Has Blizzard lost sight of its audience? Or has its audience genuinely changed?

[guisadop]

not really bothered by the female characters. I'm more bothered about the "quirky" pop references that have been multiplying exponentially since Cata.. (SL flappy bird quest comes to mind).

[Feral Druid ist Op]

You are quite simply wrong. By definition bad means low/poor quality - for something to be bad it has to be below average. When the average is 50%, a player would have to be getting parses below 50%. A player getting 90% parses is still a very good player, just not as good as a player getting 99% parses/

And again, parses don't always equate to skill. Please stop being weird

i em right i raided/raid progress in the top 15-50 my last 13 years and keeping up dps/parses while doing mechanincs is the most important skill you can have in progress when you kill bosses in the first 2-3 weeks and if you disagree with me youre wrong that simple, dont be weird and dont denail facts try to get in any top 50 guild or even 100 with 80%-90% parses while beeing stacked in gear ill wait

[Eapoe]

not really bothered by the female characters. I'm more bothered about the "quirky" pop references that have been multiplying exponentially since Cata.. (SL flappy bird quest comes to mind).

There’s been pop culture references since WotLK that I can speak of from personal experience. I know they existed in BC as well. I’m sure they were even around since Vanilla. It’s not a new thing. It also doesn’t seem like there’s been more or less really. The biggest I can think of was the long Harrison Jones quest line during Cataclysm, and even that wasn’t too bad.

[Loveliest]

It's a trend thing. Now you have to represent everything that people yell the loudest about in every media or people will point out that you're shit because (whatever x is popular at the time). A few years back people yelled there are not enough women and the ones that exist are all a bunch of cazies. So we got all women leaders now, for allied races too.
Now everyone noticed there's really no gay representation in WoW. We had a few hints here and there, some gnomettes in love but nothing really clear. And now all of a sudden, you hace a gay couple yelling they are a gay couple every 20 pages in the new book. Dont get me wrong, I play all my games as gay when i have the option. But these felt so forced it was uncomfortable. Like soneone ordered "and give me a bunch of gay couples and make clear they are gay, ok?" How should i put this... gayness looks like its there to be put on display, it doesnt integrate naturally. Or it felt like that to me anyway.

The accessibility and internet has made it very easy for people to be aggresive and show how much their are against those who don't "support" them. And i use quotes because if you do a story about women suffering, you'll get a bunch of angry comments about men suffering too. Or if you show white it means you hate black and so on. So you HAVE to have everything, no matter what stories you want to say because a bunch of angry people can ruin your rep. That don't actually help the cause by doing something for the people affected, but they will always be there when something needs to be done AGAINST someone. Because its easy to yell, hard to help.

[Ielenia]

Uou fail to ask yourself why it was cleared so fast ? It is cleared faster than ever before due to its 15 years old content. Back in vanilla id be lucky to have an onyxia buff when raiding today i have roids zg buff onyxia buff and a multitude of other buffs making me invincible. Hell im sitting at hit capped with over 40% crit besides. I was nowhere near that in Vanilla simply because no one thought about getting and combineing all the elements. Today heads are beign put up 5-6 times a day with horde resetting. That was not a thing in vanilla. So yeah time does change and so does the knowledge and math behind it. Hell even givinf the zg trinlet to tanks in prep for naxx would have been unheard off.

I've already pointed out that Classic is not a 1:1 representation of vanilla WoW.

Molten Core remained unclear for 154 days back in the day. Compare that to the 2-hour time it took in Classic, from it being opened to first full clear. Are you trying to say that "BiS gear" and "BiS buffs" were what managed to reduce the clear time to 0.05% of its original record?

Even if that is what you're trying to claim, here, that still doesn't change what I said. Because, if people had "BiS gear" and "BiS buffs" back then, then MC wouldn't last even half the time it did back then, right?

"Ah, but today we have extensive YT guides on how to clear those bosses now! Which is why they went down so fast!" Well, we also have extensive YT guides to defeat current raid bosses, and those don't go down as fast now do they?

[Loveliest]

You know what the next thing will be that hasn't yet hit Blizzard hard enough? Someone's gonna count all the main characters with balck skintone/feathers/fur and point out Blizz is racist. And then we'll get a bunch of new black leaders and all the current ones that are single will get a bunch of black consorts. This isn't bad at all, what's bad is that these things are never added naturally over the whole lifetime of the game (now and in the future), they just appear in bursts when some cause is in trend and the Internet revolts.

[Flurryfang]

Sylvanas and nathanos are definitely the worst characters in the franchise, blizzard has done a staggeringly bad job writing those characters and their stories.

The story is also making less and less sense imho due to a lot of different influences from "outside" the old school gamer culture.

As several articles over the years have said (based on insider info) blizzard today is led by a lot of marketing, business, PR and finances people.
People who have probably not played a proper old-school RPG in their life and whose only contact with games comes in the form of Candy Crush.

They are trying to pander to every demographic and the lowest common denominator in hopes of drawing in every possible $ they can.

Blizzards first, last and only question these days is "how do we maximize money even at the expense of everything?!"
Its not about having some kind of epic story they want to tell or a great vision of a fun game design they want to develop and enjoy.

Its not even about maintaining and further developing a company brand or carefully planning their products so that their franchises have proper development and long term growth.

Its all about that quick cash in, instant cash grab that keeps the fat bonuses coming into manager pockets and keeps share-holders happy who only care about swift profit because they plan to sell to buy something else.

Very much agree on all points.

But i think the most important thing to push down is that: WoW does not feel a game with a leader with a vision anymore.

Like, i love Ion. He is a great guy and seems to really care for the game, and his background shows that he knows game design. But it more seems like he is interested in systems and feature design, and not in creating a grand vision for the game overall, not something that he can stand 100% behind.

WoW is kinda missing the touch, which a film director would give to a movie. There are so many hands involved in making decisions for WoW, that it does not really feel like it is talking to anybody in specific. The story is written for some people, the comics are for other people, the gameplay is for a 3rd form of people, the raid design for a 4th kind, and so on and so forth. Its hard to like WoW, when its seperated up in so many different targeted-experiences.

To sum it up, i think Blizzard have gone way too much into the area of appeasing as many people/demographics as possible. And when you try to appease everybody, you end up appeasing nobody. WoW is now a "meh" experience through and through. I would be surprised if anybody will ever again like ALL of WoW, instead of just few pieces of it.

[Dug]

Oh please, dude.

Not watching a 15 minute video, sorry not sorry. My point stands and was correct.

[Chromell]

I agree. Warcraft is in desperate need of some male badassness.

Too much estrogen for you in-game nowadays?

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I agree with it. The last badass who died was Varian. We had him, Arthas, Illidan, Garrosh etc. What do we have now?

Anduin, Wrathion, Sylvanas, Taelia, Talanji, Tyrange... That's ridiculous.

Gods forbid men aren't the center of all attention 24/7 in a game.

[Krakan]

Too much estrogen for you in-game nowadays?

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Gods forbid men aren't the center of all attention 24/7 in a game.

I think it's more sylvanas and jaina fatigue . Both are such terribly written characters and have been allowed to linger on like a bad fart in room that people want to go back to wc3 story telling.

Never mind how neutered and boring the horde and alliance are. All the horde does now is cry and talk about how sad they are about committing constant betrayal against anyone and anything and all the alliance does is talk about how immature it is to be angry about people who murder your family and betray you constantly.

Honestly I wish I could join the scourge or the burning legion at least they have a point to existence in the plot beyond where our character lives.

[Logwyn]

I have explained over and over again why you are wrong. You keep using fluff words like casual and hardcore that dont have an actual definition in this context, and havnt provided one tangible piece of evidence to support your claim - i have provided multiple examples that are supported by Classic.

Give me one piece of evidence to support your claim, without any word salad or buzz words - just tell me what made classic more "hardcore"

I would throw in that the classic of today has players that have been there and done that and know exactly what needs to be done. Throw in the fact that we've had over 10 years of having to push a character to max dps/tank and heals. Also that classic you needed really only 25ish players doing what needed to be done and the other 15 could just sit back and wand the bosses to win.

The safety dance boss in Naxx. You can kill him with 5 yes 5 players. I know because I've done it with just entry-level geared players in Naxx. You can't compare Classic of today with Vanilla. The player base is just too different than it was then.


In reality, all WOW takes is time. Not skill just time. Most MMOs are like that. If you don't let your players have a sense that they can progress in a reasonable amount of time they quit.

[Gurahk]

Too much estrogen for you in-game nowadays?

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Gods forbid men aren't the center of all attention 24/7 in a game.

god forbid there be a badass male character that doesn't bite the dust.

[Eazy]

Gods forbid men aren't the center of all attention 24/7 in a game.

So, you're saying that Anduin isn't a man?

[Chromell]

So, you're saying that Anduin isn't a man?

I'm saying that there's no problem in having (more) female main characters than males, as we do now, in fact. Had you paid attention to the comments I replied to you'd see they included Anduin and Wrathion in a list with women complaining we no longer have Varian and the others.

All I did was point out how quick the community is to complain when the macho stereotypes are gone from the game and women are more prominent. Where were they when all we had was basically Jaina and Sylvanas as secondary characters? (One of them was a race leader and wore a bikini armor, no less, I guess that was more than enough to the average fan service whining fanboy)

[goldlock]

So, you're saying that Anduin isn't a man?

I mean you can argue hes a child but a man is stretching it. Does he have an emotion beyond feeling remorse for the fact hes enemies are not noble?

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I'm saying that there's no problem in having (more) female main characters than males, as we do now, in fact. Had you paid attention to the comments I replied to you'd see they included Anduin and Wrathion in a list with women complaining we no longer have Varian and the others.

All I did was point out how quick the community is to complain when the macho stereotypes are gone from the game and women are more prominent. Where were they when all we had was basically Jaina and Sylvanas as secondary characters? (One of them was a race leader and wore a bikini armor, no less, I guess that was more than enough to the average fan service whining fanboy)

I mean... blizzard cant write female characters. Jaina and Sylvanas don't act like real characters but manic depressants. Jaina's story is more or less her crying and having more powerful characters bestow positions of power onto her.

Sylvanas is so poorly depicted and portrayed I legitimately thought she was an alliance plant as the expansion starts with her murdering a victorious horde army to turn them into fragile and weak skeletons. Followed by her plans being ruined from being insulted in the war of thorns...

Both are just terribly written... I find it hard to find any female character that exists in wow that has a somewhat believable character that doesn't act as a foil for a male lead.

[Eazy]

I'm saying that there's no problem in having (more) female main characters than males, as we do now, in fact. Had you paid attention to the comments I replied to you'd see they included Anduin and Wrathion in a list with women complaining we no longer have Varian and the others.

All I did was point out how quick the community is to complain when the macho stereotypes are gone from the game and women are more prominent. Where were they when all we had was basically Jaina and Sylvanas as secondary characters? (One of them was a race leader and wore a bikini armor, no less, I guess that was more than enough to the average fan service whining fanboy)

I have no idea what are you talking about. Like bunch of random words, implycations and assumptions?

I just asked if Anduin is man and that's all. I don't care about Sylvanas or Jaina.

But I'll try to bait - about he "macho men", they're the reason why the war is won. It's a game about war - WARcraft, and strong men are the biggest part of EVERY war. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any women/fragile men, I'm just saying that WARcraft without STRONG, PURE TESTOSTERONE, POWERFUL males is just wrong.

If I wanted to see more about fragile men and woman romance then I'd probably read twilight lol

I mean you can argue hes a child but a man is stretching it. Does he have an emotion beyond feeling remorse for the fact hes enemies are not noble?

I get you, but the guy I was quoting asked if there's a problem with more female leads.

Both are just terribly written... I find it hard to find any female character that exists in wow that has a somewhat believable character that doesn't act as a foil for a male lead.

...and here I completely agree.
Sylvanas was cool in Wc3, same with Jaina. They had their own moments.
Sylvanas become idiot that doesn't know how to lead people, typical cartoon villain.
Jaina had her alliance vs horde compass continuously changing up.
There aren't any good written female characters in WoW no longer. I liked Tyrande in Wc3 though, when she wasn't just another "I WANT REVENGE", when she wasn't Elune-Avatar-whatever.
Yrel started good, but ended as a psycho light crusader.

Damn... every time I try to find a good female character in WoW I see that they are fucking them up.

Maybe less important characters are cooler, such as Moira or Alextrasza. Azshara was nice also.

[Magnagarde]

Did you see the new artbook coming out? The gay spymaster who describes Garithos as a bigot, with the author explicitly stating that Blizzard had a hard request to make the Shaw thing happen. This is when the author has to craft an eviscerated story around a preset thought, instead of making a story that feels organic, relatable in and out of the universe. We all know Garithos is a bigot, but that's a real life perspective on a character within a very, very unforgiving and cruel universe in which no one - at least back when the writing and story mattered most - would use the word "bigot".

At this point I feel like Warcraft is becoming a parody of real life.

Both are just terribly written... I find it hard to find any female character that exists in wow that has a somewhat believable character that doesn't act as a foil for a male lead.

There are no in-universe believable characters that are male either nor are there any that don't act as a foil for a female lead. All of BfA was about what Sylvanas is doing and how Sylvanas impacted the Horde, how she had a masterplan all along, how her boytoy Nathanos executes orders without question and more. Then you have to deal with Tyrande going full vengeance mode because of what Sylvanas did, while following Maiev or Sira. Rastakhan gets killed off to be replaced by a female character, Katherine Proudmoore was leading Kul Tiras and was advised by Lady Ashvane, getting replaced by Jaina Proudmoore in the end.

The male characters that follow suit are all gutless, indoctrinated by a female, pathetic and lost, ranging from Anduin who is pathetically lost, Saurfang who is lost and Nathanos who is a puppet.

[Azerate]

It's funny how the world is progressing in so many areas in so many ways, but there are still people out there who just want:

"badass dudes doing badass things".

...and they are angry that the world no longer caters exclusively to manchildren who want to feel better about themselves.

I mean you can argue hes a child but a man is stretching it. Does he have an emotion beyond feeling remorse for the fact hes enemies are not noble?

Right, of course. If someone has any more complex feelings in themselves apart from "I'm so strong and I'm gunna kill my enemies with my muscles" they are not man enough.

I genuinely wonder how people like this even exist in 2020. It's like the last 500 years never happened

[Venziir]

Did you see the new artbook coming out? The gay spymaster who describes Garithos as a bigot, with the author explicitly stating that Blizzard had a hard request to make the Shaw thing happen. This is when the author has to craft an eviscerated story around a preset thought, instead of making a story that feels organic, relatable in and out of the universe. We all know Garithos is a bigot, but that's a real life perspective on a character within a very, very unforgiving and cruel universe in which no one - at least back when the writing and story mattered most - would use the word "bigot".

At this point I feel like Warcraft is becoming a parody of real life.

They made it, very, clear that Garithos was a terrible person in TFT, they downright called him an asshole. And made it very clear, through his very own sayings, that he was, indeed, a racist. So yes, they made it very clear.

[Magnagarde]

They made it, very, clear that Garithos was a terrible person in TFT, they downright called him an asshole. And made it very clear, through his very own sayings, that he was, indeed, a racist. So yes, they made it very clear.

They should call him incompetent, daft or even an imbecile. The word bigot should by default not exist in the universe of Warcraft because almost everyone is one to a varying extent. Garithos being a bigot should be the last adjective a spymaster like Shaw should be using. Night elves are bigots, the Nightborne are bigots, high elves are bigots, humans are bigots towards orcs and trolls, yet this is the standard for these races and nobody is being called out on it specifically because the Warcraft universe itself has a deeply-rooted sense of interracial tension and conflict.

To now call Garithos specifically a bigot makes absolutely no sense in an universe where every single race has a deeply-rooted past and present when it comes to bigotry. Of course we know that he is one as out of character observers.