WoW's "community" as bad as MCF's?

[jakj]

I feel somehow special for receiving my first LFD vote-kick today, after playing since the feature was first put in the game. "What were you kicked for?", you might ask. Well, I'll tell you: For not kicking someone else.

Yup.

Keep in mind this is not only a normal (not heroic, meaning lowest difficulty level) dungeon run, but the dungeon in question is not even max-level, but in a levelling zone. A vote-kick goes through against a player who was doing adequately but not amazingly, and the reason was "just 2 new 4 this". Yep...in a dungeon run designed for new players.

I blinked, then voted "no". And then I told them that being "new" is not a valid reason for voting to kick someone from a normal dungeon run, and said they shouldn't be so elitist. So then, they kicked me instead.

Right as the group pulled the next boss monster. Amazing.

As my essence was teleported away from the aura of failure at the speed of electricity, and I plopped back down into the forest where I started, I could not help but chuckle.

"That's a new one on me."

[Jay?]

The moral of the story is "ditch WoW, and go play Aion, or one of the dozen other good MMOs that have moved to an FtP structure.

Aion is particularly good, though. even random players will help you out with buffs, heals, and sometimes a little extra help with some of the uniques.

Also flying at level 10.

[jakj]

Honestly, I'd rather the games like WoW and SW:TOR had a single-player variant. There is just such a ridiculously small amount that being multiplayer adds to a game like that, and honestly, off the top of my head, the only concrete benefit to being multiplayer I can think of is that human beings feel a lot different than AI.

And then I look at TF2 bots and I think maybe most companies just don't know how to do AI very well. TF2 bots are pretty good.

[Wooden_axe]

[removed]

sorry for the shitpost

[jakj]

What was the point of that link?

[hoho]

Just like with any bigger community there are asshats everywhere but also nice people. You just have to be lucky enough to bunch up with the latter ones.

I played wow from late 2007 to the end of 2009 and generally had nice experience with people with a few pure amazing ones thrown in. I can't really remember ever grouping with serious retards but that's probably mostly due to me not farming instances-raids ad-nauseum and just sticking with progression raiding with my guild.

The moral of the story is "ditch WoW' date=' and go play Aion, or one of the dozen other good MMOs that have moved to an FtP structure.[/quote']I've actually been looking for a new MMO "fix" after wow became too boring for me. Wasn't Aion a huge grindfest with little to do pve-wise? Could be mistaken though, I haven't really looked into it at all. I did pre-purchase GW2 though, hopefully it's as good as the hype suggests.Ever heard of multiboxing? I did that in wow with a bunch of chars up to L50 and had tons of fun. Then I got into cata beta and spent the next four months there. I actually just quit my last job and was resting at home so I pretty much lived in the game for the time and that completely burnt me out of the game.

[jakj]

Right, because I want to spend an additional $160/2years + $60/month to multibox solo and non-heroic 5man content.

[hoho]

Or you can do it in some F2P MMO and pay nothing

Though I'm not sure how well is it supported there. Not having /follow command in-game is a major problem with most of them.

[jakj]

Wow free is to level 20 of 85.

[hoho]

I know it is, just that the dungeons you can run in that level range are rather boring. Though it would still give you some taste of it. Be ready to spend a few days optimizing the software, scripts and hardware setup though :)

[freakachu]

hahaha, oh WoW, how many stories I have about thee. I could probably rant for hours about the various absolute morons I've had the displeasure of partying with or being in a guild with. I haven't been around the MCF enough to really say if they're better or worse, but it would be really hard to top WoW's "community". I raided heavily from classic through about half of WOTLK (stopped right before the argent tournament raid came out). I've run raid guilds, been an officer, main tanked, been raid leader, and so much more. I ran into neglectful parents, entitled brats, entitled women 3 times my age, and children that played better than 90% of anyone else out there. overall, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than WoW though, IMO.

I'm trying to think of a hilarious LFD story (I came back for a while for cata), but I can't really think of one right now. I usually didn't get kicked because I was the tank and/or I had friends with me.

edit: ok I remembered a good one

my gf and I had decided to return to WoW after burning out on cata and a failed attempt to create a successful raid guild (thanks, guild leveling system!). she convinced me that we should join the guild that her mother was in on another server. supposedly, it was a decent raiding guild and her mom pretty much does nothing but play WoW so you'd think she'd have some ability.

we server xfer and get an invite, then run HoO heroic with me as tank, gf as heals, and her mom, another guildy, and a pug as DPS. her mother is a hunter. we did not kill the first boss. it was perhaps the most awkward thing I had experienced in a long time as I try and direct people on vent how on how to handle the encounter while this other guy is hitting on my gf's mom and the mom is falling off ledges, not paying attention, and generally pulling almost no DPS. meanwhile perv guy is trying to defender her while I'm all, "are you serious?"

it ended in large repair bills and my gf's mother crying at my gf over vent for about an hour and trying to convince her that I am abusive and evil.

we xfered off again quickly. yeah, good times.

[hoho]

But wow also has some nice people

Once during late WotLK I logged on to my L28 baby ele shaman to do the daily dungeon run. I landed in a already in progress SM library run. Apparently the old group wasn't able to even get to the first boss and 3 people left. So we got a holy priest and prot warrior with us and off we went.

Oh and did we rock. Prot warrior was pulling 4-5 groups at a time, holy priest was chasing him around with holy nova spam and I tried to keep up with my aoe totems. The other two DPSes lagged behind looting stuff. Basically we finished the run in mere minutes.

We talked a bit after the run and decided to do some more. I went to respec to proper aoe dps mode and we continued running stuff. We ended up running them from late Friday night to late Saturday night so nearly 24 hours in a row. By around L35 the priest and warrior were pulling around 2k DPS on groups, I at 2.5 (glyphed magma totem is OP). At around L57 when running BRD priest and warrior were at 3.5k and I was pulling up to 5k on groups. It was insane and hilarious at same time considering people were bitching on forums when people weren't able to pull 1k DPS at L80 heroic 5-mans

Of course once we moved to TBC stuff we had to start pulling "only" 3 groups at a time so the DPS dropped a little but it was still well in thousands. By the time we finished we were all at L60 just from chain-running instances.

Another funtime was in Cata beta where we were doing 5-mans before gear for >L83 was added and heroics before those instances were half-decently itemized. Basically when first heroics suggested around ilvl 320 we were often at around 280-300. Doing the stuff for very first time with no idea about strategies and being severely undergeared was friggin awesome. We had TotalBisquit in our beta guild and we did tons of runs for him as well. It was quite regular that first run of any instance took us 4-5 hours. Seeing tanks drop to <10% HP just from one special hit was amusing. Raids were similarly fun.

Together with my shadowpriest, TB's mage and another mage we pulled off some incredible stunts such as kiting several bosses to death from 30% after both tank and healer had died. Agro ping-pong, invisibility, fade, dispersion tanking, iceblock and rocketboots are simply amazing when used right.

We also occasionally had a holy pala with us that was quite likely the best healer I've seen in my entire wow carrieer that was often able to keep us alive through some really nasty stuff while at the same time the wow forums were filled with whine about how holy palas are so weak that they could be considered broken.

Though as I said after living in wow beta for 4 months I was burnt out and the actual Cata release was a pale shadow of the awesomeness of beta so one day I simply decided I won't play any more and next month 1.5 years will pass from that. I'll probably try out MoP beta if I manage to sneak myself a beta key for being an admin in shadowpriest.com but I highly doubt I'll ever get back to it.

[Nethaufer]

I've been playing since almost a year after WoW came out. Never had much trouble with people in groups. Maybe because I'm the tank and if they don't follow me they kinda get reamed. Anyway, yeah, I have had next to no trouble at all with people on WoW. Maybe it changed recently because this time I only got to level 85 and bailed out. Hopefully the next patch will hold me in for longer. Ah, well, if not there's always games like TF2 that I could use for my multiplayer, and Sacred 2 for my grindfest RPG.

[Neowulf]

I've been playing since almost a year after WoW came out. Never had much trouble with people in groups. Maybe because I'm the tank and if they don't follow me they kinda get reamed. Anyway, yeah, I have had next to no trouble at all with people on WoW. Maybe it changed recently because this time I only got to level 85 and bailed out. Hopefully the next patch will hold me in for longer. Ah, well, if not there's always games like TF2 that I could use for my multiplayer, and Sacred 2 for my grindfest RPG.

Been playing about as long.

I've had my share of shit groups and really good groups. Most of the shit groups were deadmines, long before LFD.

PvP tends to give me shit groups though. Freaking hate solo defending a flag/point while the rest of the team goes "But the kills are over here!" or "Hold the roads! It totally worked once!" or "Don't concentrate on one gate, it totally works to send split up and send half the siegers away so they chase them!" or my personal favorite "Everyone to docks! Hangar, Workshop, and everything else are useless!" which is usually said 4-5 lost games in a row...

[Nethaufer]

Been playing about as long.

I've had my share of shit groups and really good groups. Most of the shit groups were deadmines, long before LFD.

PvP tends to give me shit groups though. Freaking hate solo defending a flag/point while the rest of the team goes "But the kills are over here!" or "Hold the roads! It totally worked once!" or "Don't concentrate on one gate, it totally works to send split up and send half the siegers away so they chase them!" or my personal favorite "Everyone to docks! Hangar, Workshop, and everything else are useless!" which is usually said 4-5 lost games in a row...

Wintergrasp on my server was pretty even. The Horde would hold it for a bit, then the Alliance would. Generally I think the Alliance held it more. Although my Battlegroup fricking sucks. Horde is always better.

[Neowulf]

WG was always held by horde on my server. New area is just as bad.

Though pvp has gotten a LOT better since vanilla. I remember being one of the few people who would stay in a warsong match if the horde side had more than 1 superman (shaman) on their team.

It was both hilarious and frustrating watching horde players justify the uberness of shamans back then. Apparently having an exclusive class that is designed to counter 4 other classes and solo atleast 2 enemy players at once is perfectly balanced and didn't need a counter of it's own.

[hoho]

Wintergrasp on Al'Akir was just broken. The server has about 1 alliance per 20 hordes and it was a rare sight to see more than 3 of alliance in WG during any battle. When they were there they were like friggin bosses with the tens of stacks of tenancy or whatever that buff was called.

Luckily for me I couldn't care less about pvp :D

[Jay?]

Wintergrasp on Al'Akir was just broken. The server has about 1 alliance per 20 hordes and it was a rare sight to see more than 3 of alliance in WG during any battle. When they were there they were like friggin bosses with the tens of stacks of tenancy or whatever that buff was called.

Luckily for me I couldn't care less about pvp

Aion needs a buff like that. You have no idea how often i join a pvp instance and find 30 asmos setting up siege machines, and slaughtering the crap out of 5 or 6 elyos.

[Neowulf]

Aion needs a buff like that. You have no idea how often i join a pvp instance and find 30 asmos setting up siege machines, and slaughtering the crap out of 5 or 6 elyos.

Ugh, tenacity was a horrible attempt to fix team size differences. Making one side physically stronger does not counterbalance problems such as force projection and crowd control efficacy. All it does is encourage the smaller team to ignore the still impossible objectives and instead go rack up big kill counts.

[Jay?]

Ugh, tenacity was a horrible attempt to fix team size differences. Making one side physically stronger does not counterbalance problems such as force projection and crowd control efficacy. All it does is encourage the smaller team to ignore the still impossible objectives and instead go rack up big kill counts.

It's still better than having servers that are completely dominated by one side or the other, to the point that the losing side actually gets smaller over time because less people want to pick that side.

[Neowulf]

It's still better than having servers that are completely dominated by one side or the other, to the point that the losing side actually gets smaller over time because less people want to pick that side.

Not really. There was still the problem of the losing side shedding players due to them not wanting to lose all the time.

Wintersgrasp is a battlefield that ran every two hours, and required the current owners to defend a set of walls from the attacking team's siege weapons. Also included were towers the defenders could destroy to decrease the time limit, and siege workshops the attackers had to hold so they could actually use siege weapons.

The siege weapons were the only things that could hurt the defender's walls, and they did not benefit from tenacity.

So it would usually go down with the horde side having 30-40 people while the alliance had 5-10. Atleast 2 alliance were needed just to hold a single siege workshop, so you have 3-8 left to man a couple wet tissue vehicles and hope to get one shot off at one of the 3 layers of wall (which required something like 25-30 each shots to take down). Then walk your way back through a ton of crowd control spam and try to get another shot off.

And this all assumes the alliance side plays smart, instead of the usual 10 complete idiots all running around trying to get as many kills in as possible before losing.

Oh, and did I mention your side had to have control of wintersgrasp in order for you to progress through PvE gear upgrades?

All in all, until they implemented team size caps, all WG did was unbalance server populations. So badly that the effect is still easily felt a year after WG became something to ignore, and will sadly probably still continue well into the next expansion.

[Jay?]

I disagree. Maybe it didn't work for WoW, due to the structure of their PVP system, but aion has a much more continuous PVP, with the different areas always being active.

Aion has even had to stop allowing new Elyos characters on the Siel server, they outnumber the asmos so badly.

[hoho]

Oh' date=' and did I mention your side had to have control of wintersgrasp in order for you to progress through PvE gear upgrades?[/quote']Meh, it wasn't that important really for pve assuming you were doing half-decent raiding already. I think I got a grand total of 3-4 pve tier peices from there that I actually used [edit] combined for my main + army of alts [/edit]. By totc release I was basically just trolling around there with my shadowpriest tanking the stone guy, sitting fire patches and outhealing all the damage with vampiric embrace while simultaneously pulling off some pretty nice dps. It was always fun to see people yell at me for no good reason. Shadowpriest were(/are?) effin OP when played right :)

[Nethaufer]

Not really. There was still the problem of the losing side shedding players due to them not wanting to lose all the time.

Wintersgrasp is a battlefield that ran every two hours, and required the current owners to defend a set of walls from the attacking team's siege weapons. Also included were towers the defenders could destroy to decrease the time limit, and siege workshops the attackers had to hold so they could actually use siege weapons.

The siege weapons were the only things that could hurt the defender's walls, and they did not benefit from tenacity.

So it would usually go down with the horde side having 30-40 people while the alliance had 5-10. Atleast 2 alliance were needed just to hold a single siege workshop, so you have 3-8 left to man a couple wet tissue vehicles and hope to get one shot off at one of the 3 layers of wall (which required something like 25-30 each shots to take down). Then walk your way back through a ton of crowd control spam and try to get another shot off.

And this all assumes the alliance side plays smart, instead of the usual 10 complete idiots all running around trying to get as many kills in as possible before losing.

Oh, and did I mention your side had to have control of wintersgrasp in order for you to progress through PvE gear upgrades?

All in all, until they implemented team size caps, all WG did was unbalance server populations. So badly that the effect is still easily felt a year after WG became something to ignore, and will sadly probably still continue well into the next expansion.

There's also that dungeon inside of WG that you can only get into if you hold it. And most of the people immediately there would be geared for PvP and not for dungeons. And yes, there is a HUGE difference between the two.

[jakj]

One panda video, and now I'm playing Pikachu dancing to Caramelldansen on repeat.

Help.