Tired of "Cata"tude! - General Hunter Discussion - Hunter Forums

"Cata"tude:  noun – An overall crappy attitude towards other players that has its roots in the anonymity afforded players by the dungeon finder and the associated "vote-to-kick" function, but brought to sickening lows in the Cataclysm expansion.  Signs of "Cata"tude include, but are not limited to: unwarranted and overly abusive criticsim of players followed by a swift vote kick; and overly obnoxious behavior in a PuG raid or chat channel characterized by the player's not caring about their reputation on their server.  There is currently no known cure for "Cata"tude.

WARNING: Wall of text to follow.  If you keep reading, don''t complain about how long it is.

I was questing on a mage I'm leveling the other day when I realize just how socially withdrawn I have become in the game.  I don't think it's because I don't want to make friends.  I think its just that there are fewer friends to make.  Many of the people I was friends with in-game have quit playing because they thought the in-game community was becoming just too abusive as a whole.  Outside of their guilds, people seem to walk on eggshells around each other, afraid that they might come across someone who suffers from "Cata"tude who is just going to be generally unfriendly.

Questing is, by and large, a solo experience.  Sure, you can occasionally pair up with someone you know but how often do you really end up playing at the same time?  You can't really level together if you play at different paces.  That's why I liked dungeons.  Get a group of friends together or actually work at putting a group together.  Pre dungeon finder groups were harder to put together (unless you were a tank/healer) but far more rewarding.  You joined the group because you wanted to run the dungeon.  You cared about your performance because you knew it made getting groups together easier down the road?

Remeber when the purpose of the "Friend's List" wasn't just to list your real life freinds, but to list "friends" you met in the game, as well?

In BC my friends list was HUGE.  If I was in a good dungeon group, I asked everyone if they cared if I added them to my Friend's List.  Having that list made it easier (though still not easy) to get a group together.  You met people.  You got to know people.  It was FUN to run a dungeon.  Think about that for a second because if you played in BC you probably feel the same way.  BC heroics were wipefests with brutal trash but because of the fact you were, more often than not, with people you at least had some relationship with.  By and large if you wiped, people didn''t complain and they CERTAINLY didn't drop group.  How often in Cata did your group wipe and at least one of the following things happened, if not both?:  A) at least one person drops groups immediately and without saying anything, or B) someone in the group (typically the one with the lowest dps) starts degrading one or more people in the group for how their poor performance caused the wipe. 

The dungeon finder changed all that.  People stopped caring about their performance and their reputation.  They stopped being nice to each other.  They didn't have to do any of those things anymore.  Don't like the group?  Drop and re-Q.  Group kicked you for underperforming?  No problem: re-Q.  Now granted, this attitude didn't develop instantly with the dungeon finder.  But the seed was planted and it has grown into something rotten.

I don't like using the dungeon finder at all anymore.  Not for my main.  Not for my other 85s.  Not for alts I'm leveling.  And its because of how people treat each other.  It's downright shameful for the most part.  A few examples:

I zoned into Nexus last night on an alt.  "Hey gang" I type.  3 people didn't reply at all.  The one who did responded with "shut up and dps, mage".  We hadn''t even buffed up yet and I got "shut up and dps, mage"!

I zoned into a heroic with my tank.  I notice that the 3 dps all come from the same server.  We get to the last boss.  I get kicked.  This wasn't the first time.  I will typicall ask one of the players why I got kicked.  I will usually get no response.  When I do its something like "our friend just logged on so we made space for him, n00b!"

I zoned into a dungeon while leveling an alt.  The other 2dps and the healer were from the same server.  One of them says "brb…following healer".  Which he does…for the ENTIRE time I was with them!  After second boss I say "Is he coming back?  This would go faster with 3 dps instead of 2."  Kicked.

I also notice more open hostility from people in chat channels.  Someone asks a question and they get lit up for not reading wowhead or elitist jerks, etc.  People get made fun of for stuff that other people used to be helpful with.  I believe wholeheartedly that this attitude comes from feeling anonymously invulnerable in the dungeon finder.

This kind of stuff bothers me because when I started playing the game, I HATED the idea of being in groups.  I wanted to play on my own and at my own pace.  As I played more, I came to realize that the social aspect of the game really enhanced the fun, rather than detract from it.  And now, for the most part, that fun is absent from the game.  Think about it.  Was the game more social before the dungeon finder?  Do people seem to carry their anonymous invulnerability outside of the dungeon finder now?

Simple courtesy and friendliness to your fellow player should not be the exception to the rule.  It should be the rule.  

But there's too much "Cata"tude right now.

And I hate it. 

End rant.

Thanks to all who read and replied.  It just feels good to have a place to vent and not get replies like "OMG tldr whiny n00b!".  No worries about hijacking the thread.  Not sure I even know what that means.  =P  I like encouraging discussions, regardless of what it is people want to discuss (assuming, of course, that its not malicious).

I LOVE 4.2!  The dailies don't take a long time so I can get them done on all of my toons.  Molten Front is cool and there is never nothing for me to do because I can hunt any of the new rares.  Btw, does it seem like the new rares must spawn an awful lot?  I've seen TONS of people with them.  Anyone else notice this, too?

lawman30 said:

I also notice more open hostility from people in chat channels. Someone asks a question and they get lit up for not reading wowhead or elitist jerks, etc. People get made fun of for stuff that other people used to be helpful with.

 

I've seen a lot of this, people just ask something like "Where is the mining trainer?" and get catatude from people.  "Ask a guard NOOB."  I usually pst them, tell them where it is, but if they ask a guard they'll get a mark on their map.  One of the many reasons I'm debating whether to renew in Sept or not.