Blizzard Interview - The Post-Mortem
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- Опубликовано: 3 авг 2024
- Can take quite some time to digest all the stuff we talk about in that hour so let's go through it as we would any other interview.
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Website: preachgaming.com/
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Blizz "We want players to do a variety of content to obtain gear and power"
Also Blizz "Players shouldn't be able to change their characters to suit a variety of content"
What is the difference in power between conduits? Less than 1%? If that's really a problem for you just choose the ones that are less content specific.
@@tyrannosaurus696 Or they could just let people change them easily since limiting it accomplishes nothing anyway.
@@omegaxtrigun it was a conscious design choice aimed at making choosing a soulbind feel significant. To some people it is significant. Either way, conduit energy has a miniscule effect on player power and affects a tiny amount of the playerbase who do all three main kinds of content at the highest level. Faux forum 'problem', with the vast majority of people just whining for the sake of whining as it doesn't affect them in the slightest.
@@tyrannosaurus696 how is it at the same time a significant choice but also has miniscule effect and only affects the "1%"?
@@MrFuckingKololo Woah buddy slow down; youre using logic and reasoning thats illegal.
"Some probably think were out of touch"
yes Ion, yes we do
At least they know that we know what's up. FFXIV looking pretty good right now... at least it's not this!
The question wanted to hear asked was: "Hey Ion, when was the last time that you played at least 5 hours of World of Warcraft in a week?" It would have been really interesting to hear him answer that question or worm his way out of it,
We don't think we know
@@Davivd2 I'm sure as part of his duties he's forced to play The Maw on 10 alts with his eyes forced open like Clockwork Orange
@@andrewbasore3560 I think the thing that makes FFXIV's development better than WoW's is that everyone that works there not only plays the game, but they pay for their own subs (like, everyone; even the president of Squenix pays.) They're looking at the game like every other consumer BECAUSE they're like every other consumer, so they ask the question of whether or not what they're doing is worth the money they're paying to do it. If Ion and the gang had to pay $15 a month to play what they put out, they might realize how far away from their base they are...
The amount of alts i have abandoned because i realized i have to farm my legendary recipe, soul ash, renown and conduits..... alt friendly expansion, my ass.
True. Don’t get why people say SL is an “alt-friendly” expansion...
@@lonefish8128 people slapped the label in the first two weeks where you didnt have to do it all(or rather you had more time to do so)
facts!!!!!
It's almost like alts are band aid to a rather larger problem the game faces. People used to play one or two classes at most and be happy. Now 'everyone' is playing five or more, probably because the lack of content. All this obsession over alts is actively making the game more barebones. Why design a long well thought-out chunky piece of content that will bide most people over to the next patch when the playerbase do the same thing over and over again on multiple characters. So design half or even less of what you would otherwise and 'allow' the playerbase to repeat the same thing over and over again. This obsession over alts is actively contributing to the game being worse of.
The amount of alts I have abandoned after leveling them because I realized I'd have to run Normal Dungeons, Heroic Dungeons, LFR, M+ and Raids yet again on another character. Same content I have run over and over already on my main and other alts. They should take the need for gearing out of the game tbh.. Much more alt-friendly! I mean, I have the gear on my main!
I'm just done. I'm not even mad anymore. I'm just sick of trying to fight the systems of the game to get to the parts that I enjoy.
the same here. Been a mythic raider for the last few years, CE, push m + and all, it's just not worth it now.
I left and now I feel free from this sticky and suffocating grip of the ion or whoever is in charge of development. Add AoE cap to 2 targets, add new anti-melee mechanics, leave dead talents or frustrating uncontested builds (like frost dk BoS), do not introduce an analogue of a mage tower, no tier sets, more GCD, in general, do whatever you want. It doesn't concern me anymore, and it feels so good. Preach records a video about Thorgast in 9.1, and I laugh because I know I won't have to run it twice a week, run away and die in fear when my health is below 40%, etc.
systems = gimmicks == whats the new gimmick = a game that feels it needs new gimmicks every time is trying to hide how mundane the base design is.
They're using systems to "reinvent themselveS" each expak - but really, they're not reinventing anything: they're covering up the base design that needs to be reinvented, thats all.
Same man. Past expansions i was always mad about the changes because i always cared about the game (obviously more than they ever did).
At this point i don't feel anything anymore. They can ruin WoW as much as they want, i just don't care anymore.
Ion and his whole crew are as delusional as it gets.
What sucks is that my spec assassination rogue is now actually fun and playing it is fun and strong, but the rest of the game to get there is horrible
@@Sonnabend00 how is FF14 anyhow, I haven’t touch a Final Fantasy since 6 and I want to play an MMO that doesn’t have Torghast in it
The disconnect between developers and players is astronomical.
The disconnect between fake forum problems and actual in-game experience is astronomical. What else is astronomical is the amount of arrogance needed to think you represent the views of the playerbase.
@@someguy9970 this is the problem with comments like these, its worthless, what did you add that was interresting on meaningfull at all byonde beeing frustrated at a screen, people talk about devs and community as if a monolith of these even exists, you talk about Ion as thou he has the power to single handadly change wow, its such ignorant discourse just coming frustration its not even funny, you know how long people have been accusing wow of dieing and its playerbase to be gone, since cata ( and if you really want to try hard you can find forum posts just like these about tbc)
porblem is you can't say anything with nuance or you're defending blizz, and anything thats said out of frustration those are the valid arguments, fuck shit makes no sense specially when people are saying the same, one's just not being a jackass about it and assuming it's bad intent on behalf of devs. People have accused mike of being a blizz chill for talking about good things they did and only praise him when he talks about the bad as being honest, its such condecending bs on part of the viewers its insane
But so strong between developers (producers) and the board of directors.
@@duman173 >people keep posting crap out of frustration
And where is the frustration coming from? Oh... right... the devs and their anti-consumer choices...
They don't care. And why should they? WoW has absolutely no competition in the market.
You know what would be really funny, if next xpac we get a new talent row and it has 3 covenant abilities on it KEK
That will happen in 2 expansion. Blizz is 4yeara late with player feedback. Think about legion leggos 😂😂😂
Omg why didn't they do that with SLs!! Ugh blizz is the fun police
Really enjoy your guides and editing choices.
GASP! Selwen, you're still alive?!
@@georgepachulia6071 Oh yeah, they brought some back as worse versions of what they were in Legion.
Interview TL;DR:
"We hear you, and we're looking into it, but we probably won't get around to giving the people what they want until the end of the expansion in an attempt to keep people playing over the pre-expansion content drought."
yep, if you want to have fun in wow you basically play the first month (for the joy of discovering new zones and lvling chars), and the last 3 months of an expansion (every systems are in place). Whats in the middle is unbalanced, timegated content :)
@@spacedandy6778 100% correct, it makes sense now because I came back about 2 months before SL and I had a blast in BFA.
@@spacedandy6778 how do you know when the last 3 months start?
@@TheGokuend wowhead?
@@spacedandy6778 Up until BFA I’d started to suspect that the last patch was when the expansion became playable... but 8.3 was really very dreadful low-effort content. Even the raid was ugly and disappointing. If they continue on this botched development cycle the last patch in Shadowlands might be similarly compromised and cut short.
Mike had a hair transplant to be able to pull something out hearing what Blizzard design policies are...
Did he have his second treatment already or is it still one only? Looks somewhat barren up there.
I love the disclamer at the start, to prepare us for his anger
Heelvsbabyface preach is not
21:00 the rant here can be summed up rather nicely. we want blizz to spread their wings and be creative. they say no and try to shove everything into a box whenever they can. even when they can't.
Ion would say: For developers everything is a box. So yes. DOUBLE DOWN!
No we don't. I want Blizzard to make as stale a game as possible. I want no new content, I want the sub price to increase, and I want more monetization.
They forgot that the #1 concern is making their game fun
Actually, their number one concern is making their game profitable. As long as people are still willing to pay for a subpar product, nothing will change. Think back to the last positive change that WoW had - Legion. It was right after droves of people cancelled their subs in WoD.
@@zebrion5793 you’re not wrong about profit motive, but if they made the game fun it would sell more. It’s just like any other business that has to make a good product to make money. The leadership at blizzard is definitely doing a poor job of making a sustainable future but it could be fixed. Profit this year is important, but profit next year and the year after won’t come if they make the game worse
Lol true 100%
@@boomerwow8482 if they make the game fun, it is more effort. its more cost and time efficient to sell a sub par product then to invest into it when the current result is doing fine. especially when you consider that what you change might not be well received and lose you money. MMOs require so much money to make and up keep. youre not going to want to hear this, but Blizz/activision is probably just milking wow for everything they can. then as soon as its no longer making money its deleted off their list of things to care about. then will move onto easier and cheaper products like mobile games.
the problem is they actually think its fun somehow. the leaders have no clue how to make a good game and refuse any criticism. we saw it with legion. we saw it with bfa. we're seeing it again with shadowlands. they don't care how we feel.
I'm curious how it feels to have Ion direclty tell you they want to take the chore out of Choreghast and then the very next day you see the garbage they put it in and thought that was acceptable. You seemed legit disheartened.
Watch his Torghast video...he discusses it for about 20 minutes. ;)
Dol you even realize why content becomes chore? Content starts beinh chore when you have "good experience and bad experience" texture on wide scale and what you do is to try scale down bad experience with game. In order to have only good ones. But such desing do not ever work. In moment you shrink or remove bad experience from the game you also remove good experience with game and end up with medicore ala chore.
Just don’t do content you don’t enjoy.
Normal and heroic raids are cleared by pugs day 1 none of this is needed
@@ChichiNaka God forbid having high standards for the entirety of the game and not just a part of it...
and yes, please show me the pugs, that bring you, unless you actually went out of your way to do the "not required" stuff, that still is required, because it gives you upgrades.
@@Varichan There aren't high standards for the entirety of the game, they focus on their core audience who will stay subbed little paypigs running the same mythic+ dungeons every week and pay the entire expansion.
just gotta say preach that i appreciate your work. its great to just have you interview these devs, period. you do a great job. your team does a great job as well.
This is the look of a man who has been broken by Ion
Ion-izing radiation does a lot of harm to a man. ):
@@kevinwestermann1001 LMAO this is underrated.
@@kevinwestermann1001 dude, great pun.
Preach may appear unhappy and frustrated but our data shows he's actually very satisfied - Ion
@@kevinwestermann1001 but look what its done for his hair
The current state of the game in a nutshell:
Players: We HATE this.
Blizz: Okay.
Blizz: *does it anyway*
Players: ....we still hate this.
Blizz: We'll make it so you like it.
Blizz: *makes it worse*
Players: *start unsubbing*
Blizz: Idk what we did wrong, we gave them everything they wanted
.....
End of expansion: *Blizz gives us many of the things we asked for at the start of the expansion*
The cycle begins again 6-10 months after this.
Maybe yall should learn as players and unsub to force them to listen to the players. But it seems the fans won't leave the game.
@@Nonbinarysmile I unsubbed months ago; I only watch Preach because I like to watch Mike do Mike things.
@@Idividezero ditto I feel you
They make things total shite, it's on purpose, so that they can add the good stuff at the end of the expansion in an effort to be magnanimous . "Look, they listened to the players".. and you think, Why the hell didn't they do this at the beginning?" They slowed you down, they kept you paying that fifteen a month, right? I am not willing to keep playing and wait for that. Lucy is not going to hold the football, and i'm going to fall flat on my head. One More Time.
@@christistratton No lol You're wrong. Blizzard wants to make the game good, but they also need to make money or there's no game and if there's no game, there's no jobs. The problem is mostly on the shoulders of the players for two reasons. First, here's an analogy. Players go to a restaurant and order a steak. The steak is cold and has hair in it. Instead of sending it back to the kitchen, they eat the whole thing and complain about how bad it was to the chef and manager. If you don't like something bad enough, you don't eat it in the first place. You send it back. Players are complaining about a game that they still pay for. If their concerns were strong enough, they would have stopped playing, so to Blizzard, the players look like they just enjoy complaining - which is partly true. Second, players think that they know HOW Blizzard should fix each problem and they don't. Players are only qualified to speak about what they like and what they don't. They do not know how to accomplish anything in Blizzard's game design.
** and bonus, players can't just say "I don't like X." You have to tell them why you don't like it and how it affects your experience. They're not going to play whack-a-mole and just axe features from the game on a whim when people say they don't like them, because other people may.
The conduit thing is like your parents saying you can't do something, and when you ask why "because we say so". The worst answer ever. Glad I quit wow
I am also. I had a lot of fun with wow but I’m done forcing myself to like something because “playing wow is my thing” honestly have developed a bunch of new healthier habits and I don’t miss wow 🤷♂️
Same here. Quit WoW last January and everything I'm seeing Blizz do is reminding me of exactly why I decided to quit and reinforces to me that it was the right decision. It's pretty clear to me that Blizz just doesn't care about the game or their community anymore. It really seems to me like they just want WoW to die so that they can focus on other and newer projects.
really love this game and I started playing like a year and a half ago so this was technically my first expansion and I stopped playing 2 months ago. I just can't be bothered with half the systems they have in this game. makes me feel like im working lol not having fun.
Glad I still play, having a blast in SL!
@@tyrannosaurus696 Give it a little more time.
It's a tragedy what has become of blizzard
As Asmongold once said. "A game shouldnt waste your time, its should make you want to waste your time"
- So it's all borrowed power?
- Always has been.
On covenants, I was that small percentage that went with my favorite at first. Then I saw just the shocking percentage of my class all nightfae, and I made the decision to swap. Gave my character a massive dps increase, as a performance player I was happy. Just goes to show the thought process behind the meaningful choice between covenants.
I'm going to assume you are a fellow boomkin, I did the exact same. I'm a good 20k Anima behind due to it too. SL is very punishing to alt toons and alt covenants.
Yup same I was venthry mage and swapped to night fae...
Yeah I did that with my DK, started as Venthyr and swapped to Necro
My guardian druid I swapped from bastion to night fae and holy crap it took me like a month to finish the campaign. I still haven't mixed out my stuff. I'm behind and it's frustrating
@@LilSinger097 when did you change? Because nowadays even if you go slow you can get to 40 in a couple days at most
It's like they are afraid we will play and God forbid enjoy the game lol. So they load it up with no fun throttles.
Completely. They're always juggling the balancing act instead of standing firm in their design decisions. They release an expansion and spend the whole expansion fixing it, and then release another set of systems. If they relied on their own integrity instead of licking their finger to the wind and developing to popular sentiment.
@@andrewbasore3560 woaw woaw let's not go crazy now, they've stood quite firm on conduits
@@gordo6908 Yeah That's true. Guess I'm talking more about old school blizz. What's left of them is unrecognizable. I'm not sure what the he'll they're thinking anymore. I feel bad for their devs I imagine the reality there is pretty grim with little creative freedom
@@andrewbasore3560 there is no old school blizzard anymore
Preach is right it was super cringe when ion said you know we can't just add stuff all the time that doesn't work it will eventually fail... well bish let it eventually fail If it gives me longer sustaining content then what you are originally putting out because WE ALL KNOW IT AINT WORKING
Ion: tells players to git gud
Also ion: parses grey
He said if the difference is more than 1% per ilvl then its a skill issue. This is true.
@General Pershing no its not, the dps difference between ranks of conduits for the vast majority of specs is minimal. If your grinding maw for a 6dps upgrade conduit and getting burnout, thats on you
@@12oxspring It isn't a 6 dps upgrade. Try being over 14 before you comment, might help you with understanding what reality is and isn't. The thoughts that appear in your head aren't reality. I know your head said 6 dps difference, but your head is wrong.
I don't know why some children want to control how others play wow so badly? It doesn't make any sense... just let people play how they want
Whenever anyone says they're "looking into" an issue it honestly is making me doubt if they are. it feels like the standard "we hear you" response.
It's PR for lolnope
@@MagiusNecros P much lol
yeah it's just like how Ion says, "but don't worry, we have BIG things planned for xpac." Man's been saying that shit since WoD
I had more alts rolling in BFA than in Shadowlands
Conduit energy: because not...
Since when is that an acceptable answer lol
The maw intro wouldn't be that bad if there wasn't 30 minutes of roleplay
It wouldn’t be bad if I could chose to do it or not after I already experienced it
@@oliverjensen223 tbh, it should be a combination. give me the option to skip it, and remove the forced RP.
I'm legit curious why people are so against the maw intro? You also couldn't skip the wod intro and it was just as long. And now you will even be able to mount in the maw.
It feels like whining for the sake of it
@@TheSilverwing999 You can skip WoD Intro tho
@@TheSilverwing999 I feel like Jeremy stated the answer to your curiosity. It certainly is my issue with it. I don't like having to wait for Jaina to walk around and tell me the shit she told me the other 11 times... or that I have to walk slowly in her stealth bubble because the maw is dangerous.
As usual I feel so much better knowing there's a person like you Mike who just gets it and wants the game to be great.
27:22 I've been saying this for ages.
For some reason or other Blizzard got all pissy a few years ago when asked about certain things like talents, new spells/abilities and tier sets/set bonuses. They basically gave whingy answers to the tune of;
"waaaaah, it's too hard to balance",
"waaaaaaaaah, it will make some spells/abilities redundant if we add more",
"waaaaaah what's the point of choice when people pick the best",
"booohooo, we already have too many in-game, why do you want more?",
"wahhhh, flavour text spells and abilities don't do anything for the game", "wah waaah waahhh". /cry
We had a period where 'pruning' was the buzzword of choice. They stood defiant. Adamant that they were right, and we were wrong.
So what did the stubborn cunts do?
They added talent trees... that aren't talent trees.
They added spells/abilities... that aren't spells/abilities.
Isn't it time we stopped fannying around, pussy-footing around these pseudo talents and abilities. They're a bad fucking disguise for Blizzards "unwillingness" to give us new talents and abilities... ya know, in the fact they're disguised EXACTLY LIKE FUCKING TALENTS AND ABILITIES. Except for they don't have to call them that, because like I said... They're defiantly adamant, or is that adamantly defiant. Either way, they're stubborn af, because they wouldn't have to add unanimously-hated new systems or have to BALANCE new systems if they just added something new to the characters in an expansion.
Basically, TL;DR - Oi, Blizzard. You mugs, sort your shit out. Next expansion, skip out on my warrior wearing a wimpy necklace and firing lovu-lovu beamu's and the "I call to you, Friends of the Forest" speshul fwend bonds... and just give us new fucking talents/spells/abilities, and maybe whilst I'm holding the knife and making the demands, some tier sets and set bonuses.
Interviewing Ion is like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall. You can't blame Preach for the total non-answers and dismissive attitude towards everything.
one issue with your comparison. jello has a more solid base than wow.... and it's pathetic that it's true.
As soon as Ion started talking about damage control before even answering any questions I knew we were in for a bullshit romp. He reminds me of a politician. These talks aren't meant to get player feedback at all, they are merely placating us. Activision has severely fucked Blizz up, another soulless product from a soulless corporation meant to extract money from you rather than offering a compelling product you are happy to buy. Fuck this game, time to scrap wow honestly. It's like watching a once great show's horrible final seasons
Well isnt Ion a trained lawyer... they know how to fill entire paragraphs full of nothing burgers.
@@Shiirow That's probably even a bit unfair to lawyers. While they are indeed trained to use language very precisely and to argue every point... even among lawyers it's considered unethical to make material misstatements of fact or to fraudulently misrepresent yourself or your work product. I can't say that Ion as a game designer still has those same ethics.
Why do they even do these interviews with you if theyre going to go into it so bull-headed. There was ZERO point in your interview where it seemed like Ion was there to get a better idea of what people want.
The only thing he seemed to be trying to do was convince us why the direction theyre going is the correct one - and why we're wrong.
Or how what they put on the ptr is the exact polar opposite of what Ion literally just told Preach their plan gor Torghast was. Really cool, agree to an interview just to lie to Preach's and everyone else's face as if we won't notice......
I get your point but as you said, it was an Interview, meaning that Mike is gonna ask questions and Ion is gonna answer. Even if you don't like the answers and they felt kinda disconnected, this wouldn't be the place to gather community feedback.
But I get where you're coming from, they never seem to do that kinda stuff at all.
It's all Public Relations for Blizz. Ion is just the public face for these terrible design choices. These Torghast changes in 9.1 signify to me that SL needed 6 more months of Dev despite the delay already. They spend so much dev time on borrowed power that has to be scrapped each expansion... why can't they focus on just making a decent game and then release content for it instead of redesigning the experience with new and recycled systems... They do major reworks on other titles of characters to the point they are basically a new class/hero and it gives me the impression that Blizzard is just releasing incomplete games, and never completing them, full stop.
This is downright frustrating. I've been playing WoW on and off for the last 3-4 years, and even I feel it. Each time I just get tired of the systemscraft very quickly and drop the game.
@@andrewbasore3560 it would be great if they just focused on content and balancing instead of temporary stuff.
Hair looks really good, too bad Blizz gonna cause it to all Mald off. I hate that they dont even consider PvP interviews. Theyre just on such another planet right now.
preach has never gotten more than 1600 rating, he is totally clueless about pvp. if you dont believe me go look at his armory
You think there's a gear issues in pvp? When they touched on gear they just talked about pve and say get good its a skill issue, seeing so many people agree with this take blows my mind are they even considering pvp?
@@Sarlyx Maybe watch the video that you're commenting on, dunce. Preach says in it that he's not the guy for PvP and he wishes that Blizzard would grant an interview to one of the top PvPers.
@@CaptainKenway Yes hes not the guy for PvP, but the last PvP interview came out almost a full 5 years ago. Theyve all but confirmed they are done with PvP discussions.
@@fezzzost950 I definitely think theres a massive gear issue in PvP. The max and the minimum are wayy too far apart. Alts and returning players get crushed along with causing ridiculous amount of gold carries. Which ill admit you can make a lot of gold doing and is nice, but its completely saturated the 1800 and lower 2s bracket. I wish they would go back to cata style gearing if they want to keep the upgrading gear from PvP. One good honor set, one better but not massively strong conquest set, and one upgradable piece from getting high rating (weapon).
Ion and the devs are so out of touch its actually insane.
Oof. That ending. "I hope it wasn't too passionate" *heavy sigh* 😂
Thanks for caring, Preach.
I hate that you still need to slightly soft ball so that Ion doesn't feel cornered and so he gives actual responses.
Feels like Ion always has a gun to the back of his head when it comes to game design. So we gotta coax responses out of him that won't upset that gun
Makes you wonder how 9.1 was so delayed when there's bugger all in it.
Return of class sets and Blizz acknowledging borrowed power (for the first time it seems) were the highlights
They did say we will get tier sets back for 9.1 now its moved to 9.2 and mark my words it will be moved to 9.3 or even next xpac
@@ctopedja are you serious? That's literally one of the reasons I first started playing wow years ago... Those class specific tier sets were so satisfying to complete...
@@ctopedja They never said 9.1. The two statements we got were, "we are thinking about it, but if it happens, it's going to ba a later tier" (paraphrased) and now we got a more specific answer with the tier after CoD.
I get being angry at Blizzard, but spreading things they never said does not help anyone and is a factor in making them keep stuff secret as long as possible.
@@Opharg Exactly. They never said 9.1, just that they were considering it for the future. People just hear what they want to hear
on the topic of conduit energy, the thing that got me is when Ion said something like "Changing Weekly is ok, but we don't want you to change daily" . Why not?? I want to play your game all day. let me play your game all day.
Is playing the game associated with switching Conduits? Is it that much fun to click those buttons?
Imagine if you would pay for a game you like to play but the company is limiting your time to.... Oh.
@@SenpaiXcore
stretching the term "limiting time" really thick arent we?
@@hansbansor5170 You can replace the term "limiting time" with "limiting your personal joy of a certain part of the game". "Oh you want to grind out that rep and get it done with? Nah, 26 more days of 3 dailies because fuck you and your free time you want to fill with your favorite game."
@@hansbansor5170 no, swapping conduits isn't fun. However, being able to PvP or PvE with the talents / conduits I want at any time, is.
Systems designers making more systems that the players do not want. I don’t think Blizzard realizes they are quickly killing their player base off.
I think that is the goal.
Did it ever occur to you that they are just simply trying to divide the community and take down another one of the things that bring us together?
Look at the bigger picture, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this is in line with the “social distancing” agenda going on all over the world.
Just think about it: When we stood together we did great things. Developers listened to players, implemented good ideas that players wanted and through this cooperative work we built this amazing game and community. Just look at Blizzcon alone, and remember that 20 years ago all of it was mostly nonexistent. When you think of everything that makes up the vast network that is blizzard: the communities, infrastructure, experience, knowledge, staff and etc... then you’d realize It’s sad that money alone ended up being the only thing needed to put it all at risk.
It only takes money to buy enough shares to control the decisions at the top, and from there they only need to go against popular opinion/act as a spark, then sit back and watch everything burn. Then they get to sit back and watch players turn on developers, developers on players and etc. What used to be a strong unified community, an impenetrable fortress, is now on the verge of collapse. If this keeps up, there won’t be a wow player base in 10 years (possibly less). How can something so big get taken down so easily? Perhaps that is one of the biggest flaws that went into designing blizzard as a company, is that they left a way for anyone with enough money to take control; regardless of their intentions.
Look at the bigger picture in general of what we have done as a human race over just the last few centuries. The rate at which we progress is... well it doesn’t take a genius to know that if left alone for long enough, that we’d be capable of anything - including a Death Star.
Hmm... Best way I can explain it is we are Azeroth, the hidden gem that everyone wants to conquer and harness the power of. When all of Azeroth stands together and she is “awake”, she/we will be an unstoppable force. The problem is, most of us don’t even realize blizzard is trying to tell us something with the Azeroth lore. We are the force that shapes a planet into Azeroth, therefore we are Azeroth. Every force in the universe wants to harness that power/enslave the sleeping giant. Most of us don’t even know we are a Titanic force yet, hence the term sleeping giant, but the lore has been leading up to it and eventually we will get there.
Anyways, my point is, a United Azeroth/blizzard is impossible to take down, but a divided one will take themselves out. They figured all they have to do to divide us/take us down is control the money and buy out the top positions with it.
There’s something concretely wrong with how a company is designed, when it no longer matters if 99% of the company want one thing and the other 1% want another (even less in this case), that the direction of the company will always be the will of the few (one that leads to more power for them).
The way I look at it, is this is a valuable lesson and a blessing in disguise. This sort of thing helps us figure out how to build something more permanent next time around. I’m thinking, open-source, crowd-funded, community/player owned gaming company!!??
The Conduit Energy issue was the most painful thing this expansion for me, period. At least recharge them completely at the beginning of the reset or something, it would follow their botched philosophy on the matter. Swapping required conduits between raid and pushing keys kills my soul as a disc priest.
DONT FORGET your weekly 3's if we raid/pvp & then do a key all within a day cuz that's the only time we have to play that week nope u cant... throttled hardcore
After playing FF14, I realized how disconnected I was to the world in WoW. I’m not even sure when that happened, but playing FF14 felt like when I first started playing WoW back in vanilla. WoW lost the world building aspect I feel.
Slowing people down == content. Heaven forbid they just make things fun to do.
22:53 lmao how Preach is like, "Yeah, im not clicking 15 times for 3% primary stat fuck it"
I got so mad several times during the interview. I just can't believe they keep messing up so bad.
The problem is that people get mad - but not mad enough to stop giving them money. People can complain as much as they want, but as long as they're forking over that subscription money every month, literally nothing will EVER change. Think about it. When was the last huge change for the better with the game? Legion - right after a giant chunk of players actually cancelled their subs.
Activision is a company that cares only about money. If you want your voice heard, you have to be willing to pull your money back from them.
@@zebrion5793 40% of the player base have already unsubbed and rising
Ion needs to go. The buck stops with him and this keeps happening over and over again.
@@brandoncox5257 I've seen so many guilds die through friends and myself in the past few months, i wouldn't be surprised if it was around that number honestly.
@@zebrion5793 This. Honestly, what do people expect? They can complain as much as they want, but at the end of the day Blizz just points to the heaps of cash they're making from this crap and say "see, it's working"... who cares if people leave mid-expansion when the initial release insanity probably already paid for the development of the next expansion and gave all the suits big fat bonuses. people always get angry but then lap up whatever Blizz throws them, then get mad that nothing changes
The Maw is at least 30 minutes. That's why it feels so long.
43:33 is me everyday after i launch the blizz launcher wondering why I'm still playing.
Quit
I've never seen preach being so down to earth. Didn't thought it was possible. There's times he speaks like he is from another planet, but the way he lays down his thoughts in this video, incredible. I'm amazed and it was eye opening on some things.
Open world content does feel bad. I used to love world quests in Legion and BfA and I never do them now
"Why did you implement this system? Does it improve the player experience?"
"Because we're supposed to have one there."
I'm pretty confident there is almost no player-centric game design discussion, or intrinsic entertainment discussion in their calls. Pity too, because player-centric design isn't mutually exclusive with squeezing cash, could be both.
I was *STUNNED* by Ion saying that the gear difference was all down to skill. I am a LFR hero and I can see a real, tangible difference with almost every piece of gear. It was either a bald-faced lie by Ion that he didn't care we'd all know was a lie, or he's shockingly ignorant about the state of the game.
Both
I've gone from 2k at 200 to 5k at 224. I've not got that much better.
Wait didn't we get ion saying in the interviews during prepatch that this was the goal? That players should feel like each piece of gear matters and makes them feel stronger? I don't think they checked their math
Get good buddy
@@fakenews4734 I'd be thrilled to get adequate.
Great analysis; Thank you Mike - As always, you are a man of the people, even it its more angled towards the top end. To your point, everything trickles down from there.
Shadowlands will always be remembered as the expansion that all my friends stopped playing including me
So you stopped playing..? :*
It's shocking how many players actually quit the game, but let's face it, Shadowlands is just boring right now, nothing do to!
@@plmPissekatt yes. Ive been enjoying nier replicant, warhammer vermintide 2, overwatch in its place. Thinking of playing ffxiv but dont have the time right now.
@@celtiberianwarrior3783 with the way this patch cycle is going I can not play for another year and we will still be in 9.1
@@MrBigsmallguy I can only recommend playing FFXIV, just started recently and I'm having a blast!
Lore-wise, Torgast is meant to be literally hell, so I'd say it's working as intended.
The impression I got from the interview was just that we're getting more of the same. I will do my chores so I can do the 9.1 raid on mythic then quit until 9.2 and probably do the same again.
Stop paying them completely instead so they learn.
the question here is.. why do it over and over again knowing the game sucks.. just for raiding ? Oo'
Just quit now and cut out the middle man
facts
@@WeallAreAdults because sadly the raiding is usually pretty damn good...
been following since you were jus a top 5's guy an general info creator an ive never seen mike this flustered....its awful watching someone who used too enjoy an show that joy in every vid an now cant even crack a darn smile when talking about his "favorite game". My heart goes out too all of us that feel this exact same way. good luck everyone it was fun for 16 years but enough is enough. keep it real mike do what you love.
I love you Preacher! Thank you for this video we all needed it lmao
Remember, they changed gear to have more main stat. That will skew ilvl increases because it's purely more powerful, but from a percentages standpoint (where they can apply a template to gear for ease of development), it looks the same to them.
No man sky is fun so I'll be back when they take feedback. It's just a grind and a gear reset with the same gear to grind for every patch for the last 3 expansions.
In all the interviews Ion has done when ever asked about why the limit on the conduit charges he always says they don't want people swapping them around per fight or dungeon or whatever. What no one ever follows up with is why don't they want us to play the game the way we want?
Blizzard-mom knows best. Didn't you hear how much Blizzard-mom loves us at Blizzcon Online?
they dont want you to play more than one class and more than one spec. that is the only answer that i can see.
Also Blizzard-mom preapproves all the questions you are allowed to ask in these interviews. So you are not allowed to push the questions. Otherwise good luck trying to get them to talk to you again.
They are trying to protect the (below) average player. Blizz is afraid community would force changing talents/conduits etc. on every pug. I don't agree.
For one very simple and arguably stupid reason. Blizzard don’t want casual players to be forced into swapping in every fight and Blizzard knows that many players imitate pro players and content creators. That is the reason even if that reason is stupid.
Love your work preach and will continue watching to support you... but I'm soooo glad I'm taking a break from wow.
it feels like theyve gone from amazing classes with a cherry on top to having a cherry buried in a pile of crap
I agree with the conduit part, I was in a guild as a priest. Flexing as healer was awful. Some days I didn't have any energy. Doesn't make any sense to have it.
Man the hair is coming in really good!
I guess these comments are gonna be 50% of the channel forever
Blizzard wants it out, apparently. lool
For me, alt levelling is "turn on AAP, start Netflix, tune out of wow and follow the arrow"
They could put a reasonable amount of time as cooldown on the conduits themselves, like, if you spec a conduit, it enters a, for example, 4 hours cooldown, where it can't be respec'd on that soul bind for that duration, and that's it
In Legion we had the option to skip broken isles intro and everyone was happy. If you wanted to replay it cool go for it if not you press the dialog-button and can do your thing. Suddenly it hurts people who want the journey even tho they could choose to not press skip and replay it? What a stupid argument. It feels more and mroe like they want the game to be as tedious and boring as possible i just canceld my sub and looking at what ion said they seem to think they are going in the right direction and thats a hard no for me...and they dont respect our time at all anymore. I feel like instead of going forward and improving the game they are doing the opposite and taking all the fun away. Legion was the high point after that everything went to *** for me
That sigh at the end says it all :)
Cheers for the great content, Mike
Listening to this was nice reassurance that quitting a month ago was a good call. 8/10 mythic raider 2246 IO at the time, played since vanilla, stuck with BFA but too much of the same was it for me. I’ll be back if they put in some good world content and give meaningful class changes that aren’t temporary system things.
What gets me twisted is that they won't let us change conduits on the fly because they're afraid people who don't do that won't get chosen for group content. Then they put raider Io into the game and now i cant get a group for m+ even though I have 210ilvl from raiding
0:58 don’t think I’ve ever come across a preach video where I said “ew, long video”.
I really wish renown and anima were account wide. It would smooth out so much alt gameplay and save you from doing covenant campaigns over and over
Yeah I have characters I've given up on bc they all need to be necro and I've done necro twice and it's my least favorite
A lot of charas bc*
Preach dude you smashed it.
Regardless of the responses given by Ian. It was a pleasure to watch and listen to the interview.
I just don't understand what's going on with the wow development team. World content is stale, Torghast is stale, there is almost no 'massively multiplayer' content to do. Ion pretty much said they aren't developing any interesting side content like Legions mage tower at the moment. Something the community for the most part enjoyed. They need to start developing long term Interesting content that people want to engage with. Not boring world quests or daily chore quests. Having them is okay but we need something new and fun to engage with or work towards.
And that's not even mentioning how Blizzard think the systems behind the gameplay itself are fine. Conduit energy is a mess. Torghast looks like it's going to be so unfun again with some of these Torments. This is all just so depressing.
Conduit energy has stopped me from engaging in multiple aspects of gameplay on one character and the Choreghast requirement of alts has put me off playing on an alt.
Mike - i've been a journalist for 12+ years, and I absolutely appreciate your sentiments on interviewing Ion. People in powerful public-facing positions are often extremely difficult to interrogate - and I've often found myself kicking myself after an interview thinking "why the f**k didn't I ask/push/question that?!" - From my experience, the key is SLOW DOWN your thinking. It will feel unnatural. It will feel shit during an interview - but the delay in your head is 10x longer than in reality. Take a second and think "what's up with that?" when the answer comes. Ion is unbelievably confident, and that's hard to counter, because you want it to sound natural/professional - so I totally get it. I still think you did an amazing job - you asked everything I wanted to know as a WoW player. Kudos dude. Just my 10 cents.
Like he has said already he also had to tell Blizzard what questions he would be asking and they had to be accepted first, I doubt Ion would answer many questions that sprung up and in fact what we seen was almost set in stone with some chatter between each answer.
Your interview was awesome. Even as a person that doesn't really play the game much anymore, I understand your (and other's) frustration. I love WoW and care about the state of the game. I started in Wrath and I haven't been happy with the game in the last few years. Legion was the last time that I truly enjoyed the game. I'm grateful for your efforts in trying to get them to see the bigger picture. Thank you for your hard work, Preach and team!
That sigh at the end of the video speaks volumes.
I think you're spot on with everything you said, and I am a filthy casual: I don't raid (not even LFG), I struggle to time +10s, I enjoy leveling alts, I even care about transmogs.
You get my deepest respect for doing SL on 12 characters. I'm an altaholic and my mind swims thinking about doing this on all my characters. Recently found your channel and love your content!
Great video as always Mike. Keep it up!!
Terrible answers from Ion as usual. They're going to fix nothing. They ''hear'' the feedback yet they make the shittiest decision.
Year after year, when will the players learn...
Yet again, Ion proving he's not suitable to lead WoW. People just need to unsub at this point and come back once it's better. That is the only way they'll learn.
I have to pick weeks when I do PvE content and weeks when I do PvP content because of conduit energy, dog shit system
but but your vault has 9 Options theoretically if you wanted to do all that content in a week; whilst min/maxing your character you couldn't. Raid Mythic + & PVP take all the different conduits and we are literally being throttled to NOT be able to do that
- I think they decided this route because it would keep players "playing longer" ...etc When in all actuality it is making people quit the game because of there dog shit systems.
Passionate is good Preach shows u rly care thats what we all watch u for your Passion and that sweet hair coming back ofc :) nice video mate
How Preach's expression keeps falling in the intro says everything about the interview.
I still find it mind blowing that they dont understand over 75% of players will just pick what's bis to perform the best in a competitive game
I rolled frost mage rather than fire and went with Necrolord for my covenant choice because of the cool covenant ability. Got any evidence I'm in the minority?
@@tyrannosaurus696
Frostmage distribution (197766):
98,853
Venthyr
76,497 Night Fae (probably inflated by fire offspecs, also allrounder for Mage)
11,743 Necrolord
10,673 Kyrian
The latter two being about the same has me guess, that 40k of all Mages choose for the sake of vanity, maybe 50k because Venthyr and Night Fae are probably the more liked Covenants from an aesthetics perspective. Even with 50k choosing for the sake of aesthetics, ~150k choose power. These 75% are roughly the same for all specs.
@@Opharg according to Icy Veins, Night Fae is the third best covenant for frost mages behind Venthyr and Necrolord. However, Night Fae has seven times the number of Necrolord. Necro is the second best overall covenant choice for frost, and best for AOE. So, 76,497 frost mages chose the third best covenant according to Icy Veins. Wowhead has Night Fae bottom for raiding, and joint second with Necrolord for M+. Yes a lot of frost mages chose the perceived best covenant, but the Night Fae popularity makes little sense power wise. Appreciate you making my point for me though!
@@tyrannosaurus696 Night Fae obviously has the most vanity players, but Fire Mages logging off after offspeccing and it being the recommended allrounder Covenant for Mage also has a bigger impact that the other was around. But even if you add the 3 covenants together, you have about equal the amount of players, as there are Venthyrs.
@@tyrannosaurus696 you're not taking PvP into account where virtually all frost mages pick either Venthyr or Night Fae because they are the best for competitive play
Question I had during the interview for you but for Ion. "What sort of data showing you people are performance minded would you accept as a enough to change your mind on this issue?" Cause it seems like without that answer from Ion literally no amount of explaining is ever going to get through to him.
Not to worry Mike, I love it when you get THAT passionate.
The issues predicted to happen prior to expansion release still happening..shocker
So sick of that happening every expansion and then them also never even acknowledging it unless/until they HAVE to
Soul ash is not the only cost for new legendary items. We will have to repurchase/recraft the base items which are not cheap.
Blizzard likes this apparently
I kind of like how Mike has been really critical of the systems. I feel like a lot of people are looking at shadowlands and questioning somethings and a lot of people also feel not so great about SL.
Mike, you are a legend for going to the efforts you go to in order for us to get interviews and information like this, so I'd like to say thanks for your hard work. The problem I have with interviews that devs have done like this, over the past many years is that you could have done the interview with me or any other log time wow player and we'd basically be able to give the exact same answers as Ion did. This is in no way your fault, but comes down to how Blizzard devs treat their customers these days. We have all been consumers of a sub par product for too long now, paying and playing expansions that have released bare bones, yet blizzard are so deluded that they think we actually enjoy it, without realising that the reason we still hang around is for the connections we have made with other people over years of playing this game. Thanks again to you and your team for doing what you can to make this a better game for us all.
I 100% agree with the missed opportunity of rpg elements with the covenants.
Just imagine doing a questline as a Venthyr player. Renethal gives you a quest asking which covenant you think would best aid us in our efforts. You choose the other covenant that you would like to use their covenant perks from. Let's say you choose night fae, you are sent to the heart of the forest, and begin a short questline, where you are asking for the aid of the Winter Queen. You do some quests with Dreamweaver, Korayn, and Naya, as well as Theotar, Draven, and Nadjia, the characters are working together, having some banter, and they help you deal with a threat in Ardenweald for the Winter Queen. Again, this isn't gated, and it's not a particularly long questline. But it's just enough, to convey the covenants working together.
The Winterqueen, and the 3 soulbind characters from Night Fae all thank you, and the 3 of your soulbind characters. As you finish the quest, you get a pop up quest from Naya, you speak to her, and Korayn, and Dreamweaver come forth as well, thanking you for your help, and telling you, if you ever need their aid, they would be happy to assist you, thus unlocking them as soulbinds.
When you return to sinfall, Renethal sends you to the accuser where she imbues your covenant ability, with the power of Sinfall, if you were a Mage, you would be able to use the Nightfae covenant ability Shifting power, but instead of a pulsing blue seed, it pulses red instead, and maybe it has a different name like "shifting pride" because it's been manipulated to work within the Venthyr Covenant.
The mixing and matching where you also are changing the appearance, and name of these spells seems so appealing and honestly easy to do, as well as obvious. Imagine if you were a Night fae hunter, and you converge with Necrolords, instead of Wild Spirits, you get something called "writhing undead" and as opposed to the blue circle on the ground, it is green like the necrolord colors, and there are little skeleton hands that are reaching from the ground.
Something like this would have just added a fun layer of cosmetic mixing and matching, as well being able to use covenant soulbinds, and their respective powers, and it would just mesh, and make sense.
They’re just pandering to the player base who never unsubs and mindlessly runs the same content weekly for months on end.
Absolutely nothing to bring me or my friends back to the game which is saddening, but too many games and too many mmos are offering so much lately, I can’t waste two years of free time in 6 wow dungeons again lmao
Blizzard devs follow the religion of 1 step foward... 2 back
Mike, I apprecate you taking the time to get out of your mythic raider bubble. It does make your content more relatable.
Regarding feral druids in WOTLK: They even had a raid buff back then. LotP gave crit. That's why there was a single feral in most raids. And "feral" was bear AND cat.
They also had innervate, faire faire feral, battle ress and mangle +30% bleed buff. Feral was hard to play for most ppl so it was rare to see even when feral was top dps. This is why i liked to play feral becouse even tho i have to put more effort into pulling good numbers then anyone else i was rewarded for doing well. Later on feral started doing averange dps while still having this annoying hard to play rotation. ( for example ppl are bitching about blood talons talent since mop and somehow this shit is still in game and is go to talent in most cases ) I myself went rogue and will never even look back at the feral the 2nd grade citizen.
The team fundamentally believe that players play the game to get gear, that’s their biggest fault.
I do
I like the HtosN shirt, mah fav band! \m/
There are also those vehicle quests that just take straight up longer when you get better gear because of the world scaling you don't one shot the enemies anymore.
Tip: many vehicles have vastly overpowered right click melee attacks. Especially the cat and bear ones right now. Can make things a lot less painful - the cat makes for 3 times more than its ability but you do have to right click to do it.
I can literally feel my hair growing back inside my head, watching the Shadowlands grand designs.
Thinking about having to do the Maw intro quest is one of the reasons I stopped playing Shadowlands. I didn't enjoy it the first time on the PTR, I cannot imagine doing it for all my alts, actually kill me pls.