WoD was super hype because it was the 10th Anniversary of WoW, and also the lore was marketed a throwback to the Warcraft era, as we would see all these Old Horde orcs like Grommash and Black Hand in their prime.
Yeah wod made me come back when i took a break from the end of cata. It was fun for a while and leveling was fun however once i reached level cap i was just so bored after doing my raid
Yeah, I remember I skipped MoP but after WiD announcement I got hyped af, bought MoP right there and then to start catching up for WoD. Unfortunately WoD was nothing like what I expected.
pulled an epic one out of a trash mob leveling and farming for my first mount, outdoors in stranglethorn back then... still remembering it like it was yesterday tho some 16-18 yrs ago or sth... got me so excited, i thought i couldn't believe my eyes... couldn't even wear it so i basically sold it for an apple and an egg bc i was so clueless \o/ everything felt novel and like an exciting new discovery... getting leveled up and to the next spendable talent point... even having reached a certain level height like 40+ felt special... different times.
Ive leveled so many characters in vanilla and classic and literally still everytime i get my helmet/shoulders it’s exciting. Maybe not the same as the very first time but it is
Private servers offer something official servers no longer provide. Sense of community. No sharding nor layering, everyone at one world. And also there is no lag. No idea what is Blizzard doing wrong.
33:33 as a Starcraft fan, yes it's pretty depressing. But whenever I play SC, it always reminds me of old Blizzard, when they used to have a soul and used to care about their community and games.
in a way it's better... We will always have the great SC1 and 2 games, they will still be fun in 2040.... When activi$ion makes a SC3 it will probably suck anyway
I remember jumping off of High mountain with my Shaman and they took away my mobility ability so I didn’t break my fall. I just logged out and played league lol.
Omg absolutely this, in all honesty, Legion for me was the last expansion that felt really innovative, like it breathed some fresh life into WoW. I am not 12 years old like i was when i was when i started playing in TBC, but i was just as excited as i was back then to go home and boot up WoW. My problem with the following expansions is that they all felt like scuffed versions of Legion especially BFA. I don't know what the problem is, but it feels like Blizzard is so afraid of pulling another WoD, that nowadays they're constantly trying to reinvent Legion instead of making an expansion that has the same impact that Legion once did. They just feel so formulaic that i'm sort of tired of it by now.
Still better than Legion with its awful Artifact weapons. They ruined the class fantasy of my main and I will never forgive them for that.. BFA was an upgrade in every way for me. Actually, my biggest criticism for TWW is that they repeat the same mistake with the new talents trees.
When they announced BFA I was genuinely excited because I thought it was gonna be a legit back down to earth and MAYBE a Faction vs Faction expansion, then we got what we got and was very disappointed, the allied races were cool I guess
@@-in-the-meantime... if you played horde it wasnt. they promised us morally grey but they made our like fifth warcheif act like an over the top cartoon villian that had no brains. im not saying slyvannas wasnt evil (if you played classic as undead you always were morally sketch) but they made her incredibly dumb.
I love the etiquette for react content: If there's an ad read you leave it unbroken; you always leave links to the creators in the description/caption. Very classy.
I literally just found the "Restored" version of Stickerbrush Symphony this week and have been listening to it in FLAC almost every day, and you brought it into your video too. So damn good! Love ya, SNES gang
I have this cartoon image in my mind of WoW loot through the expansions. Vanilla - 40 people crowded in awe at 2 pieces of loot. TBC - 25 looking at 2/3 items. WotLK - 10 looking at 3 items. etc... BFA - 1 person looking a mountain of loot and throwing most of it in the trash.
the sub numbers are missing a huge factor that the china servers got shut down, i forget when. but id be surprised if they ever get close to their old sub count
I had a sub from 2007 until about half way through MoP. I hopped between retail and private servers from the Cata release until I switched full time over to private servers when I ended my retail sub. I skipped WoD, played one month in Legion, and haven't played any expansions since then. I did resubscribe for almost a year to play classic.
You should definitely keep doing reacts. You do a great job balancing letting the video play and when you pause for comments, and your input is well put and adds good opinions/thoughts to the overall takeaway. Thanks for the vid!
Thanks, I'm sure I'll improve over time. I also want to take a more structured approach, and fill in the pauses with a little editing, kind of a mix of a react and structure I guess
@@madseasonshowfor as hateable as react meta shit is, yours is quite palatable. It may be worth a bit of shortening to fit more in the 20 min timeframe and to give folks a reason to go back to the source material to see the whole thing. Just my 2C. I really 8.5/10 😂
I really do miss feeling part of a server community and being able to go online and always see someone to talk to and play with. I understand those days are behind me now, but what a wonderful home it was
While you definitely don't get that experience in retail by default, if you want that experience you literally just have to join a guild (and their discord)
The small hump in player numbers after classic tapered off at first is when lockdowns happened and boosted player counts before shadowlands made another boost
34:34 oddly enough, all the data suggests the more money triple A companies make, the less they pay towards employees, because of cutting jobs and what have you
@@ihalia capitalism implies individualism, which leads to greed and the corporate state. When the only moral guideline is the benefit, it is strange to be surprised that a small person is an inferior consumable.
@@ihalia capitalism implies individualism, which leads to greed and the corporate state. When the only moral guideline is the benefit, it is strange to be surprised that a small person is an consumable.
Great choice in music. I turned 34 today and cried a lot. But man that DK music really reminded me how how happy of a kid I really was. I hope to recapture that simplicity one day.
Hi guys, rolling comments and noticed this, turning 33 in 3 days, still playing wow since 18, living alone no kids no dogs or a wife, doing relativelly “well” no more parties, just working in my small company, doing my workouts and, year by year noticed you get alone day by day in this world, have my dad and sister living near, but really dont get excited for a new thing like in my twentys, would you like to give some world dear friend? Its a holyday here in brazil today, but i could care less..
I turn 36 next month. I feel you on the nostalgia. Damn that game was so good back in the day. It's crazy how comparably bad wow is now despite all the innovation and additional content.
@@safersephiroth943 it was a total new experience back then, people started getting broadband internet acces and pc gaming took off and MMO-games we're taking off big time. It was a perfect storm and I was totally blown away playing with all those other people. The gamers were not as toxic back then as they are now. Epic loot realy meant something and was considerd a accomplishment.
i think you have to consider that during the dragonflight "peak" there are still classic people quiting because of how they handled tbc classic(store mount, wow token, no botthandling etc.) who arerent interested in retail at all. So take that in to consoderation and the upwardstrend and peek for dragonflight looks almost the same as for shadowlands imo.
What I find interesting is that even with seeing in realtime the loss of subs with TBC Classic, they continued on with Wrath Classic and now Cata Classic. Its like watching your vehicle literally catching fire from the drivers seat and still getting in and trying to drive it away from the flames.
@@Verticom10I didn't. They started fiddling with the original games and, surprise, surprise, now WotLK is getting a cash shop. They ruined it. Private servers all the way.
A lot of wow players absolutely hate when you suggest something they aren't interested in. Not that they think it would be bad for the game, just that they don't want it.
@@warllockmasterasd9142that’s untrue. The whitemane era cluster is extremely healthy today. And then, there’s a mix between Wrath/Cata and SoD. You have the classic crowd divided into three segments, and all three have healthy communities. Try to twist it to your belief however you like, but that’s the truth Also, it’s kind of goofy to even say that. A massive community just journeyed through Classic up to Cata up until this very point in time. On top of the perpetual Classic era community.
lol i resonated with this not because of how boring his voice was, but because of how boring the loot was. but yes, his voice is so boring, in a serene way
Your passion surrounding WoW was a big part of the spark that got me back into the game, roping my fiance in with me along the way. We've been playing mostly modern WoW since legion, I will say on the gearing point that DF has been a huge step up. There's a long list of weapons with fairly unique effects starting with Fyr'alath and Nasz'uro but also extending to non-legendaries like Kharnalex for evokers and Neltharax for hunters. There's even a cloak with no stamina that steals stats from allies when they take damage (Voice of the Silent Star). So on the gearing point I think Dragonflight has massively improved. It's a tricky balancing act: in a modern, somewhat competitive game having iconic gear can be a struggle. You bring a measured perspective as always, @MadSeasonShow. Missed your videos when you were on break.
I leveled a character to lvl 30 on retail last week, it took me about eight hours. I literally, did not meet a single person out in the open world. I queued up for battlegrounds the whole time (up to an hour each session) did not get a single battleground. Got a few dungeons, those were only about 10 minute queues. But the people in those mostly said nothing. It felt like playing a single player game. I log onto SOD and the world is filled with players.
A Strange Phenomenon that will ALWAYS baffle me about some people... Is this belief that what's good enough for them, is good enough for Everybody Else... And that you must like, what they like! And hate what they hate! Well... Until we all get assimilated by the Borg Collective... So that we all think with ONE MIND... NOPE!!! Not... Going... To... Happen!!! 😊
It's rooted in insecurity imo. If someone's opinion doesn't line up with their own, it shouldn't illicit an emotional reaction if they're truly confident and secure with their beliefs. The only exception would be blatant misinformation, and opinions misrepresented as facts. You'll like the next video, we analyze tribalism and fanboy culture within mmos and social media as a whole. Should be live on the channel in a few days
@@madseasonshowUnderstandable but when someone doesn’t like Steak I have an emotional response. Even worse when they claim to like steak but demand it well done… the savages.
Its more than that really. It's fine to like what you like, but when you huff so much copium that you're blind to the bad parts of what you like thats when it becomes a problem.
TBC and Wotlk didn't do as well as expected because they added the Dark Portal Pass to TBC while at the same time they relaunched classic with season of mastery effectively burning out players with both "limited time events" happening at the same time. No idea why Blizzard can't just keep a single TBC and Wotlk server open for people it's insane. Also where are the Instant Lvl Cap Pvp servers for classic
Dragonflight gear is the same formula. Main stat, Main Stat, secondary, secondary. However tier bonuses were back and played nicely with some talents. Made it somewhat interesting but also tied you to a cookie cutter build based on that. If you wanted min/max
You're so right about boring loot. It felt like they wanted to flatten everything and cram it into a spreadsheet so they could tweak and balance percentages at their convenience. WoW a 3d spreadsheet
to be fair, after so many years and thousands of epic items it's almost impossible to come up with new original meaningful names and lore hooks... Try design 100 different epic Two Handed Axes.... I think they ran out of ideas as early as WotLK .. and then you have to design 500 uncommon and rare ones....
Well u can blame the Player base for that.. Even if there was no PvP to think about and balance, there is still the problem of how Raid groups are composed, meaning, if they throw balance out of the window...lets say Hunter BM becames the "best" dps class by a huge diference...than guess what, most raid groups would be 100% hunter dps BM, everyone want an "easier" time when going raid, so much so that groups demand things even outside of the game from their raid member "have you watched how X or Y group done the raid? do you know the mechanics?"...
I played the og WoW through Cata. Can't remember what happened that made me stop. Might have been my dad cutting the sub. Jumped back in for the transition from BFA to SL. Got through to the endgame of SL and raiding, but promptly stopped there. The endgame zones were awful, filled with horrible, super janky terrain you couldn't fly through. Upgrading your gear meant dungeons/raids, followed by hundreds of hours of farming the atrocious endgame zones. But worse than that, you could only level your gear in a season, and leveling it further was disabled once the season switched. So you had to sink those hundreds of hours in a limited time frame or be penalized for it. The tower rogue-lite gimmick locked me out of the best boosts for my class, as they were solely offered on days I had both school and work, kneecapping my ability to do dungeons and raids. The story could have been written by a 5 year-old and I still don't know what was going on because I never got to finish raids because of how heftily it handicapped people with normal lives outside of WoW. It was awful. No wonder their subs sank like a rock.
The cost to make the spectral horse was less than $5,000 (probably less than $2,000 in actual employee billable hours and $3,000 for cooperate bloat) and StarCraft 2 cost to make was never released but for 7 years of development would have been very pricy, so they probably had to sell millions of copies before it broke even, verses the 330ish to recover the horse cost. Then you have to consider that the Servers to run SC2 multiplayer and to allow players to download the game also cost money to operate. So its very believable that the horse made them more money.
I played WoW on release as a 14 year old, stopped playing during tbc because of college and other stuff, got back into it during classic. 9:40 would like to add that your subtraction method, which was a great way to show it visually, doesn't show the full extent of subscriber decay considering the data going forward from the crop still includes some amount of baseline classic subs, crazy! 24:30 "the loot is boring" probably the #1 reason i thought wotlk classic was not at all as fun as i thought it would be based on the hype.
something i wanna add about the loot, most of it you either killed bosses till you got it, or went on epic quest chains to obtain it (thunderfury, Quel'Serrar, etc) meanwhile i'm sitting here on SoD farming warlock portals since the first weekend of phase drop and still no dagger.... when i get this i'll be happy, but i don't think i'll feel like i earned it, just toughed out the rng game that didn't even include a boss.
Stopped Retail in WoD. Picked up Classic on launch and have loved it. But now that Cata is coming my journey is over, Cata is not classic for me. Retail is not WarCraft for me, and has not been in a long time. It makes me very interested to see this chart one year from now, since I suspect many might feel the same way.
I don;t play classic at the moment, but can't people just stay on Classic or TBC? Will they (re)release a few new servers of those every year or so? That would be a no brainer for me to do, to retain the core classic player base...
Thats because you havent played retail, and hating on it because you can. Classes gets better & much more rewarding to play. Atleast im glad im not stuck in the same loop as all the negative people. Not enjoying WoW to fully eh.
There's classic era and SoD for fully classic Andy's but they probably need a fresh Classic server refresh once a year or something. Same with TBC tbh.
@@gollesenah I play DF quite a bit but classic is an entirely different game and is imo better not because of nostalgia but as it plays today. That's a preference tho and it's okay that you prefer retail. I have fun playing retail but if I had to pick one(thankfully I don't) I'd pick vanilla.
That feeling of losing power each expansion was compounded by level scaling. Not only did you lose the borrowed power, but levelling up made you weaker relative to the mobs. You were in the same old raid gear until level cap, and the same mob would gain health and hit harder while your damage output stayed roughly the same, or even decreased due to secondary stat scaling.
Only halfway through but wanted to say how much I appreciate the editing throughout this, this is how reaction videos should be. Someone with knowledge on the subject elevating the original and creating something original yourself
Each time he says "I told you so!" I fist pump the air! He took a LOT of flak when he predicted certain things about this game... That now turned out to be 100% true! So he has EVERY RIGHT to rub it in their grubby little faces until the very Heat Death of the Universe Itself! And Good for him too!
@@Nightstalker314 You obviously weren't paying attention when Mad spliced the graph and showed the results when he took away the rise due to Classic subs. Indeed... He's curious, as am I and many others, to see these results being separated out because they are *combined* results! So the picture is mixed! Hence why he spliced! Anyway... I'm not going to engage with this any further Dude! This argument is old... As it is tiring! You believe what you want! Bottom-line, WOW has a DIVERSE player base! Some like Classic... Some like Hardcore... Some like Retail... The End!!! And I honestly don't understand why some people see this as a problem!
I'll say, the way this video was made really made it feel like you were talking to us directly as opposed to funneled content. Giving your honest thoughts and opinions as they entered your head was refreshing to hear and knowing that some of things I thought were alike. Well put together, I am excited to see more content like this to consume in the future.
When I see this chart from Blizzard, I can't help think of similar charts from Marvel and Star Wars - ramp up, reasonably spaced out releases, lost consumer interest - and BAM - the solution is to completely flood the zone with so much stuff that it becomes a shotgun approach. "By the time they realize they don't really like it, they'll already have paid!". Something for EVERYBODY. I am not saying these aren't good products or people aren't having fun, but as a business strategy, it comes off as a bit desperate and I question the sustainability.
That's the thing, it was a desperate move because Shadowlands and the legal issues hit bliz hard. The big thing is that they now tighten their focus over time. Classic isn't gonna be forever but timed game modes (Plunder Storm and MoP Remix) are a good way offering fresh game play options without having to dedicate year and years of support. Im just glad it looks like they are going that route. Stability and good foundation into long term growth. While introducing new things from time to time. I'm here for it
Just a quick critique of your new format: Personally I really like it and I hope you do much more, but all of the apologizing and prefacing isn't necessary. We don't mind if you pause the video, we're here to hear your thoughts on it, so we want to hear what you have to say. The people who don't care about what you have to say aren't here anyway, so no need to apologize for doing the video the way you want to do it. People will give their feedback whether you ask for it or not, so I say don't feel like you need to need to throw those detractions in there. Keep up the good work! (could have also used a few more Itoldyouso's in there)
blizzard had the whole scandals in TBC. i quit shortly after. i came back before wrath just because i was bored. actually liked it but again i was away because of blizzards controversies. wrath i actually stayed by i admit i saw the beginnings of retail in wrath that i didnt notice back in the day. raiding kept me around but if you didnt raid i can see you dropping off. they didnt fix their pvp in wrath sadly.
I subbed for Classic after a long time not giving Blizzard money but I didn't like some of their choices like layering and eventually they announced TBC with level boosts, deluxe mounts, and even wow tokens (can't recall if it was tbc or wrath) so I cancelled my sub there and then.
it's respectable to let his ad play. I skip em but I understand content creators need them to live. Might as well leave it in and let the viewers choose to skip or not.
Shout out to when wanting a special item meant something! Soulkeeper Robes of Arugal Voidheart Tier Set Sunfury Bow of the Pheonix Cloak of the Illidari Council Cowl of the Illidari Highlord Warglaive of Azzinoth
Keep in mind, BFA launched when Classic has already been announced (several months after Classic announcement, in fact), so many players who subbed for BFA were doing so in anticipation of Classic (that was the case for me anyway). As much as BFA gameplay sucked, I loved the theme. It's a shame it ended up being such an awful expansion because Boralus was just so awesome, the music there was great too.
In DF im fully decked out with items that have unique effects. I got a cloak that steals my teammates lowest secondary stats, and a tome that infects the enemy with spores. A ring that does fire damage if you do fire damage and etc.
Current WoW feels even more like a single player game. And on top of that they are adding dungeons with followers. And probably after that will be raids with followers and your alts. Or a solo mode - you're the only character in the whole game (like your own layer). I can already see how they say "didn't you always wanted to go raiding with all your characters?". It's the greatest multiplayer-singleplayer game.
24:20 That's why I like the Staff of the Sun so much in TBC. It requires a rather dangerous quest to nab it at Level 21, and once you get it, the stats it gives you provides you so much mana regen at that level that's desperately needed in a game that doesn't just refill your mana bar back to full in three seconds because you stopped casting. Limitations placed creatively allow you to design around unshackling them later, making the player feel powerful. It was the same with the Robes of Arugal and Abomination Skin Leggings for me in Shadowfang Keep. Gear and gear sets are so important for being milestones to make doing everything so much *easier*, especially when the gear does exciting little things like proc chances or buffing a specific playstyle or build that you're interested in. I think the threat of the Overworld in TBC felt perfect because it heavily incentivized you to play with other people, quest, gear, level up, etc. because otherwise you weren't going to make it. And working together with other people to overcome challenges are what MMOs are all about IMO.
This format suits you well. Your voice and knowledge makes the reaction far more interesting. I'm glad we were able to take a look at these numbers. These last few months have been really hopeful and have led the game in a great direction I haven't seen in almost a decade. The lore was great and well-paced this expansion, with some great individual questlines. I don't particularly care for the Dracthyr or their place in the lore, but concepts like catching up with the flights and several lead characters passing the torch to the next generation were executed really well. I'm very happy with the communication nowadays. Even if War Within isn't great, it's very refreshing to know where blizz's head is at.
1. Your voice isn't boring, it's a great contrast against all the yelling on youtube 2. I love your reactions. Most of the ones I've seen are just pausing and commenting live, while you obviously take the time to edit in visuals instead of having just a paused video. Feels more like a MadSeasonShow Analyzes vs a MadSeasonShow Reacts. Great stuff.
How sure can we be the numbers' representation is correct, though? We have no reference point for the Y-axis; nor if it starts at 0 or not. Some of Bellular's theory stems from an earnings call back during Legion, where they said Legion performed slightly better than WoD. But that doesn't necessarily mean there were more subscribers; it could simply mean more revenue due to more MTX. Blizzard has surely figured out how to extract more money from their customers over the years, without increasing the number of customers.
General rule of thumb with reaction content is to not cannibalize the algorithm, name is something you would without copying the name and of course give credit. This is also one of the better instances ive come across of pretty much anyone doing this properly. You waited long enough that B's video got it's own views. You always made sure to give as much of your own input as possible and people value that from you as they always have. Keep up the good work man, i look forward to whatever projects you have in store.
I personally think that the huge success of WoW was based on the continued world building of "Warcraft 1-3". The more "alien" stuff they added and the further they got away from the core concept, the less people want to play it. In TBC there is Illidan, in Wotlk there is Arthas in MoP there's.... pandas and monks? On another side note, a lot of the expansions degraded the quality of the game and discontinued successful concepts from past games/expansions. This is something I think they have done consciously, as they focused more on trying to create an addiction (to keep people subbed) than to create a good game. One interesting example to show how they fail in doing this even today, is Season of Discovery phase 3. In phase 1 and 2, you could raid at least twice a week with 10 man raids and the bosses would drop around 2 items each. In phase 3, they made it so that you can only raid once a week and in order to compensate for this, each boss now drops around 4 items each... so far so good. However, they also doubled the size of the raid to 20 man - what this means is that they actually cut the amount of loot you can get from raids per week in half, despite officially promoting it as an increase of loot. The raid loot in phase 3 is barely an upgrade to the raid loot from p2 as well, making it feel even more discouraging. I do think that the way to go would be a "classic+", where you go from classic+ and add new content. I think that if SoD would continue and they add stuff like m+, new raids, better rewards, then it would most likely be my to go game for a long future.
mop was (critically) successful and involved plenty of lore from warcraft 1-3 to classic wow. the lore was good up to legion with the only bad moment being wod. then died when bfa launched
Pandemic started more like in middle of March of 2020. I remember going to the airport to see the lobby being so empty before government even started shutdowns. Also I remember Bfa at launch… I got my first piece at max level, the Azerite level, turned me off. I didn’t feel like it was worth the time and effort for tedious grinding. What happened to just getting the gear and that was good enough? That transition from legion to bfa was horrible too.
@@zoldlen883 And I don't like paying premium prices to watch youtube videos, but I'd rather the video have an ad (that I don't even have to watch, I can just skip it) so I can watch it for free.
The issue i have is that theese charts do not really mean as much as you might think without the numbers, you simply do not know if amount of players drop from 500k to 450k or from 500k to 100k on theese, numbers are crucial and shows the full scale, without theese you cannot have the full picture.
There is almost no way the estimates given for that new graph are accurate. They extrapolated those numbers by assuming a single summary line in a quarterly talking about Legion's performance means that Legion at the same point had near the same subs as WoD. Except quarterly reports are purposefully vague/ambiguous for this reason because 'performance' can mean anything. It could mean revenue, avg MAUs, retention rates, or whatever metric they can find that they can put a positive spin on. That's why they stopped reporting the sub count in the first place. Also, the estimates make no sense in context to the old graph. WoD was in total free fall losing more subs than any other point in the history of wow. So somehow it magically stabilize and gained subs over the 6-8 month gap between these two graphs? I don't think so. Basically, subtract a million from all those estimates and its probably closer to the real number.
It's not a chart, the Y line doesn't exist, there is only X line indicating time. There is no data about the difference between highs and lows. In the hay days, WoW had 6mln West/AUZ/EU subs and 6mln Asia subs in 2013. There is no way with China being out of the picture that remaining regions amount to 7.25mln subs in 2024. Also, WoW revenue is lower now despite having in game shop and a bunch of new services like level up and token. The numbers just don't add up.
About the lore. I am not a lore guy by any means, but man the things that sets me off the most are names and transmogs that don`t fit the class. I just get red...
@@madseasonshow I used to routine follow his videos as they released back in BFA, something ended up putting me off from watching him and considering how finite “watch/listen” time available is for the average working and video gaming adult, sadly you have to pick a few favorites that you end up watching long term. Bellular did put out good content. Loved your Nobbel shoutout as well, used to listen to his lore videos at work nonstop. A majority of the wow content creators in this vein are really top notch. Thank you for your videos, you were always a favorite of my wife and mine.
I personally don't watch react content very much, so your style of pausing is totally okay in my book! I'm here to learn your perspective and opinions on the subject at hand, and you do a great job as always with conveyance of this.
To answer your question, Dragonflight does have more interesting loot imo. I was stoked when [Ashkandur, Fall of the Brotherhood] finally dropped on my Paladin in the second raid, and I’ll probably never forget about that sword because of how cool I thought it was. The [Ouroboreal Necklet] is another highly sought after item with unique effects that I was ecstatic to finally get. There are a lot of unique effect named items in DF and I’ve loved that coming back. [Fyr’alath the Dreamrender] felt like a Classic-style grind to finally get and attune to, though I’m not sure how much that one counts in the context of what you meant by interesting gear.
Funny how to reach the same subscriber count they had when legion was the only playable version of the game they have to add up the subscribers for 4+ different versions of the game.
@@CallMeHooLi FF14 feels like it faded away after the boom in 2021, wow always gets everyone together when something new comes to it (retail or classic), and being in the top 2 is still huge.
If you really think 7.2 million are playing Dragon Flight you haven't played the game in the last 10 years. They may have that many ACCOUNTS, but more than 2/3 of them ARE NOT PLAYING and of the remaining third the majority are playing CLASSIC. Blizzard thinks CONTINUING TO DUMB DOWN THE GAME and GIVING EVEYRONE THE SAME GEAR is going to make people play more. It causes people to GET BORED and leave until the next big hand out. Bellular is also one of the BIGGEST SHILLS ON RUclips. He makes EXCUSES for everything and only shows the failure at the END of the Expansion so he wont be held accountable for his opinion.
only cause they gave us femboy dragons. if we could be one of those giant ass wormkin and breath fire on people. people would be like yea!!!! . thats the problem with retail its corporate safe .
@@phgamer4393 This. As someone who has wanted to play as a dragon back when I bothered playing WoW, I was excited for the Drakthyr at first. After I learned they can’t transform into like, full on dragons, I lost interest. I’ve had to play as a pseudo-dragon so many times, and the Drakthyr would be cool if they just… let them be more dragon like. It sucks that the closest thing to playing a bonefied dragon is a fucking alchemy mount that costs an arm, leg, and a kidney on the auction house
@@missleiadragonitemaster7597 do ANY popular MMO's let you both play as humanoid / human-sized characters, as well as dragons, or dragon-sized creatures? (let's put aside the fact that dragons are superbly powerful in WoW and would break all immersion... why is a human warrior fighting a boss if a semi-truck sized dragon can do the job of 10 men)
@@thewhiteniinja to my immediate knowledge, unless you wish to count ‘transforming into a mount’ as a form of that, or some unfinished MMOs that double as life simulators, no. Quick addendum: I’d agree if it wasn’t for the minor detail of ‘our character wrecks dragons on a consistent basis’. Dragons are fairly common later into base Classic from my memory (heck the swamp area elves gotta death run across have a small section in the corner where you can farm dragon mobs for a minion drop). Granted that’s a bit later into the game still, but then there’s also the aspects losing their powers (supposedly) at the end of Cata. Dragons got nerfed if anything.
Despite its flaws, Dragonflight was exactly what I wanted out of WoW of being a light-hearted adventure like the Vanilla days. The new features were awesome, the vibes were perfectly on point, we have never had so much content in one expansion EVER and the Dracthyr might be one of my favorite additions to the roster of playable races. It was easily my favorite expansion to date and I've been playing since TBC and I am sorely going to miss it once it is over. I acknowledge it isn't for everyone, but it was the perfect expansion for me.
"The wall of 'No' - I don't know the reason why" Very simple - because they want to look like smart boys and to be on the winning side. Blizzard answered "No" before very definitively, so in those people's eyes they are sucking up to the winning argument by repeating it and justifying it. It's like those small loser guys in School who follow the biggest bully and suck up to him all the time. It's the same mentality. Agree with the winning argument - push down and ridicule all opposition. These are the same people who will defend multi-billion corporations for any decisions they make
I wanna see my sub and unsub chart along with the ridiculous responses i gave for each unsub
0:00 long
I feel this way to much. #firebobby
So true I always just put Bill Cosby every time
Mines been "fuck death knights" since wotlk.
Was rough being a warrior main.
@@DisgustedAsmonHow much fentanyl and meth are you speedballing?
WoD was super hype because it was the 10th Anniversary of WoW, and also the lore was marketed a throwback to the Warcraft era, as we would see all these Old Horde orcs like Grommash and Black Hand in their prime.
The idea of player housing "garrisons" was also pretty hype for a lot of people.
WoD had so much potential but the gutted the hell out of it and left out 90% of what they said they were gonna do
Yeah wod made me come back when i took a break from the end of cata. It was fun for a while and leveling was fun however once i reached level cap i was just so bored after doing my raid
@@Euruk1 just for them to release the single most shitty version of player housing ever unleashed on mankind
Yeah, I remember I skipped MoP but after WiD announcement I got hyped af, bought MoP right there and then to start catching up for WoD. Unfortunately WoD was nothing like what I expected.
Loot in Vanilla was exciting. Heck, getting your first shoulders or helmet was just so satisfying.
pulled an epic one out of a trash mob leveling and farming for my first mount, outdoors in stranglethorn back then... still remembering it like it was yesterday tho some 16-18 yrs ago or sth... got me so excited, i thought i couldn't believe my eyes... couldn't even wear it so i basically sold it for an apple and an egg bc i was so clueless \o/ everything felt novel and like an exciting new discovery... getting leveled up and to the next spendable talent point... even having reached a certain level height like 40+ felt special... different times.
Ive leveled so many characters in vanilla and classic and literally still everytime i get my helmet/shoulders it’s exciting. Maybe not the same as the very first time but it is
Your first long cloak was really satisfying too
Private servers offer something official servers no longer provide. Sense of community. No sharding nor layering, everyone at one world. And also there is no lag. No idea what is Blizzard doing wrong.
imagine thinking no layering is good. it works on private servers because they have a population of 50 people. doesn't work on live servers.
I loved the sense of community of having to constantly jump servers in TBC and Wrath because the guilds I joined were dying and with them the servers
Warmane lorderon is great server
@@cococock2418cope
@@cococock2418 HAHAHAH lol warmane has 12k online. You've been lied to
33:33 as a Starcraft fan, yes it's pretty depressing. But whenever I play SC, it always reminds me of old Blizzard, when they used to have a soul and used to care about their community and games.
in a way it's better... We will always have the great SC1 and 2 games, they will still be fun in 2040.... When activi$ion makes a SC3 it will probably suck anyway
Yes, what a feeling playin it back in the day
@@Blackadder75 Unless they reforge them. Then RIP.
Azerite armor was such an awful system, my god, coming from Legion to BFA was absolutely terrible, especially losing so many abilities at level cap.
I skipped WoD and Legion to play Destiny and returned for BfA. I liked it. Played it through. Then went back and played Legion and ... was blown away.
I remember jumping off of High mountain with my Shaman and they took away my mobility ability so I didn’t break my fall. I just logged out and played league lol.
Omg absolutely this, in all honesty, Legion for me was the last expansion that felt really innovative, like it breathed some fresh life into WoW. I am not 12 years old like i was when i was when i started playing in TBC, but i was just as excited as i was back then to go home and boot up WoW.
My problem with the following expansions is that they all felt like scuffed versions of Legion especially BFA. I don't know what the problem is, but it feels like Blizzard is so afraid of pulling another WoD, that nowadays they're constantly trying to reinvent Legion instead of making an expansion that has the same impact that Legion once did. They just feel so formulaic that i'm sort of tired of it by now.
@@Quark214 >but it feels like Blizzard is so afraid of pulling another WoD
And ironically they ended up following in WoD's footsteps and not Legions
Still better than Legion with its awful Artifact weapons. They ruined the class fantasy of my main and I will never forgive them for that.. BFA was an upgrade in every way for me. Actually, my biggest criticism for TWW is that they repeat the same mistake with the new talents trees.
“It do go down”
it dont go down
ultimately it trends down
@@semiramisubw4864 Robert! it do go down!
I miss important videos
@@u-mos8820 no it dont
When they announced BFA I was genuinely excited because I thought it was gonna be a legit back down to earth and MAYBE a Faction vs Faction expansion, then we got what we got and was very disappointed, the allied races were cool I guess
Imo it was vibing until we got mandatory (to stay viable) visions and the cheaped out Nyalotha raid they didnt even draw walls for. 🙈
@@-in-the-meantime... if you played horde it wasnt. they promised us morally grey but they made our like fifth warcheif act like an over the top cartoon villian that had no brains. im not saying slyvannas wasnt evil (if you played classic as undead you always were morally sketch) but they made her incredibly dumb.
That's how I felt as well.
bfa wasn't horrible but it was like a cut down legion still better than cata and wod but clearly worse than the last one
@@phgamer4393 played horde for 16 years now... Sylvy isnt my cup of tea...
/cast War Stomp
holy shit, 7.25 million subs for a 20 year old game is really good.
And keep in mind whenever they add anything in the shop even if only .1% buys it thats still thousands of sales for less work than i do in a week
With 3/4 of them being Classic.
@@nopenope460 nope :)
@@nopenope460I'd say closer to half, after all, doubling sub numbers means classic and retail are each half of the total.
That's worse than what I was expecting so that's good
I love the etiquette for react content: If there's an ad read you leave it unbroken; you always leave links to the creators in the description/caption.
Very classy.
The good ones almost always feel like a research paper. Very heavy citation, I think that's a very good thing.
@@spur3g654 agreed. I have a B.S. in Math and chemistry. Published 5 or so papers. Glad I'm not the only one that feels citation is important
I literally just found the "Restored" version of Stickerbrush Symphony this week and have been listening to it in FLAC almost every day, and you brought it into your video too. So damn good!
Love ya, SNES gang
I have this cartoon image in my mind of WoW loot through the expansions.
Vanilla - 40 people crowded in awe at 2 pieces of loot.
TBC - 25 looking at 2/3 items.
WotLK - 10 looking at 3 items.
etc...
BFA - 1 person looking a mountain of loot and throwing most of it in the trash.
WotLK was the sweet spot. 10man raids didnt have access to the top of the line loot, you had to go to 25man and hope you get lucky.
the sub numbers are missing a huge factor that the china servers got shut down, i forget when. but id be surprised if they ever get close to their old sub count
China servers reopened like three months ago.
When we getting a Donkey Kong country madseason video? You're rocking that David Wise soundtrack in multiple videos now, it's due
I second this!
I had a sub from 2007 until about half way through MoP. I hopped between retail and private servers from the Cata release until I switched full time over to private servers when I ended my retail sub. I skipped WoD, played one month in Legion, and haven't played any expansions since then. I did resubscribe for almost a year to play classic.
That clip of Pyromancer losing his mind over "I will never serve" brought a smile to my face.
Yep, Classic launched around Labor Day 2019. I remember going to a festival around then and coming home to play Classic with my wife.
You should definitely keep doing reacts. You do a great job balancing letting the video play and when you pause for comments, and your input is well put and adds good opinions/thoughts to the overall takeaway. Thanks for the vid!
Thanks, I'm sure I'll improve over time. I also want to take a more structured approach, and fill in the pauses with a little editing, kind of a mix of a react and structure I guess
@@madseasonshowfor as hateable as react meta shit is, yours is quite palatable. It may be worth a bit of shortening to fit more in the 20 min timeframe and to give folks a reason to go back to the source material to see the whole thing. Just my 2C.
I really 8.5/10 😂
He understend that is easier money just reacting than making a 1hour video about something else... sad
I really do miss feeling part of a server community and being able to go online and always see someone to talk to and play with.
I understand those days are behind me now, but what a wonderful home it was
Same. I never knew how good we had it.
While you definitely don't get that experience in retail by default, if you want that experience you literally just have to join a guild (and their discord)
@@Akeruyri oh I played retail up through Shadowlands that’s not what I’m talking about
@@Akeruyri nah even rivals in BGs...
Moonguard
The small hump in player numbers after classic tapered off at first is when lockdowns happened and boosted player counts before shadowlands made another boost
34:34 oddly enough, all the data suggests the more money triple A companies make, the less they pay towards employees, because of cutting jobs and what have you
That's how capitalism works, in general
@@Jackfromshack No, it's not capitalism that works like that. Human greed and absence of sympathy are the culprits as they have always been.
@@ihalia capitalism implies individualism, which leads to greed and the corporate state. When the only moral guideline is the benefit, it is strange to be surprised that a small person is an inferior consumable.
@@ihalia capitalism implies individualism, which leads to greed and the corporate state. When the only moral guideline is the benefit, it is strange to be surprised that a small person is an consumable.
Great choice in music. I turned 34 today and cried a lot. But man that DK music really reminded me how how happy of a kid I really was. I hope to recapture that simplicity one day.
Hahaha I’m only 33. You old bastard. How’s your eyesight OLD MAN 😂….🥲. For real tho feels like I was just 15 the other day
Hi guys, rolling comments and noticed this, turning 33 in 3 days, still playing wow since 18, living alone no kids no dogs or a wife, doing relativelly “well” no more parties, just working in my small company, doing my workouts and, year by year noticed you get alone day by day in this world, have my dad and sister living near, but really dont get excited for a new thing like in my twentys, would you like to give some world dear friend? Its a holyday here in brazil today, but i could care less..
I turn 36 next month. I feel you on the nostalgia. Damn that game was so good back in the day. It's crazy how comparably bad wow is now despite all the innovation and additional content.
Don't be upset, they made a whole Rule in your honor! Just Google Rule 34!
@@safersephiroth943 it was a total new experience back then, people started getting broadband internet acces and pc gaming took off and MMO-games we're taking off big time. It was a perfect storm and I was totally blown away playing with all those other people. The gamers were not as toxic back then as they are now. Epic loot realy meant something and was considerd a accomplishment.
60% of my friends have already left SoD. Our guild would be dead if it wasn't for 2 mergers we did.
I'm just waiting for level 60
Sod is toxic as hell. Who wants to play excel spredsheet the game
Can someone tell me more? This is unexpected for me, what I am reading here above.
@@Marunius Season of Discovery.
Your voice isn’t boring, it’s restful
Yes, he needs to make a wow lore video for three hours long.
It's not restful, it's creepy
@@LimeGuy101 maybe if he said creepy things
It’s pretty fucking boring
I think he just sounds like ur usual wow nerd
i think you have to consider that during the dragonflight "peak" there are still classic people quiting because of how they handled tbc classic(store mount, wow token, no botthandling etc.) who arerent interested in retail at all.
So take that in to consoderation and the upwardstrend and peek for dragonflight looks almost the same as for shadowlands imo.
What I find interesting is that even with seeing in realtime the loss of subs with TBC Classic, they continued on with Wrath Classic and now Cata Classic.
Its like watching your vehicle literally catching fire from the drivers seat and still getting in and trying to drive it away from the flames.
I had a blast all the way baby
@@Verticom10I didn't. They started fiddling with the original games and, surprise, surprise, now WotLK is getting a cash shop. They ruined it. Private servers all the way.
Thank you MadSeason. For years of content. ❤
Thanks for watching for so long
the wall of no, rose-colored goggles crowd were the biggest clowns ever
I mean they were right.
Just look at Season of Discovery it is the only think keep classic alive.
season of clowns
I've no real stake on this horse, though when my friend who plays it, explained it I went: That sounds stupid. @@electricwizard5747
A lot of wow players absolutely hate when you suggest something they aren't interested in. Not that they think it would be bad for the game, just that they don't want it.
@@warllockmasterasd9142that’s untrue. The whitemane era cluster is extremely healthy today. And then, there’s a mix between Wrath/Cata and SoD. You have the classic crowd divided into three segments, and all three have healthy communities. Try to twist it to your belief however you like, but that’s the truth
Also, it’s kind of goofy to even say that. A massive community just journeyed through Classic up to Cata up until this very point in time. On top of the perpetual Classic era community.
24:59 “as boring as my voice” 😂
lol i resonated with this not because of how boring his voice was, but because of how boring the loot was. but yes, his voice is so boring, in a serene way
@@landonian1223 I actually really enjoy listening to people with monotone voices
Your passion surrounding WoW was a big part of the spark that got me back into the game, roping my fiance in with me along the way. We've been playing mostly modern WoW since legion, I will say on the gearing point that DF has been a huge step up. There's a long list of weapons with fairly unique effects starting with Fyr'alath and Nasz'uro but also extending to non-legendaries like Kharnalex for evokers and Neltharax for hunters. There's even a cloak with no stamina that steals stats from allies when they take damage (Voice of the Silent Star). So on the gearing point I think Dragonflight has massively improved. It's a tricky balancing act: in a modern, somewhat competitive game having iconic gear can be a struggle. You bring a measured perspective as always, @MadSeasonShow. Missed your videos when you were on break.
Dragonflight cinematic felt like they were stuffed animals fighting. No big bad, etc
I leveled a character to lvl 30 on retail last week, it took me about eight hours. I literally, did not meet a single person out in the open world. I queued up for battlegrounds the whole time (up to an hour each session) did not get a single battleground. Got a few dungeons, those were only about 10 minute queues. But the people in those mostly said nothing. It felt like playing a single player game.
I log onto SOD and the world is filled with players.
A Strange Phenomenon that will ALWAYS baffle me about some people... Is this belief that what's good enough for them, is good enough for Everybody Else... And that you must like, what they like! And hate what they hate!
Well... Until we all get assimilated by the Borg Collective... So that we all think with ONE MIND... NOPE!!! Not... Going... To... Happen!!! 😊
It's rooted in insecurity imo. If someone's opinion doesn't line up with their own, it shouldn't illicit an emotional reaction if they're truly confident and secure with their beliefs. The only exception would be blatant misinformation, and opinions misrepresented as facts. You'll like the next video, we analyze tribalism and fanboy culture within mmos and social media as a whole. Should be live on the channel in a few days
@@madseasonshowUnderstandable but when someone doesn’t like Steak I have an emotional response. Even worse when they claim to like steak but demand it well done… the savages.
@@madseasonshow Nice One Mad! 👍🏼 Looking forward to that! 😁
Its more than that really. It's fine to like what you like, but when you huff so much copium that you're blind to the bad parts of what you like thats when it becomes a problem.
@@madseasonshow that'll be a really good one
TBC and Wotlk didn't do as well as expected because they added the Dark Portal Pass to TBC while at the same time they relaunched classic with season of mastery effectively burning out players with both "limited time events" happening at the same time. No idea why Blizzard can't just keep a single TBC and Wotlk server open for people it's insane. Also where are the Instant Lvl Cap Pvp servers for classic
The relaxing music over the top of it haha
"Stickerbrush Symphony" for anyone looking for it.
Final fantasy 10 song
Dragonflight gear is the same formula. Main stat, Main Stat, secondary, secondary. However tier bonuses were back and played nicely with some talents. Made it somewhat interesting but also tied you to a cookie cutter build based on that. If you wanted min/max
You're so right about boring loot. It felt like they wanted to flatten everything and cram it into a spreadsheet so they could tweak and balance percentages at their convenience. WoW a 3d spreadsheet
to be fair, after so many years and thousands of epic items it's almost impossible to come up with new original meaningful names and lore hooks... Try design 100 different epic Two Handed Axes.... I think they ran out of ideas as early as WotLK .. and then you have to design 500 uncommon and rare ones....
Well u can blame the Player base for that.. Even if there was no PvP to think about and balance, there is still the problem of how Raid groups are composed, meaning, if they throw balance out of the window...lets say Hunter BM becames the "best" dps class by a huge diference...than guess what, most raid groups would be 100% hunter dps BM, everyone want an "easier" time when going raid, so much so that groups demand things even outside of the game from their raid member "have you watched how X or Y group done the raid? do you know the mechanics?"...
You are correct about the pandemic timing. I entered classic a few months after realease for exactly that reason, a lot of extra time!
34:57 as a big starcraft 2 fan this one hits hard 🥲
I played the og WoW through Cata. Can't remember what happened that made me stop. Might have been my dad cutting the sub.
Jumped back in for the transition from BFA to SL. Got through to the endgame of SL and raiding, but promptly stopped there.
The endgame zones were awful, filled with horrible, super janky terrain you couldn't fly through. Upgrading your gear meant dungeons/raids, followed by hundreds of hours of farming the atrocious endgame zones. But worse than that, you could only level your gear in a season, and leveling it further was disabled once the season switched. So you had to sink those hundreds of hours in a limited time frame or be penalized for it.
The tower rogue-lite gimmick locked me out of the best boosts for my class, as they were solely offered on days I had both school and work, kneecapping my ability to do dungeons and raids.
The story could have been written by a 5 year-old and I still don't know what was going on because I never got to finish raids because of how heftily it handicapped people with normal lives outside of WoW.
It was awful. No wonder their subs sank like a rock.
WoW Classic Era, where loot is still crazy and different and memorable!
The cost to make the spectral horse was less than $5,000 (probably less than $2,000 in actual employee billable hours and $3,000 for cooperate bloat) and StarCraft 2 cost to make was never released but for 7 years of development would have been very pricy, so they probably had to sell millions of copies before it broke even, verses the 330ish to recover the horse cost. Then you have to consider that the Servers to run SC2 multiplayer and to allow players to download the game also cost money to operate. So its very believable that the horse made them more money.
I played WoW on release as a 14 year old, stopped playing during tbc because of college and other stuff, got back into it during classic.
9:40 would like to add that your subtraction method, which was a great way to show it visually, doesn't show the full extent of subscriber decay considering the data going forward from the crop still includes some amount of baseline classic subs, crazy!
24:30 "the loot is boring" probably the #1 reason i thought wotlk classic was not at all as fun as i thought it would be based on the hype.
something i wanna add about the loot, most of it you either killed bosses till you got it, or went on epic quest chains to obtain it (thunderfury, Quel'Serrar, etc)
meanwhile i'm sitting here on SoD farming warlock portals since the first weekend of phase drop and still no dagger.... when i get this i'll be happy, but i don't think i'll feel like i earned it, just toughed out the rng game that didn't even include a boss.
Stopped Retail in WoD. Picked up Classic on launch and have loved it.
But now that Cata is coming my journey is over, Cata is not classic for me.
Retail is not WarCraft for me, and has not been in a long time.
It makes me very interested to see this chart one year from now, since I suspect many might feel the same way.
I don;t play classic at the moment, but can't people just stay on Classic or TBC? Will they (re)release a few new servers of those every year or so?
That would be a no brainer for me to do, to retain the core classic player base...
Thats because you havent played retail, and hating on it because you can. Classes gets better & much more rewarding to play. Atleast im glad im not stuck in the same loop as all the negative people. Not enjoying WoW to fully eh.
There's classic era and SoD for fully classic Andy's but they probably need a fresh Classic server refresh once a year or something. Same with TBC tbh.
@@gollesenah I play DF quite a bit but classic is an entirely different game and is imo better not because of nostalgia but as it plays today. That's a preference tho and it's okay that you prefer retail. I have fun playing retail but if I had to pick one(thankfully I don't) I'd pick vanilla.
yea what were they thinking with bringing back cata this game is doomed
MadSeason really blessing us this week 🙌
Looking to post videos every 3ish days ideally. Thanks for watching
Pandorahs box is my favorite YT video of all time
That feeling of losing power each expansion was compounded by level scaling. Not only did you lose the borrowed power, but levelling up made you weaker relative to the mobs. You were in the same old raid gear until level cap, and the same mob would gain health and hit harder while your damage output stayed roughly the same, or even decreased due to secondary stat scaling.
Legion was really good and made me try out different classes and playing their storyline wich I found really interesting.
Only halfway through but wanted to say how much I appreciate the editing throughout this, this is how reaction videos should be. Someone with knowledge on the subject elevating the original and creating something original yourself
Classic wow is what is keeping wow alive, its the life support equipment keeping activision blizzard running.
Enjoying the increase in content man. quality stuff
The better video title could’ve been “i told you so with Madseasonshow”
lol yes, and it's glorious
Each time he says "I told you so!" I fist pump the air! He took a LOT of flak when he predicted certain things about this game... That now turned out to be 100% true!
So he has EVERY RIGHT to rub it in their grubby little faces until the very Heat Death of the Universe Itself!
And Good for him too!
@@Nightstalker314 classic has been out since 2019, what does your comment even mean?
@@landonian1223 He's trolling Dude... So I wouldn't even bother! Just down-vote and ignore...
@@Nightstalker314 You obviously weren't paying attention when Mad spliced the graph and showed the results when he took away the rise due to Classic subs.
Indeed... He's curious, as am I and many others, to see these results being separated out because they are *combined* results! So the picture is mixed! Hence why he spliced!
Anyway... I'm not going to engage with this any further Dude! This argument is old... As it is tiring! You believe what you want! Bottom-line, WOW has a DIVERSE player base! Some like Classic... Some like Hardcore... Some like Retail... The End!!!
And I honestly don't understand why some people see this as a problem!
I'll say, the way this video was made really made it feel like you were talking to us directly as opposed to funneled content. Giving your honest thoughts and opinions as they entered your head was refreshing to hear and knowing that some of things I thought were alike. Well put together, I am excited to see more content like this to consume in the future.
When I see this chart from Blizzard, I can't help think of similar charts from Marvel and Star Wars - ramp up, reasonably spaced out releases, lost consumer interest - and BAM - the solution is to completely flood the zone with so much stuff that it becomes a shotgun approach. "By the time they realize they don't really like it, they'll already have paid!". Something for EVERYBODY. I am not saying these aren't good products or people aren't having fun, but as a business strategy, it comes off as a bit desperate and I question the sustainability.
That's the thing, it was a desperate move because Shadowlands and the legal issues hit bliz hard.
The big thing is that they now tighten their focus over time. Classic isn't gonna be forever but timed game modes (Plunder Storm and MoP Remix) are a good way offering fresh game play options without having to dedicate year and years of support.
Im just glad it looks like they are going that route. Stability and good foundation into long term growth. While introducing new things from time to time. I'm here for it
Just a quick critique of your new format: Personally I really like it and I hope you do much more, but all of the apologizing and prefacing isn't necessary. We don't mind if you pause the video, we're here to hear your thoughts on it, so we want to hear what you have to say. The people who don't care about what you have to say aren't here anyway, so no need to apologize for doing the video the way you want to do it. People will give their feedback whether you ask for it or not, so I say don't feel like you need to need to throw those detractions in there. Keep up the good work! (could have also used a few more Itoldyouso's in there)
I'm surprised how TBC and Wrath classic were unpopular, worst than any phases of vanilla classic.
blizzard had the whole scandals in TBC. i quit shortly after. i came back before wrath just because i was bored. actually liked it but again i was away because of blizzards controversies. wrath i actually stayed by i admit i saw the beginnings of retail in wrath that i didnt notice back in the day. raiding kept me around but if you didnt raid i can see you dropping off. they didnt fix their pvp in wrath sadly.
The WoW token strikes again.
Bots, Blizzard scandals, nobody liked shadowlands, minmaxers, and you already have a ton of options to play TBC and WOTLK in private servers.
For me it was the bots in TBC. It was frustrating and disappointing.
I subbed for Classic after a long time not giving Blizzard money but I didn't like some of their choices like layering and eventually they announced TBC with level boosts, deluxe mounts, and even wow tokens (can't recall if it was tbc or wrath) so I cancelled my sub there and then.
Your got one of my favourite narrator voices & always have well picked music! Thsnks for being you!
OMG Bellular.... Madseason has just put you on the map!!!! Gz dude!!!! xD
Bellular is bigger than Madseason.
@@XCygnusX Body shaming is so not cool m8.
@@Alan-hb2ng Damn man, you trapped him with sarcasm and killed him with a joke. Well played.
@@nauscakes1868 Ty Brother. /bow xD
As a long time Thief, Command and Conquer, Legacy of Kain, Jet Set Radio, and Halo Fan, I feel the Starcraft playerbase's pain.
it's respectable to let his ad play. I skip em but I understand content creators need them to live. Might as well leave it in and let the viewers choose to skip or not.
MadSeason + Cowboy Bebop soundtracks is a match made in asmr heaven
It's over.... Westfall...
Shout out to when wanting a special item meant something!
Soulkeeper
Robes of Arugal
Voidheart Tier Set
Sunfury Bow of the Pheonix
Cloak of the Illidari Council
Cowl of the Illidari Highlord
Warglaive of Azzinoth
Nothing will ever touch OG WotLK numbers.
and it's unreasonable to expect that
Love the Stonefire remix playing in the background ❤
Keep in mind, BFA launched when Classic has already been announced (several months after Classic announcement, in fact), so many players who subbed for BFA were doing so in anticipation of Classic (that was the case for me anyway).
As much as BFA gameplay sucked, I loved the theme. It's a shame it ended up being such an awful expansion because Boralus was just so awesome, the music there was great too.
In DF im fully decked out with items that have unique effects.
I got a cloak that steals my teammates lowest secondary stats, and a tome that infects the enemy with spores. A ring that does fire damage if you do fire damage and etc.
Choosing Donkey Kong Country music for the background is an 11/10 choice
Great video. You should do a whole video on loot. Your favorite weapons, item quests, the relationship between stats and gameplay.
Current WoW feels even more like a single player game. And on top of that they are adding dungeons with followers. And probably after that will be raids with followers and your alts. Or a solo mode - you're the only character in the whole game (like your own layer). I can already see how they say "didn't you always wanted to go raiding with all your characters?". It's the greatest multiplayer-singleplayer game.
24:20 That's why I like the Staff of the Sun so much in TBC. It requires a rather dangerous quest to nab it at Level 21, and once you get it, the stats it gives you provides you so much mana regen at that level that's desperately needed in a game that doesn't just refill your mana bar back to full in three seconds because you stopped casting. Limitations placed creatively allow you to design around unshackling them later, making the player feel powerful. It was the same with the Robes of Arugal and Abomination Skin Leggings for me in Shadowfang Keep. Gear and gear sets are so important for being milestones to make doing everything so much *easier*, especially when the gear does exciting little things like proc chances or buffing a specific playstyle or build that you're interested in. I think the threat of the Overworld in TBC felt perfect because it heavily incentivized you to play with other people, quest, gear, level up, etc. because otherwise you weren't going to make it. And working together with other people to overcome challenges are what MMOs are all about IMO.
This format suits you well. Your voice and knowledge makes the reaction far more interesting.
I'm glad we were able to take a look at these numbers. These last few months have been really hopeful and have led the game in a great direction I haven't seen in almost a decade. The lore was great and well-paced this expansion, with some great individual questlines. I don't particularly care for the Dracthyr or their place in the lore, but concepts like catching up with the flights and several lead characters passing the torch to the next generation were executed really well.
I'm very happy with the communication nowadays. Even if War Within isn't great, it's very refreshing to know where blizz's head is at.
1. Your voice isn't boring, it's a great contrast against all the yelling on youtube
2. I love your reactions. Most of the ones I've seen are just pausing and commenting live, while you obviously take the time to edit in visuals instead of having just a paused video. Feels more like a MadSeasonShow Analyzes vs a MadSeasonShow Reacts. Great stuff.
My guy is on fire, loving the uploads
you're right, in fact the covid bump was that small bump after the classic explosion
How sure can we be the numbers' representation is correct, though? We have no reference point for the Y-axis; nor if it starts at 0 or not.
Some of Bellular's theory stems from an earnings call back during Legion, where they said Legion performed slightly better than WoD. But that doesn't necessarily mean there were more subscribers; it could simply mean more revenue due to more MTX. Blizzard has surely figured out how to extract more money from their customers over the years, without increasing the number of customers.
Yeah subs don't mean a whole lot when the bulk of their revenue is probably from the cash shop. Buncha clowns paying for all that garbage.
General rule of thumb with reaction content is to not cannibalize the algorithm, name is something you would without copying the name and of course give credit. This is also one of the better instances ive come across of pretty much anyone doing this properly. You waited long enough that B's video got it's own views. You always made sure to give as much of your own input as possible and people value that from you as they always have.
Keep up the good work man, i look forward to whatever projects you have in store.
I personally think that the huge success of WoW was based on the continued world building of "Warcraft 1-3". The more "alien" stuff they added and the further they got away from the core concept, the less people want to play it. In TBC there is Illidan, in Wotlk there is Arthas in MoP there's.... pandas and monks?
On another side note, a lot of the expansions degraded the quality of the game and discontinued successful concepts from past games/expansions. This is something I think they have done consciously, as they focused more on trying to create an addiction (to keep people subbed) than to create a good game. One interesting example to show how they fail in doing this even today, is Season of Discovery phase 3. In phase 1 and 2, you could raid at least twice a week with 10 man raids and the bosses would drop around 2 items each. In phase 3, they made it so that you can only raid once a week and in order to compensate for this, each boss now drops around 4 items each... so far so good. However, they also doubled the size of the raid to 20 man - what this means is that they actually cut the amount of loot you can get from raids per week in half, despite officially promoting it as an increase of loot. The raid loot in phase 3 is barely an upgrade to the raid loot from p2 as well, making it feel even more discouraging.
I do think that the way to go would be a "classic+", where you go from classic+ and add new content. I think that if SoD would continue and they add stuff like m+, new raids, better rewards, then it would most likely be my to go game for a long future.
mop was (critically) successful and involved plenty of lore from warcraft 1-3 to classic wow. the lore was good up to legion with the only bad moment being wod. then died when bfa launched
@@Ty-oe4drperhaps, but pandas just felt out of place for some reason
Pandemic started more like in middle of March of 2020. I remember going to the airport to see the lobby being so empty before government even started shutdowns.
Also I remember Bfa at launch… I got my first piece at max level, the Azerite level, turned me off. I didn’t feel like it was worth the time and effort for tedious grinding. What happened to just getting the gear and that was good enough? That transition from legion to bfa was horrible too.
Big ups for including the original creators sponsor
Don't support that behavior. It's not a good thing.
@@zoldlen883 why?
@@JarleFlaat I don't like ad's. No one does as far as I know.
@@zoldlen883 And I don't like paying premium prices to watch youtube videos, but I'd rather the video have an ad (that I don't even have to watch, I can just skip it) so I can watch it for free.
The issue i have is that theese charts do not really mean as much as you might think without the numbers, you simply do not know if amount of players drop from 500k to 450k or from 500k to 100k on theese, numbers are crucial and shows the full scale, without theese you cannot have the full picture.
There is almost no way the estimates given for that new graph are accurate. They extrapolated those numbers by assuming a single summary line in a quarterly talking about Legion's performance means that Legion at the same point had near the same subs as WoD. Except quarterly reports are purposefully vague/ambiguous for this reason because 'performance' can mean anything. It could mean revenue, avg MAUs, retention rates, or whatever metric they can find that they can put a positive spin on. That's why they stopped reporting the sub count in the first place. Also, the estimates make no sense in context to the old graph. WoD was in total free fall losing more subs than any other point in the history of wow. So somehow it magically stabilize and gained subs over the 6-8 month gap between these two graphs? I don't think so.
Basically, subtract a million from all those estimates and its probably closer to the real number.
You are absolutely correct about the lockdown @ 13:35 , No one was talking about corona at the time of classic launch.
Yoooo Madseason. I loved this video! Awesome job. I didn't mind the pausing because you gave your two cents and added to it! Thanks again!
It's not a chart, the Y line doesn't exist, there is only X line indicating time. There is no data about the difference between highs and lows. In the hay days, WoW had 6mln West/AUZ/EU subs and 6mln Asia subs in 2013. There is no way with China being out of the picture that remaining regions amount to 7.25mln subs in 2024. Also, WoW revenue is lower now despite having in game shop and a bunch of new services like level up and token. The numbers just don't add up.
Really loving these video reacts! Keep it up Mads! Much love! ❤
This is unrelated, but do you have a playlist somewhere? Really enjoy the background music.
It's mostly Final Fantasy music. The song at the start is from FFX
It's final fantasy 10, 7, and 9 acoustic covers and WoW music
Also some Donkey Kong thrown in there. Stickerbrush Symphony I believe.
About the lore. I am not a lore guy by any means, but man the things that sets me off the most are names and transmogs that don`t fit the class. I just get red...
Bobby is still thanking all of you for his yachts.
Holy round mound of rebound, it's Bellular Gaming! I stopped watching him like 4 years ago, what a transition.
One of my favorite channels, highly recommend
@@madseasonshow I used to routine follow his videos as they released back in BFA, something ended up putting me off from watching him and considering how finite “watch/listen” time available is for the average working and video gaming adult, sadly you have to pick a few favorites that you end up watching long term.
Bellular did put out good content.
Loved your Nobbel shoutout as well, used to listen to his lore videos at work nonstop. A majority of the wow content creators in this vein are really top notch.
Thank you for your videos, you were always a favorite of my wife and mine.
@@AUZlEyeah he got kinda shilly for Blizz. At least it seemed that way to me.
@AUZlE Yea, I used to watch Bellular but he kind of became defensive of the industry and shills for companies, not just Blizzard.
I personally don't watch react content very much, so your style of pausing is totally okay in my book! I'm here to learn your perspective and opinions on the subject at hand, and you do a great job as always with conveyance of this.
To answer your question, Dragonflight does have more interesting loot imo. I was stoked when [Ashkandur, Fall of the Brotherhood] finally dropped on my Paladin in the second raid, and I’ll probably never forget about that sword because of how cool I thought it was.
The [Ouroboreal Necklet] is another highly sought after item with unique effects that I was ecstatic to finally get. There are a lot of unique effect named items in DF and I’ve loved that coming back.
[Fyr’alath the Dreamrender] felt like a Classic-style grind to finally get and attune to, though I’m not sure how much that one counts in the context of what you meant by interesting gear.
Funny how to reach the same subscriber count they had when legion was the only playable version of the game they have to add up the subscribers for 4+ different versions of the game.
No king rules forever…
what doesnt this video show the opposite? I mean wow is still the biggest mmo
A king can rule forever as an undead. Which is basically what WoW is now.
@@hunlepto2239 i mean its kinda not. Look im waiting as everyone for the next insane mmo, but until then
@@woo22-q8l Nope. Its FF14
@@CallMeHooLi FF14 feels like it faded away after the boom in 2021, wow always gets everyone together when something new comes to it (retail or classic), and being in the top 2 is still huge.
If you really think 7.2 million are playing Dragon Flight you haven't played the game in the last 10 years. They may have that many ACCOUNTS, but more than 2/3 of them ARE NOT PLAYING and of the remaining third the majority are playing CLASSIC.
Blizzard thinks CONTINUING TO DUMB DOWN THE GAME and GIVING EVEYRONE THE SAME GEAR is going to make people play more. It causes people to GET BORED and leave until the next big hand out.
Bellular is also one of the BIGGEST SHILLS ON RUclips. He makes EXCUSES for everything and only shows the failure at the END of the Expansion so he wont be held accountable for his opinion.
Dragons just feel cheesy. Them being rare is great, but the norm... i dunno man feels like a cop out. *DRAGONS! PLAY NOW!!*
Hey buddy, I hear you like fighting dragons.... What about if you got to play a dragon?!
only cause they gave us femboy dragons. if we could be one of those giant ass wormkin and breath fire on people. people would be like yea!!!! . thats the problem with retail its corporate safe .
@@phgamer4393 This.
As someone who has wanted to play as a dragon back when I bothered playing WoW, I was excited for the Drakthyr at first.
After I learned they can’t transform into like, full on dragons, I lost interest. I’ve had to play as a pseudo-dragon so many times, and the Drakthyr would be cool if they just… let them be more dragon like. It sucks that the closest thing to playing a bonefied dragon is a fucking alchemy mount that costs an arm, leg, and a kidney on the auction house
@@missleiadragonitemaster7597 do ANY popular MMO's let you both play as humanoid / human-sized characters, as well as dragons, or dragon-sized creatures? (let's put aside the fact that dragons are superbly powerful in WoW and would break all immersion... why is a human warrior fighting a boss if a semi-truck sized dragon can do the job of 10 men)
@@thewhiteniinja to my immediate knowledge, unless you wish to count ‘transforming into a mount’ as a form of that, or some unfinished MMOs that double as life simulators, no.
Quick addendum: I’d agree if it wasn’t for the minor detail of ‘our character wrecks dragons on a consistent basis’. Dragons are fairly common later into base Classic from my memory (heck the swamp area elves gotta death run across have a small section in the corner where you can farm dragon mobs for a minion drop). Granted that’s a bit later into the game still, but then there’s also the aspects losing their powers (supposedly) at the end of Cata. Dragons got nerfed if anything.
I respect and love classic too, but there is no competition retail has more players by a mile
The way people talk about classic, you swear its the onlying thing keep WoW going.
Despite its flaws, Dragonflight was exactly what I wanted out of WoW of being a light-hearted adventure like the Vanilla days. The new features were awesome, the vibes were perfectly on point, we have never had so much content in one expansion EVER and the Dracthyr might be one of my favorite additions to the roster of playable races. It was easily my favorite expansion to date and I've been playing since TBC and I am sorely going to miss it once it is over. I acknowledge it isn't for everyone, but it was the perfect expansion for me.
Lame ahhh
@@no0bbbb Bit sad thats the best you can do. Disrespect someone's view. Your response was poor
@@daketh4572 I know right? I'm more insulted by the lack of effort than calling me lame lol.
Maybe you'll get to experience it again with Drgonflight Classic
The game isn't WoW anymore. DF is a completely different game from WoW even 10 years ago.
"The wall of 'No' - I don't know the reason why"
Very simple - because they want to look like smart boys and to be on the winning side. Blizzard answered "No" before very definitively, so in those people's eyes they are sucking up to the winning argument by repeating it and justifying it.
It's like those small loser guys in School who follow the biggest bully and suck up to him all the time. It's the same mentality. Agree with the winning argument - push down and ridicule all opposition.
These are the same people who will defend multi-billion corporations for any decisions they make
It’s a bizarre modern form of clericalism for sure