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.
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.
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.
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.