How does one get into WoW end game?

[Solid Shake]

So let's start this off by saying I've played wow very, very casually since Vanilla. Almost like a single player RPG, just scraping by the story content then quitting once getting level cap and running a few heroics.

Here lately I've been wanting an MMO to waste my life in so I've been playing FF14 and WoW and I'm trying to make my choice as to what I want to sink more time into.

I'd love to give WoW a shot and this is where the thread comes to it's point. I feel like without having prior connections its almost impossible to join a guild or group that isn't dead in order to learn to raid/do mythic +, rated BGs, etc. I've tried Discords, they're usually eerily dead, and no one really talks in the world or random heroic pugs.

Where do I find people to play this cold game with? Because right now I'm steering towards FF14 because at least in that game I feel an actual attachment to the people that play unlike WoW, which has lore and a world I'm much more interested in.

I feel like more people don't engage in World of Warcraft simply because of how unforgivingly cold it seems to new players. Please tell me I'm not crazy or what I'm doing wrong? I feel like I'm applying for a job and everyone wants 10 plus years of experience 😬

 

[Theswweet]

I haven't played WoW, but everyone I know that *does* play it seem to hate it, and they complain about the community. XIV's community isn't perfect, but it's miles and away better than most MMOs, that's for sure. You've also got Endwalker coming out this year, so there's that.

 

[Hasemo]

It really does feel like the FFXIV community is by far the best out of all big online games.
There are terrible people here and there, but nothing like in WoW, where I experienced being randomly cursed at because I greeted people after we started a dungeon for example.

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

End game you apply to guilds. Don't know how they do it anymore, I quit like 2 months into Cataclysm. In the old days we'd apply on guild sites with a link to our character sheets and our availability.

 

[Hilarious_Bearious]

I played WoW at launch up until Wrath of the Lich King. I loved it in the early days, it felt like there was a sense of community and discovery. I tried the game again recently and... Yeah, it felt so cold and sterile. I tried to run Deadmines, and everybody had heirlooms and could just mash through without my heals. There was no communication or team work. I unsubbed the next day.

 

[Nere]

You need to find a guild, you try on the forums https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/c/recruitment/54 , you can also use wowprogress and check what guilds are in on your server and whisper the officers https://www.wowprogress.com/ . I don't think anyone asks for experience, except if you apply on a high-end mythic guild, which I don't think you should if you don't know much about wow. I don't think it's hard at all to find a casual heroic raiding guild.

 

[Guppeth]

I feel like I'm applying for a job and everyone wants 10 plus years of experience 😬

Click to shrink...

It can be like that, yeah. It's a few years since I played WoW, but when I was a guildmaster there was a raidgroup megathread on the Blizzard forum for our server, and we posted a link to our website in there. Then on our website people could apply to raid with us. We were most interested in their attitude when they posted, and we'd check their character to make sure it was fairly well optimised. If their character was a fucking mess we'd usually give suggestions on how to fix it, and if they followed our advice we'd know they were mature and willing to learn. We'd rather have someone cool who respects everyone's time, than an amazing player who acts like a wanker.

Tanks and healers were always in high demand, and DPS were like flies buzzing around shit. So if you like tanking and healing, you'll find it a lot easier to find a guild. Make sure you're wearing good gear and have all your enchants before you apply anywhere, and never act like a dick if you get turned down, because raid guilds read each other's forums and you'll end up with nowhere to go.

I started raiding in vanilla where it wasn't possible to do any group content without making friends. Those social links helped me a lot over the years. Without those, you're really going to struggle. Just be exceptionally friendly and keen.

 

[Yari]

I started playing again to experience TBC, never played this expansion (I only played vanilla). Having a blast grinding, just went through the portal a few hours ago. Will probably quit when I hit 70, not much of a raider and don't want to deal with the toxicity of it. Level60 with full greens now LOL.

 

[Tacitus]

You should look at what guilds are recruiting and talk to them. Wowprogress and the official forums for your server are probably the best place to start.
You should start with a casual guild or try to get in a as a non-raider into a more serious one (serious meaning here that they actually have a specific raid team) and try to get into a casual run of theirs - when I played my guild did casual runs on fridays where the main guys were dragging casuals and alts through content and everyone was boozed up.

 

[Santos]

When I started playing WoW, I was lucky enough to have a friend that regularly played and who was in a very active guild which I eventually joined.
I had to change guilds a few years later due to our raiding schedule, I found my current one in the WoW forums. Been there for a few years now and everyone is great.
Unfortunately, I just think it's a matter of trying until you find the right guild/group of people that actively play, are nice enough and have the same end-game goals as you in mind. Which is easier said than done.

 

[Glimpse_Dog]

I haven't played WoW, but everyone I know that *does* play it seem to hate it, and they complain about the community. XIV's community isn't perfect, but it's miles and away better than most MMOs, that's for sure. You've also got Endwalker coming out this year, so there's that.

Click to shrink...

FFXIV community and 'systems/progression design' is better but the gameplay in wow is exponentially better. It's not even in the same ball park. I also hate weeb stuff so even the MMO-y parts are a massive turnoff for me. Cat-girls make me vomit lol. Its nigh-on peodophilic.

 

[Synbios]

The bigger, (new player friendly) discord groups can help out for organised raids and M+. Some use signup sheets in advance, and others will post a time and list the custom group. i'm not a huge raider anymore so if I want to see the new content at non LFR difficulty I'll just use Euroraid (in the eu region), they are usually led by nice people who will explain stuff and won't get mad if you wipe, from my experience.

Raids
EuroRaid
The Fail Train (EU)
The Fail Train (NA)

M+
Mythic Plus Friends

check out Wowhead for a bigger list of servers.

 

[Fallout-NL]

Tanks and healers were always in high demand, and DPS were like flies buzzing around shit.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, wish I'd known that when I rolled a character back in '05. Still, I had fun with my rogue.

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

Yeah, wish I'd known that when I rolled a character back in '05. Still, I had fun with my rogue.

Click to shrink...

It's like that in every MMO. It's why I'm always a tank and my friend is always a healer, we get groups instantly and it's much easier to get into high end guilds.

 

[Kwigo]

Finding a decent (as in decent people, not decent players) group that actually wants to raid without raging is so damn difficult in WoW nowadays.
The statics in FFXIV are such a great idea, other MMOs should adopt this system. The progression system is also way more flexible and makes it feel way less than a second job.

The only time I could decently raid and actually progress in WoW was when I couldn't find a job for 9 months. Actually that might also have been the reason why I didn't find a job :D

 

[Artdayne]

It's like a job interview frankly. You need to either know someone or be well prepared with good pre-raid gear, enchants, potions etc and maybe even look for pugs to run some things with or just find a guild on your server. It may mean looking on the WoW forums for different guilds you can apply to. Guilds tend to be very difficult even if they have no business being so, they'll look at your raid history or your item level and say you're not good enough, especially if you aren't playing a premium class. It takes effort but raiding is a lot of fun once you get your foot in the door of a guild.

 

[Glimpse_Dog]

Yeah, wish I'd known that when I rolled a character back in '05. Still, I had fun with my rogue.

Click to shrink...

It only takes like 8 hours to hit max level on a freshly rolled toon nowadays. I managed to get one of every spec to 60 during lockdown in about thr time it took me to level my warlock in OG wow in 2006.

 

[Fallout-NL]

It only takes like 8 hours to hit max level on a freshly rolled toon nowadays. I managed to get one of every spec to 60 during lockdown in about thr time it took me to level my warlock in OG wow in 2006.

Click to shrink...

Oh I bet. My WoW days are pretty firmly behind me though. I have two kids :D.

 

[sredgrin]

At this point it's kinda rough because a lot of people are waiting for 9.1. A lot of people are unsubbed or at least only playing very casually.

Other than that, just like, join guilds, not everyone will be a good fit, but you'll find usually a person or two that you gel with. If they are moving too fast or too slow for you, move on, but remember the people you made friends with. It's not rocket science. I'm not a hugely social guy and only a low-middle skill player but in all the MMOs I've played I haven't found it too hard to find folks that I fit in with.

But really, right now is just an awful time to try to get into (outside of maybe M+). A lot of people will be coming back when 9.1 launches and will be of varying skill levels and thus are more likely to take on fresher and newer folks.

Also, just set your sights lower in the meantime. Find people that wanna run normals and heroic rather than mythic raiding. You might outpace them eventually, but you'll pick things up, or maybe you'll find thats what suits you.

 

[Aztechnology]

I've played a lot of WoW in recent years. I'd recommend getting into Mythic+ both to get gear and make connections that can lead to end game raiding groups. That's how outside my casual guild I get ahead of the curve and stuff done. I'd recommend joining the mythic+ discord and using the in game finder. You'll likely need to run your own keys until you get your IO score up. Which is an add on that scores you based on the mythic runs you've done.

It is late into the current patch though so it'll probably be difficult atm.

 

[JahIthBer]

Only Cutting Edge guilds want Exp, Heroics on WoW are easy & early Mythic bosses tend to be a push over too.

 

[FondsNL]

The state WoW was in when I quit you could pretty much forget about an actively raiding guild when you didnt have the proper item level.
Odds are you need to do easy mode raids and pick up groups for a while before some guilds would even consider bringing you along.
The level of gatekeeping is horrendous.

 

[Serious Sam]

I haven't played WoW, but everyone I know that *does* play it seem to hate it, and they complain about the community. XIV's community isn't perfect, but it's miles and away better than most MMOs, that's for sure. You've also got Endwalker coming out this year, so there's that.

Click to shrink...

I'm playing WoW and I love it. I only wish I had more time to play.

 

[melodiousmowl]

wow end game needs a few things:

patience
know class well enough to keep your dps near max under duress
quick learning
able to get chewed out by raid leader and not feel hurt
time

wow raiding is like this for the most part these days:
raid finder: baseline dps, barely perform mechanics
normal: some mechanics in play, dps average
heroic: above average dps and mechanics matter, and more of them
mythic: top tier dps, really stringent mechanics and usually more than on other difficulties


mythic raiding will take a ton of time, and getting into a hard-core guild will be like a job interview because they have to have 20 people and no one wants their time wasted.

heroic will be easier to find groups for, and is a place where you can get a feel for the time and patience requirements

 

[Tacitus]

The state WoW was in when I quit you could pretty much forget about an actively raiding guild when you didnt have the proper item level.

Click to shrink...

Well, yeah?
There's only so much skill can compensate and the average raider doesn't have that skill to begin with so they make up the difference by overgearing.

 

[Dyno]

Well going by the influx of WoW players it seems the best way to handle endgame is to sub to FFXIV

 

[Zexen]

My advice would be, if you're interested in joining high level guilds, find yourself a semi-hardcore guild able to clean Heroic mode, learn your class really good, log your fights and do high parses.

Once your parses are great (90th+ percentile per your ilvl bracket), apply to harcore Mythic guilds.

You have to consider websites like https://www.warcraftlogs.com and https://www.raider.io as your game's resume.

 

[Sanctuary]

Yeah, wish I'd known that when I rolled a character back in '05. Still, I had fun with my rogue.

Click to shrink...

It was easier if you used a "tank" as a trojan and then switched over to DPS later. I was actually initially a Shaman when our smallish guild was just getting going, and one day when the instance servers kept crashing, I randomly decided to roll a Warrior just for the hell of it, despite hearing how hard they were to level. Liked tanking so much that it became my main, and not long after that we merged with two other small guilds to become an actual raiding guild. When my Thunderfury dropped though, I slowly acquired DPS gear over the following weeks until I was allowed to do it full time.

The benefit of being a Warrior though meant that I could go back to tanking for small instances or raids when necessary.

able to get chewed out by raid leader and not feel hurt
time

Click to shrink...

Some do this better than others though. The best guild that I was in for around three years (which comprised of many members from my first guild as well) had a great raid leader that could at times get frustrated, and let you know he was getting annoying with how the raid was performing, but he didn't act like an outright dick like the kind of horror stories you hear happening in the bigger "World first" kind of guilds. Our guild was the top on the server at the time too, but we weren't chasing guilds like Death and Taxes, or Afterlife.

I had been in four other guilds briefly as well, and they all had the "I'm going to shout and blame whoever my gaze falls on, even if they weren't even the cause of the issue" kind of "leaders" that also had revolving rosters because of that. No thanks. There's having thick skin for actual criticism, and then there's eating shit from a man-child. Those are the kinds of guilds where the leadership is trying to emulate the actual best guilds, but don't actually have the skill to pull it off, so they just randomly yell at everyone.

 

[Mathieran]

Don't do it. It's a curse on your life.

 

[mclem]

Timing is *critical*. Our guild's going slow between content, which is fine, but at the point just before a new patch opportunities will increase again. The best time to get into a guild is just as a patch hits; a good guild should be willing to help you catch up to a reasonable gear level, particularly if we're going again with the "There's a couple of weeks before the raid opens" side of things. That's prime recruitment time and prime gearing time, because the gear from smaller-group content will increase in quality a bit.

But I should point out that this is from the perspective of an only-a-bit-above-casual guild, who rarely touch Mythic raids but can usually get through Heroic.

 

[ZecHarth]

I'd stick to FF14 personally, I've payed both extensively and personally have a far better time playing 14 these days

 

[Magneto]

WoW's endgame is more interesting, but also takes way more time.

Right now i'd suggest you to look at WoW official forums, reddit, and discord servers to see what's up, if you're looking for some people / a guild. There's a guild for everyone, so maybe don't go into a Top 10 guild, but in a semi-hardcore guild first. Will be easier to be accepted, and to start playing with your new friends.

 

[FondsNL]

Well, yeah?
There's only so much skill can compensate and the average raider doesn't have that skill to begin with so they make up the difference by overgearing.

Click to shrink...

My experience earlier on was that guilds helped gear up newer players in dungeons and raids and in the process helped them develop their skills.

 

[Acidote]

Best thing you could do is start looking for M+ groups in forums or your server chat and get a good raider.io

Get ready for a lot of M+ runs and broken keys.

Joining a guild that's not going for the absolute high end for a while wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Time your +17 / +18s as a baseline and then whisper people from the guilds you might want to join and ask them for applications or who should you talk to. Once you find a guild you'll be doing the Mythic raid or high M+ instances (I'd personally consider anything over +18 as endgame M+, but someone will probably come by telling me I'm a scrub and anything under +20s is beginner tier).

And most of all, wait for the next patch. It's kind of a desert right now.

 

[Vinx]

You can make your way up the Mythic+ ladder by PUGing. It's not great but you will get gear and experience. Going higher than Mythic+ 10 can get frustrating with PUGs.

For raids do LFR and actually try to do the mechanics correctly. Try to get into Normal PUGs. Once familiar with the fights try Heroic.

Look for a guild, either from chat or the official message board.

Learn the fights. Watch YouTube videos and read guides. Plenty of information out there so use it.

When making a topic about WoW don't mention FF14.

 

[Grips]

I love WoW and its been great playing the Burning Crusade again but If you care about a safe community I highly suggest looking around forums and reddits for a guild that meets your needs.

WoW's Classic community is very toxic with a big history of alt right indoctrination (mostly because of pservers and its "free speech" chats) so its a thing to think about.

 

[Guppeth]

I was going to recommend Openraid but the site no longer exists. That was a great tool, especially for "lone wolf" types. Doesn't look like there's anything similar out there.

 

[ArrogantBastard]

wow end game needs a few things:

patience
know class well enough to keep your dps near max under duress
quick learning
able to get chewed out by raid leader and not feel hurt
time

Click to shrink...

My job requires:

Patience.
Know my field well enough to keep my productivity near max under deadlines and stress.
Quick learning.
Able to get chewed out by my boss and not feel hurt.
Time.

Yah, that is exactly why I quit. MMO's just feel too similar to work these days and I'm getting older and older.

 

[Hippopuncher12]

To start you really would just need to PUG until you get good enough gear to be considered for a raiding guild (Mythic anyway). But keep in mind right now it's a dead period, people are waiting on the new patch and raid so a ton of people are playing other games like FF 14 (Hence the influx of people someone mentioned) so it's probably harder to get into anything solid at the moment. As someone that has tried FF 14 several times and just can't get into it and everything I have heard about the endgame, if raiding and the like is something you want to do I would stick with WoW and just keep pushing.

 

[Javier]

So let's start this off by saying I've played wow very, very casually since Vanilla. Almost like a single player RPG, just scraping by the story content then quitting once getting level cap and running a few heroics.

Here lately I've been wanting an MMO to waste my life in so I've been playing FF14 and WoW and I'm trying to make my choice as to what I want to sink more time into.

I'd love to give WoW a shot and this is where the thread comes to it's point. I feel like without having prior connections its almost impossible to join a guild or group that isn't dead in order to learn to raid/do mythic +, rated BGs, etc. I've tried Discords, they're usually eerily dead, and no one really talks in the world or random heroic pugs.

Where do I find people to play this cold game with? Because right now I'm steering towards FF14 because at least in that game I feel an actual attachment to the people that play unlike WoW, which has lore and a world I'm much more interested in.

I feel like more people don't engage in World of Warcraft simply because of how unforgivingly cold it seems to new players. Please tell me I'm not crazy or what I'm doing wrong? I feel like I'm applying for a job and everyone wants 10 plus years of experience 😬

Click to shrink...

People have addons that show damage metrics and they'll rub that in your face if your performance is "poor", also, they'll look down en you depending from which server you are. I'm telling this couple of things because they were the main reason i stopped caring about trying to reach end game and moved to FFXIV. So, take this into consideration while investing your time there.

 

[HuskerfanChuck]

A few things I wanted to mention. As others said, wowprogress and the official forums are good places to start in looking for a guild. Others have talked about PUGs, I'd also suggest making sure you've gone through the whole covenant storyline, and get the gear that comes with that, and upgrade it fully, to take advantage of the levels of gear that can give you. I use that and LFR level raiding to gear my characters. I know you're looking beyond that, just saying that's a good way to set your gear to move on from there.

This is assuming you're talking about retail, and not classic. I rarely play classic... played it enough the first time around. (Playing since summer of '07.)

 

[Tacitus]

My experience earlier on was that guilds helped gear up newer players in dungeons and raids and in the process helped them develop their skills.

Click to shrink...

You *might* find one like that, I just wouldn't count on it. People are going to gatekeep the harder content, even if it's only hard to them because they're bad at the game.

 

[GaussianMultivariate]

There are terrible people here and there, but nothing like in WoW, where I experienced being randomly cursed at because I greeted people after we started a dungeon for example.

Click to shrink...

I wonder how the community were before the last presidential elections, where even decent places could get into heated arguments about the candidates.

 

[Tacitus]

I wonder how the community were before the last presidential elections, where even decent places could get into heated arguments about the candidates.

Click to shrink...

Barrens chat

Barrens chat is a condition which occurs when you have a large, sprawling area that is the primary means of leveling from 10-20. "Barrens chat is like a stupidity centrifuge, distilling the unexpurgated banal thoughts of a thousand morons into a hardened impenetrable lump of smacktardery...

wowwiki-archive.fandom.com

So, not great.

 

[GaussianMultivariate]

Barrens chat

Barrens chat is a condition which occurs when you have a large, sprawling area that is the primary means of leveling from 10-20. "Barrens chat is like a stupidity centrifuge, distilling the unexpurgated banal thoughts of a thousand morons into a hardened impenetrable lump of smacktardery...

wowwiki-archive.fandom.com

So, not great.

Click to shrink...

WoW that's like a lot of trolling undergrads

 

[Tacitus]

WoW that's like a lot of trolling undergrads

Click to shrink...

If you're (un?)lucky, you can melt down trade chat to nonsense spam for a few minutes just by simply linking https://www.wowhead.com/item=23555/dirge