ESO's Elsweyr expac finally dropped, and I celebrated by hanging around Vvardenfell and doing some crafting and questing.
What, you thought I'd do something else for a change?
No way, man. I'm not getting in the middle of the mad rush over to Elsweyr. And apparently I'm not the only one, given the crowd over in Vivec City. As Shintar put it, ESO does a good job of spreading people out, but I also think that it's now baked into the game's DNA.
The reason why I'm bringing up the "baked in" part is because I had a conversation with the oldest mini-Red today. She's home for (part of*) the Summer from her university, and she's spent the past two weeks catching up with friends and getting in some MMO playing.
This evening, while I was working on dinner, she and I were talking about MMO culture. She said that in LOTRO today, the main discussion in World Chat centered around a new player who had recently left WoW and decided to try out LOTRO instead. The new player simply could not stop praising LOTRO's in-game culture, talking about how nice everybody is, when back in WoW the culture was so toxic. Given that LOTRO has their own culture issues with a few notable malcontents --on the Gladden server at least-- I was kind of surprised by the story. "Had WoW gotten that bad?" I wondered.
I'd also been reading in chat on ESO about an influx of WoW refugees finding that ESO is a more pleasant gaming social experience than the present atmosphere in WoW, and I knew of posts on Reddit (of all places) mentioning that SWTOR is a more pleasant gaming experience than WoW.
This kind of begs the question whether the WoW experience is now more toxic than it was when I left.
The only way to really find out what WoW is truly like is to resub and then login to an old toon. However, I wasn't planning on doing that until right before (or right after) WoW Classic comes out, so it'll be only then that I'll find out exactly what Trade Chat has devolved into.
That being said, I realize that it has been about 5 years since I last subscribed to WoW, so my remembrance of WoW's Trade Chat has faded somewhat. Since then, Blizzard's fortunes have waxed and waned, and WoW itself has bled both subscribers and devs. You know things have changed when Elitist Jerks has faded into nothingness as people from EJ have been hired on by Blizzard itself.**
My great fear is that WoW now has a toxic culture baked into the game in as much the same way that League and some other MOBAs now are more well known for a toxic culture than being incredibly popular worldwide. It's also entirely possible that the type of person who is attracted to WoW's dictum that "the game begins at endgame" is more likely to engage in toxic behavior than those who don't subscribe to that belief. Other MMOs, such as LOTRO or ESO or SWTOR, have more of an "enjoy the journey" attitude toward their MMO design, and aren't defined by toxic culture.
But this is all a "who came first -- the chicken or the egg" sort of speculation, because people could have left for other MMOs because of the toxic culture in WoW, or WoW became toxic as people left.
I don't believe that a game's culture is set in stone. Blizzard can change WoW's culture, but it requires Blizzard to invest in more aggressive policing of Trade Chat, Zone Chat, and other areas where poor behavior has been allowed to fester.
Reputation, however, is much harder to change than the culture itself. Once a game acquires a bad reputation, combating that will take a lot of effort above and beyond the effort needed to fix the cultural issues. And it takes the one thing that WoW likely doesn't have in abundance any more: time. Blizzard is on the hot seat to "turn things around", and a corporate quick fix won't correct a poor reputation because quick fixes are designed to make things look good on the quarterly balance sheet, not address any underlying long term problems.
Poor Bobby Kotick. The two things that are required to fix problems in WoW --time and money-- are things that he doesn't want to use. He'd much rather cut costs and demand people do more with less than actually fix the long term problems.
*She'll be spending a few weeks back at her university during the Summer as a camp counselor/chaperone for a Summer Music Program, and then spending another week away at a double reed camp. Then she'll move in early because of Band Camp, which is a boon to us because we'll be taking her brother up to his first semester at a university during the time she'd ordinarily need to go back.
**Courtesy of Reddit, here's the thread Why did Elitist Jerks die out? There's also the additional nail in the coffin as EJ was bought out by Ten Ton Hammer and the latter tried to monetize the site. I could have told them that EJ was --more than anything else-- a labor of love, and trying to make people pay for that will inevitably backfire.
What, you thought I'd do something else for a change?
No way, man. I'm not getting in the middle of the mad rush over to Elsweyr. And apparently I'm not the only one, given the crowd over in Vivec City. As Shintar put it, ESO does a good job of spreading people out, but I also think that it's now baked into the game's DNA.
The reason why I'm bringing up the "baked in" part is because I had a conversation with the oldest mini-Red today. She's home for (part of*) the Summer from her university, and she's spent the past two weeks catching up with friends and getting in some MMO playing.
This evening, while I was working on dinner, she and I were talking about MMO culture. She said that in LOTRO today, the main discussion in World Chat centered around a new player who had recently left WoW and decided to try out LOTRO instead. The new player simply could not stop praising LOTRO's in-game culture, talking about how nice everybody is, when back in WoW the culture was so toxic. Given that LOTRO has their own culture issues with a few notable malcontents --on the Gladden server at least-- I was kind of surprised by the story. "Had WoW gotten that bad?" I wondered.
I'd also been reading in chat on ESO about an influx of WoW refugees finding that ESO is a more pleasant gaming social experience than the present atmosphere in WoW, and I knew of posts on Reddit (of all places) mentioning that SWTOR is a more pleasant gaming experience than WoW.
This kind of begs the question whether the WoW experience is now more toxic than it was when I left.
***
The only way to really find out what WoW is truly like is to resub and then login to an old toon. However, I wasn't planning on doing that until right before (or right after) WoW Classic comes out, so it'll be only then that I'll find out exactly what Trade Chat has devolved into.
That being said, I realize that it has been about 5 years since I last subscribed to WoW, so my remembrance of WoW's Trade Chat has faded somewhat. Since then, Blizzard's fortunes have waxed and waned, and WoW itself has bled both subscribers and devs. You know things have changed when Elitist Jerks has faded into nothingness as people from EJ have been hired on by Blizzard itself.**
My great fear is that WoW now has a toxic culture baked into the game in as much the same way that League and some other MOBAs now are more well known for a toxic culture than being incredibly popular worldwide. It's also entirely possible that the type of person who is attracted to WoW's dictum that "the game begins at endgame" is more likely to engage in toxic behavior than those who don't subscribe to that belief. Other MMOs, such as LOTRO or ESO or SWTOR, have more of an "enjoy the journey" attitude toward their MMO design, and aren't defined by toxic culture.
But this is all a "who came first -- the chicken or the egg" sort of speculation, because people could have left for other MMOs because of the toxic culture in WoW, or WoW became toxic as people left.
***
I don't believe that a game's culture is set in stone. Blizzard can change WoW's culture, but it requires Blizzard to invest in more aggressive policing of Trade Chat, Zone Chat, and other areas where poor behavior has been allowed to fester.
Reputation, however, is much harder to change than the culture itself. Once a game acquires a bad reputation, combating that will take a lot of effort above and beyond the effort needed to fix the cultural issues. And it takes the one thing that WoW likely doesn't have in abundance any more: time. Blizzard is on the hot seat to "turn things around", and a corporate quick fix won't correct a poor reputation because quick fixes are designed to make things look good on the quarterly balance sheet, not address any underlying long term problems.
Poor Bobby Kotick. The two things that are required to fix problems in WoW --time and money-- are things that he doesn't want to use. He'd much rather cut costs and demand people do more with less than actually fix the long term problems.
*She'll be spending a few weeks back at her university during the Summer as a camp counselor/chaperone for a Summer Music Program, and then spending another week away at a double reed camp. Then she'll move in early because of Band Camp, which is a boon to us because we'll be taking her brother up to his first semester at a university during the time she'd ordinarily need to go back.
**Courtesy of Reddit, here's the thread Why did Elitist Jerks die out? There's also the additional nail in the coffin as EJ was bought out by Ten Ton Hammer and the latter tried to monetize the site. I could have told them that EJ was --more than anything else-- a labor of love, and trying to make people pay for that will inevitably backfire.
While I think that all MMOs have their good and their bad apples, I think it's possible for a community to be toxic about very particular things, some of which are more off-putting to certain types of players than others. E.g. someone being told to "STFU" for trying to make some friendly conversation in a dungeon is something I'd struggle to imagine happening in many other games and would be a huge red flag for me.
ReplyDeleteYep, the concept of actual conversation in 5-mans is a bit of a foreign concept in WoW these days. And to be honest, it was that way in late Wrath, too, when everybody was just trying to get the speed runs done so they could get their daily finished.
DeleteOn the flip side, I've had some pretty in depth conversations in SWTOR instances, especially while waiting on runbacks after a wipe.
Anecdotally, I'd say that Wow doesn't have that toxic a player base because as much as I've pugged I haven't run into that many jerks. A few here and there, but nothing like Wow's reputation. I've seen just as many in other MMOs, sadly.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I could be doing thing that minimize me running into said jerks. I have trade chat it a different chat tab so that I don't have to look at it unless I need it. When joining pugs if I don't like the group advertisement I'll pass on the group, even if I need that specific instance. I'm willing to mute/ignore/report people the moment they say something out of line. I know that I'll never "win" an argument with a jerk so I just squelch them asap.
I think you have done just about everything humanly possible to minimize jerk interactions, particularly moving Trade Chat to a separate tab and the aggressive muting/reporting part. From a new player's perspective, however, they won't know to do any of that, so they'll just get hit by the very things that you squelch.
DeleteJudging by your post, I don't think what the ex-WoW people consider "toxicity" is the same as what you're imagining. I think the "toxicity" of WoW isn't really found in trade chat, etc. Heck, people barely talk in chat.
ReplyDeleteBasically, the WoW pick-up-group world is often elitist, and acrimonious. If something goes wrong in a run, things get heated. Especially in the Mythic+ PuG community. In contrast, in LotRO and FFXIV, people are often more patient in groups, willing to work through wipes, etc.
For example, I don't encounter toxicity in WoW at all. But I pretty much only do stuff with my guildmates, or do easy random content. I don't PuG Mythic+ and I don't run LFR. So long as the stakes are low and success is very likely, WoW's community is perfectly fine. The moment it becomes even moderately difficult, the knives come out.
I remember there was a time when people would spew real racist and sexist stuff in Trade Chat in late Wrath and early Cata, and that was shut down by the admins aggressively going after the main perpetrators. A-52 (US) was kind of notorious on the Horde side for that sort of crap. However, by the time I left WoW at the end of Mists, the asshats were creeping in on Ysera.
DeleteBut I believe that you did hit on a main complaint about the stereotypical WoW player being elitist. The whole "get gud scrub" that is now associated with MOBAs is also a main theme in WoW. I can't tell you the number of times I used to hear "learn the fights!" from puggers in leveling 5-mans --sometimes directed at me, and sometimes at others-- but always from those who felt that we weren't either moving fast enough or were as awesome as they were. But I hardly ever heard that attitude from people in SWTOR or LOTRO. (I don't do group content in GW2 or ESO, so can't comment there.)
One of the things that I'd pondered over was whether WoW is so guild oriented that you pretty much have to join a guild to find a welcoming community in WoW, whereas I've never really felt a need to join a guild in other MMOs.