Preach drops some unexpected and well-articulated truth bombs

[Klingers]

I was watching Preach's video "I'm At Blizzcon - Hype and Thoughts Going in" and got a surprisingly thorough articulation of the way I've been feeling for the last two expacs, which is why I've dropped off playing.

The dev team, Ion in particular, would be well-served to pull their heads out of their arses and listen to what Preach said.

<video snipped: videos belong in the video sticky>

Too long didn't watch; I'm really paraphrasing Preach's far better dialogue, but basically the game's too fucking busy. There's too many course corrections. Too many systems. Too many major mid-expansion class or gearing changes. Too much time-gating. Too many chores. Too much complication.

I hadn't framed it in the same terms Preach did before today, but to be honest it's probably why I stopped playing in very-early Legion. I've been playing since Vanilla and I've been a fan of the Warcraft franchise since the mid-90's... But as much as I still enjoy keeping up with the major story beats, watching all the cut-scenes etc, the thought of actually playing BFA makes me sick. The treadmill, the grind walls, the systems confusion, the time gating... Just... Ugh. For me it started with Garrisons (which made me quit for the middle three quarters of WoD) and only went downhill.

There's a reason fans came back to Vanilla, and it's not just nostalgia. Some of it is just a live version of WoW with easily-defined parameters with far less hoops to go through to achieve a set goal for yourself.

I agree with Preach. The only dot-point feature I want to see in the next expansion's preview trailer is:

• We're removing all the shit you hate.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

If that's your only dot you want that's a damn subjective dot because what you hate, I could love.

[ercarp]

Preach, being cynical as always. I for one am looking forward to the next expansion without setting unrealistic conditions for what they should remove or fix to "get me to play".

If the lore is good and the gameplay is fun, I'll enjoy the expansion.

[korijenkins]

Sometimes I just want gear to be rare, and that's it. I don't want titanforging, corrupted, benthic, azerite, all this crap.

There's a dozen different currencies for each expansion instead of just a handful at max level. I'd rather log on, play for 2-3 hours, and log off than have too much to do and never feel like I can take a break. That's the unfortunate state of BFA, and a huge reason why I don't even bother with the BFA content.

[Klingers]

Sometimes I just want gear to be rare, and that's it. I don't want titanforging, corrupted, benthic, azerite, all this crap.

There's a dozen different currencies for each expansion instead of just a handful at max level. I'd rather log on, play for 2-3 hours, and log off than have too much to do and never feel like I can take a break. That's the unfortunate state of BFA, and a huge reason why I don't even bother with the BFA content.

Yep. Damn straight. Me too.

I don't mind gear being rare, I just want to log on and farm some content with my friends for it and that be it.

When I started playing you went to a handful of dungeons for your Dungeon Set 1 and worked towards a linear set of 40-man raids or a side-set of 20-man raids. In BC, Wrath, Cata and most of MoP except for badges and some mid-tier catch-up mechanics it wasn't ever much more complicated either. I miss those days.

[WinningOne]

Someone rambling on for 30 minutes with negative statements about Blizzard and World of Warcraft is not unexpected. Sorry, I don't have anything in common with someone who has "outrage" and "furious anger" about the state of a video game.

[hulkgor]

The dev team, Ion in particular, would be well-served to pull their heads out of their arses and listen to what Preach said.

This statement is so completely absurd that there doesn't really seem to be a point in arguing with it.

Holy hell.

Also, it's also the worst possible type of threads on forums, just paste'ing youtuber vids onto it... ugh.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Sometimes I just want gear to be rare, and that's it. I don't want titanforging, corrupted, benthic, azerite, all this crap.

There's a dozen different currencies for each expansion instead of just a handful at max level. I'd rather log on, play for 2-3 hours, and log off than have too much to do and never feel like I can take a break. That's the unfortunate state of BFA, and a huge reason why I don't even bother with the BFA content.

Currencies wouldn't be an issue, if you could actually buy what you wanted with them. But due to pricing you are pretty much better off gambling still with the currency (in case of Azerite) than saving the whole patch cycle for the 3 BiS pieces and then having them become obsolete 2 weeks after you finally got them all. Same with benthic, the whole system was build around pretty much just gambling with the pearls to get socketed items with the best bonus procc, you were just wasting them if you upgraded any other item. Corrupted gear will just be an incentive to grind the cloak and more azerite power, nothing more.

Also OP, you cited the fat british guy, you pretty much have invalidated your whole argument because the dipshits on this board have a hate boner for him (and most streamers/youtubers unless they are mindless fanbois like themself), even if they are right for a change. Nothing good will come of your thread. #prophecy

[hulkgor]

If that's your only dot you want that's a damn subjective dot because what you hate, I could love.

I'm actually surprised in this day and age, that people still don't realize everyone likes different things... especially in such a vast game like World of Warcraft.

[Cathbadh]

Someone rambling on for 30 minutes with negative statements about Blizzard and World of Warcraft is not unexpected. Sorry, I don't have anything in common with someone who has "outrage" and "furious anger" about the state of a video game.

There's neither outrage nor furious anger in this video. Heck there's neither of those things in any of Preach's videos. He articulates his points well, and has offered plenty of praise in the past. He's not some one trick whiner.

[Wrath of the Bolvar]

If they stop innovating and stop coming up with new things, people will say Blizzard has no new ideas and that the game only does the same thing over and over again and it's uncreative and unoriginal.

[Flutterguy]

I was watching Preach's video "I'm At Blizzcon - Hype and Thoughts Going in" and got a surprisingly thorough articulation of the way I've been feeling for the last two expacs, which is why I've dropped off playing.

The dev team, Ion in particular, would be well-served to pull their heads out of their arses and listen to what Preach said.

<video snipped>

Too long didn't watch; I'm really paraphrasing Preach's far better dialogue, but basically the game's too fucking busy. There's too many course corrections. Too many systems. Too many major mid-expansion class or gearing changes. Too much time-gating. Too many chores. Too much complication.

I hadn't framed it in the same terms Preach did before today, but to be honest it's probably why I stopped playing in very-early Legion. I've been playing since Vanilla and I've been a fan of the Warcraft franchise since the mid-90's... But as much as I still enjoy keeping up with the major story beats, watching all the cut-scenes etc, the thought of actually playing BFA makes me sick. The treadmill, the grind walls, the systems confusion, the time gating... Just... Ugh. For me it started with Garrisons (which made me quit for the middle three quarters of WoD) and only went downhill.

There's a reason fans came back to Vanilla, and it's not just nostalgia. Some of it is just a live version of WoW with easily-defined parameters with far less hoops to go through to achieve a set goal for yourself.

I agree with Preach. The only dot-point feature I want to see in the next expansion's preview trailer is:

• We're removing all the shit you hate.

Finally. Forsaken will be removed from the game. But yeah, it would be nice if WoW was a pick and put down game without missing too much action. I don't like the daily grind and it's far worse than it ever was in MoP, an expansion that got a lot of shit at the time for its dailies. But they sell the game to investors based on play time. So these systems aren't going anywhere and may only get worse. Thing is, they don't want you to ever be done.

Oh, and I make it a policy not to watch these guys videos. Just going with your summary.

[Oholyknight]

Who is this and literally why should I care what this old man has to say about a kids game?

[Muajin76]

Who is this and literally why should I care what this old man has to say about a kids game?

haha since when is WoW only a kid's game?
I know more adults than kids that play this..."kid's game"

[Nomads]

Who is this and literally why should I care what this old man has to say about a kids game?

This kind of post always makes me laugh at how clueless some randoms on the internet are.

[Zeek Daniels]

One thing I learned from legion is that alts kill my drive for the game. I used to love having alts in wrath and cata. But now I can't stand them. What's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. What works when playing one toon does not work when playing 2 or 3 or 5 etc.

Things like legion artifacts and necks and essences are fine when your only playing one toon. But do you know how many hours a day per week you have to play in order to be up to date on 2 or 3 alts? It's draining. I vowed after legion where I had 7+ toons I was playing to never do that again. M+ just makes it worse because artifact levels greatly improved damage and if your not up to date it's hard to get into groups.

M+ are also draining as if you dont have a group you always go with your prolly sitting in q for hours not making any progress on gear.

I hope next expack be they go back to the token system of buying catch up gear so your not forced into these terrible wastes of time sitting in q,s getting nothing done.

[Nevcairiel]

Seems like another generic "vanilla was better" click-bait rant from a YouTuber to me.

BfA isn't actually that "busy" when you actually play it. It might seem that way if you've never played it and the breadth of things to do hits you, but if you actually did play it, much of that became relevant at different times, and only had a limited time of relevance or eventually you just were "done".

If you kept up with activities, you can perfectly fine raid-log right now, or raid and do 1-2 M+ a week to for the chest, with nothing really "lost" to you.

The majority of people complaining about "too much to do" are generally doing it to themselves, farming unreasonable things for 0.1% of improvements. Play at 99%, which is still plenty to tackle all possible content, and you'll spend so much less time doing it, and enjoy the game so much more in the process.

I imagine for most people with such complaints, they took a break before, they come back, they have no guild or friends to support them, making everything worse. WoW is a social game, even if classic people will try to tell you that you need to play classic to experience that, but a good guild and/or group of friends will do a lot of good for experiencing WoW even on retail.

[MoanaLisa]

Just a couple of comments:

1. Thread will stay open for a while since there's enough of a summary to have some discussion.

2. This forum has a sticky for videos. Use it. If you want to comment on anything that Preach, Asmongold or anyone else has said, write a summary and post it for discussion. This site isn't necessarily interested in promoting YouTube channels other than its own.

[Yoshingo]

There's a reason fans came back to Vanilla, and it's not just nostalgia.

But it mostly is the reason they came back.

Vanilla is clunky and sucks in almost every possible way. Classes are broken, the world is long and drawn out with no purpose, quests have no flow and almost no actual coherent story running through them, dungeons are shoved full with a thousand mobs, which aren't difficult because you can still pull them one at a time, it just takes fucking forever.

The worst possible choice they could make is to make the game more like Vanilla. The people who love Vanilla want VANILLA, not live with a few vanilla tweaks. Because there's no possible way they will ever turn the game back to Vanilla, even mechanically. The people who love that clunky ass awful game are going to stick with the thing they like.

Frankly the simplest thing they need to do is stop adding in more and more MAU features. Stop the endless grinds and just go back to making the only grind the gear grind, not a weapon or necklace that you need to incessantly get an infinite resource for to keep competitive in end game pve. And even if they did that, to credit it to Classic would be a huge stretch, at best. Because plenty of the expansions (In fact all of them before WoD) didn't have those features.

Also this idea that BfA is busy is ridiculous. Sure maybe there's a lot to do if you decide you're going to mythic raid, do mythic dungeons, do high end arena, do the hardest pet battles, and constantly run for transmogs.

The amount of people who do all of those at once is almost zero.

[nonameelf]

Oh god, are people just going to nonstop spam this video like people did with his "The Problem with MoP" video?