Is Preach And The Community Becoming Overly Cynical About The Game?

[ShadeknightX]

Another week, another "Preach" thread, and ofc the pro-preachers and anti preaches are at it somehow.....this is becoming a tradition it seems.

You folks do know he is a person with a platform and a JOB of catering to arguments? making up drama, pumping out those 15+ min. on youtube, those 1000+ stream views, those patron only videos....etc. and on top of that, he is of a narrow/niche mind set....the high end raiding/hard content perspective as opposed to overall game design.

His livelihood is based on talking and sometimes playing up issues, whether they are factually wrong or right does not matter per say, and he has a past of making mistakes in his arguments and not fessing up to them, he is in the business of playing on feelings and opinions, so yeah.....if we are going to talk shit about big evil corp. Blizz. making money out of us.....might as well be wary of some content creator word also making a living out of us.

Sometimes he is right, sometimes he is wrong, but for fucks sake, he and what he says are not some gold standard of what wow is and what it should be, THAT would be up to you as a player and how things are going for you in game.

Do not like the overall state of the game stop playing, Like the overall state of the game keep playing.

[Eleccybubb]

You're both wrong. He funds himself through a Patreon site as others have noted to the tune of over $6000/month. Go see for yourselves.

https://www.patreon.com/preach

He has plenty of incentive to do what's right for him and if that means ramping up negativity and cynicism then that's what he will do. There's nothing wrong with having a Patreon setup for funding but let's be honest about it. He's not doing this for nothing.

So again. He's not monetising his videos yes?

Glad we got that sorted. I have absolutely no interest in Preach but a lot of the current streamers/youtubers have been very critical of BFA.

I highly doubt they all suddenly decided to start "hating" the game for clicks/money.

[XDurionX]

Patreon is in no way the same thing as YT monetized videos. I don't understand the obsession with bashing on people who have opinions on the game.

Maybe it's a jealousy thing for some, I suppose

Of course you don't make as much money with Patreon only than with Patreon + Youtube. Still the equation more negativity = more money applies.

[Eleccybubb]

Patreon is in no way the same thing as YT monetized videos. I don't understand the obsession with bashing on people who have opinions on the game.

Maybe it's a jealousy thing for some, I suppose

How someone makes their money is flat out irrelevant at the end of the day. Focus on making your own money and not how other people do it.

The fact of the matter is a lot of content creators for WoW have been critical of this expansion. I highly doubt they all had a secret meeting and decided "yeah let's be critical for dem monies".

[rda]

Regarding "he's not doing this for nothing" and implications that maybe Preach is manufacturing hate where there is none in order to get views:

When I am criticizing channels like T&E, I am criticizing them NOT based on them having a financial interest in views and supposedly trying to get them via unabashed fanboying, but based on what specifically they say. I can criticize them with all finances completely out of the picture, what they say is just dumb, frequently illogical and full of uncritical wishful thinking. It's just fanboyism, a pretty blind and unsophisticated one. Yes, sure, there are financial undercurrents involved, but they are always involved, so I am never criticizing based on them. So if you are going to say that since there are financial undercurrents, then you are going to ignore what this or that guy actually says - or if you put most of your critique into this point, which is the same thing, just a little tamer - then it's only your loss. Gz, you just convinced yourself to ignore potential info based on something that is always there, like sunlight.

Always look at the message and only at the message, and judge only based on whether the message is valid or not. Preach's message is valid. T&E's message is not, they are just wrong. In my opinion.

All talks about financial interests come after. If we talked about some super-repressive closed environment, it'd have been different, but it's not like that with YT channels.

[ShadeknightX]

How someone makes their money is flat out irrelevant at the end of the day. Focus on making your own money and not how other people do it.

The fact of the matter is a lot of content creators for WoW have been critical of this expansion. I highly doubt they all had a secret meeting and decided "yeah let's be critical for dem monies".

Point of contention, it kind of matters.

IF you are catering to a certain crowd, and play of their "feelings" and gaining from it.....then there would be a question of "integrity" of your stated opinion.

No different than a politician suddenly getting a "donation" from a certain lobbying group and changing their opinion on some matter....same applies to media, and presenters of such media.

Long has it been a cancerous matter on youtube for example, that influencers didn't state they were sponsored when stating an opinion of something they endorse/dislike, and stricter rules were set in place for such a thing.

[dekal]

Preach is indeed critical, but that doesn't mean that he does it just for the sake of being critical. He is passionate about the game and it shows. Some members of the community however have become so negative that they take out snippets of what he says and twist them out of context to suit their own narratives. They even go out of their way to bash anyone being remotely positive about any upcoming content. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but i can't stand it when someone puts anyone else down for disagreeing with them.

[Pakheth]

You're both wrong. He funds himself through a Patreon site as others have noted to the tune of over $6000/month. Go see for yourselves.

https://www.patreon.com/preach

He has plenty of incentive to do what's right for him and if that means ramping up negativity and cynicism then that's what he will do. There's nothing wrong with having a Patreon setup for funding but let's be honest about it. He's not doing this for nothing.

He is demonitized on Youtube. He earns zero on that platform so he doesn't make money of ads and clicks, which people constantly claims he is in this thread regarding his youtube videos is my point. What he makes of Patreon and Twitch is a different matter. I follow neither.

[ShadeknightX]

He is demonitized on Youtube. He earns zero on that platform so he doesn't make money of ads and clicks, which people constantly claims he is in this thread regarding his youtube videos is my point. What he makes of Patreon and Twitch is a different matter. I follow neither.

Allow me to be cynical here a bit.....Ah yes.....he is demonetized on youtube argument, remind me how we know this....oh yeah, he USED to state that some time ago on those short tdp videos and low uploads on to youtube.

Alright cynicism off and let us just factually analyze this....

I do not know of a public method to actually know if a youtube video is demonetized or not, all the ones bringing up that issue are basing it on what he claimed MONTHS ago when he and ghosty were partners, and he wasn't uploading to youtube as much, but he has since stopped claiming that afaik? Maybe he was demonetized at one point but not anymore? there still ads up there....

[KaPe]

You do realize that if he was "just doing this for money", he wouldn't waste his time making 30+ minute videos, right? Why put so much effort when it's much easier to go HeelsvsCrybabyface route and spout some shit for 10 minutes, while never bothering to list any positives. And Preach does list positives all the time. His pre 8.2 videos were quite hopeful, but the new system is ... serviceable, not great. He's not going "this is the end, BFA is over", but rather "we expected more from this", as well as "some of that stuff is a balancing nightmare" and "nothing class specific in there, what a shame". I can fully agree with that - it's better than what we have now, but far from what it could have been.

All reasonable points, none of which fit the "it's just doom and gloom, all done for money" angle.

[Pakheth]

Allow me to be cynical here a bit.....Ah yes.....he is demonetized on youtube argument, remind me how we know this....oh yeah, he USED to state that some time ago on those short tdp videos and low uploads on to youtube.

Alright cynicism off and let us just factually analyze this....

I do not know of a public method to actually know if a youtube video is demonetized or not, all the ones bringing up that issue are basing it on what he claimed MONTHS ago when he and ghosty were partners, and he wasn't uploading to youtube as much, but he has since stopped claiming that afaik? Maybe he was demonetized at one point but not anymore? there still ads up there....

Youtube will put ads on demonetized channel videos but won't give any of the revenue to the video owner. Example MxR Mods. Lots of ads but he get none of the money due to his videos adult nature.

[Jikate-Stormrage]

I'm in the same boat. I hear people say: "The gameplay isn't fun, the class design isn't fun..."

But all I really can feel about that is giving a shrug and feeling as if this is still the exact same game as it has been since Vanilla. I've very little to say about class design, although I do suppose it can't feel great when you go from MoP where every class was given tools for every situation in the game towards Legion/BfA where the devs are trying to give every spec their own niche, strengths and weaknesses again.

All that said, it matters little to me. Class design isn't really what makes or breaks the game for me... It's never really reached a point low enough for me to feel like it's no longer fun.

I’d just like to point one thing out from your comments. Back in MOP many classes were homogenized; sure I’ll agree with you there. But outside of Mythic raiding, there was little need for that homogenization. We only had challenge modes for difficult content (and that meta was different).

Now we have Blizzard pushing for niches for each class. But we have Mythic +s. Having niches means classes will be left out. How do we fix this and and still have class identity? I would suggest having niches be maintained within either specs or talent trees. Everyone needs to do great aoe, if talented right/or chosen the right spec. We can’t have classes that do poorly all around, but we do.

That’s a design problem.

[MechaCThun]

For a bunch of you who claim "who cares what he says thinks" or the edgy "who?" spam comments, you guys sure do like arguing about his opinions, if he makes money for his videos, and what not.

I R O N Y

[Th3Scourge]

Of course you don't make as much money with Patreon only than with Patreon + Youtube. Still the equation more negativity = more money applies.

Then that is solely up to the person that donating. If they enjoy that kind of content then good for them. If they want some good old Blizzard shaft sucking, they can donate to someone like Talesin and Evitel. If that's what they like, good for them too.

- - - Updated - - -

How someone makes their money is flat out irrelevant at the end of the day. Focus on making your own money and not how other people do it.

The fact of the matter is a lot of content creators for WoW have been critical of this expansion. I highly doubt they all had a secret meeting and decided "yeah let's be critical for dem monies".

Yeah, pretty much.

People are critical of the expansion because it's worth being critical. Imagine, if people just sat there and said "yes Blizzard, this is amazing, I love Warfronts, best content ever. I love the Azerite acquisition system at launch. Please give us more RNG" then we'd still have that same shit. Criticism makes the game better

[solvexx]

Simple fact of the matter is this.

When some of the most well know people who loved WoW say this is the worst expansion ever or are being critical it says a damn lot.

However when even Crendor who is normally known for his neutrality is critical then you've done something wrong.

However. Form your own opinion of the game. Simple as that.

Wowcrendor has always been critical of the game. He has been for 10 years.

[Eleccybubb]

Wowcrendor has always been critical of the game. He has been for 10 years.

Disagree. He's been very neutral about the game.

He made humour out of the extremes with things like "the go guy" and whatnot but he's always been neutral. Now he's pretty much critical.

[Guyviroth]

If you had seen the video in its entirety you would know what he was talking about. For those who haven't seen it or just choose not to for some reason, I will explain.

His issue isn't the fact that the Heartforge is bad (it could be better, as everything else in everything ever can be), but that the essences, for the most part, are either too powerful or are balanced from one extreme to another in terms of their usefulness for certain classes in a certain role (in Preach's case, DPS role).

He showed off one of the essences that basically let him keep 70-80% uptime in Incarnation as a Boomkin. His point was: if this is like this for every DPS spec, how is Blizzard going to balance encounters based on this fact? Will they balance certain phases to require potions or Bloodlust? Or will they leave it? Or, in the most likely of cases, nerf that azerite trait.

Another example was an essence that had a chance to refund resources when spent... which is useless for fire and frost mages since they have no resource that isn't mana (Paladins get HP refund, Moonkin gets Astral Power, etc etc).

Bear in mind we are only half way into the Xpac and we're already getting really powerful shit.

[Poppincaps]

I don't think he's really that cynical in this case honestly. And also his video is clearly geared towards giving feedback to the devs. They need to know that if shit goes live this way, some specs will be absolutely broken. I think it's a cool system, but some of the shit is way too powerful.

[Archmage Alodi]

After the shit blizzard has done recently, how could a sane person not be cynical about the game?

[Eleccybubb]

After the shit blizzard has done recently, how could a sane person not be cynical about the game?

Exactly. Very hard to be hyped or excited when the name "Blizzard" pops up these days.