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Uh-oh! Another Blizzard CONTROVERSY! Let’s react to this BLIZZARD CONTROVERSY! Oh, no, they did it again! Did you see it? Did you? Did you? World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was UNDERRATED. Here’s a video essay about how UNDERRATED Shadowlands was. Blizzard is so BAD, I will NEVER buy a Blizzard game again! Unto the path feign the golden innocent, drifting thus as flakes of moon–touched flowers, greed concealed ‘neath ruby lips.
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Man… Hearing all this again does remind me I didn't entirely stop playing WoW because of boredom burnout, but just everything else. I do find your point that yeah, back in Shadowlands, people condemned Activision Blizzard. Now, those same people are saying WoW's back and hyped for War Within, and Dragonflight seems to have been enough to fix being that raked over the coals… It's fascinating to see.
If it gives you any hope in humanity, some of us left and still won't go back, regardless. I couldn't care less if that game was handing out free money, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. They lost me and my husband for a number of reasons, all of which you laid out beautifully, although, the "Do you guys not have phones?" line from 2018 was pretty bad too. It was then that I really started wondering if they gave a heck about their player base, and not long after that I realized they didn't. I am so, so happy to have made the switch.
great vid. completely ignoring the player feedback was precisely one of the reasons ff14 1.0 failed as well
Ngl as someone who went the other way from FF14 to Wow this is an interesting topic for me. Great video and cadence.
Hi, everyone.
Admittedly, this is not my strongest work—this was written, recorded, and produced while I struggled with COVID.
Thanks in advance for watching, have a happy new year.
I enjoyed the video fully until the last sentence. Instead if possibly arguing why people didn't stick to FF or any other discussions around, you just claimed that we (strange callout since the video was fully in 3rd person as a documentary should) just ready to sellout to Blizzard. It was an unexpected kicjback which fully broke the pace and worsened the experience. Thats my feedback, everyhting else was perfect and happy new year.
This is an amazing video.
Blizz have shot themselves in the foot many times no doubt, but at the end of the day if the game was good no one would really care, if any of these problems came out during wows boom from 2005-2010 nothing would have happened.
Many companies do horrible things but hey They make good phones or shoes so i am going to keep buying them right.
I played FF on and off for many years, but i was a warcraft universe fan for even longer than that (warcraft 2/3) FF14 and WoW are vastly different games, and each offer different things. FF14 is almost a singleplayer game with MMO attached after. It doesnt have vast zones to explore it feels constraining. I enjoyed the story loved finished the game at endwalker and returned to WoW and classic wow, since objectively in me eyes its just a better game in many ways. Sure FF14 has housing, PVE and a ton of other content but its not really what me and a lot of other people playing mmos such as wow enjoy. And thus went back. I like world pvp aspect of classic wow its fun dangerous and exciting. Every time you venture out to leveling zones in classic wow theres always that danger looming. FF14 on the other hand is soft and safe theres no danger or difficulty at all in it. Now okay maybe i should not compare classic to modern mmo like FF14, in retail i feel like my gearing progression really feels impactful, each upgrade feels like your character is stronger and each class feels super satisfying to play. Soaring through the zones, participating in world events and so much more, it feels open and feels good. The problem is that you think most people care about issues you discussed, fact of the matter is no one really does they can pretend that they do but they dont. Game Bad? people leave, Game Good again? okay we come back to play. DF expansion is nothing groundbreaking but its the best that they released and is second to legion. Thats why people came back, its couse WoW is well warcraft dude, everybody played it almost at one point or another and it is a blast to be back in classic and retail
And now everyone is happy again because Metzen is back, wtf xD
Very good video!
Though there are two small things i want to note.
1. The loss of Blizzards good will I would say did not start with Blitzchung but with the "You think you do, but you don't" instance at Blizzcon 2013 (I think that was the year) where they very publicly told players what they wanted instead of listening to them. This was then followed up by Warlords of Draenor the (at the time) worst expansion so far in WoW's lifetime with increased monetization of the game. Then a few years later they forced the shutdown of the beloved private server "Nostalrious" by sending their lawyers after them and then there was the infamous announcement of "Diablo Immortal". By the time Blitzchung happened people were already angry and mistrustful of Blizzard.
2. Another large part of why people HATED Shadowlands was the lore. BFA did damage to the lore by wasting not just one but several storylines that had been built up for decades while also wasting a potentially great war story. But it was nothing that we couldn't move past. SL however did permanent damage to the very foundation of Warcraft's lore, story and characters with nonsensical retcons and rewrites going everywhere. It damaged not only World of Warcraft the mmo, but the entire Warcraft IP. Unless they retcon the entire SL as one giant fever dream then these lore changes cannot be undone since they have been woven into the very DNA of WoW. While at the same time also greatly disrespecting some of the most beloved and iconic characters in the entire franchise and giving them an ending that was despised by the player base with no hope of returning.
PS: Seeing those old Paul Barnett videos really took me back! I think that was the first game I got extremely hyped for. Warhammer Online still has a soft place in my heart despite all the bugs 😊.
I started FF14 before the Asmongold hype. Some of my then guildies in Star Wars The Old Republic went over to FF14 and I went and bought it and For the most part, the story was alright. I hhated a realm reborn though, the 1 to 50 grind was a slog, but the expansions were mostly good. That said, Shadowbringers is overhyped rubbish, it is the "Infinity war" to Endwalker being "Endgame". I wouldn't say I liked the start of the story. Endwalker finished it brilliantly though. After that, I tried leveling more jobs but got bored with it. I have since tried Star Wars The Old Republic's new expansion and now I've started Season of Discovery in classic WoW. I will probably never play retail WoW again, I don't trust Blizzard to make a good expansion
Great video
yeah never returned and wont be
Yeah I quit a bit in bfa and shadowlands had me remove my account. I finally changed my mind with the newest patch in dragonflight.
Man…Blizzard was such a major thing in my childhood, one of the very few things me and my dad bonded over. I played in Vanilla and off and on throughout the years. In the latest years when stuff was getting chaotic, I did like Legion, after alittle while the Blitzchung bit happened and I was upset. Then Battle for Azeroth happened and I nearly hated everything about it. As much as I enjoyed the pirate themed clothing for my main, that was literally it. Didn't like the story, the misleading bullcrap about this "Faction Pride" expansion making it have an Alliance Bias by making the Horde the bad guys, and then tried to gaslight us by saying Alliance MADE one of the biggest bads in the game, it wasn't even us!
Then Shadowlands…my god. Shadowlands was easily the absolute worst expansion the game ever had. It was even worse than Battle for Azeroth! The story telling just…ruined things, the gameplay was painfully stale and so excessively grindy. We've had over a decade and you couldn't think of anything of interest? This expansion had sever content droughts, the longest in the franchise. I begged the questions "Who wrote this crap!? What were they thinking!? Are they even trying!?" Then the sexual harassment situation popped up.
I couldn't believe it, but it explained everything. The reason Warcraft was so miserable, Blizzard acting like bastards, it wasn't Covid or anything, no. It was because they were lazy scumbags! I just…left. It was the last straw and to this day, I never went back. Honestly, it feels weird. I played Blizzard for like 16 years. I tried messing around with this "Project Ascension" to get that old feeling, but it's not vibing well. Right now I'm casually playing 14 and am enjoying it.
Only reason I came back recently was because I love healing in games and WoW just does it for me.
as one of the dev's mentioned; the Blizzard we knew is gone. died after the Activision Acquisition. all the important developers have already left the game. Now we have the Diablo 4 questionnaire gate. will it ever end?
I don't think WoW's fully recovered from SL just yet. Tons of the people I know who played still feel burned by the expac and haven't seen a legitimate reason to come back. During the launch of SL my guild was struggling to fit everyone into a raid. Now only a fourth of the them still play
Wdym almost ? It is destroyed .retail wow is just meh with no appeal at all
A really nicely made and awesome video! Listening to the timeline and all the details was great.
I'm a casual FFXIV player and overall newbie WoW player, so my opinion might not be accurate.
From what I have seen, I think all the kickback and protests over what Blizzard did actually did matter to some extent. However, the only reason it mattered was that it was on such a monumental scale, and it resulted in Blizzard losing money. As a result of what happened, the devs appear to be having a new focus on "evergreen" features which are meant to last (something which WoW should have done years and years ago). They seem to be going on a pretty good trajectory from what I have seen. In terms of the WoW game, I think it will take at least another 1-2 expansions to notably "fix" the game. As for the good will, that is something that will take much, much longer to repair…for that part, I don't think they ever will do it.
FFXIV is definitely stronger in the sense that all of its content, past and present, is more accessible and more "evergreen." Also, don't have to mess with add-ons, something I'm not looking forward to doing with WoW. Maybe the add-ons won't be that bad, but the fact that some are absolutely required means that the game is missing some things.