Deniter with post #28 of the thread hit it.

WoW bashing from the *players* of the game really started then, when they saw the trend Blizzard was going to take in reaching for the cash cow of the casuals.

WoTLK though caused the major outcry from the dedicated PvE enthusiasts right around the 2nd to 3rd month in after release of that expansion. It was easy as all hell, and thus boring.

I guess it started in Vanilla. The huge debate back then was on 40-man raids. Casuals wanted smaller raids, hardcore players wanted 40-man raids. But other than this there were no major hate movements :D

TBC - people started hating on Blizzard for removing 40-man raids. People hated the new arenas, battelgrounds, class imbalances etc.

WOTLK - people complained that the game was very easy. People hated that there was no tiered raid progression etc.

Cata - There's no need to explain now is there? :D

MoP (worst abbreviation ever!) - kung-fu panda masters! No talent trees.

Once it was crowned king of the MMOs, it was game on for the bashing.  If you're watching the American Republican debates, its the same thing.  Whoever is on top in any given weak, is who gets the extra lov'in from the bashers.

I don't know about bashing, but i do not about facts because i was there on launch day.

My intial day in Wow was incredible,the worst nonsesne i have ever seen in any MMO even to this day.Also upon login i was astounded at the graphics,i had just tried out EQ2 for a coupel weeks prior.My initial thought was geesus this Wow game won't last at all and won't have many subscribers it looks chilidsh.I was wrong on my assumption of subs,the power of marketing and fanbois is amazing.

The first thing i saw was a whole pile of people forming a circle train doing the emotes,it was childish.

Then as i am out and about ,this player keeps following me asking me to duel,i said no like 10x ,he still kept bugging me.Basically everything i saw was childish,example ons were just jumping over fences back n forth,i thought thank god FFXI didn't have jumping.My whole opinion of the WOW crowd was a bunch of little kids who were just over joyed with being in their first MMO.

When i joined FFXI a year or two earlier ,it was completely different,the community was extremely mature.Further more i was so happy to be in FFXI and not see retarded chat,like Chuck Norris jokes or other insulting jokes.I also did not see WTS or WTB spam,all i saw in FFXI chat was people looking to group up and help each other.

So i made my rounds in EQ2 and WOW,then back to FFXI it was a no brainer for me.Before that time ,i would usually scoff at community being much of an issue,that wa the turning point ,that made me realize community means a lot and the game design is the biggest factor.

All wrong, it started when Vanguard was the hype.  If anyone on here remembers all the WoW trash talk back when Vanguard was close to release, you'll know what I'm talking about.  Before that, there wasn't a whole lot of bashing, maybe a few haters here supporting EQ2 since EQ2 and WoW released so close to each other, but honestly most WoW reviews in the early days were pretty good.  Vanguard was the first supposed "WoW killer".  Trust me, been reading these forums for years lol.

Needless to say, Vanguard came out and flopped hard, since then though pretty much every new AAA title that has released had the bashers coming out of the closet claiming it to be the next "WoW killer",  and of course nothing has done it yet, till SWTOR releases anyways.

Late TBC once it became apparent to everyone they were REALLY dicking around on content releases and expansions and everyone was burnt out.

Originally posted by fivoroth

I guess it started in Vanilla. The huge debate back then was on 40-man raids. Casuals wanted smaller raids, hardcore players wanted 40-man raids. But other than this there were no major hate movements :D

TBC - people started hating on Blizzard for removing 40-man raids. People hated the new arenas, battelgrounds, class imbalances etc.

WOTLK - people complained that the game was very easy. People hated that there was no tiered raid progression etc.

Cata - There's no need to explain now is there? :D

MoP (worst abbreviation ever!) - kung-fu panda masters! No talent trees.

 

My Little Panda

I would say it started well before WoW's release, somewhere when people first learned Blizzard was going to release an MMO. I was in a gaming clan as far back as 2001 when I first heard about Blizzard working on WoW and it was already getting bashed. Heck, I was one of the bashers because I was annoyed with WC3 (I never really liked it as much as WC2, the first Blizzard game I got back around 1996) and all I saw were female models in chain bikinis (something that irritates me in fantasy games).

Back then though we didn't speculate if it was a kiddy game or not. I think the bashing increased exponentially when the "kids" came in. Granted, Blizzard has a particular talent of releasing great games that attract the cesspools of humanity. Take D2 for example, one of the worst gaming communities I ever had the displeasure of being part of. A lot of those folks came to WoW, and a lot of them are now the bashers. It is no surprise to me that this game attracts negative people, or people who are unpleasant to be around in general. What is a surprise to me are people who have played previous releases and wonder about how bad the community is in WoW (there are lots of nice folks too though so the bad community in WoW is not as bad as some people would like to have you think).

I have noticed though, after ten years of visiting gaming forums and the like, all games attract bashers. Unfortunately, now it is cool to bash WoW; it is almost like institutionalized bashing. It is a bit odd because there is nothing truly seriously flawed about WoW, in comparison to some games that have attracted ire such as AO, AoC, WAR, Dark and Light, SWG, etc. It is also cool to bash WoW players, which is something I don't fully understand. Take me for example, I am a WoW player, but I enjoy many other games whether sandboxy, hardcore, whatever.

So in a way what we are witnessing is a form of general chauvinism bordering on a sort of them vs. us mentality that has become "acceptable" in ingame chat channels both towards the game and towards its players, whether those players are jerks or not. Sometimes I think that moderators should do a better job of clearing the serious bashers out.

Oh well, I guess the new kid on the block, ToR, is going to get bashed. It is cyclical.

I remember the WoW bashing happening when I was playing DAoC. I think that was in 2005 that I started hearing it. I didn't even know other MMO's beside UO, DAoC, and EQ existed and I definitely never tried any others or read about them, or even heard of mmorpg.com at the time. I played DAoC for a few years by then. Anyways, I'd hear people bashing WoW while playing DAoC, not even knowing what WoW was exactly. The community back then as a whole was used to highly group focuses leveling, harder and more complex gameplay, with little actual quests. WoW was pretty much the opposite of what we now call classic MMORPG's were at the time.

Im still trying to figure out how people let something like a game drive them insane, maybe they are just angry people in real life and need to find anything to vent against so they feel better.

plus i keep seeing people say "kids" when people are acting immature, do you mean just acting like kids or do you think they are kids?  because honestly i have met only one kid ever in warcraft between the 4 servers i play on and the now 7 years ive been in the game, all the people acting "immature" as people say have been adults lol.  maybe i just got lucky with the not running into kids part huh lol

Seems like a lot of it started when WotLK came out. Not to say that there wasn't any before that, but when they started "balancing" PvP for arenas only I left. Open world PvP didn't really happen, and the game became all about entering queues (be it dungeons or BGs). So essentially you could level from 1-80 by standing in one spot. And yeah the guy who said when they sped up leveling is right too (although that is a sticky situation for every game, how to balance between new players and veterans).

I found WoW to be very addictive - until they nerfed solo fire mages.

Originally posted by Scalebane

Im still trying to figure out how people let something like a game drive them insane, maybe they are just angry people in real life and need to find anything to vent against so they feel better.

 

plus i keep seeing people say "kids" when people are acting immature, do you mean just acting like kids or do you think they are kids?  because honestly i have met only one kid ever in warcraft between the 4 servers i play on and the now 7 years ive been in the game, all the people acting "immature" as people say have been adults lol.  maybe i just got lucky with the not running into kids part huh lol

I think like you that very few of the "kids" are really kids, but rather very angry, badly-behaved adults. People take out a lot of frustrations on anonymous players. But from my own experience, WoW's current community is on par with most MMOs out there. I really don't find it to be as bad as a lot of posters make it out to be. I have only really met a few teenagers, and one of them was one of the most polite players I ever met in any MMO.

Overall, it balances out. Recently, in my newest foray into the game, I've only met one real jerk.  Everyone else has been fine really. In comparison to Vanilla, I think people have calmed down a lot overall. I remember endless guild drama about epics and people backstabbing each other for rare loot.

In comparison to D2, WoW's community is great. I also think it is better than the average, griefing, e-peen-stroking, smack-talking EVE player, and better than the originally sanctimonious LotRO player (dunno how it is since it has gone F2A). It isn't as good as the old DAoC, AO and EQ2 communities though.

It was right around the time Steve Irwin died. I think that is when my hatred for the WoW community truly began.

2004

Originally posted by MMOExposed

just curious, but what year did the major WoW bashing {mod edit} start?

 

{mod note- also edited title to match and be a bit less lightning rod}

WOW bashing started within a few hours of the game's announcement on September 2nd, 2001.

Now my statement that follows this is not bashing WoW, Just bashing the WoW community in general. I played EQ 1 from 99 to '04 and then EQ2 for 2 yrs then i tried wow.  The game itself was resonable to play , had its quirks and did give me some interest in playing it. The major thing that bought the game down was the people that it drew into the MMORPG community, Most seemed to be complelety ANAL at best with a total lack of respect for anyone, including their own guildies. This attitude has spread across alot of the MMO games out there and its so easy to spot a WoW player, they tend to be the most critical, abusive and the most obnoxious people you wouldn't want to come across. Any thoughts of game ettiquette are absolutely alien to them, their main goal in playing the game seems to be pissing as many people off as humanly possible.

 In EQ there was alot of respect given by everyone, there were a few individuals that showed a total lack of caring but those people were rooted out and everyone on the server knew who they were and did their best to avoid contact or grouping with them. It made the gaming experience a pleasure , Guilds made sure that anyone that made the guild look bad were removed quickly and SOE ensured that player conduct was monitored closely, players with disruptive attitudes and inappropriate behavor were removed from the game.   I made many friends in EQ 1 that i still game with and keep in contact with still today. 

 Like i said it wasn't the game it was the players that ruined the game for me.

1992

I don't know the date, but I think it really started when other MMOs that came out were more and more looking like WoW-Clones. Those folks who wanted to move on from WoW for something new kept finding WoW influences everywhere and their frustration lead to more and more WoW bashing.

Originally posted by VirusDancer

Originally posted by MMOExposed

just curious, but what year did the major WoW bashing poptrend start?

Before Vanilla.

Increased with Burning Crusade.

Increased with Lich King.

Increased with Cataclysm.

You see...with each expansion, some of the people that were fine with the game before that expansion - some of them ended up joining the hatetrain.

I stuck it out through Cata for the most part... bought the expansion, played for a week . . . and brutally /facepalmed myself.

Kind of like you're seeing an increase with MoP.

There would be fewer haters if MoP was not going to be what it is - because those that were fine with Cata would have still been fine.  There would be fewer haters if not for Cata, because the LK folks were fine.  There would be fewer haters if not for LK, because the BC folks were fine.  There would be fewer haters if not for BC, because the Vanilla folks were fine.

There is a growing group of Latter Day WoW haters growing - that still love the game up to a certain expansion and wish it would return to that.

>> The truth runs strong in you my friend. I also joind the " Club " since wotlk/cata but i loved TBC.