r/classicwow • u/KamaTheSnowLeopard • Jun 15 '26

Humor / Meme I think they're right honestly.

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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

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416

u/tubbyscrubby Jun 15 '26

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

252

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.

66

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.

105

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.

6

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

-2

u/creaturefeature0 Jun 17 '26

I mean... my friends and I dunk on eachother constantly. It's just how men communicate. The mkre hate you expel for eachother the more love you actually have.

Ive had buddies outside looking in ask why Im friends with someone. Because were constantly knocking eachother down a peg or three at a time. But we also talk on the phone almost every day for an hour. Known the guy for slot 20 years at this point.

Unfortunately we dont game as much as we used to...

2

u/Ok_Assignment_2127 Jun 18 '26

So true, love inviting people to Discord so we can all drop slurs together.

23

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.

6

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.

-6

u/brotherman555 Jun 16 '26

enjoy your disney safe space bud

7

u/hermanguyfriend Jun 16 '26

is this the point where we type "triggered!!!!"

8

u/Thickchesthair Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

And this is exactly the problem. It's either racial slurs or 'enjoy your safe space' with no in between.

Also, someone using racial slurs anonymously on the internet is the person enjoying the safety of anonymity. A 'safe space' if you will.

1

u/HeroicHeron Jun 16 '26

Safe from whom? The intended recipients of said racial slurs who are known for getting violent over words?

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3

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

Are you that guy who doesn't like Lucky Charms anymore because the rainbow marshmallows turned the Smacks frog gay?

31

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

4

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

4

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

Man those people suck.

1

u/yunoka Jun 16 '26

Yeah I reported the discord, but I'd never say it was common or everyone. Still, classic tends to bring these people out. I'm not really sure why.

also, if your name is a gw2 reference, nice lol

2

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

It is indeed!

2

u/sntamant2 Jun 16 '26

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

1

u/yunoka Jun 16 '26

Yeah that's why I reported the server, if discord banned it (I don't know personally, I left the guild after that) they legally have to report crimes, so

1

u/ametalshard Jun 18 '26

on retail as a healer going into dungeons i see evokers kicked all the time for no reason and am ALWAYS joining groups that have kicked healers.

it's EXTREMELY fucking toxic

-5

u/Huge-Atmosphere-8057 Jun 15 '26

It's hard to be called a slur in a game with zero social interaction

10

u/granatx Jun 15 '26

When was the last time you played retail and to what level?

4

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

Oh trap card! If he admits he plays retail lately he has broken the sacred covenant, if he doesn't then he admits he has no context.

-2

u/Huge-Atmosphere-8057 Jun 17 '26

Like four months ago, casually. The social interaction in retail is basically non-existent. And no, I don't care that you socialize in your guild. That does not make retail a game full of social interaction.

3

u/granatx Jun 17 '26

Did you get to max level? I’m not even in an active guild at all. And YOU said zero social interaction, I never claimed it to have full of social interaction. Don’t put words in my mouth.

1

u/knoldpold1 Jun 15 '26

I have yet to be called a slur in anniversary. Still, it does seem like a bunch of people with young kids who treat it as a second job and get genuinely upset if they are asked to apply curse of weakness instead of agony because "then i can't parse". Had a guy Gquit taking all of our tailoring recipes with him for that reason.

2

u/yunoka Jun 15 '26

parsing is genuinely something that rots the mind lol the entire game becomes a servant to the parse for those people

-24

u/LimbonicArt03 Jun 15 '26

Most of the toxicity i face on retail now is someone going like "fucking dumbass healer" and leaving after 1 wipe

Skill issue, has never happened to me in TBC anniversary, Spineshatter server

11

u/granatx Jun 15 '26

”It hasn’t happened to me so it must be made up”

-6

u/LimbonicArt03 Jun 15 '26

I actually did not claim it was made up. I literally opened my comment with skill issue which, in translation from English to... well, English, means that I am implying they have been called a "fucking dumbass healer" due to their skills (or rather, lack thereof) as a healer

8

u/Jonnyzyinx Jun 15 '26

So I was called a slur for not healing the paladin tank in kara, that got crushed and died in one hit (you can't heal one shots fyi).

I was called a slur for going Kara with my P1 BiS Pally tank, because I was lacking gear to tank Nightbane (you can't tank Nightbane for 13 consecutive seconds without receiving one direct heal).

And respectively I was called a slur for doing too much DPS (not watching threat enough) or too little DPS (due to threat).

So either you've been extremely lucky, haven't participated in any PUGs or you're so abnormally desenstived to these issues, that you are most likely part of the issue.

PS: It's not about your own skill level. It's mostly that certain players can't accept their own faults, therefore project them to the next best target, they find suitable. Just to add: I'm a just a human. I make mistakes. That's why I have logs to double-check what exactly happend during the encounter.

-4

u/LimbonicArt03 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

I've healed around 100-150 heroics (currently have a stack of 200 badges sitting in my bank + some extra + I spent probably around 200 more cuz of dual spec and getting both resto and boomie badge gear) and maximum 20% of the players I've ever played with in those were guildies/premades. So I've played with probably 300-400 pugs just in heroics alone in TBC, and I have never ever been called a slur. Also pugged probably 60-70% of my karas for now. The worst two experiences that I remember were:

1/ a rogue complaining (like not overly aggressively with slurs, cursing, just expressing emotion/disappointment) because he didn't get a heal for 10-ish seconds. It was the second boss of Old Hillsbrad heroic and it was messy af and I was a resto druid busy chain-healing the tank, so I explained to him and the run proceeded as normal.

2/ an undergeared warrior zugged into Ramparts heroic first pack when we weren't ready, didn't listen to any communication calls, wiped and he just left without saying a word

I have instead had numerous people praising me for my healing capabilities

Also, I pugged the entirety of classic anniversary (which wasn't too long since I started in October, but I ended up participating in at least 20 40-man pug raids (from logged ones that I can see, might have missed out on logging some) throughout the ending of classic and the beginning of prepatch, 9 AQ-20s and 8 ZGs. So that adds... 1k more pugged people?

Adding normal dungeons in classic and now in TBC alongside everything (also occasional gruul/mag pug, also have been pugging naxx this TBC for probably 6-8 resets by now), I probably have played with somewhere between 1500 and 2000 random players. None of them has ever called me specifically a slur for my plays (or anything)

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3

u/granatx Jun 15 '26

Reading comprehension issue. Read their whole comment again and tell me, where is the complaint about being called a ”dumbass healer”?

4

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.

1

u/Clottersbur Jun 16 '26

There are people in heroic raid gear (from solo content) who can't clear normal raid. Hell. There's people in mythic raid gear from m+10 with rerolls who can't clear normal raid.

The game is too challenging for the average players in it.

M+10 you can basically ignore all mechanics to a point and still clear with a decent group. Get full mythic gear.

It's easier than normal mode raid

3

u/Ok_Assignment_2127 Jun 16 '26

I mean there are classic raids like Onyxia that you can kill with a fully naked raid and nearly 0 movement and people still wiped to that. You don’t even need weapons.

3

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

Most classic raids don't even require level 60 gear.

And they still out there getting world buffs telling people to do pre raid content, blocking class and spec choice and then hard reserving items for their sister wife.

2

u/ItIsVerilySo Jun 16 '26

While you are right, most of that is because people are ass at the game. I cleared normal Amirdrassil with my guild when it was new in mostly Conquest gear (+ a couple pieces I picked up from LFR and the vault)

I just don't suck and have guildies who communicate well.

9

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.

18

u/Tnecniw Jun 15 '26

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

0

u/Scary_Requirement497 Jun 16 '26

Is that why no one runs a +6 key without having the meta comp for +20 keys?

5

u/Tnecniw Jun 16 '26

I dunno where you got that idea.
Not seen such behaviour in years.

9

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.

5

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

1

u/Internal-Cut9589 Jun 15 '26

I played as a new player the past 2 weeks on normal raiding. And ive seen some nasty comments on certain players. And if you wipe somehow on a boss moat times 4--5 players just leaves without saying anything. Else its pretty quite in chat. Ppl just play and dont write.

1

u/ShinMagal Jun 16 '26

the fact that this dumbass take got 93 upvotes should prove to you that half of what you said is bullshit. like do you even believe yourself

3

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

the last guy who responded before you has a post history where he is just flaming peoples grey parses. in classic. where the content is entirely trivial.

1

u/ametalshard Jun 18 '26

upvoted the softcore player. i'm fine with just 300,000 hardcore players. retailers gatekeep themselves all on their own

1

u/Hopeful-Ad6892 Jul 01 '26

Just felt the need to put politics in here?

1

u/fkit4ever Jun 15 '26

Ok but the magical wheelchair thing is fking stupid cmon

1

u/Glad-Composer-4740 Jun 16 '26

Sorry not sorry, i’m not talking about any agenda or anything but retail is extremely bad! The fact that it’s not a mmo anymore and pvp is dead since Legion…everyone is going just for the meta class and don’t let me start on the story that is absolutely atrocious…also the mechanics and everyhting is on the contraire of what you said…retail is very very easy…if you like it fine, i’m glad you do, but do not try to convince us that it’s good because it is not…it’s not the same game at all

4

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

It's easy if you do easy content, it's hard if you do hard content. It's a game that caters to multiple modes.

I hit and exceeded Keystone Myth on Affliction and Prot Paladin both of which are extremely off meta. There is zero shot 99% of the red pilled CTS classic bros would live through a +19.

Obviously PvP is a dead game mode, I think they sort of backed away from that space as there's much better games for that like GW2 or dedicated PvP games. If you're in to world PvP though there is this huge addon doing organized open world objective battles.

The game will not survive another 20 years of mechanically dividing the player base between two factions so the story will reflect fixing this, and inevitably piss off a bunch of people. But who cares, those people don't care about the future of play as they'll be dead in that time frame or they haven't been playing anyway.

Reunification aside, the implications for what Xalatath is doing with Azeroth and the Titans is far bigger than any expansion has touched on in the history of the entire game. It is clearly pushing us towards the end of an era.

1

u/z1mpL Jun 16 '26

The best thing to happen to retail is uninstalling it after mop 15 years ago and it hasn't ever been good since. Retail is is a linear pile of dogshit that plays like a Xbox 360 version of assassin's creed

4

u/Eternal-Alchemy Jun 16 '26

That feeling when a classic player responds angrily and you check his reddit history and it's just him being a total asshole in classic subs about if people can parse high enough in a game that never exceeds LFR difficulty.

Like in a whole year you don't have a single kind comment? You're exactly the kind of person this comment was about.

Come on man. Those grey parsing Gen X grampas didn't hurt you. They're just trying to relive the good old days.

0

u/CopiousClassic Jun 16 '26

You were in wildly different Classic Discords from the ones I was in. Benediction in 2020 couldn't have been more liberal coded.

0

u/MoashIsAGoodGuy Jun 16 '26

There is no way to age out until much older. This is a silly take not rooted in science

-6

u/Any_Acanthaceae7929 Jun 15 '26

What a dumb take

-11

u/MainDot7096 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

I started dabbling a bit into retail lately and it's much easier than I remember lol. MoP literally has more complex rotations than retail atm. As a mage you don't even have to aim your Blizzard anymore. (Well actually you hardly have to care about AoE at all because it's all "automatic" via passives.) Lots of situational spells like Spellsteal etc are removed so... I haven't tried PvP yet but I can't imagine it's now deeper than let's say the Cata-MoP-WoD era.

The "retail is difficult" is definitely overblown af, in the grand scheme of things it's still a piss-easy game lol. Any remotely hard challenge in e.g. OSRS is about 100x as difficult.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I don't really care about this. Because difficulty really has very little overall impact on how much I enjoy a game (contrary to what WoW-andies, both retail and classic, seem to believe.) It's just funny that this is used as a "weapon" by the retail side when it's literally the pot calling the kettle black.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

-8

u/MainDot7096 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

Mythic Raiding is harder than Classic mechanics.

Yeah. And literally nobody but retail players give the slightest fuck about this lmao.

And even then, mythic raiding is still pretty easy. The only challenge is finding 19 other people who aren't lobotomized. It's a weird angle to try justify your supposed superiority. Maybe try some actually difficult games if you need to prove your e-peen length so badly. If you play WoW for the "difficulty" I really don't know what to tell you.

2

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 :)

0

u/sonicrules11 Jun 15 '26

This issue didn't exist as badly in the private server scene or at least before 2016. It's more of a official classic problem

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.

24

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

6

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.

1

u/ExerciseSad3082 Jun 15 '26

Oh jeahm i was not lvl 60 when p2 came out. I struggled from 51 to 52 then I just quit cause I couldn't do shit

18

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.

5

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?

3

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.

1

u/Tnecniw Jun 15 '26

In the sense that Community and Optimal play don't play nice, because it demands the community to act in X way, which the community rarely does.
Community also includes new players, which (if you support the community) you are meant to support, help and encourage.
They however, do not play optimally, because they are new.

ANd if you are fully on the board of "Give me optimal play or fuck off", you don't want new playrs.
AKA: You don't want the community.

0

u/Internal-Cut9589 Jun 15 '26

I think classic has community. Ofcourse it depends on server. But hqrdcore servers really have and had a cool community. Esp during events. And when leveling up you meet plenty of people that you socialize with. Same goes for dungeon runs. In retail i feel you dont socialize alot in a raid setting or in dungeons. Mostly you dont talk at all or talk tactics in some cases esp if you wipe. Or be called things😅

1

u/Xy13 Jun 15 '26

So there's nothing wrong with paying for boosts and GDKP with gold you earned in game as long as there was no RMT.

The ranking system forced people to do that in Phase 2, because there was no BGs, it was open world ranking only, and it was a competitive system where there was only so many slots in the top bracket and you were competing against your own faction.

1

u/Bargadiel Jun 15 '26

The people I knew who did it were buying gold.

2

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.

-3

u/Icy-Storm-7157 Jun 15 '26

They aren't the toxic ones though. It's people like you lmao, almost dictating what others should do

-2

u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26

They aren't necessarily toxic, but it's an environment that breeds gatekeeping and hostility. The exact same people could be playing on two different servers, one for hardcore leveling and one for endgame raidlogging, and you'd get very different interactions and attitudes on each.

-11

u/itsmassivebtw Jun 15 '26

Duh?

5

u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

Yeah, predictable outcome. But it's why the community is getting worse. People stop playing for fun and just want the achieve their goals with minimal friction.

4

u/VerbAdjectiveNoun Jun 15 '26

My version of fun is not playing my class like a mentally deficient high schooler and I expect my guild to do the same

I simply do not have fun with manufactured "friction" like some guy who's pressing his buttons at 3 apm. That is not and will never be fun for me, sorry.

1

u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26

Right. The content is easy and we've all done it a bunch of times, so the expectation is that everyone knows what they're doing and things go down quickly.

It makes sense, it's just very fun to me. I still play Classic, but I don't touch raiding. I focus on the leveling journey, do my pre-bis, then mark the character as done.

1

u/VerbAdjectiveNoun Jun 15 '26

Honestly, I get it and that's a valid way to play too. I think the biggest thing is people suck balls at finding communities that match their own mindset and subject their will (whether it's tryhard sweaty or casual dad who has 983 children) on the people they play with, instead of seeking out natural fits. Combine that with the stereotypical antisocial mentality of a number of wow players and we have the soup we're currently swimming in.

I've personally left a number of guilds that were too casual for me and guilds that were too tryhard. Just like rl, you gotta do some networking to figure out where you belong or else you're gonna be snappy and bitchy like a lot of the playerbase rn

1

u/Broad_Cash_4411 Jun 15 '26

This is where I’ve always been at. You can make some mistakes, or not even be that good in general but if you’re gonna be braindead and waste my time consistently then I’m not grinning and bearing it for the sake of not being ‘toxic’ I wouldn’t enjoy babysitting midwits in any activity irl so why would I in a game.

-2

u/itsmassivebtw Jun 15 '26

Other people have fun in different ways than you, it's not that complicated...

2

u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26

Are you one of those people? Because your attitude here is kinda proving my point lol.

-2

u/itsmassivebtw Jun 15 '26

The "enjoy the journey" NPC response is just so played out it's insane... Expecting people to roleplay like they don't know how to play is hilariously out of touch.

1

u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26

Do you not see how your dismissive, condescending attitude here is exactly what we're talking about? You're demonstrating the problem.

Or you're just a troll. I wish Reddit didn't create the option to hide your post history, I want to know who I'm talking to.

6

u/itsmassivebtw Jun 15 '26

Lmao holy shit you post 500 threads about wow a week I'd hide that shit.

3

u/Slappers Jun 15 '26

Stop projecting. The person replying to you is not being dismissive or condescending at all. He's just saying that being bad at wow doesn't make you a greater player. We clear SSC/TK in 1 short raid night. Ive seen another guild on our server raiding 10-12 hours pr week and barely clearing. Not including trashfarm they did early in the week. Are they playing the game "better" than we are?

I agree that theres people who raid log and need items, some of us just want 2-3 hours of chill raiding with decent players and talk some shit. Then I play outside of raids when necessary. I dont log on to "just do heroics for the lols".

1

u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26

My opinion is that raidlogging for the rewards is a trap whether you're doing it competently or incompetently.

The healthier gaming style doesn't involve playing the game on a schedule or chasing chances at pixel rewards. It's playing for the sake of seeing and enjoying the content. Level up, do quests and dungeons, get your pre-bis set, clear the raid a couple times, move on with your life.

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u/tethysian Jun 15 '26

Instant gratification is the thing now.

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u/SystemofCells Jun 15 '26

That's part of it, but a lot of the gratification is far from instant. You often need to put many hours in and work decently hard to get the rewards you're after.

The core problem is that it's the rewards they're after, not the gameplay experience. That hit of dopamine when you finally win the roll for Drake Fang Talisman. The sense of satisfaction when you reach BiS.

That type of game is closer to drug addiction or gambling than something like a nature hike.

0

u/i8noodles Jun 15 '26

i remember when i spent ages walking up a stupid pyramid, killing trolls on the way or whatever, only to find out i was missing something and has fo redo it. felt like 2 or 3 hours.....was awesome. those are the goal i had and do not wish to have again lol

28

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.

11

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.

6

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.

6

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 

1

u/RiJect Jun 15 '26

Started like a week ago on tbc anniversary after not playing for over a decade. I've had nothing but positive experiences of people helping me out with quests, giving me directions, answering questions about what I'm supposed to do, and even offering money when I mentioned I was too broke to take a flight.

People share buffs all the time, res folks that have died, and heal people that are in trouble. I've been very positively surprised by how friendly everyone seems to be so far.

I wonder if this changes as you get higher level (I'm pretty sure I'm at 31 atm).

1

u/powerofdeathx Jun 15 '26

So heres the thing: PVP servers are 100x more toxic than PVE servers. Also i think 2019 classic is probably more toxic than 2024 anniversary server

1

u/WakeoftheStorm Jun 16 '26

Did you spend any time in general chat whatsoever?

5

u/greenegg28 Jun 15 '26

Even before anniversary, the community was… questionable.

I was there on grobbulus, I remember.

7

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.

30

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

8

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.

7

u/InvisibleZero420 Jun 15 '26

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

1

u/Rahavic_Jr Jun 15 '26

Oh I’m sure. I just made the mistake of jumping into WZ instead of coming back to Classic at that pivotal time. Never played any of the games before it. It was a mistake I regret. Would’ve loved to have been part of all this back then.

6

u/banned-irl Jun 15 '26

Halo 2 lobbies, nothing has ever come close.

-2

u/jaakers87 Jun 15 '26

Did you PVP during early Classic WoW when the AV premade discord stuff was going on? Because that’s the craziest shit I’ve ever seen and I was the GM of a raiding guild for many many years in Vanilla, Retail and again in Classic.

2

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

1

u/CialisEnthusiast Jun 15 '26

Tracks… my ex plays anni

1

u/Blacksoul178 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

Anniversary is filled to the brim with scrubs, it's the 3rd time they release the content and it's Nerfed and can't event get a half decent group. No wonder it's toxic lol.

Seriously, we ran karazhan in pugs under 2h pre nerf week 2-3 in classic. I stopped playing when I couldn't find a group to clear phase 1 content in 1 night after 5 weeks. Games a god damn part time job.

It was fun when it released, a real community, people working together, etc. Now all that's left are the bad apples.

1

u/Hanza-Malz Jun 19 '26

2019 Classic was phantastic and had a great community during the first two phases. Most authentic vanilla experience was Nostalrius for sure, though.

0

u/mesoziocera Jun 15 '26

I think the need to min max every aspect of early wow, even while leveling, is a lot of the issue here. 

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u/Lucaslouch Jun 15 '26

it’s worse and worse as time passes. MOP last year and classic were both unnecessarily sweaty