World of Warcraft: Current Year
- Thread starter hodj
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
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Sorry, but I can't stand T&E more than 60 seconds. He has that over-the top infomercial style of talking, which automatically sounds to me like he wants to sell me something, and then upsell some more. Being in a suit and those cringe skits only reinforce that feeling.
Also, their coverage for WoW has always been positive, bordering on toxic positivity.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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I made it in 2 minutes before he started to cover the patch in his dumbfuck clown voice. You are totally right.
jayrebb
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Great coverage of the failed launch and exactly why 9.1 would be a traumatic event.
The extent of the campaign skip damage wasn't fully known to players prior to coverage like this that itemized it and explained how bad Blizzard fucked up the game. The video has information for currently subbed players and would probably only really pertain to them. If you don't currently play WoW it's not going to appeal at all, for the reasons you mentioned. It's more about the facts of the situation right now with 9.1.
I lost 1,500 faction, a transmog, and a bunch of token progression due to the skip incident. That's just the starter of 9.1
People who need that extra push to unsub who are currently on the fence about 9.1-- he's got all that. It's not going to be a technical design debate, it's just a straight up factual presentation of 9.1.
Within 2-3 minutes I was unsubbed and yeah about that login update, it didn't happen. I'll try again tomorrow.
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Yeah, that reinforces my belief that they were told "release now, we can patch it later", which is exactly the attitude Yoshi-P warned everyone about when developing FFXIV. To this day FFXIV has no public test realm, and still the content they release has less bugs and needs less tuning.
Just with like the "you can jump into the lava, but it's not hot and doesn't do anything", I think there is no one left at Blizzard who cares about the product itself anymore. Especially at the top. The people in charge seem to be sick of it after all these years, but they just can't let go.
Maybe because of the (perceived) power they have, or because they need the paycheck that bad, or maybe because they are afraid that other companies are way worse. Because Blizzard is best, right? Yeah, they probably keep telling themselves that.
That ivory tower of theirs? It needs some ventilation, some sunlight and a good vacuuming.
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Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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9.1 launched 8 months after Shadowlands release, a content drought with no ETA from Blizzard and a release during summer, which made players concerned. 9.1 features a 10 boss raid, 1 megadungeon, 1 tiny new zone and a new layer of gem socketing like systems, it obviously looks meager compared to other patches with shorter wait, which made players angry. The same decried systems (covenant energy, mandatory Torghast, rare farming) are still here, which made players furious. PvP is in shambles with boosting and ladder camping, M+ is still unrewarding, story doesn't make any sense to the point it made players threatening Blizzard employees.
Then you have those WoW content creators doing what they do: lenghty videos explaining to everyone what they already know, questioning Activision Blizzard competence while being hopeful for the future, making dad jokes about the state of the game, wondering about how which expansion was better or simply lamenting about how some Vanilla transmog you'd never give a fuck about is still buggy on their reroll.
On top of that a PR fiasco happened with Asmongold trying FFXIV during 9.1 launch with 200k peak viewers alone while all of WoW category was at 73k. During his live FFXIV developer offered subs and banned players trying to harass him ingame. Then some Blizzard lead forgot how Twitter works and called Asmongold an asshole on his official account, resulting in throwaway accounts here and there revealing how Blizzard internally hates Asmongold. This should have started a world war but Asmongold swept it under the rug therefore people think he got corrupted.
This post takes about 5 minutes to read, now you can spend your time in a more meaningful manner than checking all those "WoW is failing" videos you'd normally have no business watching because 99% of them are genuinely bad and looking at the 1% is too much time consuming anyway.
Then you have those WoW content creators doing what they do: lenghty videos explaining to everyone what they already know, questioning Activision Blizzard competence while being hopeful for the future, making dad jokes about the state of the game, wondering about how which expansion was better or simply lamenting about how some Vanilla transmog you'd never give a fuck about is still buggy on their reroll.
On top of that a PR fiasco happened with Asmongold trying FFXIV during 9.1 launch with 200k peak viewers alone while all of WoW category was at 73k. During his live FFXIV developer offered subs and banned players trying to harass him ingame. Then some Blizzard lead forgot how Twitter works and called Asmongold an asshole on his official account, resulting in throwaway accounts here and there revealing how Blizzard internally hates Asmongold. This should have started a world war but Asmongold swept it under the rug therefore people think he got corrupted.
This post takes about 5 minutes to read, now you can spend your time in a more meaningful manner than checking all those "WoW is failing" videos you'd normally have no business watching because 99% of them are genuinely bad and looking at the 1% is too much time consuming anyway.
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I really like Izen Hart. He is an old shitlord like me, and his accent (I think Italian) is funny:
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Malkav
French Madman
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Wut? "People complain there is nothing to do because there is no need to farm for gold?".
Edit : Well, looking at the comment I guess he managed to capture the WoW white knights.
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This ties into his argument that in Vanilla/TBC farming gold was really an endgame activity.
You have to remember that we got the 2.3 daily island back in the day in TBC because casual players complained that there was no easy way to get gold, after you finished all the quests. This was after they made quest XP convert to gold for max level players.
Malkav
French Madman
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No yeah, I get that, but I think he totally misses the point about why people are complaining about current WoW. His arguments are :
- Streamers complain so people complain
- WoW has boomer systems while other online games you get quick rewards for quick activities.
- Gold is worthless so people don't have to farm for it.
Like, wut?
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I don't agree with all of his points, especially with the notion that people complain that there is nothing meaningful to do in the game, while also complaining that being forced to do Torghast is shit. I think there are multiple sub-communities in the WoW playerbase voicing their dissent. But it's provocative, and it makes for some food for thought.
There is an interesting point, however, that WoW has shifted from the design principles of grindy old school MMO design to a more modern, story-driven narrative. Previously the major story points happened around you, but now you are part of it. So suddenly people get mad when the story is shit, because they can't ignore it anymore. You're there, your character is right there in the cutscene. Which is also a heavy-handed thing to do any way you slice it, because cut scenes rob the player of agency.
They also get angry when the story ends on a stupid cliff hanger, like with the current Sylvanas cinematic. And they get mad when you are basically told "this part of the story is over, see you next week for the next 20 minutes of content." Tying the covenants, their stories/narrative to (timegated) renown was a stupid decision, especially when renown gains were sometimes random.
Here's an interesting thought of his, though: Gold (read: farming/grinding for it) was a legitimate endgame activity in old school MMO design. Blizzard tried to move away from it by providing the players with more of it. Sidenote: Additionally, the WoW token has it made possible to trade it without the fear of repercussions, which in turn provided useful funds in the battle.net accounts. Which led to the current state of things, where you can buy "boosts" with it. So people who spent some hours a week to farm for gold for their potions/flasks/elixirs and repair costs in Vanilla suddenly could just outright ignore this, or buy a WoW token.
So this removed one thing for people to do at max level, prepare for the "real" content, which were Raids, Arenas, Heroics Dungeons, or now M+. Here's my take on it: It was replaced by other systems to keep player engagement up, but while gold farming was an activity the players could plan around at their leisure, suddenly they were forced into a schedule. Like a 9 to 5 job, only with something they paid for, instead of getting paid.
And I think this is a pain point for many people without realizing it, especially in a generation where static time schedules are replaced by on-demand services. We are moving away from live television (except for news and sport events maybe) to a streaming Netflix model. While WoW has moved in the opposite direction.
EDIT: Shit, I was ranting again. Maybe I really should make Youtube videos about this.
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Malkav
French Madman
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Not like farming gold wasn't as much of a chore as all these systems. It was something you did because you had to. The only difference is that you could do it whenever you wanted and didn't have to log in daily to do it because of a bad case of FOMO.
Also, I find these points hilarious while we're in the middle of a massive exodus to FFXIV, a game that :
- is story focused around your chacracter with a shitload of cutscenes "robbing the player of agency"
- where money doesn't have any meaning or use unless you want a house and then again you have a lot of avenues to make some.
The player agency was not removed because of cutscenes or whatever. Player agency was removed by stacking systems about systems to make sure the player logs in daily to his shopping list of chores in fear of missing out. Contrasted to FFXIV where you can do whatever the fuck you want whenever the fuck you want during the week, and still easily catch up if you ever missed a week or two.
Also, I find these points hilarious while we're in the middle of a massive exodus to FFXIV, a game that :
- is story focused around your chacracter with a shitload of cutscenes "robbing the player of agency"
- where money doesn't have any meaning or use unless you want a house and then again you have a lot of avenues to make some.
The player agency was not removed because of cutscenes or whatever. Player agency was removed by stacking systems about systems to make sure the player logs in daily to his shopping list of chores in fear of missing out. Contrasted to FFXIV where you can do whatever the fuck you want whenever the fuck you want during the week, and still easily catch up if you ever missed a week or two.
Xerge
<Donor>
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MMO's emulate real life, eh. MMOs have always required players to farm/earn currency to participate in the game world, how much currency you own dictates which activities you're doing. It's genre wide from WoW to ESO and FF14. It's always how it has been and sadly this changed ever so slightly over the years. The biggest change and factor has been the ability to suddenly buy currency in a legit way(tokens in WoW, buying gold in FF14 for RMT(not legal but not bannable either), trading crowns for gold in ESO). This change has fast tracked every MMO's population as suddenly a large portion of player base is skipping the gameplay to time investment requirements that we're use to respecting after earning something in game.
RMT issues that developers have been attempting to curb are showing up in different ways.
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But that is exactly what I wrote?
If you pay attention to it, there are quite a few things about FFXIV's design that are subtle, but genius: Cutscenes where "something happens" are mostly placed around duties (single players instances): Cutscene -> Duty -> Cutscene. This helps keep up the feeling of player agency, while also constraining the player to the story. Of course there are cutscenes without duty, but those are mostly at quest start and quest end where characters only talk. Those are to be more engaging than always having to read quest text.
Blizzard tried to do the same, for example during the Attack on Ardenweald quest, but somehow for players of WoW it doesn't feel as engaging. This is probably because there is a lot of what I'd like to call "emotional debt" with the story and the players' interaction with it in WoW. Players are currently apprehensive after the Sylvanas BfA shithow, and Blizzard did nothing to adress this.
For WoW players, FFXIV starts with a clean slate, it's fresh and basically everyone tells them that ARR isn't even that good, but it's needed to establish lore, setup and characters, and that Heavensward is where it gets going.3
EDIT: Also, I fully expect that a lot of WoW refugees are going to burn out from FFXIV, precisely because it is a story-driven MMO.
Malkav
French Madman
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My point was more that gold farming was never an engaging activity to begin with, so I just don't understand the reasoning about pining for the "good old days where you had to farm gold". There are more interesting grinds that can be leveraged than "farm gold" as long as you let player do them at their own pace.
FXIV has never required anyone to farm currency in order to participate in its battle content. The only reasons you'd have any need to farm currency are purely cosmetics (housing, glamours...). Also, participating in RMT even as a buyer will actually get you banned quicker than actually botting.
Xerge
<Donor>
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I'm just going to confirm that this is false. RMT can get you a house without a ban. Appreciate the correction on the other point; imo though considering housing and glam is end game for a lot of players in FF14 it could be argued that currency is more in demand than we think.
Morrow
Trakanon Raider
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Yeah I think that guy's video was pretty dumb. I watched the whole thing and didn't really find anything that made much sense or that resonated. And then he starts talking about a new currency, which would absolutely piss players off, and not be a good idea.
Malkav
French Madman
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Maybe it can, but if you ever get flagged as participating in RMT, it's goodbye. And it's not like making gil in game is hard either, just farm some in demand cosmetic items, they always seel good on the MB. I know people with 25+ millions gil who have no clue what to do with it. A FC member litterally furnished and decorated my house for free (well, the deal was that I had to fantasia to a lala for a while). Meanwhile, I've been surviving for years with constantly less than 1 million gils without ever having the need for more.
It's also not like anyone can buy a house. You have to jump through a bajillion hoops to even have a chance of buying a plot, having the gil is the least of your worry.
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Yeah, but at the same time players in "the good old time" put up with it. So why are players so enraged about grinding nowadays Torghast for 30 minutes each week, even if they can even choose when to do it? Probably because of multiple factors:
Players don't want to put up with what they perceive as "stupid grinds" anymore, especially when the game feels like full of them, and most of them are on a daily schedule: rep grind here, renown grind (which also feels randomized), world quest grind, soul ash grind. "Do this or you're not flying."
Also, bringing in catch-up mechanics for these grinds for all players just sitting out x.0 devalues the grind earlier players do. This led to the sentiment to wait until x.3, where all catch up is in place, play for a month or two and come back at the next expansion. This feels bad for players who really want to play the game now: "Why do we have to do all these grinds, when it's obviously just arbitrary design to keep us logging in daily?" Blizzard allowed players to peek behind the curtain, and now the magic is gone. The grinds don't feel rewarding anymore: When you see another player who went through that grind you don't feel kinship, but ask yourself if he got it easy by waiting it out.
Flying is another thing: Players expected that, but The Maw felt especially bad: Not only removing mounts, but also having a (perceived) timer breathing down their neck, limiting their time in the zone. One of the advertised new features of the new expansion felt oppressive, especially on the casual end of the players. This was the first time the casuals felt the "we'll make a timer to make it harder" mechanic of M+, (even if it wasn't a real time) and they hated it.