I don't think it is that calculated. Those guys were flipping his streams into YT content before he knew who they were. He figured it was a good idea to let them do their thing....then they all got banned, so he employed them to do the same officially.
The thing is with Asmongold is that he isn't a bad person: he simply reflects and monetizes the horrific nature of social media. He'd be praising wow to the skies if he could make more money that way.
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He is saying that people who say "FF14 will kill wow" are people mostly doing so within the wow community.
Wow has only one challenger. Blizzard devs. Other MMOs are pathetic with their half made games that look like devs never played mmos before...
Yeah that makes sense. I imagine actual ff14 fans, who seem to be nice people, are, well, into discussing ff14.
It seems to be toxic ex-wow players who are obsessed with this. I suspect if FF14 actually does kill wow then ironically, no one will be discussing it as no one will care that much about wow.
In Religious Sciences and other Theologies it is a clearly established fact that Converts always turn against the place they came from with even more anger and hate then other people at that directly found their way to the "new" faith. For example this very thing happened with Augustine of Hippo.
The same thing is happening here and in other WoW forums. People that went to FF think they now have to trash WoW and proclaim it's approaching doom. The similarities to religious converts is quite interesting.
So in the end I would not give anything to this nonesense. The best hint is that Preach even though he jumped on the FF bandwagon because he can make money of it and loudly declared he would not cover WoW anymore, has made several videos about the 9.2. patch. Don't believe these fools, they just literally feed of the drama.
Most of these people simply don't have THEIR opinions, they have current most popular opinion which give them audience. Remember what was problem before SL? Grind, no PVP vendor, too easy gear, warforging/titanforging. Then they praised Blizzard for listening to feedback. Then back to shit on Blizzard again when SL lost launch hype and some of these changes were bad (never admit they were wrong of course). Preach had even audacity to tell he's quitting WoW because Blizzard didn't listen to community... turned out he raids anyway, just doesn't make videos about WoW (what a coincindence it was right after scandal).
On the other said I gained respect for Towellie. For years he was called Blizz shill for defending Legion/BfA. But now he criticize SL all the time, because he thinks various player power grinds actually must exist and are good for MMO. You may disagree with his opinion, but at least, you know, he has an opinion.
Don't underestimate Riot. Arcane was a blockbuster on netflix and really boosted the League of Legends brand to non-players. They just released a LoL traditional RPG, they're releasing a LoL fighting game, they're bringing out a second season of the Arcane animated series, and they're working on a LoL MMO.
They have the money, devs, and influence to really give Blizzard and WoW a run for their money.
How many active subs do you guys still presume WoW has to be making these confident claims?
"Game vs. Game" type threads don't tend to produce much in the way of constructive discussion or debate. Closing this.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead