what happened?
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- Опубликовано: 23 авг 2024
- Hey everyone. Let's have a chat about how things are going with WoW these days. I'm worried I've lost touch with you.
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The Pale Beyond is coming to Switch October 6th! Play it on PC today: bit.ly/TPB_Steam
Buy The Pale Beyond collector's goodies: store.bellular.games
I am not subbed to or playing WoW right now but, I do follow your channel(and others) to stay up to date with what is going on in the game. I came back for the Naxx vendor content for a month to check it out but, nothing else really held my interest to be worth staying subbed. I don't do endgame group content as none of the specs seem fun enough to main so I don't care about gear and thus the open world content has no meaning to me. No real challenging solo content that requires skill rather then just buying a few M+ carries or raid clears with gold to get better gear and once you have gear there's nothing to do with it unless you do group content. Professions are also still boring and legacy content is just the same one-shot/loot/repeat process with different mobs.
I hope they bring back something like Mage Tower, Brawler's Guild, Horrific Visions, Warfronts, or a reworked Tor'ghast in 11.0 for some evergreen solo content or massively improve farming legacy content(maybe with a box of many things type of upgrade tree). Just CBA doing the gear grind at endgame every season, it's not fun enough to be worth my time.
I really enjoyed the launch of Dragonflight, but after being subbed through two pretty awful back-to-back expansions, I was just burnt out. I enjoy raiding mostly, but the M+ gameplay loop was too much and I hate it. 'Apathetic' is exactly how I feel. By contrast, Hardcore Classic has been really fun lately. I think the adventure/challenge of the world content is the draw there. I think about it compared to the "casual" world content in DF and DF is just not compelling -- despite there being lots of content. Side note: Not that I'm advocating for it's return, but I wonder how player retention would be if there was some sort of AP grind.
I think this unknown, odd feeling people have is the result of going through BfA and SL after it. Dragonflight is epic, amazing, and should feel that way, but there is a hole now that many have and express or don't even know how to express; this strange unsettled sense that something fundamentally broke wow forever, or an undercurrent of fear that it has, and that Dragonflight is like, just covering an ugly truth by hiding it under a fancy blanket.
The developer doesn't care about its player base. I literally got a 1 week "silence" for a Trump discussion in "GENERAL" chat. It wasn't in trade chat. I didn't curse. I didn't use derogatory sexual comments. So what happened? It was a discussion on economics and politics that many did not agree with. So a lot of people reported it as "inappropriate" discusson and a random bot decided it was enough. So instead of players using their ignore feature, the bot decided that since more than a certain threshold of those people complained, I deserved the 7 day silence. A silence means people can send you messages, but you can't talk to anyone in the game, not even listed friends or guildmates. And you can't use mail. So you are basically playing solo.
I would not mind the silence if a real person.... an actual GM discussed whatever the issue was with me. But nope, Blizzard decided to save a buck or two by not using real employees. Instead, they chose to use bots and let sociopathic players thrive by reporting and hurting you rather than ignoring things they don't like to see or hear. Blizzard simply emailed me saying I was silenced and didn't even tell me specifically what was said. They simply said I was reported by a random threshold of people.
So I finally quit WoW and will 100% not play a Blizzard game again. It's not so much the actual silence that bothers me, it's how they handled it and their decision to let players make those decisions with random reports. Social engineering at its worst. That's why nobody speaks in general chat anymore and the game seems dead. People are afraid they'll offend someone or say something stupid others might not like. God forbid they use the ignore feature. And god forbid Blizzard tells them to use ignore. But nope... it's cheaper to use bots and piss off those of us who've been playing for years.
y but you do know that wow is still the most popular mmo and by far. I know that most of the things you say are true but i think the big problem was shadowlands .
The dragons don't feel like mighty creatures that take on human form, they feel like humans who occasionally take the form of mighty creatures.
YES. I hate that they turned dragons into basically humans when they had more of an esoteric, magical, beastial feeling before. They can never go back now but they really ruined the “cool factor” for what a Dragon is.
Very well put. They took the power and epicness out of dragons.
So much this. It's such a simple way of putting it, but it hits the nail on the point so well anyway.
They spend 90% of the time in "visage form". More like elves than dragons. Dragonflight was an opportunity to show a distinct dragon culture but they did the opposite and made them the equivalent of a 90s mall.
This is part of the problem!
Shadowlands truly did what no other expansion could. It killed the passion of so many people. The biggest losses are always the quiet quitters, not the raging ones.
Yeah. Checked out after Nathria (great tier, but everything else was lame) and haven't looked back. I follow the news waiting for something to jump out at me.
From Bfa to shadowlands it was mostly Developer and Community attitude that killed wow, Filled with toxic cunts event nowdays look how they reply to wow criticism atacking everyone and telling them to leave if they do not like it in shadowlands , now cry about people not coming back IRONY ...
this 1000%
@@user-sk4ds1rg1zsame exactly. Coming back now just to check it out but not really enjoying it
Absolutely this@@Youscubin . Shadowlands did what nothing else could. It killed my passion for this game. I tolerated and was still even kinda excited about some stuff in BfA. Within a month of Shadowlands' release? Everything was shit and it was staring me in the face finally.
It is because the writing has become bland, and I can see through it. I can see the writers influence, the entire wow world now feels as a "check box for X" instead of feeling like a continuous story that sometimes had some pretty dark elements to it. It had some mature things that made you think on things. The undead chain where Sylvanas resurrects dead humans as forsaken and Garrosh questions her how is she different from the Lich King now. The blight-stricken Paladin questline in Icecrown, The Arthas heart remnant quest chain there too. Also, all the previous expansions had an overarching villain who had a presence to some extent - the Lich King who kept taunting you, Deathwing always burning something. Also, all the abandoned questlines dont help. If you keep the forgotten quest thread in mind, the WoW storyline makes no sense... even moreso than normally.
That's just part of it. I care little about the story, yet there's still a multitude of issues that deprive me of enjoyment.
tranny npcs, inclusive language, deleting /spit - these are all clearly more important, come on
@@CottidaeSEAgo on
@@drtyprior I'll be brief. Cutscenes which just fall flat. They sometimes escalate just to drop the ball entirely and lose any momentum they had. This is largely true for pretty much every single story event that has been going on in the last few expansions.
The story has little to no nuance, regardless of faction and just bland writing overall.
Sorry for not being more detailed, a few minutes before midnight here, so my brain has left the building. One of my major complaints is poor momentum, goes for everything in the entire game, even gameplay.
I think that the order halls being an evergreen system is a great idea. Literally after you complete the tutorial, you should be funneled into your order hall, where you can learn not only lore for your chosen class, but even be taught how to properly play it through a questline as you level up. I think this would do wonders for player retention, as well as make for more skilled players overall, so things like PUGging raids are less torturous for everyone. Final Fantasy XIV already does something similar to this, although they don't have order halls which I think is something that WoW can do to set it apart.
They kind of did this with the class trainers early on. Then the class trainers became meaningless. In elder scrolls they have the guilds you can join and everything attached to that. They could do something similar with the order halls where they stay relevant.
I mean FFXIV definitely does have literal class/job guildhalls. They aren't as thematically strong as the WoW class order halls, but they are absolutely present. FF is one step away from expanding that into what people want WoW to do
I think the game left me behind once the story reached its conclusion in Legion where we met the titans and defeated the burning legion. Pretty sure the story left me after going beyond that.
Yup, Legion was the last xpac where I found myself actually caring about what was happening in the story.
Yeah. These new "threats" we have faced after have felt extremely underwhelming after Sargeras got jailed.
The whole Sylvanas Windrunner fiasco ruined it for me.
The Legion was the final boss of the verse, Sargeras was a representation of death and destruction on It's purest form. The only thing left after that was a hardcore, FFXIV-style reboot of the verse through the Void Lords and their final duel against the Naaru and the Light. Deviating from that (or not having the balls to do such a thing) was their biggest mistake, they cannot make higher stakes after that the same way the MCU cannot move on after Thanos.
That's also how I always imagined the end of WoW would be, the "Avengers: Endgame" moment: Defeating the Legion that has waged war on Azeroth for over 10,000 years. Instead, they crammed it in between an expansion that would've benefited greatly from Legion's features (Warlords, which had a great story with little to do) and one that actually needed these features to stay afloat somehow (BfA, that had a terrible overarching story and way too much to do). Azerite, the Jailor, the Incarnates - none of this was really that interesting since then. Again: I don't need faction war. But something interesting would be nice. Something that hasn't been rehashed or sidelined out of existence.
You really hit the nail on the head here. I miss the stories that were told in old WoW. I miss being excited about the leveling story AND the end game. So much of the world felt lived in. There were small problems, big problem, and all the while characters were being built throughout the stories.
Now all the small problems are gay romance quests.
@@schism2k9 YOU WILL PET THE GAY FROGS AND YOU WILL LIKE IT
I thought about this a lot but to be honest, I really think it's because WoW is just too old... I think we are numb
@@jorgetinoco3574I don't even agree because other MMOs like FFXIV continue to tell great stories like Shadowbringers that even the most jaded WoW player could enjoy. It's an issue with WoW's writing team having no backbone and no character development with their stories.
The reason why I enjoy so much leveling in wotlk is because I am surrounded by the consequences of actions. Wow came out as a collection of consequences of many different actions that happened in warcraft, with a rich, extensive and deep understanding of a fantasy world. Now that doesn't exist. We have pocket fantasies in distant lands. The wetlands are more interesting as a zone than the entire dragonflight stuff. Without proper understanding of the world and the fantasies it holds within, it's empty and meaningless. Small good things create a massive great picture, but now we are looking at just one good thing. It needs diversity in it's storytelling, not as inclusion but as different stuff happening everywhere all at once. Doesn't matter if players choose to follow a small story, that didn't stop the original team from giving lore to feralas. There is a huge world of fantasy waiting to be fantasied about and the writers are being held back or just need to start imagining more.
Remember how we meet this troll in the end of the grizzly hills quest and we follow him in a dungeon only for him to become the boss in Zuldrak? Man, those were some good times.
I think the bit about the evoker is spot on. As a long time wow player, a race of dragon soldiers trained by Neltharion who use a mix of all the dragon magics sounds super cool. But then in game they're big goofy lizards that like to pet puppies, its cute and fun but its not the dragon warrior I was looking for.
I was hoping the burly drakonids would kinda what they would look like haha.
I bounced off evoker so hard cuz yeah, I wanted real drakonids being metal AF. Not these wimpy caster types, which is great for those who want that.
That was quite literally my dream when I was 12. They managed to butcher a guaranteed masterpiece.
How they handled Arthas was it for me. How do you F up one of your main storylines, character from your most popular expansion?
How can they expect us to care about the game more than they do? Do they care about the game when they flush the most badass character in the whole entire franchise down the shit tubes they way they did? No.
What happened with Arthas, I’m very much out the lore loop after Cataclysm
@@avatarroku3173 a bunch of unfuckables at Blizz took him and turned him into a blue fart. The woketards in the company had to destroy him.
@@avatarroku3173Basically Arthas was just a minion/pawn of the Jailor. The Jailor had the Helm of domination and Frostmourn sent to Azeroth then had his minion Malganis trick Arthas into getting those two items. Arthas then becomes the Ling King and builds the Jailor a way to suck the soul out of Azeroth which is what the Soul Forge was. Durning Shadow lands Arthas soul was used to corrupt Anduin or more like mind control him. We free Anduin and broke his sword where Arthas soul was kept. Sylvannas says a few words then the soul fade. Jaina who is literally standing right there doesn't say shit.
@@garrettkiley522 just to put emphasis on what they destroyed, it means that in the prior wc3 and wotlk that ultimately nothing arthas did running up to and after becoming the lich king was actually his decision, so there is no moral weight in anything he did. There is no tragic fall of a great man, it was just mind control from a character that didnt exist and nobody knew existed. It eviscerates the whole story, like, oh, actually arthas isnt responsible for anything he did. It's that hollow and absurd. And by extension what bolvar sacrificed is meaningless.
In classic our character isn't a guest in some remote island, it is his world that he's trying to defend. Now every expansion we are guests, welcomed in some beautiful island to solve the locals' problem. Our character is a hero, yes, but he is mainly a stranger to the place he's invited in.
this is so on point its crazy
@@thomsnvykovski6135 2nded. It's why my whole family stopped playing Retail and play only classic.
In Classic the character is a nobody as far as the NPC's are concerned. And that makes the world feel so much bigger.
@@TrazynnI seriously miss when my character was just a nobody.
And the new systems/mechanics are simply unfun. Paladin in LKclassic is a riot. Paladin in retail is a mindless boring slog of complexity that suffers from the burdon of pointless reworks, just so the dev of the day could have "their vision".
The last time that I was really invested in the story was Suramar. It was a wonderful example of the cohesive story that they are able to tell. It all led up too nighthold and I felt like there was a reason to be there. At this point, I'm skipping cut scenes which sucks. I have no idea what the story is when I have played since vanilla, and that's really sad. You have mentioned it before and I know preach has as well, the feeling of being "the" hero or champion rather that an inhabitant in the world is not a good feeling.
> The last time that I was really invested in the story was Suramar. It was a wonderful example of the cohesive story that they are able to tell. It all led up too nighthold and I felt like there was a reason to be there.
Suramar lore from Legion itself is a slap in the face of some pretty foundational WC lore (read War of the Ancients to know why).
@@tiffles3890 To be fair, Blizzard has always played pretty fast and lose with its lore. Think about. Why the hell was Illidan the bad guy in BC? Why did the blood elves join the horde due to one human being a dick?
Beside, I think Suramar was a retcon people could get behind because the story behind the nightborne was awesome and Suramar City itself was a (Mostly) fun experience.
Compare that to Shadowlands... enough said.
I don't typically comment on videos, however after watching this one Bellular hit it right on the head. Yes the game is fun, yes they've done great things for gameplay and this has been a positive direction.
However, the next step is to get WoW feeling like Warcraft again. After playing classic Hardcore since release it is clear that Retail & Classic are two different games. We all just want WoW to be at its best! I know "best" can mean different things for others, however getting back to the "core" of what we all fell in love with is key.
Great video Bellular.
this video resonated with me, been playing WoW for like 16 years and its original aesthetics, storytelling, and overall world was what originally got me into art. what made me want to be a part of making games. ive talked about it over and over with friends too where it just feels like modern wow doesn’t have the same feeling. it doesnt evoke any feelings, especially in dragonflight its like some races and classes don’t even fit into that expansion. For example, forsaken may have their new heritage quest and it’s great, but then you go to the dragon isles and they don’t seem like they’re a part of the same world. it’s a weird dissonance between old and new content that I really, really hope blizzard can fix.
That's another issue I have with WoW. They keep adding races and then just ignore them. I don't think I've seen a single cinematic with a Vulperra, non-Chromie gnome, non-Genn Worgen, or most allied races. They just forget these races exist and so we end up with settings and storylines that just don't connect with our characters unless we play a few specific races.
@@HumanPerson_final
Thats because they didn't do any new races because of story reasons but just as content for an addon. when a new addon comes around the old stuff is forgotten because there is no plan for those things. they were just there so they can promote their game with a new race. I bet the new races are completely made by the marketing department, while the devs are like: "we should stop adding races and focus on the ones we have."
marketing: "yeah... we see... but foxes are really trendy right now and we need a playable fox race to promote the next expansion."
bobby: "people wanna buy foxes? sell them foxes asap!"
The story has been shit since cata, nobody even cared about deathwing and they fucked up the world. Firelands was good but not good enough. Same with the thunder king raid. Shadowlands was fucking unintelligiible for a normal person, and i didnt bother with this dragon stuff.
Pvp in shadowlands was shit. You cant compete in arenad without addons, fuck that. Same with raiding most groups wont even invite you if you dont have Dbm and weakauras. Fuck that too. People dont want to deal with that shit after a 10 hour day at work.
They can't, that's patently obvious.
This
Too this day im still really mad at blizzard for making Nyalotha a raid and not a Zone were we go and fight the black empire. That bummed me out so hard
Dude I felt the same way! I was hoping it would have been some kind of argus equivilant of a triple zone..but nope. We got a raid and two "old" zones black empired...was such a letdown.
Yeah while nyalotha is probably my favorite wow raid of all time bc the atmosphere and art was completely on point, i was so damn said that was all we got about the black empire.
That was the theme i waited for a decade for and then we kinda oneshotted nzoth in one patch, wtf.
Foolish mortal. This was only a vision that our master created. We all serve N'Zoth, only he can save us, from what is to come!
Thank you for being a voice to so many... this is exactly it. I've been playing since 2009 and it's an entirely different game.
It's... squishy.
I do not feel bad ass while being a therapist version of my character and listening to every npc in the expansion vent out their feelings about random things that aren't engaging. :S
What actually are the relevance of these almighty and amazing, yet entirely irrelevant, oath stones? lol!
I think the classic scene has shown that more than anything, leveling is a big part of the game. As a casual player, the leveling experience is actually the most exiting.
Another problem is that end game now is made so everything you do is irrelevant in the next patch. Nothing you see is a relevant either. Next patch we get a new zone with new stuff etc. In the earlier years, you would see the black temple or ice crown and know at some point were going there, but we need more power before that. So when the raid or zone eventually opened it was actually ha huge thing, where we had hyped ourselves up.
I think Blizzard messed up by using player goodwill and fandom as a currency to get away with anti-consumer design. No matter how good the content is now, it's impossible for me to feel like my investment into the game will be reciprocated in the long run.
Every expansion is a minimally viable product and caring about the lore feels as meaningful as caring about the lore of a Dyson vacuum. The lore is just a product.
It's not good now
It didn't help that Zoval invalidated the Lich King and that meme popped up about each Warcraft Boss being the new big bad behind the previous big bad like a Russian nested doll.
I can't trust Blizzard, they are just untrustworthy as a company. I worry every time they even want to do something nice like update a model. Since model updates have been a coin flip between a actual update and just slapping name on a model that vaguely is same thing.
@@wormwood8071 Well, I wouldn't know, I haven't played in a while, just saying even if it was good it wouldn't matter for me.
I tried logging in recently and my motivation to play went negative as soon as I got into the game lol
@@Mark-nh7zg sorry didn't mean to be a prick.. just there is the common bs flying about that the game is in a good place gameplay wise and that the continued failure to retain players is due to some sort of lack of trust.. the truth is the game is just bad, I'd go as far as to say dragon flight is the worst exp yet.. it truly is dire, RUclipsrs and streamers have once again drunk the blizzard cool aid and refuse to call them out. It's pathetic tbh..
The story and the “World” of Warcraft had it’s heart removed like the hole in zovaals chest.
I could take Dragonflight’s more cozy tone if I had enough investment in the world or any of its characters, but right now it’s basically just watching a support group you walked into by accident.
I need to see it recover before any systems changes will matter to me.
You managed to put into words exactly how I feel as well.
The story and whole vibe is just weak, and I would say that it is because people at blizzard see masculinity as a toxic thing that must be purged so we won't get anyone cool like Grommash, Varian, Garrosh or Arthas again. The only good character in DF is Baine Bloodhoof with very little screentime.
@Daniel92CZ you mean the dude that sat on the cold floor the entire last expansion?
Damn! That's a really good way to put it.
@@impulsikk3815 I was talking about his questline in dragonflight. Old Hatreds quest with 10.0.7 patch.
Shadowlands was the breaking point for me and the lore and the lore has kept me on board for a very long time. I just don't care at all and moved on to new and more interesting games.
For me the breaking point was in WoD, it was just so dumb. I didn't play Legion til late because I was so apathetic about wow, and although Legion restored my faith a bit when I did play it, BfA crushed it again. By the time Shadowlands came around I no longer expected anything, and even if it had been good I would've thought of it as a Legion-esque fluke.
I remember how cool it was back in vanilla seeing a Tauren and how big they looked compared to all the other races. I was expecting the Dracthyr to have the same feeling...
As someone who left during early Shadowlands and hasnt come back, I think you hit the nail on the head. I remember watching every cinematic multiple times, I think I watched the DF one twice. Dracthyr look like they are from another IP. There was nothing hype to bring me back. Even the story, from what little I've seen and heard, feels like a side adventure, which isn't necessarily a bad thing I guess but it doesn't create that itch that brought me back year after year. A big epic Metzen style cinematic might get me back, we'll see.
This take is so underrated.
It's too late. Too many people on today's team oppose Metzen-like ideas. Even he might be forced to conform to 🌈. Watch me get proven right
Since Legion, the feeling I have is emptiness. Your video really resonated with me. I’m still playing at a high and achieving CE some tiers, but that excitement and energy I once had has dwindled away. Love your content. I’ve been following you since WoD.
💯
The world feels very...small, now. The cosmos was supposed to open up with all this void stuff and the intergalactic disco war Taliesin likes to go on about. But pinning everything down into the skittles of reality, making the dragons feel like a bunch of normal people with wings instead of timeless, impossibly different creatures who have different perspectives and needs and priorities than playerkind, everything just feels like you say: empty. I love Warcraft. I want to enjoy it. And I'm thrilled they're trying to do a properly fast and meaty content cadence. But whatever they're doing right now just isn't it.
Maybe u grew out of it
If people had grown out of it classic would not be so popular.
@@mogalixir give it a few weeks. Classic will die again
The thought of logging into WoW exhausts me, and I'm currently unemployed with loads of free time. There is just no desire to play. I think you really hit the nail on the head here.
My main problem is that the older content is not well integrated or supported. I'm only up to WoD and whatever expansion has the broken Isles, and it's very hard to get through it with it constantly trying to get you to skip everything. I'd like to actually experience the story, but Blizzard seems dead set against that happening.
I agree here, the problem is that they never went for a horizontal progression, because they seem to think that it would be a waste to make new content if all people don't play it.
IMO they should scale older raids, dungeons and max level zones to the current tier and allow players to play almost all expansions as current content.
The "experience eliminator" NPCs in Stormwind/Orgrimmar help a little bit.
Just recently I've been leveling through old world zones like TBC and WOTLK, and I can tell you that something about the quests not being "Tell" stories, but more implicated, makes the setting feel so much more immersive. I love how when you head into Outland, they didn't instantly say "Illidan is the big bad and we must go stop him now", but rather "help us forgotten soldiers regain our foothold on this world, but also there are demons".
Also I'm quite confused why the lore decided to head towards a PG mindset? Most players are full grown adults, and even with teenage minorities (me included), we'd still prefer a more mature story/setting (eg. culling of stratholme, defias brotherhood, warbringers, harbingers, lords of war series, etc). Because there are games wayyyy more gruesome than WoW that kids/teens play, so I don't see the reason why the devs decided to tone down WoW's violence.
Sorry for ranting, I love this game sm :)
Stonetalon Mountains revamp probably the best overhaul of a zone I have seen in 20 years. It was head and shoulders better than any of the other stuff they did. If you havent done it in a while I would say give it a crack.
I think Shadowlands was more of a breaking point for people than originally thought to where even when Blizzard does something good with the game the same question always pops up in people’s mind which is: “can we trust them?” At least in the sense of not doing something to f*€k it up because shadowlands set that precedent of just how much Blizzard in its current form can screw up and that’s not even getting into the fact that I think WoW has just fundamentally lost its magic in the ability to capture that feeling you get from exploring the world itself
This dude. Dragonflight is flawed but enjoyable enough. However, it’s paying for Shadowlands’ sins (and probably BFAs). Big Time.
Shadowlands have nothing to do with it. DF had over 60% player dropoff. So how exactly is SL fault if people quituing DF? They play game and quit.
@@jakubpelikan2393I meant it more so in regards to the apathy angle and how even to people who are enjoying Dragonflight there is still that lingering feeling of distrust in Blizzard’s ability not to repeat the mistakes of the past as it were
I quit DF because the rep grind was too much to get the story, so I just couldn’t engage
I think a big problem is that each expansion just creates another bubble that doesn't incorporate the old world then they move on to the next bubble leaving the previous expansion to feel like it's stuck in a frozen limbo. In fact that's how you could describe the world. Bubbles frozen in limbo, go anywhere not the current expansion and it looks like time has froze. Wow didn't really have this problem till cataclysm
As soon as they removed flint and tinder as a req for creating campfires it was the beginning of the end for what made Warcraft unique.
Funny how this is literally how I'm feeling about WoW atm. The game feels meh, I don't have a lot of time to play but even then I login and I feel instantly bored and have to do 1000 quests to catch up because if I don't, I won't understand what's going on so I just ALTF4 instantly. Just cancelled my sub a few days ago, it made me sad but deep down I knew that I didn't want to play it anymore. Sad, I will miss WoW
I did the same in Cata.
WoW started off with more cartoonish/stylised graphics so that it would be more accessible to more PCs. At the the same time, it kept the darker, rugged, masculine tone of Warcraft.
Modern WoW has now fully embraced the art style while leaning into it and making it soft and a Friendship is Magic type fantasy. It's too wishy-washy, where everything is about emotions instead of having emotional moments, such as the sacrifice of Grom Hellscream.
Yeah fr, WoW feels way too Disney atm.
Its gone Woke is what you are trying to say.
the graphics/art style were not so it could run on anything, because it definitely didnt back in the day.
Yeah I've always said this since TBC launched. It's mainly been kinda "happy" in general. Some parts have been darker such as parts of Legion, Wrath or Draenor. But in general the dark old WC3 vibes are gone sadly.
Not sure about this because in shadowlands it was dark with creepy creatures in 3/5 zones. But then again people hated the story so maybe u need both.
It’s a game that’s pretty impossible to play without reading guides, addons, 15+ button rotations, time gating and affixes that punish you for playing the game. It’s absolutely the opposite of inviting for new people to play 💀
This.
That's exactly how I feel about the game. Old wow had some threats here and there while leveling and becoming stronger. There were some nasty gnolls, the scarlet crusade or some evil centaurs who were plotting something and posed a threat to someone somewhere and they needed to be stopped. And once you get big enough, you'll be able to face some of the really big guys like the Old Gods, Illidan or Arthas. It just felt more comprehensible overall. And also so damn rewarding to have brought yourself to that point after hundreds of hours. Now, you quickly plough through some placeholder leveling content to face the biggest threat to the world ever imaginable, once more. It feels silly. And all the cool content they've added and the great graphics can't cover that
all high fantasy tends to trend that way, even lord of the rings, look at where it went from the hobbit, to LOTR, then to the similarian, which is extremely obvious that blizzard draws heavily from. Where all the gods of valar and the big dark lord melkor that sauron serves.
warhammer 40k is probably one of the biggest examples as well, it's been a decade and a half since we dealt with arthas, so I don't see how the story creep is anything particularly egregious.
@@ExarchGamingYou dont need to make the enemies stronger, who actually wants this???? I never heard anyone complained about the bad guys being too weak. Blizzard wrote them there themselfes.
You hit the nail on the head with the comment that some on the WoW team are frustrated because they want to keep telling their version of the WoW story (ie: Draognflight's narrative/type of narrative). When did designing a MMO or a story in a MMO go towards making the development team happy vs making the player-base happy?
Shadowlands felt like a huge case of jumping the shark to me.
From the very moment Sylvannas completely wrecked Bolvar in the cinematic and for some reason destroying the Helm of Domination cracked open the sky and opened a way to another dimension etc....
Right there and then I knew I hated the direction the story was taking.
And that came off the back of BFA which was one huge Sylvannas fan-fiction highjack.
I miss when the Helm of Domination was just a possessed item containing the spirit of an evil lich.
I miss when the big enemy was The Legion.
Too many sharks were jumped, and it was done with very low quality storytelling. The lore now feels like it was written by a teenager who is dreaming of becoming an author one day.
I don't think there was anything wrong with that cinematic. You got the feeling that Bolvar as the Lich King had much more raw power than Sylvanas but that doesn't me she can't outsmart him. Somebody "more fit to wear the crown" could've read her intentions but Bolvar couldn't. I never understood the community reaction to it.
So true
@@timestimesx7535 you dont understand why the community was upset that they retconned essentially the entire arthas story and made bolvars sacrifice meaningless, one of the most loved storylines and characters in the whole warcraft universe? Instead of arthas being a story of a tragic downfall of a once great man trying to save his people but becoming corrupted by the allure of power and a possessed artifact/weapon, becoming the very thing he hates it was....jk just mind control from a character that never existed from the death dimension and actually he's been pulling the strings this whole time all over azeroth. You dont get that? You dont get that it implies arthas never had a moral failing or a fall? That bolvar sacrificed for nothing?
If you consider the fact that WoW has been around so long at this point that people who started playing as teenagers are on the staff now, it kinda makes sense.
@@timestimesx7535 Respectfully, there was no outsmarting to be seen in that fight. Sylvanas completely overpowered Bolvar without breaking a sweat. Unless by "outsmart" you mean using magic chains to tie him down, an ability she has never shown before, which still boils down to completely overpowering him. She literally stops his hammer mid-swing, with a wave of her hand.
Her intentions were unreadable to everyone except the writers, because she kept everything to herself the entire time and there was basically zero foundation laid for her actions or Shadowlands in general.
“Why is Nozdormu so moisturized?” at 29:30 sums up the issue in one of the greatest questions to ever exist 🤣
Wow, just wow. I feel like you have legit 1000% read my mind and then made a very well worded and articulate video essay to explain it all. I have never seen a video ever on RUclips where I have basically agreed with pretty much every single word spoken. It's crazy. I'm so glad you made this video and I wish for the best for this game. I was always the angry and obnoxious friend in my circle who was bitching about WoW and what's become of Blizzard. Now, I don't care anymore, and they really did loose me. My brother actually linked me your video and told me I needed to watch it and boy was he right. I think it's too late for them to get me back, especially after how much the companies' principles have changed, but I truly hope for the best for WoW and all of my friends, and the fans, who still do play.
Sad to see that wow has reached a point where I can unironically say that Chris Metzen's era of Thrall running around as green jesus was more engaging than current wow
I definitely understand the whole Chromie thing. For a game that's supposed to be about blood and thunder and epic battles, Chromie does not fit in as a narrative driven character. She just doesn't fit the mold. "Oh boy, the whole world is burning down around us, but let me crack a joke because I'm so small and funny and cute!" Chromie would serve much better if she returned to just being a character that periodically shows up for dragon related story moments.
@@Ankhtoweit*
@@philipje1 Pfft, again with the pronouns.... I'd argue that's part of the problem with the current game. Too much pandering to a very small minority, to the point the other 90% or more of your audience is left wondering - "why the fuck should I care about this?"
I think she should get brutally murdered by a bear. Why not? That would be a good start to end the pussification. Make the game cool again.
OMG PRONOUNS! THEY SCARE ME!
@@philipje1 they/them
I recently decided to try Classic HC, and it's that slower, more methodical pace you take that makes it fun. The retail version keeps getting faster and faster gameplay wise and I realised I can't enjoy what I'm doing in the moment, only the rewards / results after the fact. While I understand that the game kind of had to go this route to be more difficult, it's slowly ruined the ability to just take in what is happening on my screen WHILE I'm doing it.
classic is for leveling nothing else. pretty much everything else is 100 times better in retail. the 1-60 journey in classic is cozy and good and always will be, but once you hit 60 i just want to uninstall or make a new char lol. the end game and class design is horsecrap in 60
Yes! This! It moves too fast! Before I could even finish getting all the keys to finish all the crap on the forbidden reach, (because hey you have to wait for frickin weeks to access each area) Zaralek Caverns was open and I didn’t have time to do all the things.
@@wm1573 Ok, dont care, fuck retail, fuck the blizzard of today.
For sure, less is often more. I don't want to play the action bar instead of the game. Especially for certain classes/specs, it's just not fun inducing RSI for decent DPS.
Its faster cuz its pointless and dumb to level for 1-2 entire months for all the majority which are casuals, yea the game has aged for too long, casuals rather skip the stories and go straight into arenas rbgs, mythic or just the max level content.. like i wouldnt even be surprised if Blizz gets rid of leveling at this point lmao
No other mmo or wow expansion will replicate what leveling 1-60 felt like in 2005, hardcore is the closest thing but with a wowhead and addons in its infancy id say it was way harder back then, hardcore is all about patience.
Today none of that matters for retail players, the surprise factor is Gone from vanilla 2005, leveling speed as if it was 2005 in 2023 is retarded tbh lol
I found especially with DF, i wasnt a 'HERO' anymore, i was the hero's errand boy. It was just fetch quests then listen to people talk to each other, to a point where a lot of those conversation scenes your character isnt even spoke too. i found myself saying "why am i here" like every time
The issue is that Shadow Lands totally screwed the IP, story, history, lore, etc and people didn't like it. Not to mention it was just awful with systems.
Whilst Dragon Flight may be retaining players well, it's not bringing back in those that left - simply because they don't trust Blizz and they're still annoyed at them.
I feel this. Dragon Flight gave me everything I've wanted in WoW I just don't want to play as avidly as I used to.
thats becasue your oppinion on mmorpg designnn is poison to it. Hint: the game isnt about what you want from it. Its about what it demands of you. Currently its a casual shitfest that you can lay about do nothing and still get all the gear and experience in an afternoon to play the latest patch. So - since it takes nothing to acomplish stuff in the game - people quit.
@@86CorvusI’ve been saying this for years. Stop giving people everything they want in an MMO. There are regular games for that.
@@86CorvusI mean OG WOW is the grindiest thing but people still want it. If people are happy getting what they wanted then why is Classic still such a big hit lmao
"Why is Nozdormu so moisturized?" really got me. 😂 But very well-said in this video.
I used to love the game because of the story, because of the Lore. You hit the nail on the head with every Lore related criticism in this one. Especially the stuff realting to that damned cosmology chart. The world feels small, all the past events seem meaningless, nothing of interest is happening.
I sometimes go back and try to see if something has changed, but the wounds are too deep, and I frankly do not have the strength to care anymore. The passion that I had has been snuffed out by sheer incompetence.
I have beeb playing some of Dragonflight, but all I have been doing is weekly farming old raids out of habbit, or doing the Trading Post stuff monthly. But even that has no longer been able to keep me interested even on the AFK level. I found it really difficult to force myself to even do the main questlines, because at no point anything of interest happened. At some point I stopped reading quest logs and soon I ceased to do them altogether. Even watching the pre-rendered cinematics on WoWhead felt like a chore.
I think that trading post has been miraculous in terms of subscriber retenstion, and is the reason why Dragonflight can boost that claim. Since one month I payed for all I did was finish the Post, got my rewards and logged of for another month.
I feel like a long-running problem with WoW's ability to tell its story is that they want to make the player feel integrated into the story without actually integrating them. There's no agency, not even a hint of it really; from an analytical standpoint I can say FFXIV focuses so heavily on cutscenes that at times there's a risk of boring the audience, but what keeps those potentially interesting is the player being given...not just presence in those cutscenes, not just a starring role - but the opportunity to *interact* with the other characters in them, to provide feedback, insight, witticism here or there. It's not much, no; when a character turns to you and asks for your thoughts and you get to press one of three buttons and the story continues the same either way, there's only so much I can claim is being done to make the player feel present. But when a cutscene happens in WoW, you're lucky to see your character in it *at all,* and all the dialogue is exclusively between other people. Despite how important you _surely_ must be to Warcraft lore by this time, you're always in the background; it's never your story.
Bluntly, it's hard to feel anything but apathy - hard to feel like anything you're doing matters - when nothing in WoW reinforces that sentiment. When something important is happening, you get shot after shot of the characters that are important, you get dialogue between them ad infinitum about how what they're doing is important, and maybe if you're lucky your character's shoulder is off at the left edge of the screen somewhere.
They can’t pretend Shadowlands didn’t happen. They RUINED precious lore. In my opinion, they need to come out and say Shadowlands was a non-canon expansion for me to give them any ounce of respect after obliterating Arthas and Garrosh’s souls. I mean seriously, how f’ing sadistic do you have to be to write that!? The idea that their souls are just gone forever really makes me uneasy af and lose all respect for this game. I don’t care what the future brings, they need to fix the damage they did with Shadowlands or else the game will continue to suffer.
I adored patch 9.0. I really felt excited about being NF. Then 9.1 broke me and I’ve not been engaged since. But TBH, I didn’t like the dragon theme when announced, and liked it less after playing
Its happening w/ so many IPs, movies & games. New writers going into established IPs with this absurd idea that "I can do it better" and not respecting the source material in the slightest. I feel like its ego
It also lowered the stakes for pretty much everything. Who cares if X character dies, when I can just pop over to Bastion or whatever and they're chilling out having a beer?
obliterating Arthas and Garrosh’s souls - that was the stupidest thing i have seen in wow.
Shadowlands should have been the most epic expansion in wow history with all the characters in wow lore dead and alive... the last hurrah of the amazing lore of the past... il never understand why they chose to make it so pathetic.
I honestly, truly do not think this is the best course of action. It's beyond the pale for Blizzard. They won't do it, realistically. Shadowlands must be built away towards. The lore may exist independently of how it's been changed. IMO, the only way to resolve their past mistakes is to do it better. Take what they fucked up in Shadowlands, make it better--make it sensible, make it *resolve* itself. Right now, it's their elephant. They cannot take back what they did. But what they can do, and what they've continued to do, is write better stories with the mistakes they've established, or write them differently, or write them under a new light. Because I agree with you. The world does feel hollowed out by Shadowlands. It feels trampled. But simply "taking back" what they've done to WoW doesn't remedy the bigger problem. They've got to grow new flowers on the earth they've trampled.
This is spot on, particularly the last third. The whole vibe of the game has changed which is part of why i think nostalgia for classic is so much more potent. I stopped playing in 9.1 also but i still think WoW "feels" like one of the best MMOs to play but even aside from issues with systems its tone has completely changed. Also the story was in a weird spot where it was good enough to get me interested to the point where i was really disappointed by all of the mis-steps. I could have been converted from the classic era story telling to the higher level plots they were trying to tell but for me some of Bellular's lore speculation videos only served to highlight how disappointing what we actually got was.
I mean look at Classic Hardcore, the server is full and every zone has people leveling - the social aspect returned as people are actively grouping up for quests.
i grew up with wc3 and can pinpoint the exact moment my investment into the setting got severed, it was the ending of bfa
all the speculations and build up to nzoth, just to end like this, was a massive wake up call to their incompetence
played shadowlands, cleared nathria and quit because i just didnt care about whats happening anymore
you are so right about all these class and system changes being irrelevant to people who stopped caring
ill consider trying it again when they pull a realm reborn, im done otherwise
I actually cried when Ysera died. I was gasping when Illidan fought back against the light. I am my scars!!!! Those were scenes that made you care.
I think Taliesin is correct when he said the company is on good boy mode after the misconduct issues. It feels like they're afraid of doing any big war moments or darker topics due to potential backlash, so all we get is "wholesome" stuff that just feels empty. All the cool heavy metal beats are gone along with the universal heroics, it's just plain nice everyone is well meaning gruel.
Ff14 endwalker is so dark compared to wow nowadays and that's an expansion about getting past nihility, depression, loneliness, and to start to hope for better again
Basically this. They're afraid of offending anyone, and in tiptoeing around, they fail to do actual good storytelling. The fact that the world is a grim, dark, depressing awful place is what makes it so sweet to finally smash out a victory. When everything is rainbows and puppies, that victory just seems... hollow. Meaningless. Who cares? Yes, Dragonflight is pretty, yes, I have things to do, but... but I don't *care*. I've been trying since DF launch to figure out my problem, and there it is. I. Don't. Care. Everything is too goddamn sanitary.
Nah - I think the fluffy tone of the game is just the developers making what they want. Its been this way since years before the misconduct scandal. The "war" and grittiness hasn't been there since Metzen left. I think him coming back is going to do a LOT more for the game than people realize. Who knows though, maybe I'm just coping..
Sounds like BS to me, heavy metal heavy bands and big war moments have nothing to do with what blizz got backlash for.... They had sexual harassment issues, discrimination issues, things like that.
@@tastyenchiladaI would have enjoyed shadowlands if Zovall did not have the personality of a tree stump. Wait thats a insult to trees. Those are actually alive.
I'm a casual player and to be honest there is so much going on with the game I'm completely overwhelmed. I can't get anything finished before everyone has moved on to the next patch and that is very frustrating. I'm now playing Classic HC because it's the WoW I remember. The thrill, the danger, the excitement. And I can understand how professions work, and I can follow the story... I also think forcing Dragon Riding on people was a poor choice. It completely ruined the expansion for me. I'm an older player and don't have the reaction time to make the most of it. So I'll stick to Classic and running everywhere til I get to level 40...
They put in so much stuff on an old gameplay system in order as time sinks rather than fun Role Playing experiences. They should rethink their business model, their game engine, their gameplay mechanics, their lore, an most importantly rethink why they're making WoW (aside from revenue). This is nearly the same problem that the Diablo team has.
The dev team should decouple from the corporate bigwigs and spend time just regrouping and make the hard decisions.
So much this, totally agree.
yeah, its hard to do anything in forbidden reach or zaralek caverns because they're mostly empty zones now lol. You can always try to find people on group finder but slim chance anyone is even doing that content now
You're not even 40 and complaining about the forced aspects of dragon riding which are beyond easy... I agree with everything else you said, but dragon riding is one of the best things blizz added and the races that are forced are ridiculously easy. Assuming you were born in 87, you're only 10 years older than me. I really hope I don't let myself go so much that something as trivial as an easy dragon race is impossible due to my dilapidated response time.
Looks like you replied to me, while I dont have an issue with the dragon riding I agree with everything else.@@OGboi
The problem with the game ATM is that it lacks in depth meaningful cinematics specially for the type of game (MMO RPG), the lore feels meh, generic. They basically killed all the brutal lore, the blood, "the antihero" vibes, the mystical vibe, to give us furries, agendas , etc( no offense to anybody), however they have been doing that for the past years, WOW has been slowly becoming less and less interesting for a lot of people. When they announced the dracthyr race they had multiple options to give us something epic and unique, they could've given us a buffed dracthyr , like the guards on the main city, they could've given us humanoids that turn and fight like real dragons, (deathwing, chromie like in HOTS) to my taste they just released one more furrie race that looks more like a lizard than a dragon IMO.
It's sad to see that even the people that play the game on a regular basis, doing casual raiding or even spamming M+ don't get rewarded fairly. The rewards are super bad designed, an example are the portals that you can achieve after timing a m+ 20 who wants that? ( so after obtaining them we can then leave the game?) What's the logic behind that? Wouldn't it be better to lower the CD of that reward lets say 2h CD, attainable after timing level 10* for each key (account wide), a title at level 15 and the mount at 20?, maybe even a weapon and transmog cosmetic set for each class that changes every season at 25+ Idk these are just a few ideas. No wonder why the game feels like shit ATM, and don't make me start with the balance of the game, the state of healers and even PVP
I think Warcraft as a fantasy world really overdid it with making every fan theory cannon. The speculation and mystery was super fun and they basically just took everything they saw people were interested In and threw it on the table without giving it the time it needed to be revealed properly
You know what i miss most about old wow?
The adventure, meaningful journey & snappy combat.
snappy combat 💀
Combat was shit, but the rest I agree.
Understandable combat for sure.
@@markojovanovic9651wow has never has snappy combat
snappy combat? u mean "i stand still for literally 5minutes per enemy so i hit him with my staff or axe" this shit is boring as hell. Retail WoW has literally the best feeling combat in ANY mmo
You're spot on with how everything has been feeling. Along with needing to return to Azeroth. Continue old stories, old lore, old characters, old zones. It's sad when the best part of Shadowlands and DF for me, was going back into the old world. (Calia / Tirisfal story. Unlokcing old Scholomance, etc)
Simple solution: get rid of the 'creatives' who greenlighted the Sylvannas main story arc that we had to put up with over two expansions. What we are seeing is the residual effects of these same writers in Dragonflight.
The most excited I've been this whole expansion was the return to Argus to unlock red Eredar...lol
@BellularGaming The problem is that the dev team has a core fundamental issue. There are content developers and content programmers. You have a team coming up with ideas, and those delivering it, and the team, does not see this as a passion project anymore. They treat it as a job. They come in, punch their clock, and code what they need for the day based on what the content set forth, but it is programmed and developed with no love for the project. It is just a job at this point.
For me, I get tired of dailies real quick. I don't want to do daily chores in my video game. So whenever I hit that level where all I have left is doing dailies while I wait for the story to continue I quickly lose interest in playing. I want to progress through the plot... If they don't want to do that then the need to give me a piece of virtual land that I can just build a house on or something. I'll do dailies if they get me things I need to build a cool thing. That's just a side note though. I just don't find dailies appealing and I don't have people to raid with, so that's that.
I think a lot of people lost their last playing friends in Shadowlands and while DF is good, it's boring if you don't have anyone to play with. It's very hard to re-socialize with strangers after you've played the game with same people for so long.
This is one of my biggest problems. I'm very introverted and it takes a lot for me to jump on Discord with new people. I had a great guild during Legion, and miss them terribly.
DF is Good?
THIS!!
Yeah. I tried to find a guild in Shadowlands after my guild broke up post-Nathria and I didn't even know where to start.
Not having a realm (with a discord etc) really hurts that - I don't have anywhere I can go and just advertise myself, or maybe I do but it isn't signposted at all. Trade is just people selling boosts.
Simply drifted away from the game.
i feel like we're all waiting for something great that isn't here yet, so doing content about live stuff is kind of boring. the future of wow video was the kind of stuff that gets me really hyped. thanks bellular
This is exactly what ive been feeling but I didn't know how to describe it Holy shit goosebumps
The best way I could summarize it is that the war has been taken out of Warcraft
For me is the lack of progression, and not having the option to take a break, I want to play classic, on my won speed, experiance everything, collect all the stuff I want, and then when move on to TBC and so on when I am ready. But I cant do this, cuz blizz likes to use fomo. There are a lot of people who like to play their favorite expansions. Blizz had the opartunity to fix it with classic release, and make dedicated servers for each expansion.
All I hear from my friends that still play is how hard it is to get groups for content, and when you get a group everyone's on edge and toxic, and it's STILL a grindfest to get anything done. Sad to see really, I remember a time when they would talk so positively about WOW, I felt like I was missing out for never getting into it...
I just have to keep commenting, but it's just that this video really started a thinking process. You know what the last thing after Legion was that really excited me? Saurfang and his story. That was EPIC. Truly the best work they've ever put into cinematics. A fantastic tale of one of WarCraft's oldest and most respected characters, who went out of his way to save the Horde. When all the spectators of the duel before begin to clank their weapons in unison to honour the fallen warrior, I got teary-eyed. The last time WoW ever moved me.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What has happened to the Horde? OH, "We" are ALL happy & are NOT at WAR with the Alliance! Everything has become a BIG sand box with a Bunch of friends. Where did the "WAR" GO?????????
That's the thing, I think, at least with Saurfang. He's one of our original OGs and all, but at a deeper level; I think we all came to the realization that they were running out of cards to play from their deck when it comes to original characters. Saurfang in a big way, especially for the Horde, was one of the few last ones we had; and he was stupid-epic, too. And that's why it hurt so much. Even though he knew he was going to die. Even though he knew he was doing this for the Horde, he was doing this for the Alliance; he knew he was going to die. And he was fine with it. He's an old soldier, after all, and his spirit broke a little bit when Dranosh was killed at the Wrathgate to be resurrected as a Death Knight.
But that's the thing, you know? He was a sacrificial piece on the board because the old lore and old stories from WC3 - most of them have been dredged up and used as much as they could. (Yes, I'm aware Saurfang was never a WC3 character.) Now, however, most of our old guard/old warcraft characters are dead, in purgatory, lost their teeth, flip-flop on alliances. And because our old characters have been basically used up; what's left are new characters and new stories that simply don't resonate like they used to. Whether it's the times, or perhaps writing styles, the new characters being manufactured simply don't live up to the love we had for the old characters. And I think that's a big reason why Blizzard/WoW is where it's at. I don't mean to be insulting, but the writing quality isn't as good as before. So we're just left watching the characters we love die on an alter for the future, but the writing-chops just aren't there.
Before it was simple stories told in a narrative direction, and somewhat personal. Small stories that eventually coagulated into a much bigger plot line behind everything (and we never actually confronted that until expansions later). I really, truly, don't want to be mean or cruel. But old Warcraft was about spirit, narrative journey, and personal story. That's why we all have connections with Arthas, Sylvannas, Jaina, Grom, Illidan, Kael, Thrall, that sweet little Forsaken we help make mitts for. The little ghost we save in the Plaguelands from the darkness. Personal stories that make us resonate as humans with another character - written or otherwise.
It's a different board telling a bit of a different story, and where I apologized before, I do mean it. But I think maybe the lesson is a little missed on what we actually loved about Warcraft, as Bellular stated so well.
I stopped caring for Blizzard when they screwed over the night elves and ridiculed night elf players for caring over and over. I stuck with them from 2006 through Shadowlands. But there was just no light at the end of the tunnel and there still isn't.
They "couldn't kill Sylvanas because it would upset their fans too much". But they could genocide an entire player race without batting an eye. There was no pay-off for the nelf players, the genociders never got their comeuppance, quite the contrary, they were rewarded. Apart from my personal preference for night elves,
it is a horrible lesson that Blizzard teaches young people in their formative years. Morally not acceptable. If I had children, I would not let them play Blizzard games.
This pretty much sums up how my spouse and I feel about WoW. We are a part of the huge "checked out at 9.1" crew, came back for 10.0, but 10.0 couldn't hold us after we got AOTC/KSM. There just...wasn't anything big or interesting to do that held our attention, and nothing has seemed interesting or motivating enough for us to come back. We don't think Dragonflight is *bad* per se, just...not anything special. We've kept up with our guildies and it seems to be the consensus there too.
I've said this before but, there's nothing for me to invest in WoW with. Shadowlands told me I shouldn't invest in the characters or story because I wont get a satisfying story from them. BFA told me I should invest in the gearing or endgame because it's going to be just Mythic+. I don't feel attached to my character anymore because I'm encouraged to have alts after alts. The social aspect of the game isn't there for me because... frankly put, the WoW player base is not the greatest. I've just found what I wanted in an other game. It's that simple.
WoW was an adventure where you had to explore and experience all the different ambiance. Since Cata I don't have that feeling anymore. That player you saw walking in the big cities with an awesome mount or a piece of gear, which made you to want to do stuff in the game. Yes, Shadowlands lore destroyed my experience with the Lich King.
It seems an unpopular opinion but transmogs completely ruined that part of the game, forever. You dont know what you're looking at anymore. They need to completely remove that system from the game. I cant recall a notable piece of gear post wotlk by name or sight. Its like somehow they removed the carrot on a a stick by obfuscating what good gear is while streamlining stat allocation and culling stats so that everything in the game is bland and same-y, and the only thing that matters is ilvl of the piece--but even that only matters for a very short amount of time before its irrelevant and better gear can be gotten through some easier than shit catchup welfare mechanic.
O yes for sure! transmog has its benefits but yes it has a lot of negative effects as well@@samwise1790
yeah you're definitely the extreme minority lol. at least everyone can be creative and look different. everyone would look the same if it was not for transmog. not to mention i swear there would be tens of thousands people quitting if they removed transmog@@samwise1790
@@samwise1790Yup transmogs and tons of epic(and later on legendary) items dimished the game for me a lot too.
Thanks for talking about this. The most fun I've had with wow in the recent years was when I could play some classic. As good as the quality of life changes feel in the retail version, it very often does not feel like wow, running around in otherwise visually amazing places, wondering what the heck I'm actually doing there. Part of the truth is also that over the years I have become a very casual player, I have a busy job and not a lot of time for competitive games, M+ and stuff like that is not for people like me. I hardly have time/willpower to even look up raid tactics anymore, I can't remember the last time I've done a raid that wasn't LFR. At the same time, for the little time I have for gaming, I find the pricing model just not worth it, especially coming from a country with a particularly weak currency and no regional pricing. What I'm saying is that it's a complex bag of reasons why some people (like me) have been gradually falling out of the loop over the years and I'm not sure this game is for me anymore. I appreciate you making this video and speaking about this so openly, even though I'm not playing much anymore, I still follow your content because I like what you guys do.
I think your analysis of them losing the cool factor is spot on for the narrative. Gameplaywise I love some of the stuff they have done in dragonflight, but its just a bit boring all of it. In legion I liked the nightborne stuff of building the base and the tree, unlocking more and more of it through questing in the world. Stuff like that is what I am missing, something in the world that I can progress on over weeks.
This sounds similar to the conversations I had last week (one with two students and the other with my daughter) about DND. Everyone has become so focused on the new edgy grey characters but those campaigns have no heart and generally don’t make it past level 7 because there is no heart. Ultimately, the stories that last are the good vs evil, epic standoffs, etc.
We all want to be with Henry V during the St Crispin’s Day speech, not sitting back in England having a group therapy session.
Exactly! As Samwise Gamgee says "Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why." We want the Henry V stories, we want Maximus. We don't want several stories full of Achilles feeling sorry for himself. Those are good every now and then as a bit of flavour on the side, but they don't sustain a plot.
@@schroecat1 or standing with the President for the “4th of July” speech in the original ID4, or standing with Wallace, being a member of the “Band of Brothers”…
You hit the nail on the head with this one! I had stopped watching your videos, not because I don’t like you, but the lore and models of the game just started to get too much for me and I haven’t been able to get sucked into any storylines told in retail. I’ve been having fun with classic HC. It’s sad that a new race/class comes out and I’m not only embarrassed to play one but uninterested in their background. Great work Bellular! Look forward to more exciting news
Me personally I've spoken to a fair amount of people who miss the withered scenario from Legion, but the deaths of chromie was also something I enjoyed. Also enjoyed the secrets of azeroth event recently but a lot of what happened was in quest/item text and while it was a small side project that a few devs worked on (hopefully any future secret events have an actual team on them)
The perfect tone for retail wow is the tone that legion went with. They need to emulate that kind of feel. I hope Chris can do it with the new expansion.
I've noticed that usually I always felt goosebumps during expansion reveal trailers or any ingame cinematics really, but ever since shadowlands it's been missing. Perhaps it's just me and the 'magic' is just gone, but it feels like the depth is missing as well as the heart and soul of the characters
I still get goosebumps from the old cinematics. Hell, I still get goosebumps from WC3 cinematics. I just tested and looked at the original reveal trailer. The moment the dwarf was brought into screen? Instant goosebumps. Didn't end until the trailer was done.
I don't think it's you. The game is just missing heart.
The DF trailer was also the weakest bar none. Basically nothing happens.
Since shadowlands? really? Did you have goosebumps in any video from BfA?
yeah, me neither.
Stop bashing SL already. Yeah youre twinks werent on speed that fast... so sad... yeah the story wasnt what you wanted it to be... so sad.
BUT THE WORLD BUILDING WAS THE BEST THING THAT WE EFFING GOT SINCE LEGION.
The BfA cinematic with Anduin calling to the light, raising his hand up only to have it BLAST down, run through him and form a massiv barrier to heal all the soldiers up was EPIC@@GregorioStyreco
@@yanek138 Agreed. Bfa launch trailer was promising. Then they ruined it all right from prepatch. I agree with Gregorio there that I didnt feel anything for further cinematics in Bfa except that one Darkshore with Malfurion where one and only time night elves acted as they did in Wc3. Never before, and never again.
Sadly, I totally agree with you. I can't remember the last time I was hyped to play this game. And it has been my go to game since the end of vanilla. If there was any game that was a constant in my gaming "portfolio" , at least for a few hours every week, it was wow. I am super sad for the state the game is in now. Super sad.
Bro said "why is norzdormu so moisturized?" And i felt that
I feel that the audience they are making the game for now isn't the same audience that started playing. They've alienated their old audience. And can't attract enough new players with their new direction.
100% right! I played wow since vanilla...and i dont feel that I am playing in the same "universe" anymore, like...the "soul" of the lore and what made wow is not there anymore.
Oh wow, I feel like I've seen this video 100 times now at this point. Time is a flat circle it seems.
You know Carcosa??!
You nailed it. Apathy was why I came back and played Dragonflight for all of a whole month, but just didn't care enough to resub to the game. Something prolific is definitely needed to bring me back. I want to come back, but I just can't justify paying money just to log in and be bored.
revamping class order halls to be a main leveling point on kalimdor and eastern kingdoms would be awesome
or even as just a nice hub to go to like legion on the side of whatever other hub from an expac at max level… i think class halls were a huge step in the right direction.
I felt like playing a werewolf game and couldn't find anything that scratched the itch, so I decided to play a Worgen in WoW through Cata and follow all of the faction conflict storylines. There are war crimes everywhere you turn, slaughter and mayhem, bombing a school for young druids, razing a Tauren village to the ground, etc. In Dragonflight, I've helped three different gay couples get together, stopped a rebellion with love and understanding, raised a bunch of cutsie baby dragon whelps...
Yeah it's a strange feels good direction that isn't even necessary to tell those stories if they want them to still be there. ESO has a gay couple quest in valenwood, and it's a very bittersweet story of helping a man find peace in memories he shared with his loved one before he passes from old age. It's not loud, it's not bombastic, it's not violent, everything the current devs seem to want to avoid, while not being made of sugar like most of dragonflight.
Careful, the toxic positive PC crowd will come after you for your comments about the DF stuff.
@@Sykretts toxic positivity people can eat my ass, I saw them at their worst when I was vocal about endwalker's story being dogshit and I can only hope they stay mostly contained over there instead of shit up wow too
@@Sykretts Hey, I like the inclusive stuff, but there also has to be content with more of an edge. The incarnates just feel like Saturday Morning cartoon villains at this point -- light and fluffy.
I really liked some of the level up moment, that poor drakonid you befriend immediately who dies to save the whelps, that black dragon who remembers his tragic life before leaving the Isles, all good stuff. Those quests had the feels, where I actually felt something. But I think I can count all those moments on one hand. Much of the other stuff is boring and performative.
@@ianwestcNah I dont inclusive stuff because it feels forced. And Blizzard is the company with so many sexual assaults😂 They dont even care its just greenwashing
i mean, within my friend group, we're all sick of the "peace, friendship, fluffy duffy unity", when we want brutal, doomer af lore. there is no warcraft in warcraft anymore, just world of OwOCraft
sidenote- ACTUAL brutal, doomer lore... not whatever tf Shadowlands was, BfA included... i think they're struggling because all the interesting lore ended in Legion
Just a reminder that Tyrande is 10,000+ year old General/High Priest who had at one point been taking order's from a 18yr old human
Lol, i was thinking the same for many times)
I just went back and played classic for a nostalgia kick, I was suprised how much I enjoyed the simplicity. My rewards came from questing and dungeon. I only spent a few hours playing but I enjoyed not griding whelp stones, dragon widgets and whatever the devs repackage to upgrade gear for a three point upgrade that doesn't really feel like I accomplished much. I have played the game for 15 years with only one break during BFA. I have talked a few friends into going back to classic and running old school. There has been some good quality of life additions to retail but for me it has lost it's soul.
The storyline is being told through cutscenes instead of being told through the questline. The quests just feel like busywork instead of having your actions in the World feel like they matter and make a difference. There's a disconnect.
all that wasted time questing to do meaningless chores could be better spent expanding and personalizing the main story being told, but Blizzard being Blizzard just treat it like an afterthought instead of a means to engage players.
This
A lot of the casual and social players (which make up the vast majority of MMO players) switched to Final Fantasy XIV several years ago. Another weakness with WoW currently is... the story is odd. Not a single "main character" feels developed. It's always the same narrative of "X thing happened to me and now I gained X ability and I have to PROTECT MY PEOPLE!" it feels like none of them have any plot urgency or motivations. If they want the older players to return, they really need to completely overhaul how they're doing narrative storytelling. They should have multiple leveling styles: story focused (you level much slower, quests are much more detailed and the narrative is in depth) and "omg i can't read let me get to end game" where it's more action-game focused with very little quests/lore so they can power through it fast. If they want to appeal to the action-gamers, that's fine, but don't bother with this super simplistic basic story with no depth. But there's also people (like me) that primarily play games purely for the lore, narrative, and characters.
@BellularGaming I'm super happy you made this video. Thanks for hitting on all pistons here.
This has resonated with me.
The universe has become shallow. It used to be achetypical for sure, but it had meaning.
Dragonflight feels like being dragged to the developpers' therapy sessions.
Bingo. WoW is merely the latest cultural artifact to be hallowed out by rampant materialism and the dehistoricizing of culture.
But didn’t you know, trauma is what makes you interesting!
Drag-on-flight
I play exclusively classic WoW (hardcore), and the feeling of danger, wonder and exploring (in a very old game) just comes flooding back. The dragons are big and scary (arachronos hating you) and you're just a nobody in a huge world. In retail, everything is so convenient and the story telling makes you the ultimate hero so that you're a big fish in a small pond. Being the small fish is always going to be more interesting and dangerous.
dangerous is mostly boring and stupid
I completely agree with you. Wow used to be about the journey and making your way in the world. You worked for your achievements and levels and when you got them, they were all the more sweeter.
The people who still play Retail are the ones who prefer easy and boring. Thats why you play Classic. You like when your abilities are impactful and not everything is handed to you on a silver platter... the divide between the retail community and classic community are soo vast, they both want completely different things in their game. retail zoomers prefer easy mode, 100% QoL mechanics holding their hand the entire time... if Blizz disabled addons in Retail, the entire retail community would quit over night... they're sooo dependent on them.. just goes to prove my point.
@@Nayrock A fictive scenario you invented in your mind goes to prove your point, gee, really? No wonder people mock classic andies for having IQ scores comparable to chimpanzees.
It makes sense that you grow as the story expands though. Being a small fish after being called the Highlord doesn’t make sense
I was playing WoW when it started waaaay back in the day. Kids, family and job made me leave and I came back a the start of Shadowlands. Recently gave it up. I used to be able to raid and be pretty good. What I found is that it's so complicated, and bloated, that I don't have time to do all the things that you need to do to experience end game content. Plus, and I don't know if this was my server, but the level of toxic people and time mythics was just horrid. So I walked away. There are too many new good games out there to put up with busy work, time sync tasks designed to keep your sub active, and toxic people you have to deal with if you want to compete in end-game content. To me that's the problem with the game. Why deal with that when I can play other games and not have to rely on the attitudes of others? Thanks but no thanks, I don't care how good the lore or story are. The fundamental problem with MMORPGs is the toxic, impatient and rude online trolls.
To me, the main plot feels like a badly executed transition to Age of Sigmar where different magical factions fight across magical realms with realm gates.
We need more Garrosh calling Sylvanas a bitch moments.
Never coming back ever again unfortunately, Blizzard is no longer that company. And they've stated they don't intend to go back, they've "moved on". They're currently focused on inclusion and representation, which isn't inherent bad, but it hinders them from telling darker stories more true to human experiences.
That was the best part. Pity they took it out because someone might get offended.@@Desolate-Utopia
Sylvanas > Garrosh. Garrosh is a L
We're not just not getting more moments like that, they retcon and remove every such moment from the past one by one, too.
The connection we had with Azeroth has been severed. It will take time to mend😔
In vanilla we were adventurers exploring the world, in retail we're heroes going through the motions.
"In vanilla we were adventurers exploring the world, in retail we're heroes going through the motions."
This is actually a really good, concise, and powerful explanation.
the whole writers branch of blizzard needs to be visited by deathwing and everyone transforms into a badass version of themselves
One can hope that when Blackrock and ESG finally "leaves hastilly" the gaming market things will return to normal.
one of the things that pushed me to quit mid-shadowlands was that it felt like the story was happening around you, with you just there as the rest of the cast interact with each other, rather than with you. Its felt like "The adventures of oh and also your character is there" more than a story you're involved and invested in
Exactly: The sense of a series of cut-screens, with our characters scrambling around looking for which button to push in order to start the next cut scene. It's a mystery!
Yes, it was a quite awkward situation where you were ZOMG TEH MAW WALKURZ and a nameless grunt... at the same time.
JUST LIKE A CONSOLE GAME.......which I DESTEST console games...
I prefer when the world is happening dispite you and you are there to intervene in it, instead of being the chosen champion.
To me what makes me stop play WoW is content draughts, I don't care weather the story is good or bad. I like games for the gameplay, content and system(and level design). WoW has great RPG systems and MMOs give you excellent group PVE content that can't be replicated by singleplayer games.
I can summarize my current feeling towards wow like this.
" too little too late"
Bfa destroyed my conection to the world of warcraft, and shadowlands didnt help either.
After one expansion and half free from the gripe of wow , i see dragonflight and think " thats not enought"
Edit: a dragon playable race was the biggest chance they had to get me back but they fucked that up too.
Whoever gave the greenlight to add weird lanky scalies should have been fired, and before anyone chimes in no I do not think that's going too far. Whoever has that power is in a position where they should fully know and understand what the wow fan base wants and likes, they clearly failed at that.
@zarnubiusbukowski7019 not just the lanky, the Humanoid forms with their jeweled bedazzled overtly feminent deviant art style is repulsive to your average guy
To be fair, not even the wow fan base knows what they want most of the time.
If it's too late why are you still here lul
BFAs ending is what killed wow. Who even cared about Nzoth honestly? Not ending Sylvanis was the biggest cuck the game has even done. Only to follow that up with not ending her story again in shadowlands.
At this point, Blizzard should just open source their game and profit off of private servers like how minecraft profits off of realms. Let the community create their own versions of the game and let popularity decide
I could not agree more, I REALLY hope you've expressed this concern to Holly Longdale when you had her ear.
You’re definitely not wrong, i think this kind of expansion was something they wanted tho no? Something without a giant cataclysmic event attached to it, something fun and different, before they dove into more big stuff. Idk I got the impression they were just gonna switch it up for an expansion. I think it’s fine tbh. As long as they don’t do another expansion like this for the next one I think it’s probs fine. I get that people might get pushed beyond the event horizon by it though and yeah that’s pretty unfortunate.