The World of Warcraft community has gone to the dogs. Douchebaggery is running rampant and finding a decent player is next to impossible. At least, that is the feeling you get if you head onto any game related forum today. In a nutshell, most players believe that the community has totally gone to hell and is getting worse by the day. Is World of Warcraft now the breeding grounds for the dredges of gaming society in its old age or are other forces at work here that make the issue seem worse than it actually is?

The Good Old Days

We all love to look back at the past with fondness, especially when it comes to World of Warcraft. According to our nostalgia filled reminisces, all parts of the game were better in the safe confines of our memories. This superiority of the past includes the community at large.

According to many players, the WoW we once knew was a place filled with players who breathed sunshine and rainbows. Finding a player who was less than pleasant was a rare experience and for the most part the community as a whole was basically one big happy family. Even I find myself a bit jaded when I look back from where we have come from.

With that being said, if I am really honest with myself I can start to see that many of my fond memories are omitting some major details. You see, even in the supposed good old days, jerks existed. I can remember many times when I was called names, harassed, trolled, had loot stolen in a raid, or had a guild bank utterly gutted by some dishonest fellow. To say that these buffoons didn't exist when World of Warcraft was in its prime is just nonsense touched with wishful thinking.

Degenerate Community

Of course, many argue that it isn't that these dregs of the World of Warcraft community did not exist, it is that they are far more prevalent now than ever before. No matter where you go, there seems to be at least one player that has made it their mission to make other players miserable. In fact, based on forum posts, many players have canceled or have considered canceling their subscriptions because of the flagrant toxicity that often takes place.

This new found abundance of noxious players is blamed most on a lack of in game accountability. The idea behind this is that WoW has become a game that is almost totally playable by yourself, there is no need to make any attachments to any other player. Add into the mix that guilds are no longer required and thus unable to police their members, and many feel the community has been left to totally run amok.

The Saturation Factor

Despite the various claims of a community out of control, I have to wonder if more is at work here than just a sudden increase in less than desirable player types. After all, I've played the game since launch and while I have run into my fair share of idiots, I don't really feel like there is necessarily more of them. Quite the contrary, I'm not so sure that there has been an increase in these toxic players at all.

The real issue here is that we are more aware of these types of players. Thanks to combined realms, forums, and being able to chat across server; remaining unknown has become more and more difficult. Back in the early days of WoW, communication across servers was very limited. If you had some bad apples on your server it was likely that the server population knew about them, but few others did. If a players reputation got to bad, they could simply change servers and no one would be the wiser. This made the problem seem smaller than it actually potentially was.

Fast forward to today and players can easily pass information no matter what server they are playing on. We are more in the know about what is going on. It is much like how today we see all the horrors society has to offer, making many think that the world was a pristine place 50 or more years ago. The truth is, crime is actually down, we are just much more aware of it now.

Bringing the bad more fully into the spotlight is that fewer people are playing the game than ever before. This means that your chances of running into the unsavory sort are better than it would have once been. Even worse, with fewer players in game, the chances of you meeting up with your nemesis have increased exceptionally.

So while it may seem like the WoW community has become a dark place filled with players of the worst kind, perhaps that isn't quite the case. There have always been toxic players, the same as any community involving human beings. They haven't increased, we are just more aware of them than ever before. Besides, a toxic individual is just that; an individual. Only you can given them the power to ruin the community as a whole.