Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft
Folding Ideas3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2023-2025
3.9M views · 3 years ago · documentary · evergreen
Folding Ideas' long essay on why playing poorly in World of Warcraft feels rude. It traces how raiding culture shifted from relaxed fun to optimization, theorycrafting and wikis.
Recommended as a thoughtful, research-heavy dive into game culture and the social pressure of competitive play.
11:17[Highlight] StarCraft Remastered Rant
Day9TV
453K views • 9 years ago
14:05TUN: Un-Ruining the MMO
MrBtongue
291K views • 13 years ago
9:36Why Are You So Angry? Part 1: A Short History of Anita Sarkeesian
Innuendo Studios
1.1M views • 11 years ago
21:19Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite
Folding Ideas
1.7M views • 7 years ago
8:53Game Critics
videogamedunkey
17.7M views • 9 years ago
20:38What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn't Play Games
Razbuten
16.9M views • 7 years ago
44:23The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal
Josh Strife Hayes
4.4M views • 4 years ago
1:44:09Jonathan Blow: Video Games and the Human Condition
rubbermuck
158K views • 15 years ago
2:31:44This is Financial Advice
Folding Ideas
8.4M views • 3 years ago
0:29You guys all have phones right?
MrNinjaBurger
184K views • 8 years ago
39:47How lucky is too lucky?: The Minecraft Speedrunning Dream Controversy Explained
Stand-up Maths
8.4M views • 5 years ago
47:11Gacha Drama and the Korean Gender War
Moon Channel
987K views • 2 years ago
2:59Newsroom : Warcraft Sequel Lets You Play A Character Playing Warcraft
The Onion
4.6M views • 18 years ago
25:09The Next Major RTS Will Fail. This Is Why.
GiantGrantGames
985K views • 4 years ago
8:44MMO Economies - Hyperinflation, Reserve Currencies & You! - Extra Credits
Extra Credits
1.5M views • 9 years ago
34:13The Addictive Cost Of Predatory Videogame Monetization (The Jimquisition)
Stephanie Sterling
1.3M views • 7 years ago
7:24How Gamers Killed Ultima Online's Virtual Ecology | War Stories | Ars Technica
Ars Technica
3.2M views • 8 years ago
48:27Jonathan Blow: Game design: the medium is the message
CreativeMornings HQ
119K views • 13 years ago
35:22Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.
People Make Games
7.9M views • 4 years ago
1:02:49Reboot Develop 2017 - Jonathan Blow, Thekla Inc. / Making Game Programming Less Terrible
Reboot Develop
112K views • 9 years ago
5 comments from Hacker News
You've had several replies talking about how Molten Core will be cleared easily by modern WoW players, and as someone who plays retail WoW (and has been playing continuously since Burning Crusade) I'll vouch for that take. Molten Core's mechanics are trivially easy compared to the things retail players are up against even in simple dungeons. That said, the type of player who plays WoW now has also changed since the original raiders entered Molten Core so many years ago. People still raid for fun, but like many things in modern society¹, you're also there to raid "efficiently." This documentary that I watched recently called "Why it's rude to suck at World of Warcraft" is worth the watch. It talks about how raiding has changed from a fun thing that people used to do in vanilla WoW, where a guild of 40 people would put up with the weird gnome in the guild who wouldn't wear boots, to a hyper competitive pseudo-esport where players stopped tolerating that gnome player over a decade ago. ▶ this video ¹ trying not to sound too preachy, I personally love the "get good and keep improving yourself" aspect about WoW, and it's why I push in the game's rated arena brackets each season.
I am unsure why you are curious about documentary recommendations from me, haha, but here's one I enjoyed quite a bit recently: ▶ this video
You might enjoy this citizen science dive into the relationship between WoW and wikis, titled "Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft". One of the premises is that wikis are required reading; because if you aren't min/maxing, you're breaking the social contract with your guildmates. It's a totally emergent and novel way for a game to become 'unplayable'! ▶ this video
I remember this... "Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft" and I feel like a lot of people want to be good so they cheat... they want to not be seen as bad, or a drag on their team. But yeah... DotA, and League of Legends... some of the most toxic games out there. No community to speak of, just a bunch of sweaty try-hards who probably don't get out around humans enough since they're too busy playing these games. It's rough. ▶ this video
One of the things that drove me nuts about Overwatch 1 was the common demand from other players that you employ the pro-league meta when playing even at the lowest levels. A lot of players seem to imagine themselves as the next Ninja (or the Overwatch equivalent) in training and playing multiplayer in that environment is not much fun. See also this video about why it's considered rude to suck at WoW: ▶ this video