Preach Reacts to WoW Community Council and RAGES at Ion Interview
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
- Mike discusses the recent news of the WoW Community Council, and read a recent interview from Ion.
Read about the Community Council here: worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/new...
Read the interview here: venturebeat.com/2021/11/01/wo...
Catch us on the links below!
00:00 - Community Council
27:00 - Ion Interview
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Игры
Blizzard: Puts Azerite gear on PTR.
Players: This will backfire in these exact ways, please change it like this.
Blizzard: lolno.
Players: *Unsubbing*
Blizzard: Changes Azerite gear by end of expansion.
Blizzard: Puts Covenants on PTR.
Players: This will backfire, please pull the ripcord!
Blizzard: lolno, can't pull any ripcord here m8.
Players: *Unsubbing*
Blizzard: Pulls the ripcord in 9.1.5
Blizzard: We want your feedback! Join the council!
Did anyone ever tell you the definition of insanity?
The unsubbing part is a lie. Should replace with people leaving because otherwise it sounds like the players then resub
@@bleack8701 some do some dont
By your definition they should be fixing things in the .1 patch and the expansion after that it will be fixed right away.
@@bleack8701 tomato tomato
@@DoktahDoktah Most of these things should have been fixed in the beta tbh, that's when the feedback came
Do those Blizzard devs even know what they are doing?
"They think they do, but they dont"
Such savagery....
How the turn tables,this legit should have been done when the game launched or at least 3 expansions in
Such devastation! This was your intention!
Me to Blizz Devs: “Do you guys not have brains?”
Not on copium but tbf it's harder to maintain the game than most people think.
"At this point the WoW protagonists are heroes." "You'll probably never go back to being anonymous adventurers in the forest."
Tell that to every new expansion release where im shovelling shit from Steve Mcgee's stables because he's really sore, for him to give me a green chest piece that's barely more than nipple tassels.
yeah that's completely false. if it were true, all the cutscenes wouldn't be us watching other people do shit.
tbf they haven't had an attractive female set of armor in 10+ years.
If honestly prefer to be an anonymous adventurer instead of cosmic god. It gets kinda rediculous
Okay, but that green nipple-tassle chest piece is a 1::1 replica of the official Blizzard Nipple Tassles worn during the annual cube crawl world championship series... Get them now before we put them in the Vault!!
Won't lie, I wasn't prepared for this comment. Hurt myself with how suddenly I laughed. God, it's so true though.
Mike dunking on WoW while the Final Fantasy fanfare periodically goes off really is the proper sendoff Shadowlands deserves
When that alert first went off I both laughed and wept. How tone deaf Blizzard has become while one of their greatest proponents moves to a game by a company that genuinely appreciates him being there is incredible to me.
WoW community council: “We haven’t been paying attention to what you’ve said the past 17 years, please give us another chance to disappoint you”
Featuring deer girl, Lead GM
You know how we have ignored everything you've said for the past 17 years? Well, this time we won't. This time we're super serious.
“See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation and that’s really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.” - Jerry Seinfeld
"ion and company know how to take in our feedback, they just don't know how to implement the feedback and that's really the most important part of the feedback, the implementation. anybody can just listen to feedback" - every ex-wow fan ever
@@MrBraffZachlin it's fun to bag on blizzard but player feedback is not the issue. You can't let players run the game. The problem is that Blizzard has become bad at games. They should make boxes or something. Games are too hard.
@@Jordan-Ramses i disagree not on the last part but i do think player feedback is a problem and tbe fact that blizzard litteraly doesn't even play their own game
Blizzard trying to recover from the most recent Umbral Calamity.
More like they're desperately trying to do a rejoining.
SUCH DEVASTATION!
pog
@@Xenonarth Omg LOL!
lololololol 🤣
"...and I wonder, do these developers even play their own game?"
- Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida
_FFXIV Producer & Director_
As we learned from the lawsuits, no, the developers did not play their own game. They bullied all the junior coders into making changes to the game without ever actually testing or even verifying whether those changes worked as intended or at all.
@@dizzy2020 playing the game should be part of the development process and considered work hours
@@kokorochacarero8003 When you become an employer you can have your coders play the game instead of code it for money.
@@dailybs555 when you become an employer you can do the oposite of what I proposed
Congratulations, the conversation is now in a stalemate
@@kokorochacarero8003 Making your programmers work harder for the sake of working harder won't make your game good. Sometimes 1 hour of work can outshine months of programming, design changes, etc. by developers who don't even know what the game actually needs because they haven't played it.
The return of the Mage Tower got me hyped about WoW for the first time in a year. But then I fond out that you ONLY get access to this for 2 weeks every 4 months. Seems like another disgusting retention mechanic exploiting FOMO.
Quit the copium and let the dead rest in peace xD
oh no you don't get access 2 weeks every 4 months, it's 1 week every 4 months, but you get 2 weeks when it comes out the first time only.
Ya I was really excited and then I saw it was just for resubscriber bait
Wow is great but with a big huge and colossal BUT they don't want us to have what it has to offer right away.
AND you can't use any old legendaries in there
AND you can't even use Legion legendaries, some which were required to do the Mage Tower for certain specs at that ilvl for the time.
AND you can't use any other Legion effects like artifact weapon/ability
AND you can't use any new abilities/BFA neck/SL covenent abilities in there either
Why bother ? May as well just auto-attack in there, I bet it will be buggy and scaled poorly too.
To quote Savix, "You're in a toxic relationship and you need to get out. She's just using you for money." :(
"But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but this time it's different! She won't empty my bank account or sleep around! At least I hope so!"
-- Someone terminally addicted to current WoW, also suffering from battered spouse syndrome
Eh, i don't know anyone in a toxic relationship who after getting out of said relationship keeps up with every little piece of new media about it.. Kinda weird.
@@NemisisRecords the toxic relationship in this analogy is between the customer and the company(ActivisionBlizzard in this case).
@@NemisisRecords You dumb? You know people who are in actual toxic relationships obsess about their ex partner. It’s why a lot of them end up getting back together
@@NemisisRecords I disagree. I've gone back to a toxic relationship several times
Maybe I'm just a jaded old fart, but when I watched those devs talking about the council, I just rolled my eyes. That's not how you talk to a person you respect or even think of as an equal. That over-the-top energetic, eyes wide, big smile style is the way an adult talks to a child. This feels less like actual progress and more like pandering nonsense. This feeling was further imprinted in me as I realized the council they're talking about has been done half a dozen times before.
You pull the words out of my mouth.
Especially after watching the FF XIV dev team it's REALLY apparent .
Why did Yoshi P. cry, man?
Dude was upset that he had to delay the game, thinking that he betrayed our trust. If that doesn't show heart, then I don't know what does.
Doesnt help that all of the diversity hires at blizz (who likely cant be considered as actual gamers) are working from home over recorded and monitored zoom calls ... not to black pill but gaming ended in 2019
That's more or less how I perceived it. I guess I must be a jaded old fart too 😆
@@rkjtnd basically yeah. Stop giving money to people that hate you. Simple solutions.
"Just play one." They won't, Blizzard themselves already stated exactly what kinds of games they're playing during the infamous Diablo Immortals announcement. One of the devs literally said, "All of us are playing mostly mobile games these days."
This was a bit painful to listen to. It's hard watching someone despair over the state of something they so obviously love.
As far as an ARR-style rebirth for WoW though? Let me stop that copium feed right now, as someone who was there for the entirety of the journey of 1.0 to ARR.
The journey to A Realm Reborn was a unique and very distinctive process, and the first and most vital part of it was the exact OPPOSITE of abandoning 1.0. Yoshi P an his team realized they needed to FIX 1.0 to the best of their ability FIRST to discover the parts that COULDN'T be fix, the parts that would never be more than mediocre unless the foundation was torn out and rebuilt. And that was a journey that was almost heedless of cost. They stopped charging the sub, they stripped out all notions of 'engagement mechanics' or the tricks and twists that are used to keep players grinding in gameplay loops. They started throwing things at the wall to see what would stick (And where the wall collapsed). Square Enix lost their shirt on 1.0, where they could have done a lot to staunch the bleeding, but in the process would have hindered the learning process.
So, for WoW to undergo that kind of transformative rebirth? First Shadowlands needs to be fixed without reservation. Blizzard needs to give up on WoW as a moneymaker for a bit and focus on making it a GOOD GAME. And yeah, a lot of that involves sending their Devs off to play OTHER MMOs, like Yoshi P did, to see how they do it. It means a LOT of touching base wit the playerbase. It means accepting that the preconceptions that the WoW dev team has now MUST be wrong, or we wouldn't be here, and being open to letting those change.
And to be fair? 1.0 DID hit a point where it was 'good enough'. Where it was playable, and people were trickling back, and the story was on track and engaging. They could have kept going from that point, made a little money, patched what they could as they went. And that's the point where they blew it all up, not because it was BAD, but because it was as good as they could get it... and that wasn't good enough for them.
So for WoW: A Realm Reborn to happen? It HAS to start with Shadowlands. It can't be the next thing. It involves making Shadowlands the best it can possibly be, then resolving that that isn't good enough and THEN burning it all down. And that's not an easy thing to do. That's an EXPENSIVE thing to do. It involves resolving that the World of Warcraft brand is more important for what it will be five years down the road than what can be squeezed out of it next quarter.
Scrap it all. Code and Dev team. Restart fresh. It's the only way.
@@tiagoromana3216 Might as well just play a different game at that point.
@@tiagoromana3216 they'll rather bleed it dry and move on from what it seems like.
@@MrSub132 i mean the game is extremely old , id say it kind of fulfilled its duty
@@haitharu nah it had potential to actually improve over time but instead they focussed on changing/adding shitty systems on top of others and deleting them again when youve already payed them for a year of dogshit and they just keep adding cash grabs that take time and effort away from making the game fun.
I feel the same way as Mike... this feels like a cheap stunt that will backfire.
Exactly people are asking for them to listen to the feedback they have already been getting. Feels more like a PR move to create a PR safe space than something constructive. WoW has struggled because of groupthink so they are creating a feedback system that will be prone to groupthink.
@@gantech7788 it's the same hamsterwheel every xpac... the more unhappy players the more "they suddenly want to listen"
7.0 8.0 and 9.0 have all been fixed an playable by .2 or .3 patches of ducktape
oh it already has
I'm 5 minutes in and I'm betting this will be entirely forgotten about in 9 months tops.
@@Kronosxviii1 remember when they locked of playing a spec behind an insane artifact power grind? Fixed non spec specific azurite? Or covenants that some are more a punishment then a reward? Will all be forgotten by the 0.2 patch and never fixed but “improved upon” in the next xpac.
Blizzard received TONS of excellent, specific, nuanced feedback from the community before the last TWO expansions including game ruining systems and chose to completely ignore it. What the hell is new about this?
yea but majority of players feedback is what lead to the current state of wow.
@@86Corvus oh yes thats true its bcs players feedback that these clown choose to ignore for decade
@@frankzappa3156 Yes... Wierdly enought, yes they did. Thing is that players wanted to spend more time in game, then they got it. Players however wasn't specific in how they wanted to spend their time. So we got the legendary weapon system, which was a great success, so the dev team added more such systems... If we compare it too how FFXIV make their content one would say; FFXIV gives players things to do, that ain't tied to player power and can often be done togheter or even skipped. WoW adds stuff which are required of players, which means it can go from fun to a chore pretty quickly.
I haven't farmed my relic weapons in FFXIV either, since i don't have time, I use a raid weapons instead... however Bozja is still there if i really want the weapon skin in the future. When it comes to WoW, you had no choice, you basicly have to farm AP and relics to be on par and now the system is dead and buried.
@@86Corvus everyone was against azerite system during alpha/beta, like litteraly everyone Preach said it himself. And what did they do ? They didnt listen and azerite ruined the game. At this point you are saying Preach is lying.
Yea they are trying to not listen to players on how the game plays. Only problem with that for blizz is that they need to have a good game to defend and you need your own testers lol.
2020's will usher in the age of the new type of mmo. It just won't be blizz
"“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” - Preach, probably.
*sigh* I can't wait for the third book :(
@@rhyskern I started reading Brandon Sanderson in the meantime and had nearly forgotten about it.
Well.. I'm afraid you'll be waiting for a long, long time. :P
I think I'm lucky I strongly dislike those books. ^^
From the interview Ion literally said: "We fanned out as a team to find problems to solve"
Yup, sure sounds like they've been taking careful notes on all our feedback. A shame someone must have lost the piece of paper with all the feedback on it just when they finally had time to solve some.
They fanned out and decided that the thing that people want changed is...a picture of Lady Prestor's boobs?
Who ARE these people?
Kind of hard to lose massive threads on the forums.
Thing is, they do listen. They do look at what we say. They just don't care, they think they know better. I have no clue why they're even looking at our feedback, since they throw it all out because they think they're the best thing that has ever happened to the game and that only their opinion matters, but it's clear that they know what we complain about and what issues we raise.
They knew about covenant complaints, that's why they lied to us about the ripcord, they have acknowledged our complaints, they just never gave a s***t.
"This will be the sixth time we have created a community council, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it."
Have they ever heard the definition of insanity?
And even better at ignoring it's feedback.
lol awsome reference
I love this, thank you
I can totally see Ion dressed up as the Architect too.
“Players want to make choices that matter”
No im pretty happy switching to any job i want in FF not once have I felt like I haven’t mattered.
Being able to freely switch classes gives you tremendous variety in your gameplay.
The boon of that feature cannot be overstated. It is everything.
No higher value than the entire game being effectively account-wide unlock and progression.
That respects our time.
100%, they just want to be able to charge you for crap and to have to spend tens/hundreds of hours grinding a new max level character to play those jobs
Right. Legit ff14 has almost no choices like that that lock you from other content. Yet blizzard thinks it’s required to be successful as an RPG. When literally people refer to ff14 as an RPGMMO and not an mmorpg. Blizzard is out of touch.
I would've supported the "locked into your covenant" decision _if_ there was no game mechanic attached to your choice.
so true!
"We haven't had a new talent row since I had no hair!"
Ha, Usually time is meaured in the opposite way.
15:45 got me emotional. It’s amazing that we’ve been interacting in communities, playing the game, watching content creators, and sharing excitement for new wow stuff for so many years. The experience transcends anything people associate with “video games”.
"Just give them another outlet to shout into so we can keep ignoring and selectively hearing them! Job done!" - Bobby Kotick
You should be heard selectively because your feedback is shit.
Unfortunately, this is precisely what it is going to sound like to a lot of people who read and watch this. A lot of people have lost trust in Blizzard and I don't blame them for being skeptical of their attempts now. The saddest part of this is that it just looks desperate now.
Bobby Kotick prob doesn’t know that wow exists. Game designers are just so egotistical that they can’t bear to hear negative feedback.
We want the players to feel like they're being listened to. It's like the Covid mask. Doesn't do a thing but makes people feel better. It's all about perception.
"Once players are selected, they’ll be given the ability to post in a new discussion forum that is publicly visible to everyone. " **So it's litteraly yet another forum they will ignore**
What's the point fo playerfeedback category? PTR feedback and ALL thoses other forum made by blizzard and dedicated for it?
The only difference is that it's SELECTED by blizzard and not elected or public for everyone to post. Imb4: censorship
It's Blizzard demonstrating how they do their world-building: here, they're creating an echo chamber.
I'll be so angry if they decide to focus on social diversity instead of actual players who CAN vive feedback. If the feedback group end up being diverse, good. If you're trying to fit diversity just to fill the group, I'm not having it.
this is the case in the majority of hiring today though it's not finding the right person it's meeting checkmarks and then grabbing up a few of the others that might actually be much better qualified but were just glossed over because weren't diverse enough
It's ignoring feedback with more steps
I remember pointing out the scaling issue from BFA Mythic lvl equipment and early SL equipment with +10 lvls. You lost so much power that you were a lot weaker than your lvl 50 counterpart. I tested around with friends, even created spreadsheets to calculate numbers and made a post in the PTR Forum. It got deleted a day later. They didn't care. They messed up the scaling with the level squish and they fucking ignored it.
"We made a game with punisching mechanics, which made our community the most welcome and inclusive community out there. Now we did listen and need to include punishment in our work place to make it better."
This announcement immediately made me think of the Twitch council and the deer person going on an unstable rant about getting people they don't like banned from the platform. And yes, it is all very Reddit karma, "look how many upvotes I have, people care about my opinions more than your entire existence." There are far too many genuinely unstable people online to make something like this work. If the Blizz devs want a place to start, can't they just read through the pages and pages of beta feedback going back 10+ years and just drop a random pin in a page? There is nothing anyone can tell them that hasn't already been said, they just don't want to hear it.
perfect: "If the Blizz devs want a place to start, can't they just read through the pages and pages of beta feedback going back 10+ years and just drop a random pin in a page? There is nothing anyone can tell them that hasn't already been said, they just don't want to hear it."
They need to move out of California.
@@evildarc0 I'm sure Bobby wishes they had after the lawsuit.
@@evildarc0 I really don't think CA has anything to do with it. This agenda is worldwide.
The developer known to ignore any feedback given creates a new venue to receive feedback. What could go wrong?!?
It's not even new. They did this before - they had a private forum where certain high end raiders, top rank arena players, and theorycrafters could post and discuss things with devs directly. It worked OK initially but after Ghostcrawler dipped the devs became increasingly arrogant and it got to the point where the devs were just insulting and dismissing everything anybody posted. The people who participated eventually just stopped posting anything because it was futile.
I mean it's a bit of a damn if they do damn if they don't scenario, don't get me wrong I'm not a fan of Blizzard lately, but this is at least them trying...
@@unixtreme and that's how we get hooked on copium again
@@unixtreme this is them -saying- they're trying, which they have been saying for like a decade now with no results.
And it’s just hand picked players too. So I’m sure they’ll have to have a minimum level of copium intake before consideration
Community Council
Blizzard: "See! We're listening!"
But they've had plenty of ways to receive feedback and listen, and have chosen to ignore it all. 9.1.5 shows that they have been listening. This is literally going to change nothing. Its just for show like everything else they've been doing recently since the lawsuit. Though I hope I'm wrong...
the sad thing is all the 9.1.5 changes that preach and everyone else asked for 1.5 years ago during beta are probably things they didnt actually believe until seeing it be a hotter topic now 1 year after launch. Like the players arent capable of seeing bad game design and choices because we are just payers.... we dont make the money they do..... they make more than we do therefore are smarter than us. moron payers dont know what they want, we have to dictate the terms. Like not being able to fly for 9 months. because we KNOW if they could fly sooner it would ruin their experience not make the garbage game more enjoyable
Always remember that their only goal is money. Attempts to fix their shattered reputation are just a way to further that goal.
Like what Zepla pointed out. Ion literally says they are listening, which they are, but the things the community wants goes against what he wants the game to be. He said it in the past and says it again in this interview.
they will reciefe filtered fluff, just like before, and they will still chose to ignore 99 percent of it . KEKW
@@F34RDSoldier805 Then the game he wants can fail, it's honestly as simple as that.
I feel so sad when I hear Mike YELL at Ion and the rest of the dev-team. This is pure passion turned into frustration. And this interview clearly shows that Blizzard STILL did not understand the true nature of the damage they have done. Nor have they understood what the issues even are.
To quote a brilliant movie about the 2008 financial crisis, The Big Short, "They're not idiots. They knew, they just didn't care. "
At what point do we get rid of ion? He’s the game director. It’s his responsibility… he’s made multiple shit expansions. He’s lost millions of players. Put his ass back into raids and get someone new.
Should have a looooooong time ago
It's not up to you to get rid of anyone.
It really is amazing how he is still director of this game.
@@benbooth2783 no it’s up to blizzard to recognize he has ran the game into the ground, the lowest point in its history
@@erichall090909 agreed
I'm the guy who did this interview with Ion for VentureBeat, was surreal seeing you cover one of my stories, Preach. Thanks for giving it a read! Cheers!
you did a great job asking really important questions and pressing the issues most of the community is engaged with! Kudos to you my man
Kinda wish you could have followed up, Ion really deserves to get nailed to the wall on his smug "meaningful choice" bullshit by a journalist that's not afraid to bare their teeth and who'll set aside the prepared questions. But it certainly wasn't a puff piece.
@@CrispBaker while that sounds great on paper the last thing we need is another angry joe spilling his spaghetti to the Doritos king type situation.
That is not pessimism, that is not being a bad 'relationship' anymore
"Haha bye bitch!"
It is pessimism, but there's nothing wrong ith that, it's warranted
Yeah it feels like stepping away from a toxic person and finally realising just how messed up the whole dynamic really was...
It's like hearing that your ex is doing the same shit to another person.
It's not even pessimism when you got burned 100 times by now. It's just realism.
Back when I played, every single answer from Blizzard about anything bad was an anecdote about a player who actually liked that thing and thought it was good, so they weren't going to change it.
This just sounds like another way to crowd source more anecdotes.
'You just drained the good will out of everybody' .... MAN you really are a Preacher.. WELL SAID !!!
Blizzard: “once players are selected…”
*me triggered intensifying* WHAT DO YOU MEAN SELECTED! WHO SELECT? WHAT CRITERIA? DOES THAT MEAN YOU ONLY PICK THE ONES THAT WILL GO ALONG WITH YOUR AGENDA?
Yeah it's a nice little Nepotism circle with maybe some SJWing sprayed on top.
@@Lasershadow Gotta deflect somehow, right?
Of course, they wouldn't pick somebody like you and me. Their criterias are hidden, they want you to have three examples of how you helped the community, but you won't ever know who decides what is good or not. Nepotism, gotta love it.
@@Terrgore It's everywhere in the house of commons too. You think this corp attitude effects only business? Effects government too.
recruiting scapegoats?
"We can't listen to the community feedback like every other gaming developer ever, so we need to cherrypick 100 people to constantly tell us we're doing a great job."
So brave. So consumer friendly. Truly, this is the start of a new age for WoW.
@Keith Creative Business Unit III, Arenanet, Valve, Riot, GGG, Digital Extremes, Jagex, Respawn...I can go on. Sure, they vary massively on how effective they are on actually ACTING on that feedback, but they do still listen to their playerbase to some degree. When Blizzard isn't completely ignoring that feedback, it's literally telling its players that they're wrong and everything works as intended. Only when an expansion is nearing its end do they relent and make some changes, just to bait people in time for the next one.
This bait and switch has been going on for years and years - there are a lot of shit gaming companies out there, but I honestly believe Blizzard deserves the crown at this point.
@@anti-macro DE and Respawn BWAHAHAHAHAHA
Hahhaha
@@AymenDZA Respawn do listen, they acknowledge the problems and community claims, explain how they try to solve some and how they are limited to solving others. When something is OP they fix it asap.
@@anti-macro and Creative Business Unit III will even add quality of life stuff in the next patch. One person approached Yoshi P at a fanfest and asked if they could make the telegraph markers easier to see for color blind people. He immediately said yes and the next patch it was out.
“There’s some latent feelings there”... of course there is. It’s been 17 years. This game has been a part of my childhood and into my adulthood. Seventeen fucking years of it! And we’re constantly being met with arrogance and ignorance by the very people we’ve championed for so fucking long.
YoshiP with remorseful face, facing to the camera apologizing for Endwalker 2 weeks delay and then bow his head down to the desk.
While Ion and his team with all smiles, tells the blizzard fans that the feedback are good but way too many and basically not needed because they want 100 people with nuanced feedbacks instead.
You can see which head developer and their team who still has "heart" for their player.
Don't fall for that bs lol that's just some shame culture shit from Japan.
@@grim86 I'd rather have a sorry we need more time and we're doing our best to deliver than the answer blizzard did with all that PR that went nowhere.
@@grim86 even so, the game was delayed by 2 weeks, and this man was publicly apologizing like he’d personally killed my entire family. It might only be professional courtesy and not truly reflective of his thoughts and feelings (although I saw him holding back real ass tears, so I think everything he said was quite genuine), but it goes a longggggggg way.
@@Emulcool let's be real. No matter what blizzard says people like you will always hate. That's a fact
@@hobogoat2 you clearly don't know enough about Japan's culture. Might want to learn more, this shit is normal over there and usually never their real feelings. It's all bs pressured by old customs that have been a part of their society for generations
@35:00 It's interesting that Preach is pointing out what could be considered toxic behavior when dumping a M+ group, when the M+ system itself cultivates toxic gameplay by making the penalties for abandoning a key negligible for everybody except the keyholder. The solution is less about policing the community and more about fixing a busted system.
I just find it intensely ironic that the team that had a member publicly call one of their most popular content creators an asshole because he didn't like his opinion, is going to try to fix toxicity in the community...
When you make a system that will punish the group for 1 persons single stuff up. Yeah expect toxic behaviour. This is a problem they created and blame the players.
The M+ system is the easiest to fix: get rid of keys entirely, make it so you can customize the difficulty at the start of the dungeon. You pick the affixes, you pick the number and you can try endlessly with the only punishment being a failed run. Super easy, super simple, adds accessibility, adds a clear progression path for newer M+ players and removes toxicity. Theyll never do it because no weekly randoms means easier way to farm gear, no FOMO and potentially less logins after people get ksm.
@@Ferniva93 I agree just remove the keys
The game actively promotes toxicity with its systems and has been for so long, big part of why the community is the way it is. Until they start fixing that no magical machine learning will fix anything.
I love how Ion implies that they DO listen to feedback, but they just disagree with it.
And see, that's why WoW is never going to get better. Its either Ion's way or the highway.
ego want to make something great, ego want to be admired as skillfull, ego can do this alone, ego is a genius, ego knows the way, everyone but ego is an idiot.
@@Maverrick2140 they can't ignore subs dropping tho. Casually, changes started coming (I hope) when money started fading...
Can someone explain the seat of the primus thing? I stoped playing before that patch. Dont tell me you open the door and then have to rep grind in order to go through it?
Even if they do listen I worry they will only take the feedback they want, or look at it in some convoluted way. Not all opinions are made equal - just look at the forums leading up to shadowlands launch: (mostly) casuals who hadn't played PTR or done any research whatsoever were arguing they want no covenant swapping. Obviously once they learned what that meant, now almost everyone agrees it would have been better to allow swapping...but way too late.
3 mins in. Preach: "Gods I want to be positive." Sums up what a longass trip it's been, I reckon. I kept watching your videos for the past 3 years though, because you told the *truth* Mike. You were straight with the shit. If it was shit, you called it shit. You told us why it was shit. You told us what needed to happen to not make it shit. But at the end of the day, people keep watching you because you're honest with it, in the way you can be. And THAT is why you're now able to make a business out of this stuff. "RPGs that fuck the players over are not fun." - Preach Pure fucking gold.
I had a similar reaction to this. I desperately wanted to be positive about it, my friends are positive about it, but I just look at it like a toxic ex trying to convince me they have changed when in reality it's all hollow.
Been playing WoW since before BC and playing casually since after WotLK and this here hits so hard. I feel this so much.
The whole talking over thing, sounds like bull. I've seen this in practice when corps do it and it sucks.
Often ambitious people who take a role are shut down for those who sit back. I get that it might be hard to speak up in a big meeting, but, I mean, that's part of the job. If you can't get involved, everyone else who can should not be made to feel worse for taking the reigns.
I've literally been in meetings where no one talks, until eventual one person does, and the later I hear whining from shyer people about it.
You have to remember that the most important point of meetings is to get shit done. If someone more assertive takes over the lead, higher management will surely applaud it because they're doing what they need to do. Of course it's important to be assertive and not agressive but if shyer people complain they should take trainings and better themselves to learn to speak up.
@@bertjeeuh569 Society is so brainwashed you now need training to open your mouth xD
@@cg56578 people are scared of sounding stupid or asking the wrong questions but there's a lot of good tips and tricks to learn it.
It's a soft skill like every other, I don't think it's because we're brainwashed.
I am (or was when I played wow) a casual player, and usually, 98% of the stuff you say is accurate to how I feel about things with the game. Even if I wanted to get into heroic/mythic raiding, there is no way in hell I could do that, because it would take up all my time, and the majority of that time is not even gonna be raiding because of all these idiotic system. And as a casual, I don't feel like there is anything worth doing. FFXIV has so much freedom, and you can do everything whenever you want, for all existing expansions. WoW is almost entirely centered around the current patch, not even the expansion, just the current patch.
100% covers my situation and view. I do wonder how ff will be in end game but right now I’m having more fun than I had in wow for years.
@@AAKhanivore the delightful thing about ff is that the endgame is whatever you choose it to be, really. i've literally spent the past week or so just. levelling crafters. and i'm loving it. theres no rush to do certain things at a certain pace and i adore it.
Yeah this is the biggest thing I enjoy and reason I recommend FFXIV is they purposely make all kinds of different content for every type of player. My friends mainly enjoy raiding Savage and Ultimates while my favorites are the field operations like Eureka/Bozja. There's always some crossover like how I enjoy farming the Extremes for the mounts and I'll later in the patch raid savage.
The FFXIV team are then very skilled with and know how to optimize their time using their development tools so they're constantly adding so much content tailored for different people that all Covid did by causing the 1st major content drought of 8 months was get so many of us to try different things than our usuals so even a heavy user like myself only just started feeling the drought in October lol.
even if you get there, what happens if it turns out you dont like your chosen class at that level and want to play something else? I got my dh geared up and decided.... meh, too squishy and i prefer more direct self heals... then i saw the grind that awaited me and quit the game.
@@Topazzzzzz yes I’m loving it too. Not feeling forced to rush msq since I won’t make it in time for endwalker. I’m trying different jobs, clearing blue quests, and generally having an amazing time. Feels like this game was made for me! Glad to hear that continues in endgame.
I've been in a bunch of Betas over the years, starting at TBC, and one thing that is consistent is that no matter what Blizzard does, there is a good 20% of the playerbase that will defend everything Blizzard does, no matter what it is. In Shadowlands Beta there while everyone was screaming to pull the ripcord in the Beta Forums, and not in a irrational way either, but with well thought out points and there was always that group who would instantly reply to defend Blizzard's point of view on it and how "they know what they are doing, it'll be great". So if they want to stack this council, it'll be so easy to get a bunch of people who just say everything they are doing is great.
Ion’s cam is the “parents on Skype” meme
About the M+Leaver thing, as a relatively casual player I've had pretty much every 2nd run destroyed by people who would randomly leave the group, in fact, the lower in m+ you go, the more often this happens. Back in January, when I was still playing the game, +17 was rather high-end and people basically never left and were chill af! While the +3 to +15 people were so insanely toxic and quit groups not when there was a wipe but even a thing like some accidental pull by someone lead to people leaving the group!
Well, on one hand it is those egotistical players that ruined my experience but on the other hand the mechanic of M+ it self breeds insane toxicity as it makes players try to play at their personal highest intensity while also forcing players to group up with random people who can instantaneously destroy the work you put in as a keyholder. The pool of dickheads you are gathering group members from is also so huge, that players will never meet again, no reputation can form and the amount of options you have to check if someone is good OR WILLING to cooperate in an AGREED upon strategy is pretty much non-existant.
World of Warcraft as it is, needs to die. The game design is massively toxic and does nothing positive for anyone who is playing in a relatively solo environment while at the same time promoting this solo-behaviour at every level. When in a guild you can have a great time but wont have anything to do in a jiffy just because you dont have anything to work towards besides a higher arena rating, higher m+grind-score or some higher item-level. Pretty much every quality-rpg has more than just that
When I played, I always saw posts and complaints on forums and what not about "elitist players" making everything terrible and toxic when honestly, in my experience - like you - I have found those pushing content in the upper reaches are totally chill. It's the people who are supposedly more casual that are completely toxic. Even a couple of years ago when I still played, doing "casual" content left me wanting to pull out my hair. And that's not to say that all of the players I met where like this - not even the majority, but holy hell, do you really remember toxic people and it seems like I was running into them more and more. I like teaching people and running stuff but I don't need that high stress 'go, go, go' must not make a mistake or you're stupid and worthless leave at any time there's even a whiff of a problem mentality.
The way WoW has been set up over the past several years has just made this all the more worse. There have always been assholes in game but it just feels that the more WoW has gone in the directions it has, they seem to have multiplied and the experiences I had for years leading up to this are gone. Even worse, the large group of friends I had have slowly drifted away so I can't even form my own groups for things a lot of times and it has become more and more difficult to find people who want to push content without being toxic.
This sounds more like a way to try to have a stopgap for the problems in their game until they can announce a new expansion and keep their cycle going, something to use to encourage copium usage.
ironic, that the story of shadowlands is in fact about breaking the cycle...
Damn right. Rather than the Devteam, the PR and Marketing team will become active and throw out some stuff to retain some players to prevent WoW from dying off until the next expansion is ready for release and then will pump lots of money into marketing to get players to buy the expansion under the pretense "Maybe something changed this time" - like they always did. Blizzard has neither the company culture nor the financial interests to rebuild the game. As long as Bobby is CEO and Shareholder, the Philosophy of ActiBlizz will be "minimum effort - sell the same game/franchise every year - maximum profit".
To me it also sounds like they want to avoid hiring actual people to facilitate communications so they opted to have players form a council and act as the middleman instead. Another way to avoid spending money lol.
@@Shiny49GER Yup; Your a human too; you should of realized by now you always select the easier method of doing things. Why would they respect you? It's common sense but here I am I guess.
Pretty much my exact reaction with the only difference being the diversity stuff since I find it absurd that Blizzard thinks you can't have sexual themes or jokes in the game because they can't control themselves. There's a big reason why people are fine with/find it funny in FFXIV and its because those things aren't the problem but Blizzard are using it as a way to deflect the true issues.
I’m too into the world around the PC stuff that I’m numb to the “well, someone somewhere might be offended by something somehow, so by getting rid of it makes us good people!”
At best it’s just dumb and cringey but most likely it’s a bullshit PR move. The biggest problem with that shit isn’t that it’s nice vs not nice, it’s just people trying to take advantage of people that don’t think at all about it by pretending to be nice.
There's a sign as my local post office. The fucking POST OFFICE, it reads "Don't be offended if we ask about your package." It's a winky nod to adult humour, in a government establishment.
TRUE AND REAL, spicy humour and the likes never compelled me to become a crawler and creeper.
What they're doing isn't even PC, I've seen plenty of left-learning people who are horny as sin, so this string of censorship feels like a misguided attempt at pandering to them. What Blizzard are doing is attempting to solve what they believe is part of a problem with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. It proves that Blizzard is so out-of-touch with their community, and they're only trying to distract people from the fact that they're being sued for blatant misogyny in the workplace. Blizzard isn't going to make any meaningful changes even after the dust settles, and Jen Orneal leaving after 3 months of being a co-head demonstrates that they're too far gone.
This is such a stupid take. There are still plenty of sexual themes and jokes in the game and they are not gonna get removed. Slutmogs still exist. Wild ERP in Goldshire still exists. The ones that got removed were ones most obviously connected with the frat boy culture that resulted in people getting sexually abused. Stop crying, you wouldn't notice even a single one of these changes if it wasn't for datamining.
Asmongold applied: blizzards response “GM has handled this.” No response
To be brutally honest all the problems we've seen were reported during the so called betas, it got so bad that my guild gave up reporting the issues they came across because they were never addressed.
I think a lot of the toxicity comes from the game design. Specifically, the daily/weekly chores and the wasted keys. If the keys weren't lost and time not wasted, the toxicity levels would inevitably drop. Not saying it would go away, but these "features" make playing with people of a lesser skill level, not just frustrating, but it punishes players for trying to help each other.
You know what would help as well, if there were leaps in difficulty. Proper leaps. Like saying a +5 key would be equivalent of a +20 key now. Most levels are time wasters that very slightly increment the difficulty.
I like how you are talking about mythic+, as its literally the only thing carrying wow atm. I agree with the chores, with the weekly and daily stuff. But mythic+ is literally the only reason the game is still standing right now.
Been saying this for ages, this key depletion is the root of it all.
Take a group of kids who don't know each other, tell them they can win a prize if they all spin a plate for a minute. One kid drops it and walks away. You think that kids gonna be popular from then on???????????
Basic shit people apparently don't get? Is everyone fucking blind?
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
It's the key depletion
Agree 100%. Because they funnel most progression into M+, its timing wasting potential came to the forefront. In M+, nothing drops, nothing gains, because it’s “speed run”, so if the group dies you get 0 reward. It’s such a gamey system, nothing RPG about it. They also must bring back crafting able to craft meaningful gear upgrade rather than only grinding M+ gives small gear increment. I would love to have quest rewards giving decent gears that might scale with your gear level and capped at HC raid, but they won’t be happy with that. I think we used to fill some slots with reputation gear, but they removed it mostly. The grind now it’s a little ridiculous to get anymore. It’s so easy just to give tabard so players can do whatever they want and still get reputation. Imagine handling in ores, crafted items, battle pet, dungeon, raid, PvP etc... in exchange for reps. This is rather silly because we have this in TBC….
I blame all of this on Diablo team influence on WoW design.
Yeah toxicity in the game is the devs fault. Lol
its crazy how hard blizzard tries to humanize themselves while they feel more and more like a government instead.
Oh, they did humanize themselves. Unfortunately, the human is THE stereotypical asshole ex-boyfriend.
Doesn't the Pentagon have its tentacles into Blizztivision, publicly disclosed?
So, it is gov extension, if true.
@@zenspeed404 funny, reminded me of my narcissist ex gf. 🤣
I mean there are humans that work there. What do you want them to do?
@@zenspeed404 Isn't "Greed" the most natural human nature? :D
39:38 yes, in a company that large the resumes are filtered through HR for diversity filtering prior to be fed to hiring managers in different departments
First thing that came to mind when I heard about the council where those horror stories from the private beta feedback forums shared by some people in them. Impossible to not be highly skeptical.
Why does listening to your players need to be this huge event? They are inviting a small group of chosen ones to leave feedback that they might interact with and listen to. They should be doing that anyway, which they haven't because they would have avoided broken systems that pissed everyone off if they did.
The feedback is out there! The players have been giving them feedback for years!
This is about optics.
If they wanted feedback…go to Twitter, Reddit, RUclips or…here’s an idea, and I know this is silly, play the god forsaken game!!!
my first thought exactly. And honestly, if this is a PR move i will be dissapointed but reliefed. Cause the other option is them being so completely lost and out of touch that they have no idea how to even start dealing with their community.
Sounds to me like customer support and QA have been passing on feedback and maybe the people who could've changed things based on the feedback didn't
I've experienced their listening to players.
I was perma banned from the forums for daring to criticise the devs for lazy behaviour.
That was over a decade ago. Still banned. Still refuse to play again. They've always ignored the play base. Always have and always will. It's amazing it's lasted this long.
When Mike said: "Guess I still have unresolved daddy issues..." GOD DAMN, did that hit home. I love WoW so much that I have not been able to play it in this state since March. I literally *hate* Blizzard with all my heart for what they've done to this game and since I have zero faith they will ever restore this game to the joy that it was, I would love nothing more than to see Blizzard fail for what they've done. I recognize in myself this is not healthy, but can't help how you feel.
Legit unhealthy dude. You need to just learn to play games and not invest your life and identity into stuff. Youd honestly probably end up enjoying the game better as well
@@characterantula4868 Bro this isn't Cod; soooo many players there have been playing for a long time. It's a god damn mmo. biggest time sinks in games. Like it's justified asf, and your argument shows how little you know of the situation. It's more then blizz staff being touchy feely. Game has been going towards doom for at least 5-7 years now.
@@Robert_D_Mercer This is the crux of the problem. Activision sees WoW as a cash register and not as a world. They now create content and systems that drive profit metrics and not to create a world of wonder. The need to make money off content is written everywhere now and once you see it you cannot un-see it. It's been so corrupted that I doubt it can ever made 'good' again. But as long as people buy wow tokens for boosting and buy store mounts ATVI isn't really going to care about how 'good' WoW is.
I'm with you bro, I wish WoW would just shut down completely, pull the plug, let it die with a smidge of grace it has left.
@@Robert_D_Mercer Its video game just like CoD. It is a tool to have fun, if you arent having fun then by all means leave and wait til it offers what you want again or just move on. Staying negative and toxic is very unhealthy and wishing for something to die just because you dont like it anymore is really strange behavior and theres no amount of justification you can put forward to think staying in a muck pool of toxicity and hatred will ever help you
You're explosive rant at around ~48:00 is what made me like this video. You're just like me, you try to talk about it calmly then the RANT BEGINS! The anger and passion...Jesus I couldn't have related more.
imo blizz is beyond hope. its just so obvious the game is being made by people that dont play video games. FFXIV is successful because its being made by people that play and love it.
You know the sub numbers are absolutely fucked beyond belief when they are considering allowing cross-faction instanced content across the board. They've always been so against the idea.
Something they could have done years ago. Fuck blizzard
This Alliance vs Horde thing is getting old anyway and should probably be only kept as a PVP thing.
I don't think it's even the sub numbers mainly.
I think it's the fact that they assfucked Alliance raiding to the point that it's dead. In first 100 clears for mythic Sanctum there's a total of 12 Alliance guilds, 9 of those 12 are Chinese.
I dunno why they even keep horde vs alliance when theyre too carebear to even fucking push the story to horde vs alliance
@@EurrikkeEdward Did you forget about the previous expansion??
This proves that 10.0 is a lost cause
They've had the feedback for about a decade, they're asking for even more feedback, and yet they're already over half way into developing 10.0
Which means either its gonna get postphoned quite a bit if they actually commit to listen and change the necessary stuff for 10.0 THIS TIME (unlikely) or its gonna be a mess with none of the player feedback incorporated. My money is on the 2nd Option
I don’t actually believe they’re even that far in into 10.0 just can’t see it. 9.2 won’t be till forever. Then 9.2 will last 1 year/2 years. Can believe wow 10.0 release Q1 2023.
@@scottmcgreavy3849 There are two different main WoW teams; Team A does expansions and groundwork for content patches, then hands over to Team B for patches and fixes.
I started to disagree (partially) about his anger with the weighty choice outburst, but after thinking about it seriously for a few minutes, he's right. I was going to point out that games did lock people into their choices, even fairly new RPGs. Then I realized that all the ones I could remember were story choices, not character choices. Choices made in RPGs can have weight and consequences these days, but for the most part, they are choices that have an affect on the story of the game. Character choices may hurt a character's power or progression, but it's incredibly rare that a person is locked into those choices.
Also, there needs to be freedom to truly mess up the character as well. Theory crafting is so much better if you can actually test out a theory because you know you can un-gimp yourself with a minimum of fuss.
It's fine when it does make sense. Like creating an rpg character in games like pathfinder or divinity 2 makes sense as youre trying to specialize, but even then, even THOSE games get respec systems and are meant for multiple playthrus.
WoW is meant for multiple playthrus with alts but they dont embrace that and instead, cuck people thst play multiple or even one char with those covenant restrictions.
Transistor is an example where you choose your abilities for each level, but if you apply you ability to a different slot (there were three), then you unlock more lore abotu the character related to that ability. I found myself handicapping myself with bonkers builds for the sake of lore/story. It was a temporary change as it only lasted the level, but it was an RPG choice that affected my gameplay. But, again, it was temporary, self-imposed, and motivated by story. In effect, it was a story decision.
Even then, in those games I can reload an earlier saved game.
in otherwords, blizz wants to remove anyone they don't like the sound or look of
Trust is hard to earn but easy to lose. Blizzard has pretty much lose any amount of trust they earned in the past decade. I started in Warcraft 1 days.
Doesn't seem like it was easy to lose for Blizzard at all. They've really been working at it for several years.
I'd argue that it's proven surprisingly hard to lose trust, considering just how bad Blizzard had to make WoW before all this got started
Blizzard: Look, we found 3 women in our company who haven't quit yet, so we forced them to make this video with us!
The covenants should have been factions you can get rep with by doing their story lines, and the abilities from covenants should have been talents you can swap on an as-needed basis.
Hello mr. Editor, can you always add the Twitch Chat for future videos? thanks ^^
"We want feedback from more nuance players" Translation: We want feedback from Yes-Men that have no criticism so we can tap ourselves in the back and tell ourselves we do a good job while keeping on ignoring any type of criticism from those "toxic negative people". They should do stand up because this is comedy gold.
Yeah because the years of feedback they already have on their forums and in the sub cancellation surveys , apparently, isn't enough for them to get a clue in on ... Just a money grab, a way to try manipulate and convince pixel addicts to come back and click that subscribe button, without any actions to show for anything. I've said it before, when flight is removed from a gated content system, as it was before WoD I will be back not a minute before.
WE ONLY CARE TO SEE ACTIONS AND CHANGES LIVE ON THE REALMS NOW! Why are you still trying to rebrand the conversation while STILL having done NOTHING!
They referred to solo players and transmoggers. Yeah... They're out of touch with their community. Or rather, they're in touch with the only community that is remaining I guess... Sad stuff tbh.
Yeah they want an opinion from the people who will never quit and will keep giving them money because that’s their only metric of success. As someone put it. Blizzards idea of success is washing dishes. I don’t like washing dishes. But I have to do it every day. Therefore I must actually enjoy washing dishes because I do it because I have to.
That’s not really what nuanced means. I know you’re joking but I’m sure they want constructive feedback
This needs to be on a Mikes main channel for Blizz devs to watch. Its just too important.
Blizz devs don't care about Preach's opinion. Otherwise that interview with Ion wouldn't have been a shitshow.
i loled at the last part of your post. 😂 if opinions/suggestions are important to thm they would have already listened to their community.
True, it's probably important they see how angry he gets at the drop of a hat now so they don't actually invite him to the office.
They don't care. They never cared. As long as whales swipe their credit cards, they do not care.
I heard if you send upskirts to the devs at blizzard you can get to the top of the list for invites.
It seems like the WoW team is missing that "meaningful choice" in games like Mass Effect or Star Wars meant you having to live with the narrative consequences of your decisions and how they impacted the story line. "Meaningful choice" in WoW means getting passed over for an M+ group because you didn't pick the particular class/spec/covenant combo that's flavor of the month.
But wasnt the entire franchise of mass effect ruined because people found out at the end none of their choices mattered to the point that the community petitioned Bioware to rewrite and redo the ending? Is that what the wow team is missing?
Im no stranger to soulless corporate jargon but you would think after recent events they would at least try to seem more humane but half of these people are reading from scripts and have this soulless dead stare
I work for a bank and this is creepy even to me
Wow, they are focusing on a smaller community to ignore.
N U A N C E
EDIT: 48:01 "I haven't had a talent row since I had no hair" followed by the rant and pause to stare absolutely killed me
What song is playing at 56:00?
Ion’s camera angle is so fucking hilarious 😂😂😂
It had a lot of boomer-on-dating-app energy.
His camera is fine. He's just reclining and chilling' like a villain. He is, after all, the smartest guy in the room (or in this case, the stream.) And he knows better than we do, just what we want in HIS game.
It reminds me of that meme where a hamster answers the call
It made me think of Zordon from Power Rangers. Just a giant head floating there, staring down on everyone else imperiously.
Ion rehearsing to be the next Wizard of Oz
I don't play WoW myself. Still, there's something sad to me about seeing someone who loved it being forced to watch it die while being helpless to really do anything about it. I seriously want your guys' game to get better, but it doesn't seem like your developers do.
I guess this is just another corpse on the geek culture pile. Such a bummer.
and to think about how much some content creators and pillars of the community did to try and help make the game more enjoyable for everyone. being that passionate about something only to see it fall apart is a real heartbraker. sadly, its not just wow either. when i look at blizzards catalogue of games i have some nice memories but none of them are from anything in the past 5-10 years
not to me, they like mike need to grow up and move on, sure you loved it and it happend dont forget it but god damn man MOVE ON.............and if he thinks this is the best game he ever played well....................................id venture to say he has not played a lot of games.
its fine to say you had a great time in a game and loved it, but when its over its over, its not comming back, i think mike just loves WoW ya for the exp he had but he has made a living off of the game.....its like a guy who fell in love with a girl back in elementary school and gave him his first kiss, and he will always love her for it even tho she treats him like shit and is just bad....
some people cant let go, BRAND loyalty is a BAD thing in ALL aspects of life...
i played ff11 and loved it like preach loved wow, but i movved on when it got bad SURE it took me years but i did move on, and nothing as bad as what has gone on in wow happen in ff11......
its sad like you said, but sad at him because he cant move on with his life.
@@aaronclay4665 how is he supposed to move on when it was the game that fueled his channel to be what it is now lol. It's like someone talking about the shitty job they just quit. It's pent up trauma from experiences that abused you.
@@aaronclay4665 it's easier said then done. to Preach or other WoW fans this shit is like seeing a loved one go on hardcore drugs, destroying their lives right in front of you. It'll take awhile before they just move on.
I’ve seen some wonderful games die due to dumb developpers and decisions. It’s always heartbreaking because you think what could have been if they pulled their fingers out of their nasty asses
Just wanted to say quickly that your videos for the last 2 or 3 year about wow kept me sane. Each time I wanted to go back I looked up one of your videos in combination with Asmongold and Belular to get an Idea about the game and if they finaly improved the playing exp I prefer. Your videos and criticism clearly helped me to not fall into a trap and pay money for a game I play 2 weeks and than never touch until the next exp bc the gaming exp will turn out terrible. So even it is tiny there is still something positive that came from this, at least for me and I wanted to tahnk you for the work you put into your videos everytime.
The game at one point existed with one level of difficulty. Anyone could play it. I remember being in ZG with a kid that was 10 years old and a couple in their 60s. Everyone cracking up in vent. Each tier added ie, heroic/mythic raids, rated bgs, mythic+, was a wedge that split and segmented the community. It's never going back and when I realized that I decided I wouldn't either.
Never even thought about it in that way, wow... it's true. All these great personalities we never met because there was 4 Raid difficulties and the barrier to entry is so damn high these days compared to jumping into a chill ZG or weekly MC run.
I hope the Community Council will be filled with slight variations of the same answers. And when Blizzard asks, they should reply with "If you want a unique answer that is not simply a recolor of a previous answer, you need to pay $25."
47:02 when Preach slams into that S tier, cathartic RPG rant :chef's kiss:
He was being merciful by not quoting FF as a shining example..lol
Basically Preach channels his inner Doom Marine there.
Is it like all your feedback was going into the Maw like all the souls?
Am i wrong or did the have a similar things in legion but class based that they ignored after 2 days and just went incognito
47:08 : The, well deserved, RPG rant. They really need to play more OG BioWare. In Mass Effect 1, if my Vanguard Shepard decides to let Ashley kill Wrex, Shep doesn't forget how to use their Charge ability. Now, I'm kinda screwed in 3 in regards to my options with the Krogan, but Shepard, MY character, isn't more or less powerful in their abilities if Wrex is alive or dead. If I have Shepard be a bit of an ass to Conrad Verner, they're not suddenly going to have lower health regen, or be less efficient with ammo clips. Those are RP choices.
.
Or, comparing apples to apples more or less, Dragon Age: Origins. If I play a human noble and in their origin they decide to have a 1 night stand, they're not randomly going to have a lower health pool. Choosing to romance Alistair instead of Zevran doesn't mean that my Dalish Ranger suddenly forgets her "Summon Bear" spell for the rest of the game. If one of my mages is super sympathetic to Jowan, they're not going to lose their Winter's Grasp spell for not going to Irving, or conversely, gain a spell for choosing to involve Irving.
Even those that have make permanent changes to the character, most RPGs try to balance this out by making them weaker. It hurts a lot less when it isn't a choice for meta building but rather just flavor.
That's probably antithetical to their goal but that's exactly why this rant is important. Really sad to see they treat this as a single player RPG rather than an MMO where your power level in relation to others is a very important detail.
Ion is literally delusional and has convinced himself that his view on "meaningful choices" is a good thing and doesnt seem to want to let it go. Maybe if he realises this difference that you pointed out he could then design content in WoW where choices are just RP and story stuff not gameplay. But lmao he'll never read any feedback almost got caught up in a bunch of Copium there
it blows my fucking mind every time they keep hammering on these "rpg" elements. when for over the past decade they have actively removed those elements like class quests and actually having to do a questline to tame your first pet or summon different demons.
On top of that they could have had such an easy win with covenants, just make them cosmetic only so you purely choose for the theme, mounts, pets, transmog etc and as for the ability either just make them neutral so anyone can pick any spell or instead put those class developent resources into refining the current classes/specs and focus changing/removing dead talents and making all specs feel fun and complete to play without needing all these borrowed power systems that will get thrown out of the window anyway the next pre-patch
These are games from 10~ years ago, and even in your example, which is freer than WoW, there are new games that are a lot MORE free than those. I feel like I can take a more contemporary swing at it.
Divinty Original Sin, Dragon Age Inquisition, Pillars of Eternity 1+2, Pathfinder Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous, all of these games give you the ability to fully respec your character at close to 0 cost. Standard RPG practice is that you can literally snap your fingers and adapt 90% of your build, except for immutable characteristics like race, Class (some games let you change this on the fly), and endgame path.
Here's a comparison between two modern RPGs that I feel have contrasting design ideology.
Divinity Original Sin 2. You start as an imprisoned dipshit, and you ascend to godhood. After act 1, you have a free full respec that's LITERALLY 4 clicks away from ANY given location on the map. Menu, Travel, teleport to Lady Vengeance, pop down the ladder, talk to the mirror. Your Attribute scores are reset, and your skill points are completely refunded. There are vendors that sell every skill type in the game, on the Lady Vengeance, so provided you're just looking to tweak, you're looking at a pricetag between free and trivial. Even completely overhauling your 2h warrior into a Hydromancer/Summoner/Healer is completely doable, although at a steeper gold cost. Fortunately Gold becomes trivial really early into the game, so that's not a big deal at all. Even on the cusp of literal godhood, fully respeccing is trivial.
Another game to consider is Wrath of the Righteous, which uses immutable characteristics to create a legitimately great and fulfilling experience. If Blizzard wants to see how a fully realized and fun Covenant system works, this is your game. By the time you reach the point where you have to chose your 'Covenant', your character build is more or less functionally complete. You don't NEED to lock into the Lich or Daemon Path in Wrath of the Righteous, to have your core class functionality work at a baseline level, and even when you DO lock in, you can have a hardsave before you make your choice, and the game's runtime is between 80 and 120 hours, and its aim is telling a unique storyline with every Mythic Path. Covenants have maybe 2 or 3 hours of content each, a single spell, and a bunch of passive abilities. Compared to a game like Wrath of the Righteous, Covenants literally offer nothing, but are MORE locked in than the Mythic Paths are, despite Mythic Paths being permanent, because you can't make a savestate, and even if you couldn't, it would take less time to restart Wrath, and play the game again (which is a very good experience, the game is very replayable), than it does to covenant respec in WoW and bring that covenant up to speed. Mythic Paths DEFINE how you play the game, on every level, from how you manage your campaign, to the units you can recruit for your army, to dramatically altering your character build on an ADDATIVE level. I don't feel bad while playing Lich that I don't have Daemon abilities, because my playthrough is so defined by Lich on every level. In WoW, I don't feel attached to my Covenant at all, it doesn't influence how I play the game on a macro or micro level, but it's lockin is treated more seriously than campaign defining traits in other RPGs.
In a game where Covenants and the main campaign is the ENTIRE GAME, with no fomo, no grinding, no time gates, and no multiplayer, Covenants make sense, because they become a fun, fluffy lategame immutable characteristic. The problem is, If I like Vampires, Venthyr doesn't do a good job of making me feel like a vampire on a gameplay level, and if Kyrian, the opposite of Venythr visually and thematically, is meta for my spec, I have no practical or functional reason to stay Venthyr, despite liking the aesthetic more. There's no gameplay to buffer choosing a suboptimal throughput choice, so the choice is like slamming on the breaks while you have no break pad. Raw Gameplay vs Thematic and Visual Resonance is a fucking TERRIBLE choice to make, and the break pad in this situation is fluffy, thematic, and fun gameplay, that seemlessly merges Gameplay and Thematic elements, which naturally makes the player who gravitates towards vampires, have to weigh meaningful vampire gameplay over the course of the patch, against the optimal-in-raid Kyrian. WoW's gameplay is 80% pseudo competitive grinding, why would I EVER care about where I log out compared to 10% throughput?
There's just no choice to be made when you have 1 ability and a 4 hour campaign, in a game that's asking for hundreds of hours of your time per season. It makes zero sense to play the bad Covenants for your build, because choosing the one you like the most visually doesn't actually influence your gameplay. You're trading out potentially hundreds of hours of gametime with an optimal build, just so you can log out in a mansion instead of a heavenly plaza or a dank hole in the wall? Makes no sense. It's a non-choice.
@@Julian-cn1ey I agree, but it's "brake". 👍🏼
Can someone give Mike Puff-Puff to improve his mood, he needs it more than ever.
Just his tone is so depressing and so out of character after watching his poe or ff14 vids.
@@danntheman865 I’ve only watched preach when he started playing FFXIV. This Preach isn’t what I’m used to. How can a game get a person so frustrated and look so defeated?!
@@TheBongReyes its straight grief. Its watching something you love drown infront of you. As you throw it life jacket after life jacket, whilst screaming let me help you.
They give you the finger as they sink to the bottom......
Thats pretty much how most of the community are feeling.
But hey there's a new store mount.
So we have that new content......
@@TheBongReyes
As a WoW refugee who came over right before the Asmon wave, this is Preach and every WoW content creator, and every WoW player who isn't braindead and snorting copium, has been for 5 years.
You have no idea how happy we are to see these content creators suddenly be injected with joy and excitement when they came over to FF.
Asmongold. Savix. Preach. Rich. Pyromancer. Even the mighty Bellular. Just to name a few. Suddenly seeing smiles and actual immersion and enjoyment on their faces after leaving that abusive relationship with Blizzard...
@@TheBongReyes imagine if there was something you loved so much you made a career and job around it. It gave you the ability to meet thousands of people and travel across the world. Now imagine if that thing got slowly twisted, becoming unrecognisable and something you dislike.
That is how it is for Preach.
Can we get a 10min version ?
Damn, son! That outburst at 46:33 really startled the shit out of me, Mike!
Granted, I think your anger is entirely justified. That to me sounds like years, if not an entire decade of repressed feelings coming out all at once. And I agree that we hear the same narrative from Ion and co. since the launch of WoD pmwards. It's always the same "We sorry we didn't listen to the feedback. We hear you now and we're gonna do better" over and over again and people have lost all faith in the dev team, not even mentioning the company as a whole.
If even WoW's biggest advocates over the years such as yourself, Pyromancer and Bellular are walking away from this abusive relationship then you know shit's fucked up real bad.
I'm gonna be honest, as long as Ion is the head of the game, nothing is going to change. From the experience of playing the game, it has become very obvious that he can't run this game as a head. He can be the Raid lead I guess, but it's clear that his focus for this game is solely on dungeons and raiding, and that is a major part of the reason why the leveling experience doesn't really matter at the end of the day, so it's not fun at all. Frankly, the development team of WoW needs completely new blood from top to bottom in my mind. The game needs people who actually play and are fans of MMORPGs in general, and people that actually plays and has played WoW for longer than it takes to complete a dungeon or raid.
in the beginning I had the same thought Ion must go, but today I have come to the conclusion that it is pretty much the whole team that has to go.
when he was the raid + class designer (both), wow was at it's peak playercount
He rescued us from WoD with Legion but if they try to do it again it won't go well....
It's not even that he's a raid guy.
It's that he's still acting like a smug condescending douche, like an "Elitist Jerk", and that doesn't work when you're getting wrecked by the competition.
25:20 their design philosophy is:
make a game to a decent playable state (before launch)
create arbitrary restrictions and barriers to content (at launch)
remove those barriers later and it feels like new content
(make it bad deliberately so its easy to make it better)
decent playable state*
Hireing for quotas has always resulted in lower performances at any company I've been. If the best application comes from a woman, hire her. If the best application comes from a guy, hire him. If they're roughly equal, hire both. god knows Blizz isn't going to run out of work any time soon.
there is an inherent flaw in your thinking in that you think the current male dominated employee situation is a reflection of such a hiring practice. It demonstrably is not, there is an unfair male quota in hiring and getting rid of the male quota, which is what this should be framed as, is absolutely a good thing.
@@Jadinass But you'd have to get rid of the male quota at a university/educational level. If a company hires genderblind, yet gets 80% male applicants, then there's a good chance the best applicant is gonna be a guy.
Gamedesign is very male dominated. It's become less so over the last years but it still very much is and until that changes, hireing by quota will inevitably result in hireing less qualified personal.
To calrify, I'm not saying "don't hire women" but rather "Hire genderblind". I don't mind a company hireing a guy out of a predominantly male pool of applicants because of his qualifications. I DO mind a company not hireing a woman because of her gender.
@@Jadinass consider taking a bottle of sleeping pills with your next bottle of wine
@@timokampwerth1996 having different perspectives from people of varying background will be helpful to your process, even if some of those people are slightly less qualified on paper. doing it completely blind to those things isn't useful either- all the factors need to be considered.
I imagine this is just going to be an intersectional hellfire club
I’m not convinced this will work because they have had access to people like kalamazi who provide literal spread sheets of the most in-depth information they could possibly want for years but seem to ignore the vast majority of it. If the “council” leads to anything like OSRS voting system where ideas are discussed and then brought to the players to be voted on it needs to be anonymous as to whose idea is whose, you can’t have a system where, for example, it shows that idea 1 is from (insert popular streamer) and idea 2 is from (insert lesser known person) because people will end up voting on things just based on whose idea it is not the idea itself.
The person with idea 1 could just say to their followers which is theirs. It'd need more work than just being anonymous.
I mean you either want a democratic process for changes or you don't. If out the gate your stance is "players are so stupid they'll vote for things they don't want because daddy told them to" then that's not a very strong case for an OSRS-style system. As Searix said nothing about anonymous voting would stop a streamer from campaigning for their preferred changes... and I don't see why they shouldn't be able to campaign for their preferred changes. The entire point of that system is such things can be debated openly in front of the community. If you think WoW forum arguments are somehow better than people like Preach, Asmon, Bellular, etc making long videos sharing their thoughts on the game then you clearly haven't spent a lot of time on there.
I actually feel so bad for Kalamazi because he literally did unpaid labor for Blizz just to be mostly ignored. Big sadge
@@daroaminggnome idk if you’ve ever seen politics but many people will 100% vote based on who is saying something and not what they are saying even if it negatively impacts them or they will do it to spite other people knowing the negative impacts of the change will not effect them personally. These issues are a million times more impactful than a change to a game so if people will do it there you can rest assured they will do it in a game. People will literally vote against healthcare changes that would objectively be beneficial to 100s of millions of people just because they don’t like the person proposing the change and they don’t care about the suffering of those people, there is no such morally quandary when spiting people with a vote about a video game so of course people will try to fuck people over out of spite of one person or group of people or in support of another based solely on who is saying something and not what is being said.
Preach said, in this very video, it should be anonymous, his reasoning was people might harass someone for voicing an opinion they disagree with but that is still another argument for anonymity. We aren’t saying the people on the council should be anonymous but if or when an idea is posed to the players it shouldn’t be posed as MrGM proposes X and Asmongold proposes Y and naguura proposes Z because we have all of voting history to show that a ducking hell of a lot of people will vote based on who says something and not what they say
@@AndrewNajash Politics is more talk than action.
It’s nice to see the gloves come off at the 47:00ish mark. As Blizz has just utterly screwed the pooch on this expansion and all of its patches.
As others have said it’s like seeing someone argue with an ex that gaslighted them for years, 4 months after said person has started dating a sane person.
it's cathartic listening to mike ... preach... about the issues with wow and just how badly they've fucked over the players and community but we just want a good game.
His sudden explosion shocked the shit out of me, and i'm here sitting at my desk 4 in the goddamn morning yelling in agreement with him. Asmon would get such a kick out of this, I hope he can react to it if he streams on it second channel.
"There is a part of me that would like to know the WoW story, done in a streamlined manner"
They would have to give WoW a story. Maybe we ask for too much.
man the passion this man has - i swear he went through all 5 stages of grief readin this shite
"We're listening we really are this time!!!"
Uhuh. Again? Its like Preach said we've been here before time and time again... Now they want to listen? Really? I'll bet money we'll be back where we were halfway through the next subscription based beta test
100%
This is the most typical toxic relationship behavior from them. "I'll change!" "I can fix this!"
They have proven they can't, repeatedly.
Walking away from the relationship with WoW has been the best move I've made since quitting League of Legends years ago XD
When Mike said "I want Y'shtola back" it really hit home. Hope bliz gets their shit in order. They burned a lot of bridges, they've got a lot to work to do. I'm not sure they can win a lot of people back tbh.
If they wouldn’t change for years what’s going to change now?
Hope dies last. At the end of the day Blizzard did some amazing one of a kind games. Wow remade the mmo genre. Overwatch upended the whole media scene.Hearthstone made digital tcg a big thing. I adored Storm even with all its faults. Etc etc.
Personally im out. But in a year or two im hoping to give Blizz a second try. And maybe for it to be worth it
My faith in blizzard has unfortunately been permenantly broken. I was SO excited for BFA, when I saw it was trash I was excited for SL. It can't be worse than BFA right? They will FINALLY listen to player feedback right?! Well we saw how that ended...
i know you dont like doing wow coverage anymore and i can respect that but as someone who has watched through all of your wow videos regardless of if they related to my gameplay, im not a raider i dont even currently play, its nice to hear you still care about the game. Ive always loved your opinions on how things could be improved even knowing they wouldnt listen. Thanks for this video preach as a long time wow fan i hope they can get it together and take you up on your 10.0 offer. would love a wow where your ideas were actually implemented
Imagine if they did something along the lines of having an avatar in the start of each dungeon that enables you to choose which covenant ability that you wanna use inside that instance. Implemented to raids, bgs, arena, instances and open world. Without having it undermine your whole freakin' progress, eligibility or time!