World of Warcraft and player culture
Added 2017-05-30 14:00:09 +0000 UTCBy Matthew Rossi
Should a raid guild ask you to take two weeks off work to push world firsts?
Should a guild call others in the same hunt for world firsts by derogatory slang for genitalia? Should the raid leader scream insults at raiders who don't perform up to his or her standards? Is this all just a harmless result of younger people raiding at a competitive level or is it toxic and harmful?
Rather than beat around the bush, I'll just say up front, yeah, it's toxic and should have died out a long time ago. The idea that in 2017 we should still be hearing from people that we should be willing to suspend our lives, be insulted, and have sexist/racist nonsense spewed at us if a boss doesn't die seems ludicrous and offensive and counter to the direction the game's been going in for years.
Now, I've never been a World First raider. The hardest I ever pushed was a guild that occasionally cracked the top 50 US on kills. After my eyesight started to go I couldn't perform at that level anymore and I stepped back from Mythic raiding. Since then I've been what I call semi-casual, which is a fancy way of saying 'I raid sometimes, but not regularly' and I've been a lot happier without all the aggravation. I enjoy World Quests with my wife, the occasional Mythic dungeon or flex raid, and some LFR if I'm in the mood. So I'm clearly not the audience for 'hardcore' raiding, but this isn't about that.
I think that needs to be said -- hardcore raiding isn't the issue. A guild that pursues world first kills isn't the problem. A guild that works diligently at Mythic raiding isn't the problem. Many guilds do this, make the kills, and are perfectly functional and even pleasant guilds for their members. That's not the issue. The issue is the archaic idea of what a guild should be -- that it should replace your life, that you should be willing to tolerate abysmal behavior as long as the bosses are being killed, that you should endure abuse, gender-specific insults, denigration in the name of motivation. These attitudes don't fly, and they never should have been allowed to fly.
I've been in guilds like this. Guilds where people were abusive in any number of ways from backhanded compliments (I still remember the night my wife topped the meters in Zul'Aman to be told she did 'okay DPS for a girl') to outright demands to allow exploitation. None of this was ever good, but it was a lot easier to delude players that it was part and parcel of the raid game thirteen years ago. Now? Now the WoW player based has aged, generally players have jobs and families, it's harder and harder to find people willing to let someone abuse them while they're trying to enjoy playing a game.
And that's how it should be. This kind of attitude should never have been prevalent, and it deserves to be buried in the past. Let people enjoy the game. And if you can't enjoy it without being an abusive martinet strutting around your guild, your guild won't last long.
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Comments
I have never done any hardcore raiding or anything like it... But there has been enough of this sort of garbage in the rest of the game that I have essentially become a solo player almost exclusively. In short, many of Rossi's arguments can be extended to non-guild activities. But I think there will be a base level of this sort of stuff in many places where humans gather. Because humans.
Jack_Aubrey
2017-06-03 00:12:22 +0000 UTCI want to down stuff too, but there's a Line, you know? Cripes.
Daikaiju
2017-05-31 13:10:33 +0000 UTCIf I was getting paid for raiding, corporate sponsorship, etc. I could see demands put on my for my (lack of) performance, but as that will never be the case for me. I could never quite justify coming straight home from work at 6PM to starting raiding, while my wife and kids were out in the other room. My definition of 'casual' is a bit different. As a dad of 3, I believe in the philosophy of family first. I am helping out with homework, and family errands, attending the kids sports games and practices, before I am logging on to play. I've stuck with guilds that agree with this. Of course, this means I am often playing from 10PM until roughly 1AM local and then up for work at 6, but that's my sacrifice. I'll never be a mythic level raider (unless it's a carry group like the moose last expac). I'll never see world first associated with my characters. Happily Blizz has built systems, like the LFG, for players like me. Mythic+5 HOV last night and tanking Normal Nighthold over the weekend. This allows me to play the game I want to.
Elkagorasa
2017-05-30 19:26:25 +0000 UTCWhat prompted this article? For my part, I cannot understand how behavior like that is tolerated at all anymore, at ANY level, let alone the highest.
Andrew Miller
2017-05-30 18:50:14 +0000 UTCOther examples there, definitely not ok.
RogueSigyn
2017-05-30 17:10:03 +0000 UTCI'm fine for asking people to take time off to pursue World Firsts. I think they knew what they were getting into when joining a guild pursuing that kind of stuff. So I would not count that as abuse.
RogueSigyn
2017-05-30 17:09:34 +0000 UTCI don't know why anyone would want to be in a guild that acted like that.
Ravyncat
2017-05-30 16:43:04 +0000 UTCI had a friend who dropped his guild this week after a member used a racist slur in guild chat and the officers refused to address it. After my friend dropped, the officers actually whispered him to let him know that if he couldn't handle racists slurs, then clearly he isn't good guild material. Thankfully, he's coming over to my server and guild, but holy hell. That was just amazing.
Gendou
2017-05-30 16:32:16 +0000 UTCI completely agree with this. Abuse of any kind is completely unacceptable. One of the tenets of my guild is that we pride ourselves on being mature, polite, and inclusive. We provide a pleasant and fun raiding atmosphere. We also have no interest in rankings or World Firsts, but I don't believe that these are in any way mutually exclusive.
Paryah
2017-05-30 16:09:10 +0000 UTCI agree that that kind of behavior and attitude isn't mature and shouldn't be acceptable, and I almost didn't comment at all for fear of being jumped on for agreeing. Hopefully the patrons are more tolerant of multiple viewpoints than the general internet.
Marie Buhtz
2017-05-30 14:57:39 +0000 UTC
