This current streamers trend to exit wow is obviously partly hypocritical.

[Wuusah]

thanks for writing a textwall that is literally the same thing I said

except it's not. These streamers didn't play WoW because WoW was popular and are now leaving because WoW isn't popular anymore.

WoW has never been a popular streaming game in the first place. They played WoW because they loved WoW. And they stop playing because they don't like it anymore. It has nothing to do with its popularity for streaming. It never had any.

[Trumpcat]

I can not say completely because WoW definitely deserves criticism, e.g. the subsystems are overengineered and grinding-oriented for little reason other than sub fees (people often say "MMOs are like that" but that's flawed: NOTHING says MMOs have to be like that: it's just like that because we're used to be served that).
But obviously when they say it's now somehow terribad and somehow 2 or 3 expansions ago was somehow amazing it's absolutist nonsense.

Yeah I agree with all that. Constructive criticism and especially competition is the best way we can see improvements, not the exaggerated, overdramatized and deeply infantile streamers and their tantrums. The most ridiculous thing in all this is that at the same time that WoW was the best, according to that community, was also the time Blizzard was filled with "abusive toxic males" who have since either quit or fired, including the high management. So if they can make up their mind in their selective outrage it will be a step forward.

[Dracullus]

We are talking about people who didn't make single break since Legion launch (August 2015-August 2016 was basically forced break for many people). And now "quiting" earn you some brownie points.

.. but it will be funny time when some of them will feel this WoW "itch" again. Normal people just take break when they don't have fun and return when they feel like to play These people first played despite signs or burnout (cause it helped them earn money, funny how they call Blizzard greedy every 5 minutes, it must be projection) and after years made public drama how their game was destroyed.

[AngerFork]

I feel it's a combination of things, not just a bandwagon. Some of it is being on the bandwagon for sure, given the amount of streamers I've never heard of that are having WoW quitting videos. But there's plenty more doing it for non-bandwagon reasons. Preach has been unhappy with the game for some time, and he obviously has taken the fact that WoW has this Domination Socket system in place somewhat personally. Can't say I blame him, it's an awful system & he's been trying to get them away from these systems for some time now. Scott Johnson left due to the lawsuit and sounds legit broken hearted every time he talks about them now. Neither of them left to "get their sub counts higher," and plenty of others are also leaving for similar legit reasons.

I think the real tests of these streamer departures will be 9.2 & 10.0. It's absolutely easy to hate on WoW now, especially so close to the lawsuit & with Korthia being a complete dud. But a few months removed from the lawsuit with new updated content (if it's good) might make hating on WoW not as appealing later. Scott Johnson I suspect is gone for good, the lawsuit basically moved him away from the community, but most of the others I've heard sounded like they were keeping the door open to return if there's good stuff to do in game.

[Alterno]

It's pretty obvious most of it riding a bandwagon for views. None of those people actually found a game that happened this year to be perfect or suddenly realized wow is "bad" so what's happening here is that they think that hate for wow sells and they jump on a bandwagon of the streamer culture in the hope they'll get their subs count higher.

No, not even partly. The game suddenly got way worse in the last patch. Stop blinding yourself, the game is getting worse for a lot of people and they are just either leaving for the classic experience or to a new MMO. Heck I have friends who decided to play on a private server, after the mount scandal with CTBC.

There are others who happen to see that the game is not profitable for them,in the sense that they are getting less and less viewers with WOW and this happens when people lose interest in the game. People like you will be of those who would rather see the sunset of the game, than teliing Blizzard to fix their game.

It's possble for blizzard to fix their game? absolutely, Square Enix fixed FFXIV and a lot of people from many mmo are getting into it, just like a lot of people got into wow, I myself came from EQ into WOW.

[Santti]

There are variety streamers, that stream many different kinds of games.

And then there are streamers, who mainly stream 1 game.

For the former, abandoning WoW might not be a big deal, but don't assume they do it to gain viewers. I highly doubt that's going to happen, especially if WoW happened to be popular for them.

For the latter, abandoning WoW is potentially ruinous. They need to have a high viewer-base already, to make such a jump, and survive relatively unscathed, and they are definitely not going to gain viewers for doing so (unless they find a nice niche for them in another game, but that's another story entirely). Streamers talk about this shit all the time.

[Queen of Hamsters]

I for one find it hilarious when someone makes a big deal about not supporting Blizzard/Activision due to the lawsuit, but then jump over to New World... Made by an Amazon-owned studio...

[catalystical]

Yep. The streamers could easily have said "I told you so" since they have been complaining about systemcraft for years. For the most of the last few years we're just tolerating WoW.

The content drought was the one that broke the dam. If the pandemic didn't hit, they could have kept trying to paper over the cracks and we'll be none the wiser and just willingly accept whatever Blizz throws at us, as we did in Bfa. The content drought meant everything's on repeat, and the frustration from playing the game gets amplified.

Fact is a lot of us are bored and tired of Shadowlands. Streamers bandwagoning to leave the game simply reflects that reality.

[TidalConflux]

I for one find it hilarious when someone makes a big deal about not supporting Blizzard/Activision due to the lawsuit, but then jump over to New World... Made by an Amazon-owned studio...

Or the amount of people who quit supporting Blizzard/Activision and then talked about how the Riot Games MMO couldnt come out fast enough.

[Izzyfurious]

Yep. The streamers could easily have said "I told you so" since they have been complaining about systemcraft for years. For the most of the last few years we're just tolerating WoW.

The content drought was the one that broke the dam. If the pandemic didn't hit, they could have kept trying to paper over the cracks and we'll be none the wiser and just willingly accept whatever Blizz throws at us, as we did in Bfa. The content drought meant everything's on repeat, and the frustration from playing the game gets amplified.

Fact is a lot of us are bored and tired of Shadowlands. Streamers bandwagoning to leave the game simply reflects that reality.

Good for them, things i dislike in the game i avoid and instead do things i like. And people that are influencial like that i call the usual sheeps who can't think for themselves.

[hydrium]

It's pretty obvious most of it riding a bandwagon for views. None of those people actually found a game that happened this year to be perfect or suddenly realized wow is "bad" so what's happening here is that they think that hate for wow sells and they jump on a bandwagon of the streamer culture in the hope they'll get their subs count higher.

So you're just ignoring that 9.1 basically kicked everyone in the dick? I mean, that's understandable, it would completely tank your point so I definitely see why you would ignore that.

[Kralljin]

(1) For most Streamers / Content creators, dropping their one game they've been focusing on always comes at a risk at alienating their audience.
If you are a WoW Streamer / Content creator, then dropping WoW may quite likely result in the end of your channel or rather the inability to live off "content creation".

(2) You can probably just get a lot of views by continuing shitting on Blizzard / WoW, at this point, it basically writes itself.
Watch any video from a Streamer / Content creator giving their opinion on Blizzard / WoW, it's 10-40 min videos with 90% being the same and perhaps of 10% of it offering a PoV that's not obvious at first glance - at best.
If you're just in for the money, now it's an easy time to get a lot of views by just bashing Blizzard.

(3) Dropping WoW may at best serve as a last Hurra there, to get a lot of views one final time, but if you make a fuss about dropping WoW and then continue to make videos about it a month later, you are going to alienate a lot of viewers because you've talked out of your ass for anyone plain to see.

(4) For a lot of content creators, the Lawsuit was the last straw, you could argue about them being hypocrites for then playing another game made by [evil company], but i've barely seen any video of a content creator saying:
I like WoW, i enjoy playing it but my moral code dictates that i stop playing the game of a company with such a fucked internal structure.
As said, last straw but if they would actually still enjoy the game, i doubt they would drop it.

If you make solid products but have a shitty internal culture, you put customers in a moral dilemma (like when customers chose to buy a brand that produces their products in some asian sweatshop), but when you make shitty products and have a shitty internal culture, you're just asking for customers / promoters to jump ship.

[minteK917]

Streamers dont force anything on blizzard lmao. They are the one doing it to their own game the multiplication of system to do the same shit you did back there was only one system called gear. As for people saying the problem is blizzard suckings streamers dick... the hell, blizzard employees literally go on twitter to talk shit about streamers. Nobody that doesent work on the game is responsible for shit about the game. Blizzard are the ones doing all the shit you find annoying in game and letting all the annoying people play the game that makes a toxic community. Nobody else. They will remove an emote before they bother with actually banning someone making alt to get around your blacklist multiple time to harrass you. Streamers dont do shit and arent supposed to do shit, they are players.

[epigramx]

Just to make it clear, class fantasy is what a spec is supposed to be at a glance. Informing both the benchmark for the ideal spec, as well as the starting point

Fury Warrior for instance has the class fantasy of berserker. It informs several abilities like Rampage and bloodthirst that defines the spec as one that focuses on doing lots of attacks with no heed for exactly how impactful each individual hit is, similar to how a berserker would fight.
BM hunter is a beastmaster, which informs abilities like kill command and the reliance on a pet to do damage for you, in addition to the ability to summon lots of pets at once.

A class fantasy is the ideal a spec is supposed to live up to, which is important since without it you wouldn't really have any idea what kind of abilities the spec is even supposed to have, like what happened before Outlaw rogue changed name from Combat rogue.

You miss the obvious factor that ANYTHING can be renamed or re-described in literature and still be the same gameplay. For example a cooldown like berserker for spec X may be important in your literature to stay berserker but: there's nothing stopping them giving that NAME to another spell in another spec Y so the GAMEPLAY is now completely different on the same spec literature wise.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY they can even retcon anything (and it has been done in this game already)!

- - - Updated - - -

It's the opposite of that. Streamers that decided to quit have been on the "outrage train" for quite some time. Somehow it's shocking to people here that players who were criticizing the game for the last few expansions with video after video for months and years are now quitting the game and decided to not make videos about WoW anymore.

That's the whole point of why Preach quit WoW. He doesn't want to be constantly negative about WoW, so if he doesn't enjoy WoW and doesn't want to keep criticizing WoW then there is only one path left: quitting WoW.
Same with Stoopzz. He wants to play a fun pvp game with a fun community and he doesn't get that from WoW anymore. His youtube content went from "this is amazing" to "this is not amazing anymore" to "this is bad" to "blizzard please, this is so bad and it's going to crash and burn" to "it crashed and burned" to "I'm out". He doesn't want to make video after video after video shitting on WoW. He wants to have fun with a fun game. So he's gone and won't talk about WoW anymore. Not hating on WoW, just gone.

It's more complex as you say than a "they went from positive to negative", but it can still be hypocritical. E.g. some of them say only the past few months the game had terrible subsystems and grinding and randomness. The situation was like that in almost all expansions to varying degrees and sometimes it was WORSE (e.g. I've never seen the game more terrible at subsystems than the launch of Legion with the rng-welfare legendaries (sure we liked it for a couple of weeks because it was too new but a lot of us were completely burned out within a month or two)).

- - - Updated - - -

Quoted for truth. I mean, asmongold is a great entertainer - and he should be treated as such. He is NOT a game designer, he is not a developer (I bet he can't even code), he just played video games his whole life. It is like saying someone who has driven cars until he is 40 years old is suddenly an engineer or car designer.

Younger people sometimes tend to overweight the opinions of streamers because they grew up with them, maybe older people can identify an entertainer when they see them and have enough distance to streamers.

He's a friend-simulator for 20-somethings or younger. He says nothing you can't derive yourself if you have rudimentary experience.
Most of the youtubers/streamers/reviewers are just that; friend simulators; you don't really need them to learn anything.

[Menog]

I quit wow in march or april (dont remeber the exact time but it was after having the curve and m15+ shit achievement from 9.0 done) and I have to say I dont miss the game at all. I had no enjoyment while playing it. The new m+ affixes are imho shit, the mandatory tower experience was borring and the overall vibe of the game I found it being boring, unimaginative and repetitive. They decided to pick all elements of past expansions and made it worse. World quests now take longer and moving between areas takes so much time I would decide I couldn't be bothered to take 10 flight paths to maldraxus to do one boring world quest.

To sum it up, I understand why people are leaving. I think the court filing was the last straw to add playing a borring joyless game. Playing wow was less enjoyable than my job.

[epigramx]

Yes im sure people like preach quit wow and never said it was bad before and risk his employees to on a bandwagon

You are full of cope and should look at yourself the mental gymnastic you undertaking

Yes he is full of shit. For example his main go-to argument is the tier sets were so amazing because they changed the rotation. At the same time he doesn't mention that legendaries now completely change the rotation too (e.g. I re-subbed to play kyrian arcane mage and it's a COMPLETELY NEW SPEC).

[Tooshie]

You blizzard dickriders are hilarious. Desperately trying to find some weird ass conspiracy theories or anything really to avoid facing the hard fact that this game has been stinking garbagefire for years and people running it are bunch of fucking creeps and/or incompetent, spineless cowards who have covered up the disgusting work enviroment.

Hope it burns to the ground so you addicts are maybe forced to do some reflecting instead of whinging like babies. "tHeY dId iT fOr tEh vIeWS" lmao.

edit: and if it's "trendy" to not be a total piece of shit then I gotta say that's the best trend in a while.

[epigramx]

You blizzard dickriders are hilarious. Desperately trying to find some weird ass conspiracy theories or anything really to avoid facing the hard fact that this game has been stinking garbagefire for years and people running it are bunch of fucking creeps and/or incompetent, spineless cowards who have covered up the disgusting work enviroment.

Hope it burns to the ground so you addicts are maybe forced to do some reflecting instead of whinging like babies. "tHeY dId iT fOr tEh vIeWS" lmao.

Why not both? The game had terrible elements since Vanilla; e.g. you always had to grind like an idiot without the need of any skill whatsoever in order to do parts that need skill (some say "that's how MMOs are like" but that's wrong; nothing says that's how MMOs are like; MMOs only have to be massively multiplayer full stop) or rng was always extremely utilized (especially on early legion that ruined everything for a lot of us).

So when those people that you say are so brilliant act now as if those problems started recently or in mid-BfA then you know something is fishy with their argument.

[Thage]

It's pretty obvious most of it riding a bandwagon for views. None of those people actually found a game that happened this year to be perfect or suddenly realized wow is "bad" so what's happening here is that they think that hate for wow sells and they jump on a bandwagon of the streamer culture in the hope they'll get their subs count higher.

What's happening right now is the exception, not the rule. You understand this, right? Historically, a streamer who built their brand on one game leaving that game sees huge hits to their subscriber count and viewer ratings. HeelVSBabyface tried to leave WoW for FFXIV and his stream tanked until he pivoted toward reactionary outrage over Reddit's favorite boogeymen instead (because rage is addictive and there are a lot of rageaholics on the internet). Many streamers announced they were pivoting away from WoW fully expecting their income to tank as a result.

That they're finding success focusing on another MMO or shifting the focus of their stream off the game and onto them as a performer/entertainer has been an irregularity in trends.

Nobody gives up a guaranteed cash flow for a well-known risk unless they feel strongly about it and feel their personal happiness/voicing their issues with the game is worth risking their income and needing to find another source. You'd have to be insane or stupid to make that plunge blithely thinking you're chasing greener financial pastures. Asmon himself has said he made the jump so easily because he took care to make his brand focused around himself, rather than as a "WoW streamer."

[Skirdus]

It's pretty obvious most of it riding a bandwagon for views. None of those people actually found a game that happened this year to be perfect or suddenly realized wow is "bad" so what's happening here is that they think that hate for wow sells and they jump on a bandwagon of the streamer culture in the hope they'll get their subs count higher.

I'm sorry? In what universe does a single video signaling one's departure from their primary source of income NOT destabilize said income?