The Worst of Classic World of Warcraft

Hey just wanted to give a few words about the video. Obviously I get into some pretty nasty stuff here. Toxicity isn't something I generally like to hang around because it usually just breeds and festers even more toxicity. That being said, I have about 300ish videos(at least) about classic so far, most of them sharing what I like about the game and what it does well. Over the past year some of these things were reinforced, and others....not so much. The community in particular, while it can be great, can also be REALLY bad - it's something I've been wanting to talk about for a while but took me about 10 months to be able to put it together in a way I wanted to. My past 3 months ranking also really opened up my eyes to how bad it can really get. I'm pretty proud of the channel overall not only for the (generally) positive community who follows it, but also because I share honestly what I think are the game's highlights and lowlights, and I'd be remiss if I only talk about the good and ignore the bad. All that being said, as I said in the video I made lots of great friends in the game. I still think the community is one of its best aspects - but it's just like real life. For every great person you meet, there are many more you want nothing to do with - it's just amplified 10x due to the anonymity of it all. I tried to make the video mostly constructive, but also a bit entertaining(hopefully) so if nothing else you can walk away with a few laughs at the craziness that can go on. That's about it - just wanted to include this little write-up since it's probably the most spicy video I've ever posted on here(or maybe it was my "Most Disappointing Moments" video? idk). Hope you enjoy regardless.

You know a community is pathetic when madseason cant keep monotone when discussing them

Back before I had my own credit card and my parents didnt want to use theirs for my sub, I needed to use prepaids. I was told that playing games and buying a sub was a waste of money. Even for a kid that didnt do drugs, smoke, or party, but I didn't care. So whenever I'd go out on my bike/parent's car for a "trip to the mall", I'd go to the bank, then game stop, get a prepaid card with the cash, then go to the place I said I'd go. Give it an hour, come back, put the code in, and play. I knew tossing the cards in the trash that they would eventually notice, so I used one of those metal containers that looks like a book and stuffed the cards inside. I did this for years for multiple games (WoW, Runescape, Wizard101) and I still have the damn cards.

Random thought - I kinda pity the guy whose picture is used for the "stock neckbeard" filler.

Ah yes the community, the best and worst part of every game

It's sad. This happened to me in retail. I have a job. I had to work one night a little later than norm and I ended up showing up late. I got chewed out and was told that "I'm not committed enough to the raid group because I have a job" and my GM basically told me after that I had to choose my real life job over wow. Mind you this "man" has kids and a wife...

The concept of minmaxxing is so insane to me. Coming from OG classic. How some players had different builds which worked for them, made it all a little more “real”. I knew a melee hunter who outdps:ed most guys in a party. Characters like that made the game feel alive in a sense.

I didn't play Classic when it came out, I played BC. I remember in my guild and community raiding and all that was secondary to just hanging out, doing fun stuff together in the world for no benefit but fun. I was excited to relive that when Classic came out but all I found were gate keeping min-maxing try hards. I got really sick of how awful the community was and how it felt more like I was playing keep up with everyone else or be shunned rather than just enjoying playing with one another. It put me off Classic entirely and I don't think I'll be coming back to it. I'll try BC when it comes out because that was peak for me, but my excitement is more worry now for what trying to relive my old experience will actually feel like.

When raiding becomes a job, it's time to reassess.

I just starting playing classic for about a week now and this person nerd raged cuz i was doing a lvl 10 quest as a lvl 15 lol

Story time! When I started playing WoW in TBC I leveled mostly solo until I met an undead Warrior named Grim who was leveling in Hellfire. We instantly became friends and he asked me if I wanted to join this guild he was a part of called The Broken. Real life was not going well at that point in time for me so I decided what the hell why not. To this day I do not regret that decision. I found a family in that guild that I have never experienced online since. Eli and her Husband ran the guild. They had children in RL but to me it seemed like they genuinely cared for everyone like we were part of their family as well. I became friends with a druid name Dia and bonded with many others. None of us really knew anything but we enjoyed questing and leveling and helping one another out. I was one of the first to hit 70 in that guild and many would soon follow me. Everyone worked together to get everyone to 70 so we could all be 70 together. I got the feeling that, while no one really talked about it, some of us were playing WoW as a way to dodge things in real life that we didn't want to deal with or were not happy with. WoW was our escape and the guild was a social environment we could all lean on. About 4 months later we had enough people at level 70 to step into raiding and a Hunter in the guild named Max was very keen to attempt Kara. So everyone discussed it and decided we would give it a try for Max and to see what it was like. Our first raid night came and went and all we succeeded at doing was clearing trash to Maiden and wiping on her quite a bit. I think that night it was made apparent to Max that our guild was not destined to be a raid clearing one. We were not raid clearing god gamers. A lot of us were not good at WoW or games in general. We were just a handful of nerds who bonded by having fun experiencing and screwing around in a fantasy video game online together. I'm not really sure why but if I had to guess a raid night was never setup again because of our poor performance and because most of us didn't have any interest in doing it ever again. A few months later Eli and her Husband announced to the guild that they were going to stop playing WoW. They had children to raise and couldn't justify spending the time or money they had on the game anymore. We all understood but it was still sad to see them go. A few days before they were to stop playing I remember a guild meeting was held between all the officers to decide who would take over leadership. I was not an officer so I did not attend it. I logged on after the meeting had been held and was standing in Org when Dia immediately invited me to a group and him and a few others who I was close with in the guild rushed to me. A decision had been made and some core members had chimed in and it was decided that I should take over as the GM if I wanted to otherwise Max would become our leader. This was a huge shock to me and I was deeply humbled by it. I was very young though and I did not want the responsibility of this role in the guild at the time as I was running from responsibilities in real life. I did not feel prepared for it and ultimately in the end I turned it down. You see I dont think I fully realized it at the time but Max and I represented two different futures for the guild. Max had continued to advocate for progression and raiding after our failed Kara run. He had plans to recruit more people who could play better and progress while most of us wanted nothing to do with progression. All we wanted was a chill place to hangout, have fun and help one another. This chill environment is what I represented. From day one I had helped with every group quest and dungeon that people in guild had asked for help with. I enjoyed helping guild mates with stuff and I enjoyed spending time talking to them. After Max assumed lead and Eli and her husband stopped playing it didnt take long for the guild to start under going changes. No one was forced to raid but Max recruited other people who did want to and it became clear that The Broken was no longer a place to just chill and hang out. Most of our core members left the guild within a month, myself included. The Broken we knew was no more. I dont blame Max for this and I still think the decision I made was the right one at the time. I do sometimes wonder about what could have been if I had decided to accept leadership for the guild though. One thing I never understood though was why Max decided that remaking The Broken from within was a better idea then just starting his own guild. It was clear that most of us were happy just having fun doing whatever we wanted. He was a minority to the point that only him and one maybe two others in our original guild wanted to raid and progress and yet he still chose to use The Broken as his raiding guild. One thing I know for sure though is that to this day I have yet to find that same sense of community on the scale that The Broken had under Eli and her husbands leadership. I played WoW for a few years after that but mostly found myself playing only with Dia or by myself as friends who left The Broken slowly began to leave the game. Dia found a new guild in Wrath and I eventually joined it and we made some new friends but ultimately it fell apart and not long after I wound up leaving WoW behind before Cata launched. I'm not really sure if there is a point or lesson to be learned from this story but this video stirred my memory of it up for some reason and I felt the need to share. If anything maybe it highlights the fact that not everyone plays games for the same reasons and our actions in online communities might impact others we know nothing about in ways we can't even begin to comprehend. I think the gaming community as a whole from low to high skill levels and across every genre of game can do a lot better at respecting others in the communities we play in and trying to think about how we are interacting with others online from other peoples perspectives.

Reminds me of one of the main reasons I quit before the Panda's got introduced. Started feeling too much like a job. I did jump back on for classic, but I guess I filtered out the bad stuff because while I enjoyed leveling like I remembered the end game wasnt nearly as much fun as I thought it would be or remembered it to be.. Like losing every AV for an entire day because the server is so imbalanced, the hours spent prepping for a raid, the infighting. So I quit again, only to decide to start up a subscription for the long weekend. Picked the lowest pop server and rolled a new character. And I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Sure zones are ghost towns, but as more of a solo gamer I'm enjoying the exploring, atmosphere, quest lines and complete lack of pressure to "be the best" or rush to any accomplishment. And I get it, that isnt for everyone. But isnt that the point of playing a game? To enjoy yourself? Ah well, it's easy to see how people can get a little too invested in the game.

I can remember when i bought the game. Came back to house. Installed it. But couldnt bloody play it because my parents didnt want to put their credit card for the subscription

It's not the same this time around. I hardly ever hear "the Crossroads are under attack!"

World buff meta is literally the stupidest shit ever. Spend hours collecting all the various buffs and not being able to log onto the character to save them for the raid purely to clear it 20 minutes faster than you would with no world buffs. Makes absolutely zero sense and people get so spergy about it. You spend less time on the raid if you JUST RAID. All those hours spent collecting buffs is literally counter productive. YES the raid time will be faster, but overall you've spend hours of extra time just to brag about your clear time on reddit.

To get back the great feel of early WoW, you would literally have to turn back time. We and the world were very different back then. I cherish the memories I made with my guild back then. But you can't get it back.

In guild chat last week, a guy who didn't have a 60 in the guild got into an argument with the raid leader about whether or not to use dynamite on Viscidius. He argued that casting dynamite cost .3 more seconds than using a GCD and that if everyone would just attack or use a spell that it would be more optimal. But he wouldn't let it go. A guy not even involved in the raid was unwilling to tolerate anyone in his periphery not playing in what he believed to be the optimal way. That kind of attitude is exactly why Classic is so toxic: people believe that the optimal way to play the game is the ONLY way to play the game. Great video, as usual Madseason :)

Madseason, you just made the two best wow-related videos in all youtube one after the other. I'm loving this 90% chill, 10% fed up with your nerd drama vibe

This video made me all the more appreciative of the fact that I actually am one of those filthy casuals who just levels characters to cap and then start a new one. I don't even do dungeons, just playing like a chill open world RPG.

"you install it" - some of us had to wait two full days for it to be downloaded too