Why Are WoW Players Scared of Mythic+ Dungeons?

Why Are WoW Players Scared of Mythic Plus Dungeons?
To find out, I dove into what may cause players to feel nervous about Mythic Plus content in World of Warcraft.

[Vaeland]

I think it’s mostly that Blizz has a system that punishes you for leavers but doesn’t punish the actual person leaving. As a dps this can be incredibly punishing and discouraging when it can take nearly an hour to fill a group and just listing one locks you out of virtually all other instanced content. You literally have to sit and wait around then hope that people who join aren’t assholes. Meanwhile they are almost incentivized to brick your key at first sign of trouble since they have zero repercussions and value their time too

[TakaChan]

People have gotten burnt one to many times, all it takes is a mistake or two and some random to yell(or in most cases type in all cap)and it just kill's all motivation to keep trying. Add to the fact M+ is mostly speed running with less room for error and an even bigger emphasis on meta gameplay, it's just not fun and can be pretty damn stressful.

[sunguh]

My anxiety kicked in just watching the video.

[SilentKME]

Because of the community. It's wild that so many players (now into their 30s) absolutely REFUSE to get along with one another. It's super embarrassing, incredibly immature and keeps people away from playing content like m+, where this behavior really shines through. PvP participation is way down and m+ is down - the two areas where people act like complete fools to each other.

[simonic]

I've had people want to kick me from a group I created for my key -- because I wasn't playing a meta class/spec. I laughed and dropped the group. Ran it successfully with some others.

[ToHonorKnowledge]

Scared? You mean disappointed? Mythic and heroic is literally the laziest design in gaming. Seriously. They can’t think of how to make a raid encounter challenging, so they add arbitrary difficulty. Even if it was easy people wouldn’t do that because again it’s stupid and lazy. Why would I reward blizzards lack of design with play time? They want me to play a fun dungeon or raid, they should design one. Arbitrary difficulty isn’t fun, smart, or good design

[xucaen]

I've been avoiding Mythics for years simply because I don't even know what they are. Guildies talk about mythic keys and stones. Like what?!

[ramue]

I have a little rant as a healer new to M+. what spooks me most about M+ is all the extra challenges.
When ever I start to push keys a little these extra challenges like having to run away from ghosts, making sure I don't spell lock my healing but also needing to make sure my needed healing goes out in those moments.
As a healer I already have so much to keep track of.
I can do it, but in terms of mechanics having to worry about the base instance mechanics, the challenge mechanics, healing and still be expected to DPS as much as I can when I have the time is just very overwhelming and I can feel my performance start to tank from the anxiety.
Like oh 2 dps died because my instant casts were on CD and I had to run from a ghost because my cc was on CD from the last ghost.
The fact that "people just die" in keystones is a common thing just crushes my spirit as a healer, it makes me feel like I am doing something wrong even if I am playing to the most I can on my class and technically didn't mess up majorly.

Like I can do all this stuff, but the fact I have to do so much at once and under a time limit makes me feel like I am not doing any of them to the fullest I know I can do them at.
And that is a horrible feeling.

[dutyofcall]

As a high end mythic raider and m+ player I can say that most of the groups are afraid of failers so they tent to pick players far above whats required to make it easier. People are also not very committed so they leave quick, easily triggered by everything and avoid any kind of voice chat which makes it impossible to build a coordinated random group to push M+ dungeons.

[arboris]

I care little for ilvl so M+ is really not interesting to me.
But besides the players themselves, the biggest issue for me is simple: Raider IO.
I am simply not jumping through hoops for some 3rd party off brand skill points system

[gregjross]

I’ve played the game for 16 years. Just started M+ at the start of this xpac and I’m pushing 19s. Finding a quality guild makes it so much easier. Pugging is a nightmare. The biggest frustration I have is people not asking questions when they wipe the group and instead of trying to improve the just leave. Or a toxic tank love me a toxic entitled tank lol.

[ahmadalmesba]

I would say getting to dungeons is much easier than raiding. In dungeons you can gradually increase your raideio scores. But in raiding no one will let you in on normal because you haven't defeat 8/8.

[SageOfTheGreyPath]

I don't think it's always a matter of being scared. A lot of people have access to a group of friends to do mythic+ with. With no social repercussions for failure.

The issue, at least for me; Is that Mythic+ as a system doesn't belong in World of Warcraft (Though bear in mind that I say this with the sensibilities of an old man who's seen the game evolve over almost 20 years).

There are many factors to consider too. The overall experience, the kind of person it seeks to attract, the way it's implemented etc. etc. Seemingly always seem to crystallize into things I don't want in my RPG.

I like certain ELEMENTS of mythic+, and I feel that they do have a place in an RPG. Affixes, for instance are a great example of this.
But those elements have also been implemented in a really poor way by blizzard, and seem to be an ongoing topic of contention in the community. Like many deaths being completely unavoidable due to bad RNG and the fact that healers are supposed to do way too much at once that doesn't revolve around healing. in a high key, a person can die in the matter of a GCD because the healer was forced to do other shit to make it work. Again, that's an issue of poor implementation and bad design philosophy, separate to the system philosophy I spoke of first, but one of many major issues to say the least.

All of this is without taking into account many of the other things that are issues in WoW right now such as botting, boost-selling, LFG system etc. etc. that exacerbate and compound on any other issue the game also has.

[Diskhate]

As someone that went from playing Classic (first on Private servers, then blizzard's version from vanilla up to current wrath) into playing high M+ starting in Shadowlands, i can tell you the main "problem" classic players will encounter. I'll speak from my main perspective, that being of a healer (Discipline priest being my main, but i dabble also in Holy paladin and Resto shaman)
A) it's a complete shift in mentality... in Classic you're acustomed to having your spells, on them there is a little blurb that tells what the spells does, and you use it.
In retail, as a healer, if you go into a dungeon and start using your spells to heal, you're gonna barely massage your party's HP bars and barely heal the damage. Instead you need to learn what your passives do, the fact that X spell empowers Y spell, and that they both receive an additional effect by spell Z (for example Resto shaman's Unleash life + riptide stacking into cloudburst totem..which is the bread and butter of most shaman pulls, yet its not as easy to understand as simply reading what 1 spell does)
B) way more to keep track of. Just check the footage of any M+ key above 7-8, then compare it to any scenario from vanilla to wrath. The amount of actions required by any player per second are not even comparable.

From my experience, as someone that has a lot of time spent in "classic" versions of the game, most classic players don't "really" want to have a super challenging time. There is a reason why now that Ulduar is out many want to go back in Molten Core and Blackwing lair. Guilds went from chilling in discord bullshitting and joking with each other and occasionally focusing on a boss fight, to having to do constant callouts + listening to the raid leader without interrupting; and personally i see nothing wrong with either, i adore both versions of the game..but it just isnt the socially focused-chill experience that most classic players want (it's also why i think there is the HC craze now..it's a way to still enjoy the super casual and chill game that is vanilla WoW, while at the same time making it interesting)
That atmosphere is the complete anthithesis of Mythic +, in which every single run is 20-30 minutes of hyper focus on mechanics and nothing else, especially in pugs.

[BigStank]

I stopped doing Mythic+ Healing is just way too stressful!! Trying to keep people alive with affixes that keep punishing a healer class constantly isn't fun, While dps just needs to damage and move from mechanics.

They have made healing punishing and just too stressful to have fun in M+

[SouthernDrinkSlinger]

What bothers me so much about mythic plus (as they are my fav part of the game), is that Blizz made them so unforgiving with interrupt mechanics this season. You pretty much have to have coms in keys 18+ just for the kick and CD rotation. It's so much harder this season that you really need a steady 5 man team to exclusively run with while learning mechanics and getting used to tanking & healing habits in said keys. For instance, both of my guild's main 2 tanks run almost exclusively with their own groups. Luckily I tank more in M+ than I dps, however I have to pug keys on my main raid DPS... and it's just been a nightmare. So much more this season than any I can remember. Good players seem to stick together as it seems they are extremely hard to find in pugs, and it's just frustrating for someone who basically needs to run keys just to keep competing in raid.

I've had experiences with extremely toxic players calling out the lesser experience pugs to a degree they just straight up leave the group. I've had pugs get to a final boss of the key, ask for a bathroom break, come back just to leave the key. I've had players with 0 interrupts legitimately thinking other players are the problem (since they have a whopping 2k overall damage more than the ones interrupting.)

In closing, maybe I'm just jealous of the 5 man teams able to reliably run together 3-4 nights a week like clockwork while pushing content.

[JunglebeastYT]

I kinda have the same problem when starting in M+. Finding the group. But now I joined the No Pressure (or Low Pressure, and Zero Pressure) community on WoW EU. Lots of groups going. And a very chill environment.

[theperfectbeing]

My problem with the more recent design of mythic+ is that is overvalues aoe damage, CC really isn't a factor outside of aoe stuns and the affixes are needlessly punishing to the healers. Almost everyone I know that says they love mythic+ are dps players, it's very rare you'll find a tank or healer that claims they love pushing highly stressful key attempts.

[krisofamerica]

Honestly it is a joy to block toxic people

[ankoo]

"Ladder anxiety" as it was aptly termed by the starcraft playerbase. I think this is the same pretty much.