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

[Niwes]

Its all about content. Its much easier to talk trash about wow than say good things. Im sure that no matter what Blizzard does at this point, no one will say "YEAH this looks awesome!".

And in any case, they can return at any time to play the game. Still while trashtalking it ofc.

i saw some Bellular video of last week or so. i normally not watch streamers. just every few months or so here and there. i dont even know more than 3 names (i assume the 3 are some of the most prominent). that Bellular video was about analyzing known data from Armory, r.io, etc. to get a picture of player count and popularity of actual wow xpac. i, as sw developer and analyst, did the same 1-2 months ago, way more in depth than Bellular did it. and i came to the same or even more negative results.

so, that said: nothing in his video is trash talk. ofc is focusing the negative route wow goes and bashing wow a „popular“ thing at the moment. but after watching another 10 of his videos or so, i came to the opinion, that he is just in the same boat than me: he do not bash wow for stream numbers or just for fun. he loved the game for many many years, and same as me too, he got disapointed about what ATVI Blizz made out of wow, once a beloved hobby.

so, even when i assume, that a lot of stuff of streamers is trash talk, what i see from Bellular or Preach do not look or feel like trash talk to me. so its not ALL trash talk. at least imo.

and i EXTREMLY doubt none of them would say „awesome“ if Blizz really would do something awesome. they WANT to love wow (besides the fact that they get paid by just playing it, for this fact alone would it be stupid to bite the hand that feeds you). but as Preach in his stop-playing-wow video said „i still WANT to love wow, but i cant bc it sucks“ or something along those lines.

so: its not that easy, you wanna make it look like. not ALL is trash talk. and not EVERY streamer would NEVER say „awesome“ when there finally would be again something awesome in wow.

your opinion is way too extreme and unrealistic for my taste.

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It was never about "bashing" blizzard and defending my love. I acknowledged that both have cash shops which are dubiously greedy, skimming more money off the top. That's been your WeirdChamp obsession this whole time, projecting some kind of unhinged fanboy image onto my posts. Stop projecting.

You kept claiming that SQUARE was the greedier COMPANY. And you have since failed to defend that stance.

All I did was provide facts, that nobody buys the great majority of event items on the FF store. That blizzard has constantly been at the cutting edge of corporate greed, copying money-making methods from gacha games and gambling rings. You haven't even denied these things, you've just called me "mad" "triggered" and now unhinged. When you use ad homs such as these and cant even address the facts presented, you've already lost. You have no real argument, so you call me names and try to paint me as some rabid fanboy frothing at the mouth. It's both aughable and pathetic.

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This is something addressed by a lot of streamers and youtubers. When playing the game normally, the only time the cash shop is referenced is on the launcher, and only when they add a new item. WoW content creators compared this to WoW, where Blizzard makes sure you know th cash shop is available in game, as well as regularly popping up windows in game to tell you of new store mounts and pets. Plus the ever present WoW token.

These are not my words, but the words of content creators who play both games. They complain that Blizzard is more direct about making sure you know the cash shop is in game.

But I have agreed this whole time with one point. Cash shops are not healthy for a game. But if the game is good otherwise, it is something that can be overlooked and ignored. If a game is riddled with issues, terrible gameplay and systems, then the cash shop just becomes another turd on the pile of garbage. I've never once defended the cash shop as a good thing. Just correcting misconceptions and falsehoods dome are claiming. The WoW token as a separate entity from the cash shop is in my opinion 50 times worse than the cash shop. Sanctioned gold buying turns my gut. It's disgusting that its allowed, and it's even more disgusting that certain people are defending it.

I could call them fanboys, wow andies, mad, unhinged, triggered, but personally attacking someone rather than addressing the meat of what they say is pretty much admitting defeat before you've even hit the post button.

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On topic, Zach streamed WoW last night and the WOW fans started celebrating in chat that he'd quit FF.

FFXIV was in maintenance last night, and Zach is back to full time FF streaming today. It was super cringe watching people shit on FF to the degree those people were. That kind of naked tribalism is ultra cringe.

you have to add here, that (and this makes it the most horrible reason) a smart cash grab system, like the wow token, enforced game design changes, targeting at a support of the use of a smart cash grab system.

wow changed his game design in a way, boosters have a good use. boosters are paid with gold. quick way to gold is buying a wow token. buying a wow token means +7 bugs for free for Blizz, out of an automated system, with 0 investment. its simply a money making machine. to support that machine they changed wow game design piece for piece. which overall made the game worse for customers.

the problem with smart cash grab systems is: you dont need to provide that much quality of your product to keep 4 million ppls playing and paying, when you can get more money out of 3 mio subs, when 500.000 of them pay you 7 bugs for no investment.

Blizz give a fuck, short term, about their sub numbers, as long as the quarter figures are fine.

so, smart cash grab systems may be good for monetizing, but hurt customers and product in the long run. thats why we are where we are. ingame shops, even with ingame ads, are annoying, but at least they not change the game design in a direction so the game becomes just a transport platform for a smart cash grab system.

[odamienskii]

Standards have truly dipped if this is a sign of the game being well and alive.

Huh, who was talking about standards, i was talking about someone claiming classic is dead when to me its more alive with more of a "warcraft" soul than retail.

[rhorle]

As someone who sold caries through Mop To BfA this is the highest amount of copium and lying i ever seen. Every seller of booster knows that boosting exploded when tokens came in. Can you please elaborate where you draw your "explosion of popularity" was during garrisons that is based on something real?

Except it didn't. Boosting exploded when Blizzard introduced timed run rewards and Garrisons to print money. They were well established when the token was released in March 2015. That token helped but it was not the root cause. What more can I elaborate with when you dismissed anything that doesn't agree with you as "highest amount of compium and lying"?

[Merin]

To be fair, what we know of 9.1.5 shows a distinct change in direction. Sure, its like 5-10%, but its not 9.0.5 which was a doubling down. I wish i could remember 8.1.5 (since 8.2 was amazing for players like me), actually, 8.1 was really fun for me with the jaina story (i resubbed around 8.1.5 so lack perspective). All im seeing right now is a focus on qol. This makes me relatively optimistic theyre having a change of heart... so im optimistic. Im not on board... im just optimistic.

9.1.5 doesn't show anything.

You have a few cutting room floor palette swaps and... ... ...? No actual art or even artists are needed for any of this, *I* could do the entire list of "cosmetic" changes they're making in under an hour by myself and I'm a fucking idiot.

If that's literally all it takes, then it's no wonder this rotten husk has survived as long as it has on fumes.

[Pannonian]

Blizzard sells WoW tokens for real life money that players use to buy ingame currency, this isn't a mount that some dev spent time creating that players fly around on that impacts no ones game play at all, it's literally a little item icon that someone buys and sells and can use to impact the game through various means. Blizzard is 100% greedier than Square enix.
The only things on the shop in ffxiv you can sell for actual profit are dyes and it's barely anything, the gil you make from selling dyes you buy with real money is basically like 2000G in WoW per dye, I can make 5000G in wow for doing 1 daily cache quest. So it's not game breaking at all like tokens that you can buy an infinite amount of are worth 150Kish gold and use for whatever whether it be boosting, carries, AH manipulation which affects the economy(Buy low sell high, buy all and create a monopoly)
Someone would have to spend over 100$ in ffxiv dye to make in gil what players can buy for 15$ in wow. It's greed, to argue that is just ignorance. It wasn't blizzard attempt at battling gold sellers, it was blizzard attempt at taking over the market or getting a piece of the pie.

????

Are you sure? Dyes bought in the shop are different from the ones in game. The biggest difference? They cannot be traded or sold to other players.

Or are you talking about any special dye i'm not aware of?

[Asrialol]

Huh, who was talking about standards, i was talking about someone claiming classic is dead when to me its more alive with more of a "warcraft" soul than retail.

Anecdotal evidence is just that, though. Anecdotal.

Not saying you're wrong or anything, by the way. But people here seem to think that their personal experience =/= facts.

[Cthulhu 2020]

So you agree with what I said yet still use lengthy posts to disagree with what I said? Lol.

Both cash shops are bad. As both WoW and FF streamers have said, it's easier to ignore the cash shop being there if the game is good, and it makes a bad game all the worse.

I haven't failed to defend my claims at all.

You haven't refuted anything I said. Sanctioned gold RMT > useless egg rings and hats that nobody buys. WoW has lost over 50% of its playerbase and its profits are up. People sure do love that WoW token. WoW could offer their shop items to players in game as well but they don't. Your arguments as to why FF is "worse" can be equally applied to the WoW cash shop. It's an equal amount of greed in the cash shop existing. That you keep insisting FF is somehow worse when they're the same concept paints you as the fanatic here. It's sad to say, but it seems all that "mad" "triggered" "unhinged" stuff was projection on your part.

The WoW token is a whole other beast that FF has adamantly said they will never create an equivalent of because it destroys the integrity of the game. And they're right.

But I admit one thing, I am no match for the religious fervor of your belief in what you say. No amount of facts can convince you. What needed to be said has already been said. I rattled off tons of things Blizzard has done to squeeze their customers dry. If you refuse to acknowledge Blizzard taking advantage of people's gambling addictions, that's on you.

Except it didn't. Boosting exploded when Blizzard introduced timed run rewards and Garrisons to print money. They were well established when the token was released in March 2015. That token helped but it was not the root cause. What more can I elaborate with when you dismissed anything that doesn't agree with you as "highest amount of compium and lying"?

Man, you sure do love to defend the WoW token. While I was playing during the release of the WoW token, sure, boosts -began- to increase with garrisons. They'd existed before garrisons. They absolutely exploded with the WoW token. And now all people do is buy gold and get boosted. Regardless of what you think the "cause" is, garrisons no longer printing money, and the WoW token being used exclusively to pay for boosts, the WoW token is basically the sole reason boosting and carries flood the looking for group.

It's quite interesting that you love to point out that cash shops are bad and greedy to get a cheap shot at FF, and want other people to admit it, but when it comes to the WoW token, which is extremely worse and FF doesn't have, you can't admit it's bad for the game, and in fact love to defend it? Man this is the weirdest timeline.

[sunxsera]

So yes, FF has more items on the cash shop. Do people buy many of them? LMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAO.

I also never see survival hunters ingame, but according to mmochamp and official forums soooo many people play them. LMAAAAAAO
As long as we don't have any token / cash shop etc. data every discussion is kinda meaningless.

And no, i' m not a fan of the wowtoken - i hate the boosting sh*t that is going on. /2. on my realm is unusable.

[Lolites]

The amount of players has halved across all blizzard games in four years

gee, i wonder if it might have something to do with their other games, which receive virtualy no content in that time...

[Kaver]

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 don’t see how this is hypocritical?

[Gaidax]

To be fair, what we know of 9.1.5 shows a distinct change in direction. Sure, its like 5-10%, but its not 9.0.5 which was a doubling down. I wish i could remember 8.1.5 (since 8.2 was amazing for players like me), actually, 8.1 was really fun for me with the jaina story (i resubbed around 8.1.5 so lack perspective). All im seeing right now is a focus on qol. This makes me relatively optimistic theyre having a change of heart... so im optimistic. Im not on board... im just optimistic.

They showed you a few extra ear and tail options for some allied races and it's suddenly a "distinct change in direction"?

Omegalol...

Distinct change in direction will happen when 10.0 will be the magnitude of 7.0 or more. Not when you have some off-hand blue posts where they remark that void elves have 5 more hair color options in next patch.

[Raisei]

I also never see survival hunters ingame, but according to mmochamp and official forums soooo many people play them. LMAAAAAAO
As long as we don't have any token / cash shop etc. data every discussion is kinda meaningless.

And no, i' m not a fan of the wowtoken - i hate the boosting sh*t that is going on. /2. on my realm is unusable.

On my realm /2 is used for juvenile anal jokes. I do not see how that is in way better. Boosting at least serves a purpose even if I do not agree with it. Besides Boosting and Gold Selling happens in every online game, including the oh so praised FF.

In fact I have come to see the selling of ingame services as a sign of the games health. People wouldn't bother selling things for a game no one plays, would they?

[Thundering]

most people that dont like the game quit and retail is terrible.....

[Gaidax]

On my realm /2 is used for juvenile anal jokes. I do not see how that is in way better. Boosting at least serves a purpose even if I do not agree with it. Besides Boosting and Gold Selling happens in every online game, including the oh so praised FF.

In fact I have come to see the selling of ingame services as a sign of the games health. People wouldn't bother selling things for a game no one plays, would they?

I think that Blizzard absolutely needs to curb boosting.

It is absolutely a menace and I'm saying this as someone who benefits from it passively with raid boosts. There is no way shape or form where this shit in either trade or LFG looks good or leaves a good impression of the game.

Saying "but there is also that thing and we live with it" - is a silly argument, besides just being a whataboutism.

Selling of ingame services is a sign of game's health? That one is hilarious, it's more of a sign of Blizzard not even bothering moderating that crap even a slightest. It's a sign of abandonment and disrepair.

What happens with boosting currently is a precursor to what happens in China already, where you can't even get into popular activity groups without $$.

[ippollite]

They showed you a few extra ear and tail options for some allied races and it's suddenly a "distinct change in direction"?

Omegalol...

Distinct change in direction will happen when 10.0 will be the magnitude of 7.0 or more. Not when you have some off-hand blue posts where they remark that void elves have 5 more hair color options in next patch.

I dunno... be mad, i suppose?

(Who knew nerds would act out like football fans? I guess times really have changed).

[Gaidax]

I dunno... be mad, i suppose?

(Who knew nerds would act out like football fans? I guess times really have changed).

I mean, out of my 16.5k posts here, there was more than enough supportive posts.

But taking some minor off change they likely planned all along anyway and proclaiming it's some distinct change in direction?

That's some serious copium right there.


Know what would be a distinct change in direction? A good meaty state of the game letter and their plans and actions to address community's requests down the road and heck maybe start doing it every month too for a good measure.

But guess what? We won't get it, because everyone there is trying to lay low and bunker up.

Their whole thing burning down around them and them tossing out some tails and hair colors? Hah, that's like them being by the book as usual, if anything.

[TheRevenantHero]

I mean, out of my 16.5k posts here, there was more than enough supportive posts.

But taking some minor off change they likely planned all along anyway and proclaiming it's some distinct change in direction?

That's some serious copium right there.


Know what would be a distinct change in direction? A good meaty state of the game letter and their plans and actions to address community's requests down the road and heck maybe start doing it every month too for a good measure.

But guess what? We won't get it, because everyone there is trying to lay low and bunker up.

Their whole thing burning down around them and them tossing out some tails and hair colors? Hah, that's like them being by the book as usual, if anything.

You really can't reason with WoW diehards. They will act like something as tiny as new tail options for draenei is somehow content. Blizzard has gotten lucky because people who eat it up keep giving them money. But it's only a matter of time until those diehards can't keep the lights on and WoW gets closed down.

[Gaidax]

I aint gonna be dragged into it. Find another idiot.

No shortage of those around.

TLDR:
- "Here are some new 5 tails and hair options!"
- "It's the new Blizzard! The game is saved! Praise!"

Hilarious.

[ippollite]

You really can't reason with WoW diehards. They will act like something as tiny as new tail options for draenei is somehow content. Blizzard has gotten lucky because people who eat it up keep giving them money. But it's only a matter of time until those diehards can't keep the lights on and WoW gets closed down.

Um, im not a wow die hard revenant, you should know better. But actually, to hells with it.

I like these changes. Theyre positive and a step in the right direction. A *STEP*. Get some nuance you wow obsessives. Perhaps play some other games and break the spell the game clearly has over you.

[Gaidax]

You really can't reason with WoW diehards. They will act like something as tiny as new tail options for draenei is somehow content. Blizzard has gotten lucky because people who eat it up keep giving them money. But it's only a matter of time until those diehards can't keep the lights on and WoW gets closed down.

Yeah, I mean, I am legitimately more positively inclined over the years about WoW and Blizzard, after all I play the game 16 years and I'm playing Blizzard games since about ~1998.

But this does not make me into some kind of drone who can just slurp down every little thing as if it's some sort of godsent reversal and major change, especially not them adding bloody 5 hair colors, shit even I could probably do in a fucking day if they'd ask.

Current game state is not good. No, WoW is not going to die anytime soon and you can bet there will be another half a dozen expansions down the road before it is even close to "maintenance mode". But at the same time - you don't need to be a bloody hater to see that WoW right now is flagging and Blizzard is all over the place when it comes to WoW and everything else as well.

I don't need to grab every little microscopic offhand remark and get choke full of copium about it, just because I'm also a fan. I expect MUCH more out of Blizzard because I'm a fan.

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Um, im not a wow die hard revenant, you should know better. But actually, to hells with it.

I like these changes. Theyre positive and a step in the right direction. A *STEP*. Get some nuance you wow obsessives. Perhaps play some other games and break the spell the game clearly has over you.

It's not even a "step in the right direction" - it's simply nothing. It's more of same old, more plasters and meaningless crap.

Step in the right direction will be when they release 9.2 that will not be just a stamp sized new area and undertuned raid being the content that's supposed to last 8 months.