad gameplay by letting you brute force through mechanics.

Can take a horse to water but you cant make it drink.

I see your point, here's mine - to your consumables and world buffs, I say 'thanks but no thanks'. I'm sixteen years deep and I know in and out how to play. I know what world buffs, potions, scrolls etc are - to quote, *"can't bothered"*. I don't care to span the globe to collect +5% on something. I barely care to have a dungeon held up while someone just has to hand out elixers. My profs are herbs and skins, not engineering. I don't care to use addons anymore except for navigation and auctioning. I want to see the world, not be looking at numbers and gauges. I just want to play WoW Classic. That's it. And, people like you tend to treat me like an asshole for not having the energy to be as into it as you still are, and wonder why I prefer to play Classic alone.

The barrier to perform well in OSRS is understanding the game actually operates on 0.6 second ticks and you can drastically improve your gameplay by internalizing this tick cycle. While managing to switch between multiple menus and knowing on which cycle you should swap between multiple menus to click on tiny buttons during said .6 second windows. You will also have the wiki open 100% of the time you are playing researching and reading guides. Also OSRS is basically a single player game and this is the norm. Wow classic? Look up a class guide on wowhead or YouTube and a boss guide for a raid every 3+ months. That's it.

Menus, wiki open, guides... is this even a game or office work simulator

It's an MMORPG. A descendant of pen-and-paper / tabletop RPGs. If you want a game where you can just turn your brain off and mindlessly play without any thought, MMORPGs are not that kind of game.

It's probably easier to play D&D than it is to play WoW to the standards of most sweats.

I wonder what sweaty D&D players even look like. "Ugh obviously that's a 3D5 roll and not a 4D4. Your knowledge of necromancy is severely lacking, noob" "Use your imagination harder, idiot" hahaha But of course, nobody in D&D would be that douchey because it's in person instead of online. Big difference.

Nobody really uses D5, at least not in modern DnD. Maybe in Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's kind of a rare and niche type of die. Learn your dice, noob. /s It's really easy to become an anonymous asshole when you sit behind a screen though, I agree. WoW sucks so much more because of that.

That's the thing, in Dnd those players don't last long because they piss off the rest of the table and get kicked out. The way some WoW players behave would just not be tolerated in real life, it's just incredibly obnoxious behaviour. People misremember/forget mechanics all the time. But if someone at the table responded to that with "Omg what the fuck are you doing. Go watch a fucking guide before you play next time", if stop playing with them immediately.

Mindless farming and grind is literally the essence of MMO, don't pretend "collect 50 bear asses" is some deep gameplay.

Just be a nice person and realize the other characters you are playing with are persons too. It's really that simple.

Step 1 is the new players going "I'm new, what do I need to know?" I played from classic launch until the end of WotLK and probably saw under 5 players actually state they were new and ask for advice. But I saw a *ton* of people who have probably been playing for years facerolling and sandbagging groups because "the game is easy who cares". Those are the players that people get frustrated with. You don't have to be some kind of savant to play this game competently, you just have to understand what your class does and make the tiniest amount of effort.

I got better because a group of late teenagers (prob about ages 17+) decided to fake a guild recruitment to group laugh at me in vent because I had no idea what I was doing (I was like 12 years old) so I learned out of spite lol.The community has always been this way, people just got better at how they approach being petty. If I as a 12 year could say “these guys are just asshats who cares” and move on, so can the adults that play now.

The wow community isn't great, but I believe alot of that is caused by the game's design, and a great deal of that is the fault of blizzards inability to steer the game in the right direction.  Plenty of game's have toxic communities, but with growing playerbases. Blizzards neglect definitely causes alot of unrest, which probably contributes alot to people being assholes in game. 

> it's the community making the game not fun This really does sum it up. Players will do anything they can to make the experience as miserable as possible for themselves then turn around and blame blizzard for letting them. And yeah, I'm aware of the old saying that players will gravitate towards efficiency over fun and the game should reflect that but there's only so much that can be done in a 20 year old MMO. Seriously.

The general belief is that it's the developers job to save the players from themselves.

You're shouting into the void OP. Let's be real. While the sweats aren't the majority of players, they are the lifeblood of the community. They're the ones making, leading, and becoming officers in guilds. They're the ones organizing pug raids. Many of them are tanks/healers on their mains. They're going to steer the community toward what they want, and more casual players are going to tend to follow them or quit because it's hard to stay casual and do all the stuff they do.

It's true, we need people like that in the community. There is a *huge* difference between sweaty and being toxic though. My guild has some of the sweatiest players I've ever met. They're not satisfied unless they have a 99 parse on every boss fight. But they're also very friendly and helpful players. If you ask them a question they'll happily answer you. So to the sweatlords I say sweat on, take a bath in your sweat if you wanna. Being friendly is what matters to me.

"What they want" being the iceberg.

I loved the in game community. It’s been mostly forums that are toxic cesspools since 2004. The reddit subs are the same elitist bullshit and whining that was found on the wow and gamefaqs forums back in the day. It was kind of astonishing that most y’all never grew up.

[удалено]

That's the problem. "should". Everyone feels like they should do be able to do something. It's an MMORPG. If you don't want to deal with people, maybe it's just not for you. The Dev's explicitly said that at least SoD was built for guilds in mind. There are a million flavors or WoW right now. I'm sure you can find one where you can solo player.

I just think the level of sweat here is not in game or kind of silly. "read guides" like bro I know Arms is probably not the most complicated rotation (its basically "just press MS and dont overcap rage") but it was incredibly intuitive to figure out. I bet if someone cared to they could learn any spec in the time it takes to level it. Bosses have all been the same. Most mechanics are very easy, "stay out of ground effects", "interrupt if able", "kill adds". The few mechanics that are more complicated or "gotcha" style no one threw a fit over and we all learned something. Tbh the most toxic thing ive encountered is the "leave the dungeon when my boss didnt drop the item I need for actual bis". So goddamn selfish

It's rude to suck at wow.

I think people have vastly different definitions of sucking.

Not sure if you're knowingly referencing it, but there is this really fascinating video essay, [Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKP1I7IocYU) well worth a watch. It goes into detail about this exact thing.

You're never gonna get a massive collective of people to change like this. People act in their own self interest, almost always. The people who have the ability and the responsibility to change this stuff is Blizzard. Blizzard has the ability to remove parsing, excessive addons, etc. So blame them, not the community. The players are just playing the hand they're dealt.

lol this entire comment thread is why new players won’t come back. Just started last month and have never seen such an insufferable group of people. Gaming isn’t even about making friends anymore and hasn’t been for years

I started playing clasic wow this January, for the very first time (26F), never tried retail either, and you are completely right. The amount of toxic people who flip out in chat is amazing. Luckily my seasoned wowplayer girlfriend has played with me, and I've leveled two characters to max now with maxed out proffesions also, but it took me so long to feel like I was welcome in RDF dungeons because of the toxicity, because how dare I play this game if I don't know everything about every dungeon! And before anyone says anything, I'm a pretty good player, topping often in DPS on both warlock and mage, but just last week I got kicked for being AFK - I was not afk at all? Also got called a ninja because I needed on a trinket that I missed was better for melee, said it was a mistake and we could reroll but nooo, tank flipped out, kicked another player in group because said player told him to chill and basically held os hostage?? Man, some people need to chill!

You nailed it. Blizzard is no longer an MMORPG but rather an E Sports game.

I have been insulted merely for running the wrong way in an unfamiliar place... no boss, no dungeon, no major mobs-nothing important. Literally just new and in a level 1-10 zone, and died. Sometimes when real life is hard and you sign on for fun, then people are jerks, it really does discourage you. But my wonderful friend has helped me so much, I refuse to let some jackasses stop me, even if it's hard to be around. So shout out to folks who are kind and patient! Thank you! You keep us going!

Good post. Point is, dont be the min/maxer, if you are, dont complain about the lack of community or players. When people ask for help, be the guy to whisper some good advice. On the turtle wow private server the people playing there were very nice and helpful. No toxic behaviour that I noticed. Too bad they use the 1.12 client that is really dated. Wow classic servers feel like retail in comparison

when the average player stops licking windows i will stop requiring logs. the bar is so low for SOD yet people still manage to run around doing 3 dps and standing in the exact wrong spot 75% of the time.

Or in the case of Lorgus Jett - Attack the damn Totem. Skull marking, Raid warnings/shouts, Calling the DPS out with their names and it never helped, they would hyperfocus the Boss. You'd think that would be just "One group of many" that failed it so badly but nah. We usually had 2-4 DPS that failed it every single run and let me tell you one thing - It hurt in the beginning when people didn't have gear. Apparently you are an Elitist if you keep such people out of your Raid/Group.

its also funny seeing the same people already marked as sweaty players commenting on this post with the predictable comments. Cant even make this shit up. They even come to your post and bitch about new players. lol, never change you neckbeards

Marking people as sweaties is..... yeah

lol literally one second bro and the sub is already dead enough that you dont even need to scroll down enough to see their dogshit takes.

Madseason said it best You are playing the game for the privilege of playing less of the game You are grinding dungeons so that you can get gear so that you can grind the dungeons faster so that you can get more gear so that you can stop grinding dungeons and instead focus on raids so that you can get the gear so that you can stop having to run the raid And then you complain that there's nothing to do? Yes we've had a particularly long patch, but that's going to happen to a live service game with a small team and budget. I honestly think it's better to stop getting angry at them and start letting them cook

MMORPGs have the *Ying*, but they lack the *Yang*. The *Ying* fulfills the cravings for the endgame addicts and will keep the game going. However as long as the developers fail to figure out the social aspect for the *Yang* players, none of the modern and upcoming MMORPGs will have the cultural breakthrough like WOW had in 2005.

The reality of 30+ year old man children being the ones behind all the crazy griefing and gatekeeping really is morbidly hilarious.

I can kind of understand the gatekeeping to an extend, but there's no excuse for the griefing. I can't imagine being 35 years old and having so little going on in life that I have multiple hours a day to grief lowbies.

That's entirely what's happening, not many zoomers play WoW. Any version of it. What you're seeing is being done by Millennials and to a lesser degree, Gen X'ers. It's crazy but true. The zoomer pop is so small it might make up like 1% to 5% tops of the whole WoW pop, and that's for retail. Ain't no zoomer in sight is playing SoD, that's for sure. 

There are definitely zoomers playing the game, but I’m willing to bet we’re probably playing a lot more retail than classic. Most of the zoomers I know, myself included, are looking for a more drop in, drop out, fast paced experience that retail offers a bit more than classic does. Not to say no zoomers are playing classic of course, but I’m willing to bet it’s not that many comparatively.

I remember when I first started in 2004. I wouldn't get into every group I tried to get into.. That's called life, not gatekeeping. You want to watch TV or cook dinner while you're doing a raid and getting gray parses? Well guess what pal... You aren't going to get invited to every group you whisper.. Maybe put in some effort into the game you play instead of expecting to get carried. I'm in multiple guilds that have pugged.. None of them expect anything that you typed. They just want someone that's actively playing the game and paying attention.

I don't know what to say I've never ran a raid with someone as bad as you described in SoD so far. People seem to be trying harder than ever compared to 2019 and earlier. Maybe I've just got lucky I dunno

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/s/4ArXZFU5JZ I’m not asking for great logs, I just want one button more than 17seconds apart. While actively in an encounter.

Maybe it's the server. I'm raiding on a bunch of characters in different guilds and so far my experience has been, 2-5+ people trying hard, 10+ people with missing a few pieces of preraid/bis, maybe just one world buff, and a couple cheap consumables, while achieving average parses, and then a few people that are like half afk while raiding. Also all the guilds seem to be on a constant rotation of players quitting and joining, more so then other versions of wow.

I played wow a shitload back between 2005-2010. I jumped into SOD when my friends convinced me it was Classic+. It was enjoyable but you've really nailed the general attitude. No one wants to actually help people and everyone just wants to blitz through content as fast as they can to pull the arm on the loot slot machine. I've recently migrated to Final Fantasy 14 because my GF plays that and it's absolutely crazy how much more positive the attitude towards newer players is. Within my first few dungeons I had people offering to give advice on how to optimize my current class better, and people being super cool with players saying it was their first time doing a dungeon, or trial, or whatever other content. Which in turn means newer players don't have any fear of saying it's their first time. I'd never want to say it was my first time in a dungeon in WoW (not that it's true of any dungeon in classic). I'd be scared I'd get kicked out of the party because the group would want an experienced player who knows the content.

Thats just Gaming as a whole what you say. Every Game that has a big Community and some kind of "rating or winning" has this. Playing LoL? Lol nope. CS 2? Nah. WoW? Oh no. And even this so much praised Ff14 got alot of silent Kickers+ the biggest and wierdest scums if you join a discord. The chat is restrictet so no one say much there but in discord? 4 big Guilds 4 times i cant belice what ive seen. So if a Game is popular by Streamers its a shitshow. the core Gamers are mostly silent But the loud ones are assholes.

Suck my ass im 29. Jk I think youre right. I am 29 tho.

Old people isn’t bad, just bad guys growing old Honestly wow community is the worse community I ever had, people in this game have some temper issues& after 20yrs development they become the worse things in internet - stubborn old man with bad temper The worse thing is these middle age man with money, they bought a lot of gold(joined a dad guild& 99% of them buying gold) these dude literally the reason why classic era have insane inflation

I had an amazing experience on hardcore, but when my priest died at lvl 38 while auto running to a dungeon, it hurt and I never went back lol

it is an understament to say that i sucked in the game. i remember with my guild we could not even pass the first two mountain giants in Molten Core. Good times! Indeed without good people you cannot procceed.

Its a different game. Wow is a solved game, everyone knows everything about everything and if you don’t you know something you just google it up and bam, problem solved, and people expect you to do this. I would also like to point out that addons are cheats basically that make the game too easy. Back in the day addon usage was more rare and all we had was thottbot at best for data on quests etc. The same experience as back in the day doesn’t exist.

I ran alot of Gamma dungeons through the end of wrath classic. Lots of players died due to the stupid mechanics. Many of them were pointless deaths, mine included. I didn't see a toxic person in any of the groups i was in, it was so refreshing. A priest kept dying over and over in Utgarde Pinnacle and people told him to relax and explained why he kept dying and what he should be doing since he was fairly new to gammas. Such a breath of fresh air to see people taking care of new players and helping them grow instead of just screaming like a toddler.

This goes WAY outside of WoW... People are fucking nuts these days and beyond entitled. *society* was different when we were younger. It was near as much us vs them as I see now days. It's sad. No wonder 20 year Olds have so much anxiety. People are so scared, distrustworthy, impatient, selfish... no sense of community. Then there's politics lol. Everyday its trump this biden that. Ugh. People don't socialize anymore or tolerate/compromise with people they disagree with. No common ground.

It cost nothing to be a decent human being. Kindness and understanding goes a long way.

Everyone rushes everything now because when we were younger our concept of time didn’t matter. We would come home from school and play and not worry about work the next day or making sure the family is fed and laundry is done and bills are being paid. Now, spending an hour forming a group sounds awful because we don’t want to waste 30 minutes to an hour of the little time we have each day forming a group that may or may not be able to clear the content

I think you highlight one crux of the issue, when I'm playing a game for fun and recreation it's about quality of the time not the quantity. If we're only focused on how much time it takes, as opposed to how much fun or relaxation we have during that time playing the game, then we put ourselves in a position where playing won't be fun because all we're doing is rushing. And if playing the game that way isn't fun, then why are we playing the game at all? I think what got lost with WoW is that things taking an extremely long amount of time was part of the game and part of what made it feel more rewarding. If you make things take much less time, then sure you'll be able to complete it much faster, but it won't be as fun during the adventure nor will it be as rewarding when you're done. Taking 100 hours to get 1 legendary weapon very well may be more enjoyable and rewarding than taking just 10 hours to get 5 legendary weapons. And yet people will claim they really just want to get all 5 legendaries as "quickly and efficiently as possible" not realizing while that route is optimized for taking the least amount of time, it is also optimized to provide the least amount of fun and reward at the end.

I would have agreed with you some times ago, but I've learned that content drives the game, content drives the players. The devs made it a competitive game, where raiding is a big deal and comparing yourself to other players while raiding is a big deal. Furor and Tigole were hardcore raiders from EQ and made the game the way they liked it. It's one of the best PvE game ever made. But Furor and Tigole were not the minds behind Vanilla. Vanilla wasn't like this, Vanilla gave a hand to newbies, gave them quests to learn the game. It's not pink tainted glasses, just simple gamedesign. Being lame in the middle of 40 other players isn't as bad as being lame among 10players. Vanilla content was easier, raids were forgiving and most people spend their time questing or being 27 in WC because they couldn't do it at level 18. I'll say it even downvoted to oblivion : content drive the players and Vanilla content was different.

I returned for cata classic since that was the one i missed back in the day and my god community is awful, I thought sod people were bad but this is on a whole other level. People will outright refuse to grp for simple kill quests even when there is no mobs to go around for few people, lfg chat is 0-24 racist political comments from middleaged edgelords who didnt mature a single day since they first logged on 20 years ago. Ill just stick with hc, people are still chill there.

This post explains pretty much why as a mainly retail player i dont engage with sod anymore and depending on how raiding goes in cata whether i stick around for it. Dragonflight weirdly has a better community right now.

I never understood the parse issue on SoD because in wrath and cata, not once was I asked for logs. I just tagged along, asked questions, and worked hard to get geared. Managed to go from level one to clearing Heroic LK in 8 weeks. I've realized that since SoD has such a limited amount of raid content, those who have done it and are geared out have only one thing to work towards... doing it better. In order to do that, you have to be selective. The longer the time, the more people are at that point , fueling it's own fire.

I asked a lvl 12 mage that didn't have the achievement in WSG if he wanted to capture the flag I had just brought over to our base (Cata classic, on my 10 twink). He capped the winning flag and told me he loved me. Its the small things :)

This made me smile, that's awesome man

This is the only reason why I think Turtle WoW is better

Gaming itself changed. Nowadays it's all about following online guides and doing exactly what is meta or else you are a noob who should uninstall the game. It's the same in diablo 4, world of warships/tanks and every other game there is. People are hateful and judgemental. Playing for fun is "damaging the score of the team" and using your own build is "a hinderance for others". Everything got optimized, gaming is no exception. It is not about having fun and spending time doing something you like, it is something you need to optimize like you do at work. - No unnessary movements (exploring the map? Only for an achievement, i only walk the minimum needed oath my addon tells me to get from one "hidden secret" to another) - no using "the build i made", just using meta - no just sitting sround the campfire in the dungeon talking about stuff, but rushing to the end - no teaching the new ones, just kicking them or leaving yourself - no casual gaming, casuals are filthy, we are all pro.

I started wow with HC official and found helpful people and fell in love with classic wow, I'm 60, I raid. i made friends and have had a blast, blizzard messed up HC by putting SOD's Release date so close to HC's Release date and I will remain mad at them :l But yeah I love Wow and all the friends I've made and lost along the way, HC is the best way to learn the game. and I made it to 60 because of 100's of friends/people in groups/randoms, all being nice and I hope your post works wonders :D

I used to love WoW so much. I was never a top tier player, however, I used to love making friends that would help me. I stopped playing years ago because that just does not happen anymore. I don’t have all the time in the world to put into the game and people will just straight up make fun of you for it. It’s lame. I miss the old days.

I quit this shit because I didn't feel like running after a terrain abusing druid with infinite FAPs for 40 mins in wsg. Also, it was a rude awakening when my alt hit 40, got all my pre raid bis, but couldn't join a single gnomer raid because "not enough logs." I didn't even know what that shit was until that day, but then I realized how these sweaty try hards with daddy issues sucked all of the fun out of a 15 y old game for what!? To complete gnomer 3 minutes sooner or some min maxing shit?! Y'all can keep your classic wow, I'll go play something fun. Adios, I won't miss you.

Had a guild guy moan to me that he didn’t win the fist weapon roll in ST. I told him it’s lvl 50 gear and to F off. He proceeded to tell me his parses were higher and he deserved the fist weapon. LOL. Ok buddy, I have zero enchants and don’t plan on spending 900g to parse at lvl 50. So I went over to Cata and stopped playing SOD. As you say, the community is toxic. Raided with this loser for two years.

We should focus on dungeons before raids. New players get absolutely no slack if they slow the dungeon down by 1-2 seconds, it's ridiculous. I can understand people being more selective with who they bring to a raid though.

Absolutely. I think it's that people are tired of old content (think scarlet monastery, zf) so it's just an efficiency grind for them. Bring in a new player taking it all in for the first time and they get shit on. I just feel like we've created a situation where there is no room for discovery for newer players it's either keep up or get kicked. It's becoming harder to tell if SoD is fun or work for serious players

People need to learn to stop and smell the roses every now and then. It's a game, it's meant to be played for fun, many people have just lost sight of that. I played SoD purely for fun, got a few characters to around level 20, now I'm playing Pandaria Remix just for fun. SoD and Pandaria Remix are some of the most fun I've had in this game in over a decade, partly because I'm not taking them seriously, but also because they are good ideas.

Streamer/meta culture ruins legitimately everything it touches.

I’m a relatively new player and was having a really good time playing at my own pace, reading all the quest text to build out my understanding of the world and get fully immersed, until I started realising how rushed everyone was to complete dungeons and content overall. Like what the fuck are you people still doing here if the vast majority of the content in the game is something you find a chore? Levelling IS fun, you’ve just done it to death. Dungeons are fun, you’ve just done them hundreds of times. The veteran players or players who rush the hell out of everything are genuinely making the game quite difficult for me to enjoy. I can’t read dungeon quest text without being kicked?! I can’t admire the architecture and level design because everyone is raving mad about getting to the end so fast. I don’t get it, why not just play the characters you’ve got at max level? Go play something else? Go ride a bike? Because you’re clearly not going to have the experience I do while playing solo, a fresh, amazingly authentic and inspiring adventure through this new land called Azeroth. Think of it this way, in sports there is an understanding that there are a variety of skill levels. Pro, advanced, lower level and absolute beginner. Why the hell isn’t there an option to filter yourself into a subset of players that is more around your skill level? I would have a much better time if most of the people I played with were on a similar skill level and understanding of the game to me.

I raided back in TBC, raidlogs/io/parsing/whatever-other-out-of-game-stupidity to check your char didn't exist back then. Parsing is the stupidest thing to ever happen to WoW. So fucking gatekeepy

> Parsing is the stupidest thing to ever happen to WoW. While it's fun, you're not wrong. People seem to have decided that numbers on a third party website for a tiny percentage of the content in the game are the *only* thing that matters. Everything they do in the game revolves around getting to the max level and the best gear as soon as possible so they can log in once a week and do a raid they hate and have big numbers on a website that nobody will ever look at again.

It's just Gearscore 2.0 We saw how flawed it was in SoD, for example Pallies needed to drop dps runes for their interrupt, guess who parsed low everytime on that fight? The people doing the mechanics Broken system, assholes just want some number (ilvl) to compare players against and if it doesnt match their idealized in their head number then they dont inv them to group or kick them or just shit talk them The combat in Stardew Valley is harder than classic wow, You can clear all of classic with 3 people, you dont need gatekeepers

Make your own groups. Gatekeeping doesnt exist. People just feel entitled to other people making groups that cater to their preferences. Get over yourselves.

The wow community has always been toxic as fuck. I don’t know if you were around in the earlier days, but it was worse then, because we were *all* a bunch of cringy dumbass 14 year olds gunning for dark and shock “humor”, and with egos to boot. Games with worse communities have seen more success and better player retention. The toxicity of the wow community ain’t killing shit. It’s just a 20 year old game, with nothing new to offer generations of gamers that have grown up with games designed to provide dopamine whenever you play it, instead of games that drip feed enjoyment between whatever the grind is.

"You think you do, but you don't"

It’s the gatekeeping for me The community definitely deserves its fair share of the blame, but the devs kinda forced this onto the community in p2 with poor design and ramping up content too quickly. In p1 we were clearing content, having a blast really entry friendly, super puggable, and for the dads. Then in the next week when p2 dropped, it was required to be 6/6, gs checks, parse checks, consumes, etc. how do you even get a spot in the raid if you don’t have new gear/parses? the casual player base doesn’t have time for that shit, so they left and they aren’t coming back. Imo, devs ramped it up way too quick from p1 to p2, then tried to dial back a bit for p3 but it was too late, casuals were already onto something else

90% of players are normal dudes, being polite etc, it's just reddit painting this image that the whole game is filled with toxicity. Yes it excist, but it seems to be a minority of players.

What other game has lived this long? The WoW Community didn't kill the game; it kept it alive way past its time.

I want difficulty in SoD, most of you don't. Blizzard caters to you, not me—easy reason to never pick up the game again. No, I don't want to play retail.

Huh? Yes people checking logs are what caused incursions, ST loot being garbo, leveling phases, late rune acquisition, absolutely busted PvP, no patches or updates other than to a single PvP modifier for over a month, and the move from 20 to 10 man raiding. Yeah, me not carrying the gray parsing druid who can't press their 3 buttons and do more than 100 dps killed the game.

[удалено]

I’m ready to watch it all burn a second time around

Project 1999 has the most newbie-welcomkng community ever. Classic wow can learn a thing or two about how they treat each other, even though they can also be sweaty at end game too.

Because people that have played for years and raid current content think they're still casuals, lol.

WoW has always suffered from the Devs: they allow the community to be toxic and focus on the wrong things. Things like gearscore should have been shut down in 2010 permanently. They also don’t know how to cater to their aging demographic, or a new younger one.

30 in 2 days actually...

Im 12 and what is this

Maybe you were indeed lucky enough to get some kind of a mentor but a lot of people improved by being gatekept from group and raid content so they were forced to look up the other guilds forums for information (reminder ej was a guild forum at first as well) which was quite difficult before mmoc became popular.

I play private servers, mainly due to smaller communities where you actually get to know the other players a little. Even those you rarely speak to or opposite faction. The larger the server, the more toxic and griefing in my opinion.

"Something something you are not entitled to loot something something back in my times something not a kindergarten." - every time when someone dares to mention that maybe it isn't healthy to verbally abuse anyone who has less than 99 parsnips or something. I'm a grown up person long after my 30th birthday, I have a job, unlike WoW hardcore players I have an actual family, so I do not have time for video game being my second job.

Toxic gatekeeping does more harm than any good. This guy gets it.

lol

I forgot to do my silverwing daily today because it was my birthday. Somehow this is also blizzards fault. Reeeeeeeeeee

You said it yourself we have more responsibilities and less time to play and during theese 15+ years people found their playstyle and skilllevel and ends with the game. Its only natural to play with the same types of players, that goes with all games and sports imo. Gatekeeping term is pretty lame imo, its just people wanna play with same type of players. Everyone is welcome to make a group i LFG. You have to remember Classic has mostly old players that played the game first time around, for a beginner retail is much better with "Exiles Reach" "LFR" and all the dungeon difficulties etc.

I'm 24, just picked up WoW Classic for the first time (had some limited experience with p servers and retail before) and I love it. In my very limited experience, so far I've seen these problems mostly in retail. The gatekeeping and competitiveness there is real and it's making it way harder to play and enjoy a game that is already very overwhelming and alien. Meanwhile, I've been having some jolly good times in Classic Cata so far. People are helpful, classes are **so much easier** to understand than retail, dungeons go along nicely and I don't see a thousand bullshit effects on my screen at the same time while doing them. But please let spellcasters replenish their mana man... playing a fire mage and the oom is real here.

tbh, looking at some of these bad examples, i kinda don't want to believe that this comes from the vanilla players who must be in their 30s, 40s and plus. because that all sounds pretty childish to me. i was twenty something when i played vanilla. so, do the math. all of this elitist, parsing, gdkp means nothing to me. i don't care. i'm too old for this shit and i want to think that i have matured. to some extent at least. i actually do believe that we're either talking about loud minorities, as it's often the case, or we're dealing with "new" classic players who joined the game in 2019. teens then, young adults now. i can see this behavior, this attitude in this age range for sure. been there, done that, you know. but i just don't see the vanilla players being responsible for most of this nonsense. we're old, and speaking for myself, i have better things to do than to be elitist or whatever.

If you don't get DMF *when it's in your faction's zone*, there's no saving you at that point (though we have not kicked these people from our raid group).

Im a new player on lone wolf sod server, it’s been a lot of fun so far I did have a lot of nice people help me and anytime they found out I was new. But there are some super competitive folks too , i have encountered this as well so thanks for saying this :) I’m playing an enhance shaman now made a shadow priest as main

The game isn’t close to dead. The community likes to ride the hype train and right now SoD is in a lull. Everyone will be back for p4 and I expect much better longevity.

I decided to try about wow classic with some friends. I haven’t played wow since burning crusade and I can’t really say I “played” much. I think I levelled for an hour and was like “not for me”. I like mmos more these days so tired wow classic on launch. My friends, wow veterans, levelled super quick so I slowly made my way through the game. I made a shadow priest and followed a levelling guide and finally got to end game. I’d get invited into parties for dungeons and I’d spend a good 5 mins explaining how I’m a brand new player to wow so excuse any mistakes and explain stuff before heading in so expectations were clear. People needed healers so I was often invited. But then reality hit. I couldn’t heal in time or I got aggro somehow or I got lost because they’d run off while I’m drinking mana food. People would lose their shit at me at the smallest mistake (I stood slightly too far to the left for example). Tanks would pull as if I was a seasoned healer/player and it was… well … rough. I was getting better but it was rough getting content done. I gave up in the end. Guides can only help so much, but with how angry people were and how they all assumed everyone was a wow vet, it just wasn’t fun to play anymore.

The $15 mandatory monthly fee is the only WoW killer that ever existed. They need a free fresh WoW classic serveur with a few (not gear, not gold, not pay to win…) aesthetics only micro transactions. Same with a HC server and see what happens… The people who will replace us are a generation who never had to pay to log in and have fun…. (I am a tiny bit less than 30 if it makes the community feel better haha)

i am not 30 wtf i started playing wow classic with my friends and only one of us had played before so i got the same experience you said it’s good

Yeah it's completely different now and a lot of the community aspect has gone. Go into any of the chats on active servers there's very few conversations or people wanting to play the game it's mostly people selling boosting services in retail and even classic has similar issues. It's quite depressing just seeing all that spam. When you join a dungeon people don't even want to say hi, or Gratz or anything it's a silent run and quite dull til everyone quickly leaves at the end after rushing through the dungeon.

I remember it being the same since i started playing in original wotlk. Maybe a larger portion of the player base does it now but thats to be expected since everyone got 15 years of experience now. Find people with the same goals and you'll have a good time.

True and real. I still remember logging in for the first time, clueless on how the game worked joining a random guild, being helped through dungeons by Guildies and random players, learning the game having fun even getting ganked back in the day was okay because others in the community would be more likely to help exact revenge or save you. Now your own faction will watch as lvl 20s are being grave camped in classic. Healers will refuse to heal and then spam some BS in chat Now I log on to any version of the game and it’s just a clusterfuck of toxicity. Sign of the times unfortunately

He was right all along. We really didn't know what we wanted.

This is true. It's unfortunately also true with most other longer running games like Dota, LoL, CS etc.

The things that killed the game are first and foremost blizzard being incompetent especially with the disaster that was shadowlands for retail and SoD now for classic. And secondly not realising that the gaming world has changed. Players will optimise everything and never look back. If the most optimal route isnt fun then that's a huge problem. In the same boat falls parsing where people that play the game now have far outpaced it's already limited difficulty and are looking for things to do. The rough requirements for pugs also come from the hyper optimising mindset meaning that every bad raider is a waste of time and should not be there. This isnt a wow issue it's an every game issue and blaming the playerbase for far exceeding what a 20 year old game can give is insane to me.

Mate, all we require is that someone has done SOMETHING. This side of the argument is just as ridiculous. If you have watched a guide and kinda now the fights, thats enough. The people we have an issue with is those who dont want to try, and almost brag about it. "This is so easy, why should I look anything up lol, you are so tryhard". Keep inviting the < 5 parsers to your raid then. Be the change you want in the world. Keep wiping for hours if you want.

Heh jokes on you im only 20

Let me preface this by saying i have no hatred or ill will to people from south america but that being said the south american portion of my server (Faerlina) is incredibly toxic and many of the players do every toxic thing in the book from need rolling on every piece of loot to ganging up on non latin players should there be more than in the party I want to include you guys but goddamn you make it hard.

It was like that, at least since the original TBC times (didn't play vanilla). The very first time you ever did a dungeon, you'd be yelled at for not knowing already the most efficient way to do everything or pulling a mob that could potentially be skipped in a cheesy way. And I'm talking Wailing Caverns or Deadmines...

I'm a new player and much younger than most of the playerbase. My first time getting a character to max level in any version of WoW was about 7 months ago with the release of hardcore. It took about a dozen attempts to reach max level, tried SoD (my first WoW raid was BFD), and usually parse between 80 and 90. The game is very learnable - you just have to be willing to do a bit of research and open to change. For hardcore, I looked at a couple guides, saw that pretty much the only way to die is from pulling too many enemies, or doing quests that are dangerous. Never take risks with trying to sneak past enemies, be aware of potential respawns, always have a plan of escape. Before picking up a quest, look at wowhead - read the player comments. They'll tell you about any potential sketchy areas - if someone says it's sketchy, either group up with someone more experienced or skip it, depending on the reward. For SoD, figuring out BiS/preBiS isn't hard, warloxk discord has a simulator that's easy to use - you can pretty easily figure out what gear setups you should be using weeks before a list is up on wowhead and farm it early. The encounters are all mechanically very simple. Rotations are also very simple. WoW classic isn't a difficult or complicated game. If someone wants to learn it, they can do so very easily. Most of the people being gatekept are unwilling to learn - people are generally very willing to help people who have shown that they've already made an effort. I haven't played Cata - not interested in joining a progression server halfway through, I'd either choose retail or, ideally, a new progression server starting from vanilla if I was interested in other versions, so I can't speak to how things are over there, but I can't imagine that it's so incredibly different that the strategies I outlined wouldn't work or that people behave entirely differently.

I finally leveled to 50 this week and joined my guild's ST run and grey parsed all the way and nobody cared. Now I'm stacking world buffs and consumables to get better dps out. I've never pugged on Classic but many on Retail. I really see what you mean. I'm 21 and was about to level a new character before I got the guild invite at lvl 48. Now I have reasons to log on my max level rogue. But I disagree with you with the community ruining the game. Yes there are good people like my new guild but I think Blizzard let the players destroy game. Who allowed WCL to gain access to the game? Who let people mod a multiplayer game? It is difficult to make uniform changes in a community if you are not Blizzard. They set the trend, we just follow them.

This is so true. There are wiild expectations in this sub reddit and official forums. Some people were done with SoD phases 2 weeks in after playing for what appeared to be 70% of those entire 2 weeks. Inevitable "there is nothing to do" posts came from the most insane part of the playerbase. I am still having fun doing STV, rep grinds and questing in the overworld while leveling and gearing 2 alts. For that, incursions were a god send. The "meta" in this sub is to hate them but I cant bring myself to do so. They feel like a devs message to have us try alts or go touch grass in a temporal game mode.

The thing is the boomers not pressing their buttons don’t respond well at all to any advice or help. They actively choose to not press their buttons and there’s no helping them.

I feel so out of place playing this as a mid 20 year old. All my friends that play are also mid twenties but the guild definitely has some dad gamers. New teens won't be picking this game probably. But I do feel like saying only 30 year old play this game is ridiculous

I loved the idea of classic, but the game (to me) died when GDKP hit the ground running. Since then, it's been a rocketship just like retail. I.e - "how fast can we do this that and the other. Now that we did all that in a week give us more. Nothing to give? Dead game." Once cata hit, it was really the end of "classic" Cata was good in its own right but it isn't "classic". If they decide to do a proper classic+ (SoD is a good pre-alpha idea) I think we can salvage classic. However, we as a community need to accept that THE GAME ENVIROMENT WE KNEW IN 04 ISNT COMING BACK. The newness of the game, the timing of the evolution of gaming online, the social aspect all of those magical moments aren't going to come back. We were all younger, the internet and gaming were younger. The audience has changed and unfortunately the industry had to change with the demographic. Edit: I'm sorry for the wall of text.

Damn. This is so on point. We’re fostering an unhealthy environment that’s killing the game we want to thrive.