Popular WoW youtubers calling it quits

[Berengil]

It's definitely a problem if youtubers are switching to other games isn't it?

No, not in the least.

[Stockers]

I can't watch streams of people playing games, I find them soul destroying. I can not fathom how people sit for hours and watch people do arena or play league, then donate them £££. They have zero entertainment value.

I would watching a video showing video gameplay if I was planning a purchase and wanted to check it out.

The only WoW YouTube I watch would be maybe a guide. But even then, I generally just read dungeon journal now, and as a guild group we decided our own tactics rather than watching someone else do it and just copy. Not really achieving anything then. I used to watch Heelvsbabyface, but wow, what an annoying prick he has become.

Just watching someone play a game is dull, whether its live, or prerecorded. But I know there is a huge audience who love a good old fashioned circlejerk over the likes of Preach and Asmongold. It's just gaming reality TV. Zzzzzzzzzz

As for Blizz losing airtime on YouTube, it's an old game, nothing really new to see, apart from the new features, which get spammed, watched, then forgotten about until the next new feature.

[TITAN308]

I can't watch streams of people playing games, I find them soul destroying. I can not fathom how people sit for hours and watch people do arena or play league, then donate them £££. They have zero entertainment value.

There is another category outside of this however.

Sad lonely nerds who donate money to 'cleavage streams' of girls playing games.

You know, the ones where they "accidentally" give panty shots.

[Stockers]

There is another category outside of this however.

Sad lonely nerds who donate money to 'cleavage streams' of girls playing games.

You know, the ones where they "accidentally" give panty shots.

hahaha, yeah. The ones that have 90% of the screen their cleavage, 8% donations and 2% a tiny little box of them "playing" a game...

[ceall]

I can't understand why there's a market for let's plays/streams. I personally find it boring to have others play for you, when you could enjoy the game a lot more at your own pace, doing what you want.
Guides, tips and tricks and lore stuff are okay to watch, but everything else is just dumb. I'd rather play games myself.

[TriHard]

Nobody really gives a shit about WoW as a game anymore. Overwatch and Hearthstone is their new hype games which do REALLY well on youtube and twitch, Sodapoppin, Asmon, Mitch and Towelliee are truly the only ones that keep that section alive on twitch, the rest sits at around 400-600 viewers which really ain't that crazy.

It is a 12 year old game after all. It is bound to see a huge decline

[Hawthorne Wipes]

I find guides, lore videos, and people talking about news/changes good enough.
But when it comes to actual gameplay I find impossible to pay attention more than 3 minutes.

[Sosoulsu]

These videos generate excitement and encourages others to subscribe or resubscribe.

This.
I expected the people flooding the thread to say
"Who cares about YouTubers anyway, LOL!!!"
A lot of people. It's not a good thing for the game if big community names leave.

[Magicpot]

I can't watch streams of people playing games, I find them soul destroying. I can not fathom how people sit for hours and watch people do arena or play league, then donate them £££. They have zero entertainment value.

I would watching a video showing video gameplay if I was planning a purchase and wanted to check it out.

The only WoW YouTube I watch would be maybe a guide. But even then, I generally just read dungeon journal now, and as a guild group we decided our own tactics rather than watching someone else do it and just copy. Not really achieving anything then. I used to watch Heelvsbabyface, but wow, what an annoying prick he has become.

Just watching someone play a game is dull, whether its live, or prerecorded. But I know there is a huge audience who love a good old fashioned circlejerk over the likes of Preach and Asmongold. It's just gaming reality TV. Zzzzzzzzzz

As for Blizz losing airtime on YouTube, it's an old game, nothing really new to see, apart from the new features, which get spammed, watched, then forgotten about until the next new feature.

Pretty much this. The reasons why I want to watch someone else playing a game rather then play it myself are very limited. Like pre-purchase research and maybe lore if it's lore heavy and I want a walkthrough and immerse myself without having to play it (For games like bloodborne)

[Deleted]

if big community names leave.

But is he though?
I haven't followed him at all, didn't even know he existed - could you point out the biggest and most important things he's done for the community? Like couple of things that were positive and helped the whole community?

Like Bay does with FinalBoss - or like FatBoss lads do with their guides.. what has this big community name done?

(this is honest question, I've never heard of him)

[Deztru]

If you've ever followed any WoW streamer/youtuber you can immediately see that it doesn't pay.

You have to be a drama queen or a top raider to have even the slightest chance. Or strike gold with Lore/Machinima

[Sencha]

Never understood why people are watching other people playing a video game. Maybe a generation thing.

[kamuimac]

I've come across a video about this and I'm wondering what you make of this.

What can Blizz do to generate more hype and excitement regarding World of Warcraft? It's definitely a problem if youtubers are switching to other games isn't it?

Here's one video on the issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S62mjkgtNm8

thats because they realised that wow is very niche game with niche audience - and for most of them youtube stped being a hobby and strted to be a real job - and then when problems started to happen so they need to expand to more popular game to make living

nothing surprising - just look at preach and his "mate whats" - just to bump number of watched videos and build mini media empire.

they used wow to became famous and once they did they show that it was always about money and as discarding wow.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I do think this is a compound problem though. Here is my basic thoughts on the issue.

1. WoW isn't a 10-14 million sub game anymore so the audience is smaller than it used to be. Smaller audience does mean less views, less likes, and less subs. This adds up to the odds of making as much money being less.

2. It is almost a basic browser add-on to have "ad-block" installed and blocking ads. Ads being seen is key to making money. This really knifes into revenue from an already depleted pool (see #1).

3. YouTube has been really fucking with its payout metric a lot more since Red has come into the game. Not to mention the strange disappearing subs and views deal that happened.

4. A lot of these people have been doing this for a LONG time. You have to expect some turn over and with WoW not as much new blood is entering as is exiting.

5. Blizzard did hire up some of the established long runners which made the dent of #4 bigger. Sadly they don't really use this talent as much as they should to fill the space as much as they could.

6. With the way beta and alpha works these days you almost have the whole damn expansion laid out during that timeline minus bigger patches that land 2-3 times tops an expansion? Then you have often ended up with a year plus of nothing to report on during droughts expect everything you could be reporting next expansion because you got nothing but beta/alpha to talk about. Not good for content creators.

7. A lot of people playing this game have been for a long time. So the need to be constantly reminded what to do, how to do it, and why you need to do it has become pretty mute to a LARGE part of the audience.

8. I think a lot of people don't understand how much time it takes to script shows, edit them, and then upload them. It isn't just sitting down in front of a camra for an hour, editting for 30 minutes, and then playing WoW while it uploads. It takes time and creative thinking. To have a lot of those 2 things you need to make a living off of it. Been a lot of shit stopping that lately (see the list above).

[Holofernes]

wow had a own fansite , wowmovies or sth like that, where 1000 s of arena / pve vids were posted, back in tbc, dont even know if the site still exists.
Youtube came out in like 2008 or so, so the movies that actually were interesting, when the pvp-game was interesting (when arena was actually involving, a tactical and balanced and fun experience and not whack a mole global play) are not on youtube.

And there were some really cool edited pve movies / machinimas out there back than (curse guild bwl vids for example).

[kamuimac]

There is another category outside of this however.

Sad lonely nerds who donate money to 'cleavage streams' of girls playing games.

You know, the ones where they "accidentally" give panty shots.

i think that a wider problem - imo there is abundance of very lonely people who think that just because if they donate 5 $ on twitch and streamer speaks to them for few seconds they have a feeling that they "belong" somewhere that they are a part of imaginary community when in fact they are nothign more then $$$$ making suckers to let them spend cash in casinos and ramseys restorurants and openly admit to it and brag on stream - and idiots still donate so that they can blow that $ in casino (those who watch stream will know exackly which streamer i mean) -

but hey can you blame them ( i mean streamers ), if there are so many idiots out there literaly throwing money at them they would have to be stupid to not take it.

i think its a sign of our times where very many people are desperate for any kind of community because they have problems to make friends irl.

[Polygons]

I wish they would create a new Warcraft game, maybe WoW II or a new Warcraft RTS. WoW's model is getting pretty stale real quick and they could do a lot more with a better engine. WoW II could be in VR too. It'd be cool if current WoW ended with Sargeras blowing up Azeroth, and WoW II was the aftermath of what's left. The legion wins and Azeroth is shattered and reformed, full of legion and horde/alliance strongholds. They could also use this as an excuse to remove things from the game like Death Knights, LFR, 90% of the female panda animations, pandas in general, talent system, gnomes, etc. They could also add nice things like better character customization and subraces, better animations, new classes/specs.

[Nerovar]

Wow, I must say that I find this very saddening. WoW videos on YouTube were actually the thing that made me want to play the game.

[Vichan]

He's talking about heelvsbabyface leaving, does anyone really count that as a loss? all he did was scream about how shit wow was and how everything blizzard does is ruining he game

[Deleted]

Casualization killed wow but it began several expansions ago.