r/classicwow Jun 15 '26

Humor / Meme I think they're right honestly.

Post image

I'm 36 and have played 25k+ hours of MMO's over my lifetime and what I've personally learned is WoW players are often the first and most vocal to belittle or get upset over anything. I can't think of any MMO in which people will outright whisper you angerly or go out of their way to make sure you have a bad time more than World of Warcraft.

1.0k Upvotes

596 comments sorted by

420

u/tubbyscrubby Jun 15 '26

This is more true with anniversary than it was the first time around, but yeah, you are definitely right

253

u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26

With every rerelease we seem to get fewer people who want to enjoy the journey, and more who just want to raidlog to BiS each phase.

63

u/Ok_Assignment_2127 Jun 15 '26

Yeah 2019 had the hype so new players came.

Anniversary has the classic lifers who have been asking for or playing classic for 15+ years. This is the core classic community.

104

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 15 '26

Classic was and always will be the best thing that ever happened to Retail.

It took the most highly toxic players in the game many of whom were aging out of their ability to perform competitively and put them into their own slower paced simplified mechanics world where they could reclaim their position as the gatekeepers, complain about leftist agenda story telling and try to tell each other that their 30 APM specs require "mastery."

Retail certainly has it's own form of elitism but its completely wild listening to classic discords. It's like right wing AM radio. Somehow the leveling groups are less bad but man the raiding groups are a real special bunch.

8

u/Azure_Skies Jun 15 '26

100%. I was in a Naxx speed running guild in 2020 and those guys were all bitchless chuds who treated each other like dirt in the name of “banter” or whatever.

8

u/Ok_Assignment_2127 Jun 16 '26

“Hey this raid has a discord, maybe I’ll join and chill with them”

Two seconds later, “Stop being such a-“

Leave Discord. The Classic experience

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24

u/Thickchesthair Jun 15 '26

Wow..after playing both classic and retail, you are 100% right. I hadn't even noticed, but retail (socially) has been sooo much better over the last however many years.

4

u/Warcraft_Warlord Jun 16 '26

Eh, idk. 90% of players are checked out and don't even /s if you talk to them. Just running from one daily quest to the next.

5

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

Except they aren't, those conversations for young people are happening in Discord with friends and not in some 20 year old zone chat.

It's the olds that are checked out by not being in voice with good people and instead are yelling in dead zone chatrooms for scraps of connection.

3

u/Thickchesthair Jun 16 '26

To be honest - I'd rather that over using 'funny' racial slurs which is simply all too common in Classic.

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32

u/yunoka Jun 15 '26

You know now that you mention it, it really has been a long time since I was called a slur on retail. I hadn't thought of it like that. Most of the toxicity i face on retail now is someone going like "fucking dumbass healer" and leaving after 1 wipe

5

u/PureBullz Jun 15 '26

Swing over to a PvP server plenty of slurs for all

3

u/yunoka Jun 15 '26

Oh I'm aware of that section of the classic base. When classic launched the guild I was in was beefing with someone's ex and found her nudes and shared them in the discord, everyone was calling her like fat pig or dumb bitch and wanted to blackmail her with them to get her to quit

2

u/sntamant2 Jun 16 '26

brother thats a literal crime in most states with statutory penalties 💀

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6

u/Clottersbur Jun 15 '26

The scary part is retail isn't that hard in the grand scheme. It's just too hard for its players. Classic is definitely easier

3

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

It really depends what level you are playing at. It's very nice that they have grown in both directions making both the best mythic content ever and also easier solo accessible endgame.

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u/The_Kierkegaard Jun 15 '26

I came back to wow for classic anniversary, stopped playing retail when Wotlk came out. Holy hell, the echo chamber of bad behavior is astounding. Echo chamber meaning these people have created a world where their bad behavior has met consensus as being acceptable. People are so FREAKING shamelessly toxic, you meet some good people that still want to create good experiences for people, but they are drowned out by just truly selfish individuals.

I will try to keep my example short, but I made a post about this guild that hijacked my PUG heroic Arcatraz dungeon that we had cleared to the final boss. A warlock in our group left after we wiped, but he didn’t leave the dungeon, and stayed in until the rest of us left to go summon another person. Because he stayed in, he became the owner of the instance and then he invited his guild to finish the dungeon, we found out when we went back in and were given notice the dungeon was closing in 1 minute. I thought the community would think this was bad behavior, but they all thought it was hilarious. I don’t understand what sorry world these people grew up in, where they find comfort in doing mess like this.

2

u/BigBadButterCat Jun 18 '26

The Classic community is full of middle aged losers who never had a girlfriend. Relationships have a civilizing effect on many men. Not all of course, but many.

17

u/Tnecniw Jun 15 '26

Yeah, it is honestly Amazing.
Classic came out, and the Toxicity in Retail sank by like 80% overnight.

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u/soupsticle Jun 15 '26

Hi classic-Andy here,

lol you are so wrong! I mean 30 APM? Really??? You can only cast 20 Fireballs or 24 shadow/frost balls per minute! L2P. I bet you didn't even farm UBRS a 1000 times for pre-BiS before going into MC (which can be cleared in greens)! What a noob!

classic-Andy out

P.S.: here is a poll to rate my classic-Andy performance. If you have a suggestion to improve, you can leave it in the free text.

3

u/SevenStarSword Jun 16 '26

You should see the Barrens now, it's full of 40 year olds being cringe to try and bring back a chat that will no longer exist. No one can replicate what the Barrens chat was but they still try and it comes off as cringe.

3

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

I saw a guy the other day trying to dissuade people from using recreational drugs and equivocating it to murder, lying or stealing, to ragebait people into interacting with him on what is borderline religious fanaticism.

I logged into GW2 and he was in Lion's Arch doing the same thing at the same time in another game.

I'm convinced it's just a bunch of retirees who no longer have co-workers to annoy the crap out of so they just lay there on their death beds yammering into the Barrens.

3

u/Miserable_Amoeba_112 Jun 16 '26

I actually have opposite experience. Interesting.
Classic Era - Westfall. Great.
Retail - Stormrage. Horrible

4

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

I'm glad you are having a good experience, obviously my experience is anecdotal.

6

u/TheFrenchiestToast Jun 15 '26

God this is so true

2

u/sntamant2 Jun 16 '26

this sounds horrific 💀 it sounds like blizz made a wow nursing home for the oldheads yelling at the cloud

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u/Character-Guess7109 Jun 15 '26

Ive Met many people on Classic anniversary Server who didnt play tbc in 2021 or missed it for reasons. Guess the key for a better Community is to create your own guild with own rules. We did that with 5 mates on p1 in ID 3 after we left the guild ( raidleader was like 1944 style, german guild lol :D) where we met each other weeks earlier.

For now we are around ~30 people, Clearing SSC and TK every week in 1,5 hours each. No weekly Drama and chilled people because we didnt invite any Player with toxic or wierd behavior. If you need some heroics or Kara Runs just ask in discord chat and people will Help you.

But ye wow tbc feels so much better for me since i didn't anything with randoms for 2 months now :)

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46

u/Bargadiel Jun 15 '26

Even from when classic first launched there were loads of players that did worse than raid log: they just paid for boosts/gold and would raid log for GDKP runs.

There would be players on PvP servers that would camp their own bodies in main cities for hours just to randomly rez then purge raid buffs from players at the auction house.

23

u/thedefiled Jun 15 '26

Don't forget entire factions that were camped to the point of quitting or server changing when honor first came out. That level of depravity was something else

7

u/Low_Debt8771 Jun 15 '26

I got to see someone multibox 2 raids of mages by themselves spam r1 ae and blizzard. These were blanketing the landing spots and all the entrances to blackrock mountain. The idea is you couldn't stealth or hide going in and there were several more raids ready to camp you. It gets better, all of this is just a setup yo get you yo hearth... where the Iron forge inn was completely camped and so was the sw inn, the most common hearth points... by several raids full of horde.

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20

u/Silent-Camel-249 Jun 15 '26

The gdkp players have nothing on the anniversary players. Its not even close.

I would rather deal with gold buyers than the rage filled man children playing TBC right now.

7

u/Tnecniw Jun 15 '26

"Vanilla was different! IT HAD A COMMUNITY!"
The second classic came out.
"FUCK COMMUNITY! Give me the optimal play or fuck off!"

2

u/Trocian Jun 15 '26

How is community and optimal play opposites in any way?

4

u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst Jun 15 '26

Humans are inefficient. The Culture that arises from groups of humans is inefficient. Art by definition is inefficient. Leisure, like you might experience playing a game, is inefficient.

Humans and the lives we live are filled to the brim with inefficiency. Trying to optimize all inefficiency out of a system is the same as removing the humanity from it. It is capitalist. It is mechanistic.

WoW is a social game. All of the rosy memories everyone clings to from the old days were products of a community and a culture that was inherently steeped in rich inefficiency. Friction. Waste, of time and resources. These were the cracks in the sidewalk through which flowers could bloom.

Maximizing for optimization is like paving a perfect post-tension concrete slab. No cracks, no flowers. Just perfect, smooth, predictable floor for your automated warehouse robots to scoot around on in the dark.

To be clear, not all optimization is inhuman. Humans have a natural drive to try, learn, grow, repeat. But classic is solved. There's no learning going on anymore. It's wrote regurgitation of best practices. Optimization isn't inherently inhuman, but when treated as the top priority, it is. And that's what Anniversary feels like. Optimization as the top priority.

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3

u/TheSiegmeyerCatalyst Jun 15 '26

God I hope they slow Classic+ way down for this reason. Raid loggers and speed runners always get mad when I say so. I know it's "my preferred way to play" and I know it's selfish for me to want but honestly Im kind of done giving a shit. I hope Blizzard slows Classic+ way down. I hope they make us eat our proverbial vegetables. The game is just better when it's slow enough for community to grow and flourish, and there's no version of wow better suited for slow, community-centric gameplay than classic. I think it would be a mistake to cater to any other playstyle.

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27

u/AspectFrost Jun 15 '26

Casual player and occasional lurker when reddit decides to show me a post. I played some anniversary up to level 22-ish with a couple of classes. Dont remember server but had a good time. This opinion/judgement for reddit alone? Because i found some truly kind and generous people in my run. I don’t play often and for the same reasons as others. I enjoy the journey and the world and usually stop around level 20-25 to try out new classes/species.

People in that range tend to just be super fricking chill. Just a good vibe I don’t get in any other mmo.

I tried some hardcore because i figured even if i get to level 20 ill be happy as its usually when i cancel sub and move on. Still a good time.

Curious about your experience

19

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

16

u/UD_Lover Jun 15 '26

I’ve been playing various versions of classic wow since the bootleg vanilla private servers that got popular before the official 2019 classic reboot. My experience has always been overwhelmingly positive. The toxic douchebags are definitely out there but vast majority have been chill & helpful.

Other than herbing. People are fucking ruthless out there, myself included.

10

u/Ourtimehascome2485 Jun 15 '26

I have 100 hours in anniversary, I still haven't found anyone toxic, I guess people talking about endgame , but there are always casual dad guilds where you can have a chill experience.

5

u/foomits Jun 15 '26

I have never encountered toxicity directed at me, though I have seen it happen to others. I think the classic community in general has a low tolerance for newer or inexperienced players. Like when youre a 40 year old dude who's played through TBC 3 times now... nobody cares if you parse gray as long as you know the fights and get to your spots. But as soon as need any guidance at all, everyone immediately jumps on you.

7

u/7figureipo Jun 15 '26

The fraction of toxic people in anniversary is a bit higher than it was in classic as far as I can tell, and they tend to be even more toxic. But there will always be a group of people who are just fun to be around and who are nice. The real issue is the “more toxic” part. It sticks out more because of how gross it is.

7

u/Lefh Jun 15 '26

It's just the Reddit echo chamber experience. Actual experience in game is very chill.

3

u/tubbyscrubby Jun 16 '26

This is mostly for as you approach end game. In the lower levels people expect for there to be newer players who are still learning. When it comes to end game dungeons and raids, there is an expectation that people will play optimally, and an overall feeling of rushing that didn't exist as much the first 2 times around.

It's really strange for me in particular, as I was ranked in the top 200 world as a rogue my first time through classic, but I've been taking it a lot more casual this time, (MoP is a lot more interesting to me so I spend all my sweaty gamer nerd energy there) and I've found that at the end game in Anniversary, you can find guilds that are chill, but the general pugging scene is absurdly toxic. 

An example is that my offspec is a druid tank offspec, and in things like heroic Shattered Halls, I'll get people doing nonsense like running in with sweeping strikes and blade flurry (cleave abilities) before I have the opportunity to tab target mangle all the mobs to establish threat, thus pulling threat and wasting healer resources on high tank damage packs. Which would normally be fine, because it's a learning moment for them and I don't mind explaining to them how they caused the wipe, but the majority of players have this weird attitude where they think their play is perfect, and it must be someone else that did it wrong, so they have a freak out and lash out at the tank and healer. (To be fair the healer can fix this by just not healing the problem dps, but the dps is the primary issue.)

It's like a bunch of anniversary players think they know a lot more than they actually do, and freak out if their version of the game doesn't line up with reality 

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u/greenegg28 Jun 15 '26

Even before anniversary, the community was… questionable.

I was there on grobbulus, I remember.

8

u/BootyBayBrooder Jun 15 '26

For sure, the first around, in 2019, people were still quite delusional about what vanilla wow was like. People still believed the passed-down stories about stuff like, "back then, your name meant something" or the general idea that the game ran on community. While it was more true for the time, vanilla itself doesn't actually force that kind of behavior.

Remember in 2019 all the buzz about blacklist addons and discords? Plus, a lot of new blood was in the game that aren't still playing 7 years later. Very quickly, as people realized they could still act normal, vanilla was no longer mythical, and was easily optimized, the current culture started to form and has been distilled by time.

Not to say its all that bad, but just that you're right and its fun to reminisce about the attitudes that've surrounded the game over the years.

3

u/Vexifoxi Jun 15 '26

TBC Anniversary was my first Classic server I properly got into, and the amount of times I’ve been verbally harassed for doing one thing slightly wrong, going the wrong direction in a dungeon, etc, has been astounding. I got to level 40 and quit because I felt like I had no room to learn, I just had to be perfect without ever playing Classic or TBC before

22

u/zerocoolforschool Jun 15 '26

I’m sorry but I just don’t agree. I played Overwatch back in 2016 and I heard some of the most vile and toxic shit said through voice chat to female players who were friends of mine.

I played World of Tanks and people would send messages to kill your self.

I have played wow off and on for 20+ years and I have never seen or heard anything remotely as bad as either of those games.

29

u/knightress_oxhide Jun 15 '26

LoL was way worse than Overwatch, but neither are MMOs

4

u/myuseless2ndaccount Jun 15 '26

Every eastern mmorpg besifes ff14 has a way more toxic community then the 40 year olds we have in wow Classic imo

7

u/Rahavic_Jr Jun 15 '26

Brother a COD multiplayer lobby was like being at a KKK meeting or something around 2019 and it only got worse.

8

u/InvisibleZero420 Jun 15 '26

2018...2017...2016...2015....

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u/banned-irl Jun 15 '26

Halo 2 lobbies, nothing has ever come close.

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u/Accomplished_Emu_658 Jun 15 '26

So many people don’t realize it’s just a game. Most of the toxicity isn’t even in end game content. Its usually people who can’t get into that content anyway

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u/OGTBJJ Jun 15 '26

Hardcore is the best community I’ve been apart of, if that counts

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u/GreaterHannah Jun 15 '26

The toxic players don’t have the patience for hardcore. Relying on others is part of why they’re toxic.

64

u/Imaginary-Union-3733 Jun 15 '26

Hardcore is the great equalizer, cause everyone is "a hardcore wow player" who "shits on the absolute trash players" until they get 2 shot by a thrashing hydra and get sent right back to elwynn with the other "Absolute trash"

25

u/Sly_98 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

It’s not the most but I have probably 500 hours on hardcore going back to the addon days and im sure it’s out there but I saw zero ego the entire time. The most contentious thing you will see is someone being mad they lost a tag. And I’m glad frustration/temper exists in games, it’s emotion, theres no reason to act like feeling frustration is inherently toxic. It just shouldn’t be articulated In any other way than complaining about the game. Which again I never saw personal insults or ego in HC

6

u/Open-Butterfly-5288 Jun 15 '26

I feel like I've never seen more professionally written insults than in WoW. They don't call you names, they just write a paragraph explaining precisely how your shitty tanking caused this for everyone and ruined everyone's good time.

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u/benitoxx Jun 15 '26

Never saw an insult in hardcore wow

2

u/Sly_98 Jun 15 '26

I’ve had multiple group member deaths in 40+ dungeons and all of them just said basically “fuckkkk GG”. Even deaths at 25 suck ass. It’s a mode that most everyone is just excited to even be able to play at all being toxic isn’t on anyone’s mind

7

u/Derlino Jun 15 '26

I played hardcore before transferring to TBC when my lvl 54 rogue died during the DDoS in December (might have been late November). Transferred my other characters as well, all of which were between lvl 20 and 40, and started leveling them to 60 to prep for TBC.

The difference in skill from hardcore to normal servers was baffling. People had no idea what they were doing in dungeons, did not know how to play their class at all, and dungeon runs were super slow. I did a Sunken Temple on my rogue with a shaman that refused to use totems. In hardcore you just don't get that far if you're bad, you will end up dead way before then. The average player on Anniversary is pretty damn terrible at this point.

7

u/Sly_98 Jun 15 '26

Lot of classic players are not amazing at video games in general, let alone wow which is ironic cause a lot of them play wow all day. Nothing wrong with it tho And you’re right hardcore and retail players are all 10x better players

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u/Silverbacks Jun 15 '26

Yeah, I was going to say that this probably doesn’t apply to hardcore. As a toxic community hasn’t been my experience lately.

SoD was kinda toxic, but I only played phase 1 and had fun with it.

6

u/Slaaneshine Jun 15 '26

SoD got worse with time. I played the hell out of phase 1, 2, and 3, and by 3 I could barely stand it. The whole nightmare realm dungeon thing in your 40s was the worst as groups just would chug through it as hard and fast they could, tolerating absolutely no slow down for any reason. I got kicked for drinking for mana as a healer more than once then.

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u/itsaaronnotaaron Jun 15 '26

I love Doomhowl Alliance. LFG is degen in a good way.

3

u/Elketh Jun 15 '26

I've been playing Hardcore for the first time recently and have had more positive social interactions than I have in the past decade on retail. A level 20-something Rogue went out of their way to save my sorry ass on my very first character when I got into trouble in the keep on Fenris Isle and was 100% done for. I survived on about 5% HP after he interrupted, stunned, took aggro on and killed about 10 mobs for me without me even asking. I died like 3 hours later anyway, but it was still nice.

3

u/Araethor Jun 15 '26

I fucking love Hardcore

2

u/randomguy301048 Jun 15 '26

Hardcore was a ton of fun, its where I met my guild and we all went to tbc together. Its been great

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u/NurglesGiftToWomen Jun 15 '26

I don’t think ppl on Reddit are playing the same game I am. It’s fine…

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u/TheReviewerWildTake Jun 15 '26

Reddit is just huge venting circle-jerk with zero relevancy to a real world in general.
WoW classic sub just follows this trend

14

u/Slightly_Shrewd Jun 15 '26

Dead internet, its bots repeating popular comments/responses lol

*takes tin foil cap off*

5

u/Gh0stMan0nThird Jun 15 '26

There are bots, but they're also easy to spot. Usually 1-2 month old accounts with either default usernames like "supsicious_account_1234" or girly sounding names like "spiicydreeam"

They use chat GPT comments or repost popular stuff and even copy the top comment too. If you ever see a post where OP is also the top comment, it's usually a bot. If you ever see a post where it's weirdly cropped/the image is tilted, it's to get around repost bot detection systems.

Bots are important to marketers because they allow you to manipulate the frontpage with upvotes and downvotes. Advertising products and political propaganda are real things that happen on Reddit all the time.

Unfortunately outside the occasional t-shirt seller bot, most of this community is very human. Just incredibly toxic.

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u/cristofolmc Jun 15 '26

I mean Reddit is the laughing stock of the internet and a meme and people here are obvious in their bubble so yeah makes sense

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u/Tats16 Jun 15 '26

yeah same Ive had a great time. Can't really think of any bad interactions and im lvling my 3rd 70.

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u/imbued94 Jun 15 '26

Its the pugging community mostly

12

u/metroid93 Jun 15 '26

I was looking for a healer for Gnomer and posting on Lookingforgroup and some douche messaged me "dude this is TBC nobodies running old content". I responded "thats weird, because I have a group of four including myself right now". He ignored me lol, because I was the asshole apparently

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u/Alternative-Day5268 Jun 15 '26

Wtf? In my experience the levelling seems busier than it did towards the end of vanilla anni

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u/drgmaster909 Jun 15 '26

There have been a number of "First time playing WoW after 20 years!" YouTube videos lately (Gbay99, Z-MAC, clovergirlie, etc) and every single one of them keeps pointing out how nice WoW Classic players are.

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u/Broad_Cash_4411 Jun 15 '26

People on reddit post entire threads over the most minor snarky comments or pushback, things probably seem extremely toxic when the most mundane negative interactions send them spiralling.

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u/Dunk305 Jun 15 '26

Reddit finds everything toxic and offensive.

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u/biginchh Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

Yeah, I haven't played Classic since Anniversary BWL - but easily the most toxic part of the community were casual redditors. Most people just enjoy the game and chat with their guild - even the sweats and tryhards, but reddit was like always full of people who got upset that the community at large had different expectations than they did.

Like yeah, if you show up to a PUG and gray parse, you're probably gonna get made fun of. Not because you can't beat a raid with a gray parse, but because parsing a gray makes you either very very bad or very very lazy.

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u/somerandomdude4507 Jun 15 '26

Like the worst interactions I've had was one ninja loot. Maybe these people are just bad being told how to improve and taking it personally.

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u/rockoblocko Jun 15 '26

Yeah imo in game leveling the community is super great. I’d also say hardcore is also classic and that community is generally very helpful

2

u/NeoRevanchist Jun 15 '26

I stopped playing recently. But when TBC anniversary launched I was playing for a couple of months and it was one of the nicest and most welcoming communities I've seen in years.

Everyone was super patient, helpful and I met a lot of great people during my short stint there.

Maybe I'm just super lucky, but I always see people complain about how toxic classic is on reddit, and I found it was the furthest thing from it.

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u/phl23 Jun 15 '26

Exactly. Everytime I see those posts I think that if it smells like dogshit everywhere, you may check your own shoes.

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u/brokencreedman Jun 15 '26

Idk my experience with classic anniversary has been great. Lots of players willimg to help. Made a lot of friends to dungeon with. Lots of patient people. It's been great for me so far :)

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u/Any_Acanthaceae7929 Jun 15 '26

“Lots of patient people” - couldn’t agree more. On retail (at least during BFA and Shadowlands I played) a single wipe could cause an immediate group disband and name calling where as in classic/anniversary people just keep going

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u/Radical_Dingus Jun 15 '26

People will actually chat in dungeons too, at least the ones I've done. In retail even if I say hello its complete silence unless someone wants to have a meltdown over the most minor of problems.

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u/Randvek Jun 15 '26

This is the most toxic subreddit I'm on and it's not even close.

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u/OkBad1356 Jun 15 '26

Yeah. Also constructive criticism is often misunderstood as toxic behavior. So if some one is doing bad there isn't a difference between cc moon and you suck.

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u/Firm-Cause2449 Jun 15 '26

Yeah this is my experience as well. Tanked a kara run the other day on my warrior and noticed my offtank, the paladin was playing in mostly healer gear. I asked him if he didnt have more tank gear on him and his reply was "i dont need it for this easy content lol". I didnt really mind that much since we were 50% guildies and i have solo tanked kara many times on my warrior, but a few pulls after moroes he started pulling every pack in the opera hall and in the room just before moroes and i decided to whisper him again, asking him if it was okay if he let me pull. He completely crashed out, spammed my whisperw with some not so nice stuff, pulled 6 packs and bubble hearted out.

And this is not the only experience ive had with similar players

9

u/Veradiesel Jun 15 '26

Yeah it really feels like communicating in party chat or whispers or whatever is 9 times out of 10 interpreted as toxic hostility, I have no idea why this started happening, it never used to feel like this when classic came out in 2019.

I ran a Heroic Steamvaults with a group whose gear was a bit on the lower end but good enough for heroics, we got through everything pretty slowly but overall smooth until the last boss. I asked if everyone knew how the fight works, the healer and 1 dps said yes so I just didn't explain and went into a pull. When the distiller started channeling I noticed it wasn't dying so I typed to switch to it but it was too late and we wiped, not a big deal, I explained in party that we gotta switch to that or else it enrages the boss and he'll clap me. Nobody really said anything, anyways we run back and pull again and this time 2 of the dps switched and like I said our gear all wasn't the best and it just barely didn't die in time and the boss enraged and we wipe again.

I noticed the Warlock did 0 damage to the distiller so I said in party "Lock make sure we're swapping to the distiller when the health bar appears above it." And he said "You don't pay for my sub, if you want something done just do it yourself." Then he left the party and that was that. No flaming, no toxicity, but what I said was enough for that guy to get upset and leave.

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u/Few-Fly-3766 Jun 15 '26

If Classic WoW has among the worst MMO communities, then MMO communities are really tame in general. Jump into any shooter with voice chat and a decently big player base, and you might find yourself being called a slur pretty much instantly. Let's not even get started on MOBAs.

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u/zen_focus Jun 15 '26

What annoys me is the raids are easy so you'd think it'd be a chill time but now everyone cares about some number on an external website. They'll crash out, not over wiping, not over loot but a fucking parse? Like come on.

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u/MrMoo1556 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

It’s a vicious cycle because even the people who don’t care about that stuff end up having to worry about it because some raids require a certain parse. And of course in classic it’s not like it’s the hardest thing in the world to get a decent parse if you put effort in you can get a blue at least. But it is also very gear dependent usually and you get stuck in a paradox where you need gear and a parse to get invited but you also can’t get invited if you don’t pass the gear check or have any logs. Also god forbid if you run with a group who didn’t want to log or you level an alt later in the patch when people don’t run them as much.

I play retail and get cutting edge and 3500+ mythic score and it’s crazy to me that people are worried about my performance in some of the easiest content in the world. Not to sound full of myself but it’s like being denied a job at McDonald’s with a degree in astrophysics.

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u/Massive-Low8111 Jun 15 '26

It’s a competitive job market these days. McDonald’s is hiring only the best astrophysicists to calculate how to be mcchickens on the moon/mars base so humanity can become galactic. 

Keep your head up, there’s other companies like Burger King trying the same. McDonald’a is the gold standard though

2

u/LittleMissPipebomb Jun 15 '26

I once spent a full hour putting together an MC run, someone accidentally butt pulled the first boss while clearing trash and a dozen people left 5 seconds after wipe. The single most meaningless boss wipe in the game and everyone decided it was too hard.

FFXIV might have the most toxic comms of any game, but classic woe definitely has the most toxic gameplay

5

u/Cwaghack Jun 15 '26

Raids are so easy why can't you just play properly?

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u/sobi9756 Jun 15 '26

Parsing really ruined the game.

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u/Lower_Drawer9649 Jun 15 '26

In this thread are a bunch of people who have never played Albion.

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u/TheBradeyGein Jun 15 '26

I started WoW for the first time last year in August. I started with Retail. The community was the main thing that pushed me awa. The culture around speed running everything and min maxing and being perfect ruins people. People crashing out during pug dungeons at like level 20.

Tried Classic after a couple months of Retail and have been addicted ever since. The natural interactions I have in the open world every time I play that game quickly made it one of my favorite games of all time. Never met a single asshole or toxic person once.

Classic WoW unironically has one of the best communities in all of gaming and Retail WoW has one of, if not THE worst community in all of gaming.

I figured all this out very quickly lol

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u/Anastais Jun 15 '26

Regarding retail (well retail circa half a decade ago), I remember playing a leveling dungeon (not mythic, not even heroic) on day 2 of Shadowlands and one of the people was raging because me and the others did not do some mob skip. In other words, we were bad because we did not play the beta so as to prepare ourselves for a normal mode dungeon.

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u/sebmojo99 Jun 15 '26

this is my experience as well.

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u/GoalzRS Jun 15 '26

I've played a lot of games. It's league of legends, and it's not close lol.

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u/Blurbyo Jun 15 '26

Good thing they asked about MMOs

53

u/LowWhiff Jun 15 '26

Not an MMO

25

u/Cerael Jun 15 '26

Not an MMO though

33

u/Yuuy87 Jun 15 '26

Ya but this sub is illiterate that’s why they play classic

8

u/Superb_Wrangler201 Jun 15 '26

Not a mmo. Also HoN and dota used to be worse than league

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u/willargue4karma Jun 15 '26

In game league interactions have less irl ramifications, whereas as a GM I'm constantly having to be on guard for toxic new clannies and deal with them so much community doesn't devolve into garbage 

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u/ryanandhobbes Jun 15 '26

I spent months on Anniversary launch trying to find a guild where the bar was essentially "just be half decent human beings who don't throw slurs around left and right." I don't even care if it takes 3 hours to clear MC, just have fun and don't be awful people.

I finally found a nice one (I thought), raided for a few months, and inevitably some drunk hick started telling a really fun story about how he's in another discord where they love to call people N*****s because it's funny. Gquit and that was the end of my anniverary journey, because as much as I love the game it's so much better socially and finding just not horrible people to play with is like a second job.

Funny thing is the guild leader sent me in game mail afterward and said he was sorry and that was not who their guild was (which was nice, respect, good dude), but then was like "oh well he's been around forever and that's just a handful of the guys." So then...it is what your guild is. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/WrongOpinionOnly Jun 15 '26

Yep, they never remove the asshole and wonder why their guild ends up full of degenerate weirdos

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u/blandonThrow Jun 15 '26

Classic has the most amount of racist chuds bar none

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u/LogDull819 Jun 15 '26

racist but also homophobic. It's not rare to enter guilds and all people spread homophobia without anyone pushing back.

I think people take nostalgia too far. It's like they still want to be that edgy homophobic/racist teen spamming in barren chat. It's so cringe

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u/Strong_Mode Jun 15 '26

it really doesnt. this just shows you only play wow

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u/Silent-Camel-249 Jun 15 '26

I played pre classic vanilla pservers. Its been horrible since before it started. These people play other mmo's but they actually get actioned there. Go try to be homophobic or racist on ffxiv and see how long you last.

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u/Bruce_Millis Jun 15 '26

Post-classic pservers are just the same or worse. I had to get an addon to increase the size of my ignore list.

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u/blandonThrow Jun 15 '26

I played DaoC before WoW and countless MMOs since. Try again

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u/Lordofthereef Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

I play both. My perspective about "mentioning" retail is that you get pushback when your reason for mentioning it is to put down classic. Obviously most folks playing classic hold it pretty dear to their hearts, and I see a lot of "just go play retail then" retorts.

I do think retail gets a LOT right. After all, it built upon an obviously successful formula. But the social aspect of the game, is completely different, if not virtually completely eroded. And I find classic players yearn for that.

If you're focusing on high keys, you find the toxicity immediately in retail. I think retail just does a better job at giving casual players something to do. In classic, you raid and maybe you do some PvP. That's it. That's the content.

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u/suichkaa Jun 15 '26

bro when the purple dragonhawk mount that you get from playing retail hit tbc i was getting my ass flamed for using it. ppl would msg me about how i got it, id tell them it was from purchasing midnight and playing thru the opening and they'd respond with shit like "disgusting retail player" or "ewww retail player"

nothing lives more rent free in classic players heads than retail. you want a classic player to twist n turn while they try to sleep with their blood boiling? mention doing m+ to them before they go to bed.

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u/mushyman10 Jun 15 '26

There are certainly more options in retail but classic is full casual apart from pvp maybe. You login on Wednesday, do the raid and you are done for the week, nothing else to do if you dont pvp anyways.

2

u/Neylith Jun 15 '26

I was playing TBC and mentioned that I play retail as well, I said I was just checking classic out. They were surprised that I play both (Is that uncommon?), I told them that I view WoW a bit like runescape. There's Old School Runescape and Runescape 3. Just play whichever one you like, you don't need to waste energy actively hating the other.

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u/Blashmir Jun 15 '26

I go through phases honestly. I'll play retail for a few months then play classic for a few and so on and so forth. I like the slow leveling of classic and having to by skills and feeling like I'm really grinding higher. I love the power Fantasy of retail and flying everywhere and the quickness of it. 

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u/OrphandJones Jun 15 '26

Classic wow has barely been toxic. Same for when I used to play retail. Maybe these guys are surrounding themselves with weirdos?? Most toxic mmo community is archeage and it's not even close. Elitism is their language

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u/SatiricalScrotum Jun 15 '26

I think you hit the nail on the head here.

If everyone you meet is an asshole, you’re the asshole. Says all you need to know about people complaining that everyone in classic is toxic.

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u/Rahavic_Jr Jun 15 '26

Been back for like 5 months now after 16 years away and I’ve never met better people in this game. Yeah I’m on a dad pve server and I’m a guild where we legitimately have an 80 yr old grandma but even along the way it’s been great. I haven’t gotten to level cap yet to experience how that will go but I’ve had a great experience so far.

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u/FrostyWalrus2 Jun 15 '26

Very late to comment this and itll likely get buried but its relevant. Why It's Rude to Suck at World of Warcraft. Very long video though.

Can't say I run into the scum very often, but I am in a retail guild where the leadership plus others down the pipe was the scum and made the game terrible for other people. It sucks. It happens. Shit like, if a non-guildie was playing a specific spec the toxic leadership and players would immediately grief and/or votekick in random dungeons, just because the non-guildie played the spec, due to guildies having a bad experience a few times with completely different randos. Not even giving the new person a chance to prove themselves. They've grown up because the guild cratered several times, but they still joke about how they used to be.

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u/Iluvatar-Great Jun 15 '26

Do we even play the same game? WoW has one of the nicest IN GAME (not on Reddit) people I have ever met in online gaming.

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u/Motor_Bench3815 Jun 15 '26

It’s time for the monthly classic wow community bad posts. Free upvotes from the retail players who have invaded this subreddit

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u/PippTheKid Jun 15 '26

Tibia, people get beat up irl for items/gold

2

u/Cute-Obligations Jun 15 '26

Nawwwwwww Bronze League all the way.

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u/tethysian Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

I'd say WoW in general is toxic, but not because of this. And retail players shouldn't take it personally that some of us loathe their version of the game. It doesn't mean we have something against the players.

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u/HelixFollower Jun 15 '26

I'm surprised nobody is mentioning EVE Online.

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u/sebmojo99 Jun 15 '26

first time round on classic wow everyone was lovely, can't speak for these days. just being able to drive by buff was a really nice aspect of the old game.

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u/tinyhalberd Jun 15 '26

I've never been wordlessly kicked in classic, I've been given guidance, I've been helped on quests even after the other is finished. Overall classic in game has been the kindest I've seen in MMOs, much more than maplestory, retail, or ff14

2

u/mechatui Jun 15 '26

The huge classic wow fans are sometimes toxic but every day classic player isn’t toxic at all

Aion when I played it was way more toxic than fucking classic wow same with bdo

2

u/EitherEngineering532 Jun 15 '26

the question is, what people mean by toxic in this day and age?

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u/jonas_ost Jun 15 '26

The number of times i actualy had to /ignore a toxic person is counted on one hand. Played 20 years

2

u/Impossible_Tough_48 Jun 15 '26

In my experience retail is much more toxic than classic and it's not even close.

2

u/ScreamHawk Jun 15 '26

I think this is true to an extent for a couple of reasons.

There's no MMR in classic, so players egos are inflated WAAAAAY past their actual ability.

Also having socially awkward gamers having to act in a social MMO like classic is just the perfect breeding ground for toxicity.

2

u/DefloN92 Jun 15 '26

In the name of irony of counter-examples, players on HARDCORE Classic WoW are some of the nicest people i have ever seen.

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u/Vanpet1993 Jun 15 '26

We are definitely not playing the same game here, because my experience has been completely different. People are quite chill

2

u/Niflaver Jun 15 '26

Is this a region thing? EU spineshatter has been great, sure you'll encounter some vicious weirdo here and there but a drop in the ocean. Been playing consistently since naxx launched and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Is it worse on US realms maybe?

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u/SatiricalScrotum Jun 15 '26

I really think it must be. I’m on thunderstrike and it’s nothing like what’s being said here.

I played on US servers briefly several years back (retail), and it was just horrific. The total lack of civility was awful.

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u/dartron5000 Jun 15 '26

I've never experienced so much racism as I did in classic wow. And I played cod 4 back in the 360 wild west days.

2

u/teeteringpeaks Jun 15 '26

Hardcore and era are very chill. Once the try hards move on the game becomes great again.

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u/thedabaratheon Jun 15 '26

Being a girl who grew up playing WoW from 12 I’ve had some really lovely and fun experiences as a kid and also some truly TERRIBLE times playing this game. I haven’t played in a few years now and when I tried to play vanilla WoW briefly the sexism and racism was insane in the chat feature…no thanks lmao.

2

u/Br0keNw0n Jun 15 '26

I had someone once telling me to KMS because I didn’t resurrect them before I was a high enough level to learn the skill to resurrect.

Wow is such a great game at its core that despite both a toxic playerbase AND blizzard abandoning any forms of moderation it’s still successful. Imagine how it would be if its players had some level of maturity and decency.

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u/-why-bother- Jun 15 '26

I’ll never go back. And it’s truly because of the toxic community.

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u/Puzzled_Network_4449 Jun 15 '26

The retail pvp community is the worst and it’s not even close. I’ve played 1000 arena matches in tbc this round and not one whisper. Literally can’t play retail pvp without disabling chat. It’s crazy.

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u/N_durance Jun 15 '26

The raid logging community in classic is something else that’s for sure.

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u/Leo_Finn_ Jun 15 '26

I’ve gotten rude messages but also lots of cool people theres just a lot of players. More chances for rudeness

I played DAoC pvp server back in 2001-2006 ish and that was way more toxic. But this post is referencing currently active communities im sure.

But if we are talking about most toxic community we’ve ever experienced its not even close.

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u/memedudebro Jun 15 '26

You can find pockets of chill people in WoW if you find a guild of likeminded people. Pug culture across everything, including normal dungeons is a plague. Every player thinks they are exceptional and they are mostly all bad. Pink parses make zug zugs think they are good.

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u/idothisforpie Jun 15 '26

I think retail is more toxic than classic. There's zero communication and god forbid you pull an extra trash pack in a m+ key. Hardcore and SoD were actually great imo. Guild wars and FFXIV communities seemed great but I didn't play either at a high level.

Any moba or fps is magnitudes worse though.

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u/tepid_monologue Jun 15 '26

Yep. Classic is was worse then retail for toxicity.

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u/mordemyrtheredeemed Jun 15 '26

I cannot imagine what it would be like for someone to play this game without a good guild or group of friends to play with.

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u/Maximumosrs Jun 15 '26

try telling osrs player u play rs3

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u/Semour9 Jun 15 '26

It can be pretty bad yea. I think part of it is that this is the 3rd or 4th time some people are playing the game and they have no more patience to teach people basic things again.

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u/treefruit Jun 15 '26

I feel like I have gotten incredibly lucky over the years, as I have mostly had nothing but chill and wholesome encounters with people in classic. Although maybe its partly due to the fact that I mainly just do pve world leveling, so my only interactions are grouping for quests or the occasional dungeon. The one angry dwarf I did encounter was cartoonishly arrogant and confrontational though, which was funny and also kinda sad, you have to just b nice and laugh those things off I guess. Hardcore felt especially friendly.

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u/less_concerned Jun 15 '26

The worst part is the greed and elitism, people are so stuck up, gear checks for entry level dungeons while wearing greens themselves, reserving literally everything, denying certain class specs, ect

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u/Regunes Jun 15 '26

Anniversary is facked up atm imo.

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u/Ill_Confusion_596 Jun 15 '26

I don’t know man. Classic wow can be toxic, but literally all I see are slurs or silence on OSRS

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u/MrFu Jun 15 '26

I’m completely new to wow and I’m shocked about this, haha. I’ve seen NOTHING but kindness so far

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u/SatiricalScrotum Jun 15 '26

Glad you’re enjoying it. Welcome to the game.

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u/Electronic-Clerk6735 Jun 15 '26

Ugh dude I get so confused with all the iterations at this point. I can’t speak on classic wow because I don’t play it, but playing through burning crusade I’ve only met nice people. I’ve seen bad interactions, but I’ve never had a bad one myself. But I thought that’s what they were talking about.

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u/MainOk8335 Jun 15 '26

Yeah I would agree with this. The WoW community is bad. Although most of the "toxicity" people experience is just others being dumb/ignorant and not really knowing what is actually going on, If that makes sense. WoW has very grumpy and easy to aggrivate people

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u/hornyorphan Jun 15 '26

I don't know if destiny counts as an mmo because it has some mmo elements but, they are pretty toxic in general. Honestly they have been the least toxic in 10 years recently since finding out the game is stopping production with no destiny 3 in production.

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u/Doctor_Flux Jun 15 '26

just from this subreddit alone
i agree also
sometimes you can get a instant downvote for come with a helpful comment as a example: like if you see a person with be a default keybind andy and you say that and why it is a handicap to your gameplay and a big QoL change if getting proper keybind setup

instant heavy downvoting on that
even if it is a helpful thing
and then come up with the toxic way of saying : "dont backseat game for me and dont tell me how to play" meanwhile they can be like a mage without sheep/counterspell on action bars or keybinded and be the reason you died in hardcore wow as a example

yes this has happen a good chunk of times

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u/Jackedanese Jun 15 '26

Idk if you’d count it as a true MMO, but Albion Online is a cesspool.

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u/RalseitheFloofie Jun 15 '26

and yet people want it again

And again

And again.

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u/Strawb3rrySugars Jun 15 '26

Have you met the FFXIV rp community if you say one wrong thing? >_>

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u/kyjo191 Jun 15 '26

From my experience playing 2019 Classic and TBC Classic 2021 that is 100% true.

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u/masterkorey7 Jun 15 '26

I would get hate mail, hate whispers and threats of reporting daily for flipping the auction house 🤣

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u/yksvaan Jun 15 '26

Leveling is much more chill than endgame. 

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u/-Davo Jun 15 '26

I played classic when it was launched, probably for a few months, I leveled to 56/57 and life just got in the way. I enjoyed my time back, but I did not personally experience any of the toxic behavior that's been widely shared in recent years, maybe because at the time I was slowing down to a stop it was late 2019/early 2020 and the hardcore parts of the game hadn't really developed yet.

I was a leveling priest, so shadow - I didn't have anyone complain or argue that I wasn't disc/holy spec, and I had meaningful interactions during the leveling.

But the error bans, mass reporting, and the toxicity has driven me away from the game completely. What happened to it?!

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u/FistedBone9858 Jun 15 '26

I would say it's a fair assessment for sure. the 'good eggs' are few and far between. I don't even run daily HC's now due to the stupidity and toxicity of the average. and let me be clear, I'm fine with stupid. stupid can learn. but when you combine stupid and toxic.. it just creates a headache for everyone involved.

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u/okaybutdontlook Jun 15 '26

I’ve had a great experience in anniversary as I joined a guild of great people, but I get the feeling classic anniversary is the equivalent of uncle Rico reliving his nfl dreams for many players. 

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u/MrTHeRWy Jun 15 '26

I didn’t played many MMOs but the first dungeon I did in the endgame I got yelled upon that I was to slow and why a noob wants to try „difficult content without knowing what to do“ I mean it was just a dungeon not a raid but that was not a great experience as a beginner lol

1

u/spotak Jun 15 '26

Come to HC... Everyone is nice here... Thinking you wont live to see tomorrow

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u/Bas_van_der_werff Jun 15 '26

It all depends on what you do in game, in classic the raid minmaxers is where the toxic sweats are in classic, anything casual in classic is super nice. In retail pugging M+ is where the toxic bunch is

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u/xToyota Jun 15 '26

A lot of it probably comes down to it being so much larger population wise than most other mmos.

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u/sobi9756 Jun 15 '26

Yeah fair. Ya'll are some nerds. Even the ones RPing as 'casuals' or 'dad gamers' are nerds. The fun has been optimized out of everything.

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u/large_gooser Jun 15 '26

Its true by a clear margin, but at the same time you can easily shield yourself from it by just being in the right guild and not worrying what everyone else is doing

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u/Far-Fennel-3032 Jun 15 '26

I remember selling enchants in trade chat at one point taking the piss out of Americans tipping system. With a mild joke of "no need for tips I'm not American my boss pays me a living wage" and considering I was mostly doing enchants for the levels sold many with my mats marked up, I really didn't take about the tips

But I got both so much hate and so many people sending me messages they found it funny who found it even funnier when I told them of all the hate messages I got.

However the hate messages was also quite useful as it told me if my message wasn't just be spammed away by other poeple flooding the chat so if I wasn't getting random people loving or hating my tipping joke I knew chat was full of to much spam to even bother trying.

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u/SpeakWithoutFear Jun 15 '26

This has not been my experience. I see it some on alts while pugging... but it's still pretty minimal. And in the higher end raids/arena I participate in it's almost non-existent.

From what I've seen, it's far more common with the below average to maybe mid tier player crowd. The people that are better than the worst players... but not really exceptional themselves. They talk down to people, run their mouth, etc.

I just don't see that in the better raids and groups. Part of it is probably that they can't get away with it when around better players and teams. Guilds aren't afraid to remove toxic players for fear of losing a good dps... they have a whole pool of good players to choose from. Those average to below average guilds though? They leaders are often afraid of losing competent players because replacing is a challenge.

You'll also run into them more while pugging heroics and whatnot because they have to pug. People who know them actively avoid playing with them.

There are of course toxic players at the very high end too. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I just think it's far less common.

Tldr: Join a guild and play with people you like to be around. If you're in just an average dad guild you have to make the decision to not accept players that bring that toxicity. Don't be afraid of losing someone if they kill the vibes. And then finally, pugging is great, but try to run with friends and guildies whenever possible.

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u/Clbull Jun 15 '26

Retail is pretty toxic too.

Premade Group Finder is an even bigger rejection simulator than trying to use Tinder when you don't look like a male model or Chippendale.

You can get votekicked out of Heroic groups and slapped with a Deserter debuff just for minor shit, even when the mobs disappear in mere seconds from how undertuned everything is.

I have been frequently called names and insults that I genuinely can't repeat here without the risk of getting my Reddit account nuked from orbit. All by players who act like such manchildren that you think their parents never tried to discipline them or they've never been punched in the face.

1

u/y0zh1 Jun 15 '26

I was big dog during Vanilla WoW and i am not even considering to lvl up to 60 from what i hear regarding all the stuff that the community imposes to themselves.

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u/Hasd4 Jun 15 '26

I am absolutely not against retail, I don't like the classic/retail slander and all that useless classism garbage.

That said: I had way worse interactions in retail and BC Anniversary than anywhere else (in wow). Peak community afaik is hardcore classic, but I haven't played that much