So Ryckert and a classmate got me back into WoW, the questing and leveling is crazy smooth and even the pvp is fun. One thing though, the rage. I have rarely seen the rage that I have witnessed in dungeons and pvp. You just feel dirty after some matches. "Retard," "noob," and "fuck" are probably the most used words in chat.

Even at low levels, (I'm rolling a warrior), if I screw up and aggro as a tank, the first thing out I see in the chat, "Hey retard." "Fucking uninstall," "Just quit noob." It's just about every match and dungeon.

I have gone out of my way to help new or returning players, even taking them to hard to find vendors and showing them pvp maps. I think it's fun to help out people who need it.

I would think a report system, a lot like Dota2 would be really helpful. LoL report system seems really empty, where people can just spam players for not being good, rather than being toxic. Where as Dota2 limits your ability to report and gives your report turn back if they find your complaint is legitimate. They are a billion dollar company, maybe they could afford to put some effort into this.

I'll probably post something on battle.net to see if they are thinking about this.

hey man, play SWTOR. Jedi Covenant server. All the people I've met grouping or in general chat have been nothing but polite.

Seriously, no bullshit. Aside from the odd (and I do mean odd) asshole, it's pretty peachy.

Sounds like you haven't played much DOTA. Nothing comes anywhere close to MOBA toxicity.

@hunkulese: I play Dota daily. Yes there a toxic players. Play WoW and get back to me.

How is "fuck" a toxic word?

That's interesting because whenever I do a dungeon run, also low level, it is silent even when someone made a mistake or died. Sometimes I will type something to make sure I'm playing with actual humans

What server are you on?

There is a problem in a lot of communities in this state though. The content is thoroughly "farmed" and known backwards and forwards so rude jerks just assume you are too stupid to know things when nothing is farther from the truth.

If you are tank just remember you hold the power in the group dynamic. If some DPS is complaining about how badly you are doing then just remind them the group stops moving if you leave and have to requeue for a new tank. On the other hand, playing a tank in that game is and will always will be the higher, more difficult, technically challenging role. One should never try it thinking they can wing it.

In either event, neither this game or MOBA really should excuse bad behavior. No one should be a jerk to tank struggling to get through some content where having others in the team berate them doesn't speed anything up.

i guess wow can get bad at times but im not sure it reaches moba levels. Maybe it speaks to valve doing a good job at cleaning up the dota 2 community?

wow someone else playing swtor?

Sounds like bad luck. Really bad luck. I've run hundreds of dungeons over numerous alts, and I've never seen a single group act like that. A majority of runs go silently. When people did chat, it was always polite. When someone did something stupid, people would inform them of their mistake and if they kept being stupid, they would be voted out. When I entered dungeons I had never seen before, I said as much and was never belittled for it. I've seen many people do many stupid things, and even when I played my Tank I made some stupid mistakes, and I don't recall it ever degenerating to that level.

Maybe I got lucky with my server selection. Maybe you got unlucky with yours. Try rolling on Shadowsong, see if you have the same issue.

Dota, on the other hand, I loaded up one day, and was greeted with it in my first, second, and my third and final match. Never again.

Was thinking about giving WoW a spin after watching Dan, and this is the type of thing that would put me off. What are the chill servers out there for casual noobs like myself?

Toxic people exist anywhere a feeling of protection exists. If you can get away with it

For returning players who have not played in a while or new players, if you're interested in tanking I would recommend to run through dungeons as DPS. Since every tank has a DPS spec you can run through the dungeon, see the correct route and what kind of enemies you're gonna face.Dual spec is useful in that area, then it all comes down to getting to know your abilities. That helped me a bunch so I wouldn't have to figure out the dungeon on the fly.

Most of the time when you do a dungeon or heroic at level 70+ through the LFG system, nobody says a word. It is completely silent from beginning to end. The PvP community, on the other hand, is exactly as you describe. Nobody is willing to help anyone when it comes to learning mechanics, and the community as a whole is just fucked. If you want an example, go to arenajunkies.com and just scroll through some recent forum stuff. It's chalk full of elitist mindsets and slander. As with most MMOs, your best bet is to find an active guild. Make some friends the old fashioned way, because anyone met through the matchmaking is rarely worth talking to.

This was one of the main points I learned from my recent stint with Wildstar. The hardcore MMO community sure has taken a turn for the worse. One of the major issues that has been plaguing that game since launch is the toxic environment these people is creating.

I've started leveling a shaman on Dan's server for the heck of it and did 5 low-level dungeons so far.

Total lines of chat: 4. All of which were variations of "thanks for the group" at the end of instances.

I've rarely seen the vitriol that you are describing in low level instances, especially since they're so stupid easy that you only really need one or two competent player to carry the group. Granted being the tank involves additional responsibilities, but that's the price of instant-queue.

At the end-game, of course people get a lot more demanding... especially near the end of an expansion's lifetime. Everyone expects everyone else to have done the same dungeons a billion times, and they've already probably explained every fight a thousand times before. At some point patience tends to evaporate.

Generally things always become a LOT friendlier whenever new expansions come out. Everyone starts chatting a lot more in dungeons and since everybody loves sharing new experiences together, even if it involves dying repeatedly.

@stryker1121: most servers are fine, I think the OP is overreacting a tad. Also when you PVP or do dungeons it's mostly all cross server anyway. So unless you have RL friends on a certain server than it does not matter. Just pick a server type that suits you (PvE, PVP, RP etc.)

Gotcha, thanks. Not too interested in PvP starting out. Are the PvE servers clearly marked if I don't want to have other players murdering me?

The only MOBA I didnt get excoriated in was DC's one. DOTA, 2, and LOL all were awful to new people. With WOW there is so much "how to" info out there with the likes of wowhead and youtube tutorials I can kiiiinda understand some frustration with new people. new to the now 10 year old game.

Play on RP servers. Seriously everyone is a thousand percent more polite. Sure you might walk into two weirdos having roleplay sex in the upstairs of the town inn, but whatever. Plus most people dont roleplay on roleplay servers so its not that big of a deal.

This applies to every MMO.

Ya, I know. Do not join a dungeon PUG as a tank unless you're ready to get yelled at by idiots. Even if you don't do anything wrong (some DPS thinks they should be healed instead of backing off and using their own heals or whatever- MT is heal priority).

Some people are just stupid.

Nice to see some duders still playing SWTOR. I play occassionally on The Shadowlands server and I've never had any encounters with toxic players. At least I don't remember running into any.

@stryker1121: Yes, it's shown on the server selection screen. When selecting a server it'll tell you if it's Normal (PvE), PvP , RP, or RP PVP, along with the current server population.

Weird. I started up again and I've been doing dungeons heavily as a tank and I haven't seen anybody talking mess. Are you going through the dungeon finder?

Maybe one of these days I might just jump in to SWTOR. I was never into WoW (yep I have never played WoW, like Dan Ryckert once upon a time, but I have played F2P MMOs while in college) but if I got into SWTOR at least I wouldn't be one of the people who would automatically start comparing it to WoW and start missing out on features that aren't in SWTOR since I have no experience with WOW.

There are always a few shitheads out there, but I would agree with most people here that my WoW experience was either silent or positive, I quit a few months after Cata was released and even in the beginning, when all the dungeons were new and rock-hard, most of the people were cool with taking a few runs at the bosses to figure them out.

Now LOTRO, which I just recently started playing is another story all together. The world chat is nearly always full of people arguing about Obama being a Muslim and what not. That's not hyperbole, if its not LFG or a guild advert its probably horribly politically charged.

Yeah. "Noob", "retard" and "uninstall" are pretty baseline insults in multiplayer games these days, sadly. I've experienced way more elaborate and psychopathic flaming in Mobas. The kinds that make it seem as the person didn't do anything in the game but to watch you and take notes, so he can make a profanity filled shit flinging rant-fest later on.

Truly unsettling.

It's a really good MMO if you want to just keep to yourself a majority of the time. I don't mind grouping for Heroics, but if I don't want to do them I can just focus on my own stuff. You can skip Heroics (4 man instance quests) and stick to your story and you'll be fine level wise. As long as you do the bonuses that pop up and every quest you come across you won't find yourself under-leveled; if you do find yourself under-leveled then it won't be by much.

Like any game, find people you like and roll with them, as Roy from The IT Crowd says "other people, what a bunch of bastards"

@stryker1121: when you pick your server initially you can filter out what type of servers you want. Also, on normal servers you can flag your self for PVP a la diablo 2 so you cannot be attacked when not flagged.

It was actually an encounter with a toxic player that made me just flat out quit WoW. It wasn't exactly what made me quit, but it was the final straw. People can be absolute fucking monsters when they're anonymous, and it's what makes me have anxiety when playing any cooperative or competitive game with random players.

You guys should try fighting games...

This is a symptom of being mixed with other servers. The people you're queuing into dungeons with will never see you again. There's little to no recourse for being the most toxic individual imaginable in a dungeon or BG group. Honestly with the way the game is setup, if I were leveling my 10th alternate paladin and someone screwed up an incredibly easy leveling dungeon I would be pretty mad, too.

I'm actually pretty surprised no one yelled at Dan during the Deadmines run. I probably would've vote kicked him from a party if I were still playing.

I almost never encounter people like that in game.

I think you may be having terrible luck on a server that is coincidentally filled with assholes. I dont play WoW anymore, but I have very few memories of toxicity (and I played for about three years).

I played a long time ago (pre Lich King) and found it was generally a nice community. I hope these are isolated incidents and not indicative of how the game has become overall. It's the fear of communities like the one you encountered that keep me out of MOBAs and most MMOs (well that and the timesink factor). I have recently gotten very deep into FFXIV on the PS4 and the GB Free Company has been really cool. Is there an active GB Community Guild in WoW? I beat that'd be a nice way to play.

Some people forget it's just a game.

@gaspower: I -really- wish The Old Republic didn't have the technical problems that it had. Graphically, it's better, but on the technical side there are things about The Old Republic that make it look horribly dated. Everything 20 feet in front of you has this really jarring level of detail thing going on that's simply too aggressive. It's a fun game, though. Just ignore the cartel market's lock boxes.

I think the more toxic players come from PVP and some PVE servers. RP servers tend to, outside of trolls, have a player base that's more lenient towards the non-hard core.

I think it's rather unfortunate that Blizzard merged RP servers, sorry, cross-realmed RP servers with non-RP servers. They should have just lumped the RP servers together to keep the same kind of players together. It frustrates the non-RP'ers since a lot of RP server players aren't the elite hard core.

Speaking of combined realm, I think that's where the toxic community came from. Dungeon finder, raid finder, cross realm areas, you were no longer playing with people. You were now putting up with people. I think the game as a whole is better than vanilla, but the sense of community is gone. I've hopped from guild to guild after recently coming back, and it seems like every guild out there's just a pyramid scheme of people doing quests to fill up the guild bank so the guild leader can disband the guild and keep 25k gold.

We're also so far into WoW that generations of gamers have come and gone. Maybe WoW's playerbase simply reflects the behavior of this generation of gamer. Vanilla players probably came to WoW seeking refuge from games such as Everquest and Ultima Online. I bet a lot of current WoW players wouldn't bat an eyelash if some guy in black robes came up to them yelling "Corp Por" or if some crappy 100 polygon Paladin ran past them with a flaming 2 handed sword.

there literally is no group of players worse than the randoms in an mmo

they have 0 patience for anything and 0 communication skills.

The most important thing in WoW is finding a great guild of like minded people and roll with them. Especially for a new player or leveling toon there are a lot of friendly leveling guilds out there.