"I want a longer flight path just so I don't have to play the game". I feel this is emblematic for the current retail experience; From my limited perspective, it seems not interested in providing a solid world experience or even interesting game mechanics. It is interested in psychologically exploiting "hooked" players into throwing money and/or time at it (e.g. by providing countless and mindless grind mechanics). The quality, the enjoyability, of the gaming experience seems no longer a factor.
I met all of my pvp friends either in world pvp random encounters or in my guild back in vanilla. I got into my raiding guild by being sponsored by a friend I met pvping out in the world. IMO WoW really needs world pvp as an avenue for finding friends.
regarding rep grinds : i never minded them as a side activity. to do when firends werent onliine yet, or as a chill activity after a raid with some chill music on ect.. but as main progression path it sucks.
I find it thematically problematic that you can be exalted with the Kyrian, but they don’t like you enough to let you use their covenant ability. You betrayed us by picking Night Fae!!! But also we love you 😘
You pay 40+ dollars and 13 dollars a month for a game that feels unfinished in some ways, talking about Shadowlands here, while you have FF14 which goes another route with no PTR, in house testing, you can play to 60 for free, sorry Blizzard but you're outplayed, time to get into the game again, you're Blizzard, you're gonna stand here and tell me you can't do it? give me a break.
Yeah that’s solo-queue. It sounds really bad but it’s a step up from applying to 20 different 2s or 3s premades (not knowing that 19 of them are looking for a different class to partner with) and then you play one game, lose, get screamed at by whatever 13 year old you joined up with, and then start over… for hundreds of games!
I like rep grinds but only to a degree. If I actually want to get to exalted (no reason for that in my shadowlands experience) and i did all my world quests for a week and i found myself 1,000 rep away from the level i wanted, i would totally go out and kill 200 mobs to get there instead of wait for another day for quests
He play game for money, game want money, he like wow thats bad, game is not fun, but make money, he make video that is bad, so he get money. Mutual destruction.
A big part of the issue that occurs when the devs actively choose not to implement what the community wants until a year or two later, they hemorrhage the player base over that period of time. Even if the devs eventually "fix" a system, the people who had been there in the beginning telling them the issues will most likely have moved on by the time the issue is rectified. If you receive negative feedback you should address it immediately, not mull over it for 3 patches and then say "okay our system was flawed, we're sorry we didn't listen". In the end, the players are the lifeblood of the game, if you don't want to appease their wishes (when it comes from the overwhelming majority) you're choosing for your game to suffer.
37:48 But on the flip side, when you make too little money, you also don't give a shit. However, I still agree with you that they probably are not intentionally sabotaging the game even though it really, really does feel like it.
it's great to see some more content from you! I'd love to see some more videos on game development or even a video on steps that could be taken to save world of warcraft!
Think the solo que they talk about is for RBG (rated battleground) so it would que you up with 9 others, I assume it would make teams of 6 dps 3 healers and 1 tank.
I feel as if there is something more malicious going on under the hood at the WoW Dev HQ. It's very hard for me to believe that these people are making these "mistakes" by chance, especially when you look at the legendary topic from Legion, Azerite/Corruption from BFA and so on. It seems to be all part of a grand design to keep players returning to the game through some sort of hostage situation with the constant hope that things will be better in 'x' patch or 'y' expansion.
Rather than just making a good game they seek to manipulate the player base into having cheap justifications to resub each time a patch or expansion comes around by adding content to the game that they took away (look again at tier gear).
My beef is all the ridiculous systems that just aren’t worth it and take dev time away from content. My biggest beef is this out-of-touch philosophy blizzard seems to have adapted to over the last several years. J. Allen Brack summed it up best with his, “you think you do but you don’t” moment. Blizzard has become closed-minded and stubborn and it’s destroying the best mmorpg ever made.
I think the issue that Retail faces is that none of the grinds feel meaningful at all. Rather it feels like content that is forced on you and intentionally time gated to keep you playing.
Older WoW had meaningful grind behind it, that is to say the world and the community gave you a reason to keep playing rather than it feeling like you were being time gated and strung along to keep playing.
Overall it's a double edged sword, the community has created a fairly toxic entry level barrier with addons – and Blizzard has relegated the bulk of the game to instanced PvE content. It just feels counterintuitive to encouraging cooperation – and that's a huge part of what made WoW successful, player interaction. It's just not there anymore, both by poor developer design and the community taking min/maxing to too big of an extreme.
Im one of those players that like rep grinds, but only when there do right and also like you said there needs to be the classic avenues of crafter, dungeons, raids . But the fail points are the rep grind system overtakes all the others
Kevin, I am very curious if you think the vast amount of information we have before anything ever releases hurts the game. I feel like nobody even gets excited anymore because the meta is decided before any content ever releases. I am not sure how to fix this outside of encrypting way more of the patches.
Although Asmon complain about negatives such as rep grind, incompetent systems…etc. He is one of the few who showcases the positives, if people didn’t watch his content, they’d think WoW is just a bad farming simulator.
I feel no one is making a strong case for "malice" on the part of the developers so far as releasing unfinished systems. If I had to guess, the root of it is that Blizzard can no longer be the company that held onto a project until it was finished, the days of "soon tm" are gone and perhaps in part because Activision, the suits and money guys are forcing them to release content on certain schedules and now Blizzard is rushed. Blizz has an idea they believe in, they think will work but they don't have the time they need to finish them, so out the door it goes in a broken state and the players become furious, they point out the flaws and wait for those flaws to be corrected. By the time Blizz gets around to finally finishing the system to a satisfactory level they're already behind on the next one and so it's also going to release unfinished. That is the systematic issue. The developers have lost all creative control in what state their ideas are released.
40:30 here i agree with both, i think having multiple pieces of gear in 1 timeframe is good because it allows for x y z that you already know, its also important to give players a place to store the gear so that it doesnt take up an inventory space, especially in a game like wow where inventory is so important. A place i saw this implemented well was terraria, later gear would sometimes have multiple head or chest pieces, which you could put into the vanity slot for easy switching. Of course, this would only work in terraria, my point is, the overall idea is good, you just need to give the player places to store shit so that it isnt a nuisance
39:50 as a feral in Classic, I enjoy running around with bags full of off-spec gear. I take pride in being able to fill any roll and sacrificing some of my convenience (inventory space) for that. It wouldn't mean anything if I didn't have to plan for it myself, if everybody could do it. In general, I want complexity and inconvenience wherever it makes sense and wherever it makes the experience more meaningful. For example carrying around off-spec gear. That should be a sign of dedication and of a good player who is ready to explore every side of his class.
The part where Asmongold was saying he wasnt paying much attention doing world quests and wanting a flight path so he can watch Youtube? I am 100% that. I almost look forward to the flightpath so I can do something more interesting.
If something is annoying/bad/boring to deal with, "Better luck next expansion!" isn't a very comforting thing to hear. I've been hearing that implicit message since Legion at the very least.
At least with the brain surgeon analogy, the doctor and the family envision the same ending. I'm not sure that's the case anymore for the WoW dev team and the older WoW community. Maybe it's just a new WoW dev team, looking for a new WoW community — leaving the old WoW community, well…feeling like we do.
Kevin, thank you for comments! Just want to note about 39:25 — Azerite armor and need to have "multiple helmets". Actually its not like in Classic, in BFA a player who has 3 specs and plays them had to keep in inventory full set of Azerite armor for each spec (respecing of the armor was done with increasing price, so players have to keep multiple sets, often same pieces but just wuth different Azerite traits selected). Azerite gear was: helmet, shoulders and chest. Azerite traits had big impact on your performance. Many players had sets for different roles even for same spec: single target healing, aoe healing, group healing, raid healing. If you want PVP — get set for pvp too. Multispec/versatile classes struggled the most (like druids). 50% of inventory was filled with Azerite armour. I agree with Asmongold, that is not good design. And yes, in Classic, we need gear with fire resistance for Molten Core, nature res gear for Ahn'qiraj. And that was good thing, but is not the same as in BFA, where all the gear for couple of previous expansions was already made simple and stupid. For example, if you are a paladin and respecing from dps to heal, all your gear now has int (instead of str). Not saying that you never need (and cannot find) gear with more mana regen or any resistances. Mage can kill Ragnaros with Fire balls, imagine that 🙂
"I want a longer flight path just so I don't have to play the game". I feel this is emblematic for the current retail experience; From my limited perspective, it seems not interested in providing a solid world experience or even interesting game mechanics. It is interested in psychologically exploiting "hooked" players into throwing money and/or time at it (e.g. by providing countless and mindless grind mechanics). The quality, the enjoyability, of the gaming experience seems no longer a factor.
Love all your vids Kevin. Still wish you would join Intrepid Studios for AoC. ^^
I met all of my pvp friends either in world pvp random encounters or in my guild back in vanilla. I got into my raiding guild by being sponsored by a friend I met pvping out in the world. IMO WoW really needs world pvp as an avenue for finding friends.
regarding rep grinds : i never minded them as a side activity. to do when firends werent onliine yet, or as a chill activity after a raid with some chill music on ect.. but as main progression path it sucks.
These are golden times for you, Kevin. Lots of stuff to react to in terms of malding retail players. It's all we have left…
I find it thematically problematic that you can be exalted with the Kyrian, but they don’t like you enough to let you use their covenant ability. You betrayed us by picking Night Fae!!! But also we love you 😘
You pay 40+ dollars and 13 dollars a month for a game that feels unfinished in some ways, talking about Shadowlands here, while you have FF14 which goes another route with no PTR, in house testing, you can play to 60 for free, sorry Blizzard but you're outplayed, time to get into the game again, you're Blizzard, you're gonna stand here and tell me you can't do it? give me a break.
Yeah that’s solo-queue. It sounds really bad but it’s a step up from applying to 20 different 2s or 3s premades (not knowing that 19 of them are looking for a different class to partner with) and then you play one game, lose, get screamed at by whatever 13 year old you joined up with, and then start over… for hundreds of games!
You should see if you can get him on, or get on his stream. I'd enjoy the crap out of an hour of the two of you bouncing ideas back and forth.
I like rep grinds but only to a degree. If I actually want to get to exalted (no reason for that in my shadowlands experience) and i did all my world quests for a week and i found myself 1,000 rep away from the level i wanted, i would totally go out and kill 200 mobs to get there instead of wait for another day for quests
I hate all these reward andy's. Rewards are for dogs. How about I give u a pat on the head good boi you cleared the new shitty torghast
Go off king
He play game for money, game want money, he like wow thats bad, game is not fun, but make money, he make video that is bad, so he get money. Mutual destruction.
That flight path point, dear God.
A big part of the issue that occurs when the devs actively choose not to implement what the community wants until a year or two later, they hemorrhage the player base over that period of time. Even if the devs eventually "fix" a system, the people who had been there in the beginning telling them the issues will most likely have moved on by the time the issue is rectified. If you receive negative feedback you should address it immediately, not mull over it for 3 patches and then say "okay our system was flawed, we're sorry we didn't listen". In the end, the players are the lifeblood of the game, if you don't want to appease their wishes (when it comes from the overwhelming majority) you're choosing for your game to suffer.
37:48 But on the flip side, when you make too little money, you also don't give a shit. However, I still agree with you that they probably are not intentionally sabotaging the game even though it really, really does feel like it.
it's great to see some more content from you! I'd love to see some more videos on game development or even a video on steps that could be taken to save world of warcraft!
Think the solo que they talk about is for RBG (rated battleground) so it would que you up with 9 others, I assume it would make teams of 6 dps 3 healers and 1 tank.
44:55 OMEGALUL
Solo q is cause you dont want to play against boosted ppl
I feel as if there is something more malicious going on under the hood at the WoW Dev HQ. It's very hard for me to believe that these people are making these "mistakes" by chance, especially when you look at the legendary topic from Legion, Azerite/Corruption from BFA and so on. It seems to be all part of a grand design to keep players returning to the game through some sort of hostage situation with the constant hope that things will be better in 'x' patch or 'y' expansion.
Rather than just making a good game they seek to manipulate the player base into having cheap justifications to resub each time a patch or expansion comes around by adding content to the game that they took away (look again at tier gear).
Just my 2c.
My beef is all the ridiculous systems that just aren’t worth it and take dev time away from content. My biggest beef is this out-of-touch philosophy blizzard seems to have adapted to over the last several years. J. Allen Brack summed it up best with his, “you think you do but you don’t” moment. Blizzard has become closed-minded and stubborn and it’s destroying the best mmorpg ever made.
I think the issue that Retail faces is that none of the grinds feel meaningful at all. Rather it feels like content that is forced on you and intentionally time gated to keep you playing.
Older WoW had meaningful grind behind it, that is to say the world and the community gave you a reason to keep playing rather than it feeling like you were being time gated and strung along to keep playing.
Overall it's a double edged sword, the community has created a fairly toxic entry level barrier with addons – and Blizzard has relegated the bulk of the game to instanced PvE content. It just feels counterintuitive to encouraging cooperation – and that's a huge part of what made WoW successful, player interaction. It's just not there anymore, both by poor developer design and the community taking min/maxing to too big of an extreme.
Kevin Jordan. Your content I was used to viewing your content as insightful.
This? Hilarious. Actually top quality jokes
Edit: I typed this before the sarcasm about costumer service improving after Covid. I'm dead 💀
And a lot of people said that WOW wouldnt survive another failure expansion…
Guess we'll see.
Love how he calls Asmongold a character then says the exact same things he says as Asmon, just calmer.
Im one of those players that like rep grinds, but only when there do right and also like you said there needs to be the classic avenues of crafter, dungeons, raids . But the fail points are the rep grind system overtakes all the others
Kevin, I am very curious if you think the vast amount of information we have before anything ever releases hurts the game. I feel like nobody even gets excited anymore because the meta is decided before any content ever releases. I am not sure how to fix this outside of encrypting way more of the patches.
"Cant find 1 person to play with?" ….. No I cant ….. For years lol
Although Asmon complain about negatives such as rep grind, incompetent systems…etc. He is one of the few who showcases the positives, if people didn’t watch his content, they’d think WoW is just a bad farming simulator.
Reacting to the React God PogU
Retail is the most expensive Beta Test there is right now
It just seems blizzard isn’t confident in their own ability to keep players engaged so they resort to system loops and time-gated, drip drop content
Thanks for the video!
I feel no one is making a strong case for "malice" on the part of the developers so far as releasing unfinished systems. If I had to guess, the root of it is that Blizzard can no longer be the company that held onto a project until it was finished, the days of "soon tm" are gone and perhaps in part because Activision, the suits and money guys are forcing them to release content on certain schedules and now Blizzard is rushed. Blizz has an idea they believe in, they think will work but they don't have the time they need to finish them, so out the door it goes in a broken state and the players become furious, they point out the flaws and wait for those flaws to be corrected. By the time Blizz gets around to finally finishing the system to a satisfactory level they're already behind on the next one and so it's also going to release unfinished. That is the systematic issue. The developers have lost all creative control in what state their ideas are released.
40:30 here i agree with both, i think having multiple pieces of gear in 1 timeframe is good because it allows for x y z that you already know, its also important to give players a place to store the gear so that it doesnt take up an inventory space, especially in a game like wow where inventory is so important.
A place i saw this implemented well was terraria, later gear would sometimes have multiple head or chest pieces, which you could put into the vanity slot for easy switching. Of course, this would only work in terraria, my point is, the overall idea is good, you just need to give the player places to store shit so that it isnt a nuisance
Great content Kevin! Love to listen to your thoughts and ideas!
25:35 what was the thing with dire bear armor?
39:50 as a feral in Classic, I enjoy running around with bags full of off-spec gear. I take pride in being able to fill any roll and sacrificing some of my convenience (inventory space) for that. It wouldn't mean anything if I didn't have to plan for it myself, if everybody could do it. In general, I want complexity and inconvenience wherever it makes sense and wherever it makes the experience more meaningful. For example carrying around off-spec gear. That should be a sign of dedication and of a good player who is ready to explore every side of his class.
The part where Asmongold was saying he wasnt paying much attention doing world quests and wanting a flight path so he can watch Youtube? I am 100% that. I almost look forward to the flightpath so I can do something more interesting.
If something is annoying/bad/boring to deal with, "Better luck next expansion!" isn't a very comforting thing to hear. I've been hearing that implicit message since Legion at the very least.
If only modern wow was just classic wow with better graphics, more mounts and skins, and maybe some instanced guild halls or VIP areas
the amount of people and businesses taking advantage of covid to have an excuse for layoffs and such is probably pretty high.
At least with the brain surgeon analogy, the doctor and the family envision the same ending. I'm not sure that's the case anymore for the WoW dev team and the older WoW community. Maybe it's just a new WoW dev team, looking for a new WoW community — leaving the old WoW community, well…feeling like we do.
Cannot wait to hear the usual phrase before the next expansion: "This time it's different, Blizzard learned it.."
Kevin, thank you for comments! Just want to note about 39:25 — Azerite armor and need to have "multiple helmets". Actually its not like in Classic, in BFA a player who has 3 specs and plays them had to keep in inventory full set of Azerite armor for each spec (respecing of the armor was done with increasing price, so players have to keep multiple sets, often same pieces but just wuth different Azerite traits selected). Azerite gear was: helmet, shoulders and chest. Azerite traits had big impact on your performance. Many players had sets for different roles even for same spec: single target healing, aoe healing, group healing, raid healing. If you want PVP — get set for pvp too. Multispec/versatile classes struggled the most (like druids). 50% of inventory was filled with Azerite armour. I agree with Asmongold, that is not good design. And yes, in Classic, we need gear with fire resistance for Molten Core, nature res gear for Ahn'qiraj. And that was good thing, but is not the same as in BFA, where all the gear for couple of previous expansions was already made simple and stupid. For example, if you are a paladin and respecing from dps to heal, all your gear now has int (instead of str). Not saying that you never need (and cannot find) gear with more mana regen or any resistances. Mage can kill Ragnaros with Fire balls, imagine that 🙂