I'm nowhere near as into MMOs as I was years ago, but I honestly preferred non-DPS roles. Healing was my forte and I actually feel proud of myself for nearly clearing Icecrown Citadel Heroic during my WoW heyday. Had to quit several weeks into joining a decent guild because of sixth form.

Dunno whether it's a European thing but I've always found MMO (and MOBA) communities to be toxic-as-fuck and that's what turned me away from hardcore raiding. Things were once so bad that I got bullied and harassed off of a server (Turalyon EU, horde side) during my teenage years.

I could write an entire novella of negative experiences I've had with players in both game genres, but I'd be going off on a massive tangent.

All I'll say is that this meme is accurate. Healers get a lot of flak when things go wrong, and it takes a certain level of masochism to actually want to play with the kind of verbally abusive, sociopathic, basement-dwelling turbovirgins that flip out with slur-filled nerd rage, messages telling you to off yourself, and wishes that you'll die of cancer, all because you didn't parse highly during a raid boss or didn't carry their hardstuck asses in a Ranked League of Legends game.

The hardest part about World of Warcraft (at least from a PvE perspective) isn't playing your class well. It's having to wade through a community rife with elitism, gatekeeping, unattainable catch-22's to join a raid group and toxicity. Final Fantasy XIV is a bit better, but that's because unlike Blizzard, Square Enix actually invest in customer service and actually enforce their player conduct rules.

[–] nyctre@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Toxic guilds is why I stopped playing wow. Can confirm. Also healing is both harder and more fun than dpsing when done right

[–] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Avoid EvE Online at all costs. They are the most toxic group of nice guys that just wanna kill you, that I've ever found.

[–] loutr@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That wasn't my experience at all, but my guild was made up of grown ups with actual lives IRL. Sure we were pretty casual by most standards, but raiding was fun and toxicity was shut down instantly.

[–] FunkFactory@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah casual guilds don't really have those issues because the requirements for skill at low raid tiers are so lax. Honestly the game kinda lends itself to toxicity when you play in 25-man groups, and it only takes a single person messing up in a mythic raid to ruin the pull for everyone. When it's like that, isolating the "problem" player is going to be pretty common, and people tend to be more elitist and toxic in general when they are hiding behind a computer screen.

That's not to say a high level guild can't be positive and supportive, though. One of the things I like about watching RWF is that most of the high level guilds seem to have such a tight bond, and they never point fingers over a single raid wipe. They're all in it together and come up with ways to compensate for each other's weaknesses. But it probably helps that every player is highly invested in playing absolutely perfectly, and I'm sure getting a guild to that point requires aggressively cutting out a lot of weak links along the way 😐