June 13, 2014

Azeroth Community Troubles

I've always liked being part of different communities online, and I pretty much have been since I was into boy bands when I was 13 or so. I've been part of a toy and doll collecting community longer than I've been with the WoW community. The WoW community looks like a tea party compared to the other! It's because of the high prices that dolls can go for in the other community ($2000+), and the fact that people can get custom items made from certain designers. People get jealous of other things people have; they get mad at the price of items; they even get mad about the friends you have. I used to like participating in the forums and posting my pictures to Flickr, but I stopped once people began making pages to call out and say nasty things about other members. Thankfully I was never popular enough to get any negative attention, and the people I met there were really great.

Collecting toys and dolls shouldn't be so stressful!
When I first joined the WoW community, I saw it as a nice and friendly place where everyone seemed to get along. We all had WoW in common! I blogged since I started raiding in BC with no one to read it except for a few close friends. This was a great way to get my posts out there. I do this because I enjoy the game. While I've seen others participate in arguments and disagreements, I never really had any. Recently I had my first negative experience, and hopefully it's my last. I don't have many followers, and I'm really not that interesting, but somehow one of my opinions seemed to upset someone. I wish I would have been privately messaged to discuss it, but looking back I reacted that way because I felt attacked by this person who I never had any previous contact with. I was waiting for others to jump in against me, but thankfully it didn't happen. I felt bad, but since I like to keep a public profile, I blocked the person. Later on that day I received many tweets and some DMs saying not to worry about it because this seems to happen quiet often with that person.

Toxic communities aren't fun and negativity can make you sick.
I don't want to leave the WoW community, and I won't over something like this, but I won't stop posting my opinions either. I left that toy collecting community, and I check up on it often, but I feel like an outsider walking into a new place. I don't ever want it to be like that with WoW. Azeroth is my home, and just like any other video game I play, I play WoW to have fun. This is a hobby to me, not a job. I don't make money off of this blog, but I write here because I like the game, and I play the game because I enjoy all the wonderful people I've met through it. I have so many good memories here, and Velgana isn't done with exploring quite yet.

As with most of my venting posts, I will be disabling comments. Expect my blog to get back to normal next week since I had the death of my Grandpa and his funeral to deal with this week. I have a post on my Legendary cloak lined up along with an exploration post that a friend requested!