Shadowlands was an absolute disaster of an expansion for Blizzard. Many players were already wary of World of Warcraft after Battle for Azeroth, growing tired of contrived systems they were largely forced to do, and trudging through a ho-hum story. The follow up brought a new batch of systems that only succeeded in annoying a large portion of the player base and a story that was just terrible (highly questionable retconning, garbage characterization, etc.). Then there were all of the sexual harassment cases coming out about the studio coupled with a bunch of corporate nonsense from Blizzard. This all combined to cause a huge number of players to quit the game, and subscriptions tanked. As such, it was no surprise that Blizzard Activision wanted to put Shadowlands behind them as quickly as possible, releasing a new expansion that would allow a fresh start.

Now here we are with Dragonflight. From a gameplay perspective, it certainly looks like Blizzard has listened to players' concerns over the last two expansions. Gone are the frustrating systems and super mandatory rep grinds. Instead, things are more of a back to basics meat and potatoes experience. There are a lot of really nice quests, the story has improved substantially, the dungeons are pretty neat, and they brought back proper talent trees too. Blizzard even did what it does best and pinched an idea from another MMO, then made it a main feature in this expansion: They adding dragon riding, a more immersive form of mount riding that had been in Guild Wars 2 for years.

In terms of what people do, WoW is in the best position it has been in years. In terms of who people have to deal with, the game's community is the same open sewer it has been for almost two decades now. The dungeons have a level syncing feature that lets players of vastly different levels play together. It's something that's been in Final Fantasy XIV since A Realm Reborn and works great there. Unfortunately in WoW, there's a good chance a player will be shoved into a party with at least a couple of Mythic+ try hards that are blasting around, trying to skip stuff while the other half of the party is explaining that it's their first time doing the dungeon while leveling and they're unfamiliar with it. In FFXIV, the veteran players will happily take their foot off the gas and explain the dungeon as they go, answering any questions that new players may have. In WoW Dragonflight, these veteran players will poor vitriol / harassment into chat and try to vote kick these newer players.

Meanwhile, when certain members of the community choose to complain about an element of questing that they don't like, it's also something that raises an eyebrow. In this case, I'm referring to the people railing against there being a few quests with a romantic theme that are have LGBTQIA+ characters. Somehow, there's a group of WoW players suddenly complaining that there are "gays everywhere". It's anything but. The quests in question are no different than ones in the past with straight characters where they're largely looking at ways of proving / expressing their love for someone. They're quite sweet, really, but there are a decent number of WoW players that like to exaggerate and make it sound like suddenly Blizzard has been overrun by "woke" writers forcing an agenda on players. Also, WoW players have skipped reading quests for years, opting to rush through them ASAP, get their reward, and be on their way oblivious of whatever the quest was about. Why are they now suddenly taking a keen interest in side quests? Honestly, there has been a contingent of players with these sorts of attitudes playing WoW since release, and they've been stinking up Trade Chat the whole time with similarly spicy political takes. It isn't surprising that they're complaining about these quests, but it is still frustrating.

On the world map, I've seen multi step quests where a group will be halfway through it and someone will come along and start fresh, then try to force everyone else four quests in to help them. Then there are level 70s melting everything in a zone when new players actually need to kill certain things for a quest but they're already dead. This is a selfish element of many WoW players that remains to this day and is pretty darn annoying.

I'm sure WoW defenders will read this and think about a few things. First, they'll say that bad eggs are a part of life and people just need to learn to deal with them. Know how often I have to deal with assholes in real life? Very rarely (Asterisk: my condolences to those forced to work in public facing jobs like retail). Know how often I have to deal with assholes in Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, or Elder Scrolls Online? Almost never. Know how often I have to deal with assholes in World of Warcraft? Daily. Second, the WoW defenders will say, "But these other games have toxic players too, just look at the passive aggressive mean girls in FFXIV!" Yes, there are some toxic players, but, to reiterate, they are far and few between in those other games, and all over the place in WoW. This is why I describe the WoW community as being an open sewer. Sure, there are some nice people playing WoW, but it has a lot of terrible people playing the game as well. We all know that, it's been a festering sore for years, and Blizzard still isn't doing anything to clean house in that regards.

Even that social contract that came about in 9.2.5 doesn't seem to have made a difference. People can report other players and the game is still teeming with trolls. Meanwhile, Square-Enix takes community moderation seriously and dispenses bans and suspensions in a timely manner with no patience for whatever intellectually dishonest nonsense an offender might use to justify their actions. I'm inclined to believe that World of Warcraft's social contract was nothing more than a publicity stunt because Blizzard knows the game has a reputation for being full of assholes compared to the competition, and wants to be seen to be doing something. Meanwhile, on the ground one can see that it is as garbage as ever.

So, I'm curious to see what happens with Dragonflight after the honeymoon phase is over. Will people be so gaga for gameplay that they'll persevere in spite of WoW's atrocious community? Or will they decide it's just not worth the aggravation. In the past, World of Warcraft had a monopoly on the MMO genre. As we've seen over the last year or so, that is no longer the case. A lot of fans of the genre have taken a strong liking to Final Fantasy XIV and moved there. They're also putting out the feelers and trying games like Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online. People have options now and aren't afraid to exercise them. This does make me wonder if Dragonflight's popularity will be short lived as returning players are reminded of how terrible WoW's community is and how little Blizzard has done / is doing to clean that up.

- Pennywhether

December 20, 2022

pennywhether@posteo.net