The amount of complaining on is starting to get quite silly.

[CheckThyself]

I get hated on constantly just for liking Taliesin, who is in turn relatively positive about the game. Toxic as all hell and I'd leave if I had better things to do with my life.

his channel and content is interesting to watch but the instances on his stream where he goes full blown toxic, in a almost unreasonable and beyond what is considered appropriate or necessary, has turned me off to him. The taliesin vs Asmongold saga and every thing that happened in between on Twitter and on the forums (plus his stream) was the tipping point. Inflated sense of self/ego, that one.

[Dracullus]

I get hated on constantly just for liking Taliesin, who is in turn relatively positive about the game. Toxic as all hell and I'd leave if I had better things to do with my life.

Watched his streams? If not I get you, I used to like him as well.

[Zantera]

I agree with OP that people in general are just far too negative about things. I think a common issue is that the middle ground doesn't really exist for most people and positive and negative thoughts tend to get amplified with time. If we compare Wotlk and Cata for example and we say at the time Wotlk was a 9/10 and Cata a 8/10, with time the nostalgic thoughts about Wotlk will amplify it to a 10/10 and the 'disappointment' of Cata being good, but not as good will lower it to a 6 or 7 and voila you got a huge difference when in reality maybe it wasn't the case. Just using Wotlk and Cata as examples but I think the point is still valid for most things.

[Powerogue]

Watched his streams? If not I get you, I used to like him as well.

No I haven't, but case in point for the OP how I only had to namedrop him and the thread's topic practically changed to hating on him instantly. Post after post.

I could do the same if I said the S******* or B**** WoW NPC names on these forums. It's ridiculous.

[dacoolist]

If people don't like the game.. quit.

Giving feedback is one thing, giving feedback via the forums is another.. but attacking game devs personal twitter, crying a river on the forums that your class sucks, or acting hard because you started playing before x time.. it's all just a bunch of bullshit

Either play the game or stfu already

[Fraky]

So, I read the whole thread and saw most of the answers (while skipping the troll ones). Although OP brings up most of the arguments on the let's call it "pro-current design" side, it seems a bit narrow minded and biased because OP went into creating this thread with the opinion that the current climate is toxic and unhelpful. I agree that many trolls jump on the negative feedback and push them to their extremes which muddies the actual comments that help direct arguments in a healthy way. That being said, many points brought up by OP stem from a subjective and frankly uninformed point of view which I will go through one by one. I will use quotes throughout the whole thread and not just from the opening post to give a complete picture:

First of all, I wouldn't call the current riots and protests happening around the world as "rallying behind negativity". The fact is that the only real way for working class people to be heard in a corrupt political system and around the world is by going on the streets and disrupting the everyday life in order to push for change. That is more commendable then anything else and I would wager that the "fake" protests (like the ones against face masks and quarantine lead by far-right organisations) are in the minority and that most recent protests against the governments of the USA, Belarus, Algeria, Hong Kong etc. are genuine and well-intentioned.

[...]
There is also this concept of content creators and the fact that negativity and controversy attract more attention. This feeds into this feedback loop which is very addicting to content creators. This is a huge factor of what is driving this negativity and the complaining and its speaks against its validity.
[...]
Evaluating the common complaints recently I find that 90% of the time they have no real proper reasoned arguments behind them and frankly if I might be so bold, say that they seem coming from posters that haven't made up their own arguments, but following a script.
[...]
Also I can watch a youtube or streamer with a lot of followers, and lo and behold, the next day I see people write exactly the same complaint, word for word in comment section on youtube and even here. [...] People will ACTUALLY accept a youtubers subjective opinion on something as gospel instead of trying the game for themselves.

In the quote I see a bit of a disconnect between correlation and causation and a certain bias against youtube/twitch content creators. Just because a creator does a lot of negative feedback and often presents possible solutions to observable problems doesn't mean they are automatically invalidated. Especially now, during the beta testing and 1 month away from release, pointing out the problems should be the only priority of content creators because they are the ones that played during the whole alpha/beta, tested and creating simulations and discussed aspects of the game in the greatest detail. Creating hype and positivity towards SL is blizzards job (see the covenant trailers).

You can flip the whole argument about catch-phrases and "scripts" around because on the "pro" side of the argument, the only thing you here from people supporting the current systems are buzz words fed to them by blizzard. "Meaningful Choices", "RPG-Elements" and other phrases are regurgitated by the community in every possible argument without really thinking about the actual meaning of the words and connections to actual gameplay elements new and old.

People without beta access or without so much free time should be able to trust the content creators that closely represent their view on the game and invested many hunderts of hours into the beta. It isn't necessary to invest the same amount of time if you can trust your selected creators on certain topics. I don't have to be a doctor in climate science with 30 years of experience and research to trust the experts about climate change and the imminent threat of it.

The newest thing to complain about now is what has been refered to as "borrowed power". This has always existed, though at a lesser extent. We used to borrow legendaries and set bonuses from tier sets, leaving them behind as we went into new content.
[...]

Comparing Set Boni and oldschool legendaries to the current borrowed systems like artifact weapons, azurite, essences and corruptions severly undersells the problems with the latter just because you loose both at the end of an expansion. Borrowed power doesn't only mean that you will loose it someday, it also means that in the current content, you aren't really playing your character and don't have much control over your performance, you are at the mercy of the borrowed powers. Whereas Set boni complemented your class, helped or even altered your playstyle, the current systems don't really connect to your class at all and do their thing regardless of your actions. That leaves the baseline characters in an unfinished and barebones state which, after the borrowed powers are removed, concludes in a bad and lackluster experience until the next burrowed powers fill the gaps.

The Covenant abilities are a perfect opportunity to keep a certain aspect of the current expansion for the next. We will see if they will just scrap them like all other systems or let us keep them as talents or otherwise.

[...]When it comes to balance then I think according to looking at warcraftlogs, the game has never been more balanced. [...]
[...]
When was balance at better state? Beign part of this forum for 10 years and official wow forums for 15 I read complains about balance all the time and never have people been happy with it. I am fully aware of the issues with Monks, and they are at the bottom, and I hope it gets adressed. Though, it doesn't make monks useless. They do damage and bring some utility. You basis for evaluating BFA comes from the premise that things must be balanced. I simply don't hold that opinion any more. Of course, extremes have to be dealt with, which was done with shadowpriest, protection warriors and etc. The developers time is best served by making interesting and fun classes, balancing contradicts that (most of the time) as balancing usually tends to make it more similar to other classes. For example, every class now has a personal cd, a 3 min raid cd, an interrupt, a snare and a movement increase is a result of balancing, though class identity suffers, which in my subjective opinion is far more important.
[...]

I can't agree with this statement at all. In the current environment with corruptions and essences, balance is irrelevant because class performance is heavily outweight by borrowed powers. Even with this homogenisation, you still see huge discrepancies between the best specs and the worst in raids. M+ isn't really better. Up until 8.3 and the teleport affix, rogues were mandatory in high keys because of shroud. In terms of system balancing, every single system that BFA introduced was or is still not balanced and blizzard, after their own admission, just gave up.
BFA is one of the worst expansion when it comes to balance between classes, specs, systems, borrowed vs. character power etc.

If you want to see a balanced meta game, look at legion. Most specs were represented in antorus, the discrepancy between best and worst spec was far smaller and players for the most part played their characters and not overpowered systems.

Balance in multiplayer games where people have preferences and play together to achieve common goals is always important. Without balance, people would gradually flock to the stronger classes which would create an imbalance. Also, you would leave players with an underperforming class behind and more or less force them to abandon their favorite character. You can see the result of year long imbalance in the difference in numbers between alliance and horde raid guilds. After players that wanted to raid were forced to switch to horde because of racials, even now when all racials are equal, there is still a massive imbalance which gradually spirals out of control.

Another argument is that Blizzard should keep the systems going into new expansions.[...]

Most players don't want to keep ALL systems from the previous expansion. As many in this thread already pointed out, it would be great to keep some of them or build opon them where it makes sense. A good example for that is the transition from Garrisons to Class halls. Class halls where more or less just improved and polished garrisons and almost universally loved. Similarly, in SL, a fixed Legendary system will be implemented, which improves the legion legendary system. This is the type of things people want when they say to remove burrowed powers and keep some of the aspects.

Also I feel more and more sympathy for the developers of the game. They spend 10 hours a day or so, underpaid under bad conditions working on systems they now they must change in the future anyway because feedback from the usual suspects dictates so, just to come home and trying to connect with the community and they read posts that they should be fired and don't care about the game. It's a miracle we even have a game to log into at this point.

Although this is a problem in games development in general, it will not be solved by reducing critique and negative feedback. Such problems are solved outside of the game with GameDev Unions and Rights.
I sympathise with them because the community can be very toxic and vile. But, to be a bit frank, they could save themselves a ton of time and work if they would implement systems that are balanceable. Getting back to functional base classes with complementary, supportive systems on top would help them keep the game from derailing into the clusterfuck that we have right now in 8.3. Unfortunately, Shadowlands and its vast amount of systems stacked on systems will most likely repeat the problems we had in BFA.

I do understand that that is the complaint about covenants. My issue with that complaint is why would you expect in an MMO to actually be good in all three. I find it almost borderline entitlement to be optimal in all areas of the game. You have to pick your poison so to say.
[...]
To be optimal in every situation, would feel bland and boring, as it will actually be the same as being optimal in no situations.

Why should the player pick their content of choice and be inferior in the rest? The game shouldn't force you into one perticular aspect. The only limiting aspects for playing every possible thing the game has to offer should be the available time and the skill of the player. If you have enough time to invest in PVP, PVE and M+, you should be able to do all three without the game forcefully limiting you to a set amount.

Just because your character has the theoretical ability to be optimal in every situation doesn't mean you as the player are. You will have to choose the right talents, skills, positioning, coordination with your teammates to overcome a challenge. You can see it as a dynamic, realtime puzzle. Even if there is just one optimal way, you still have to see that, understand the ramifications of that and perform according to that. There is nothing bland or boring about finding the optimal way with the given options and performing to the best of your ability, both theoretically and practically.

[...]
Viable is one thing. Optimal is something. Every specc in the game and every talent setup is VIABLE at the moment. And will also be with the covenants.
[...]

Viability is dependent on the content you are doing. Yes, everything is viable in LFR or Mythic+0. But the more difficult the content gets, the narrower the difference is between viable and optimal will become. Unfortunately, there is a trickle down effect which exists in wow for a very long time where the specs at the top are viewed as the only possible options. This is the reality we are living in, which can be compensated by joining a guild or friend group who don't limit themselves to the meta specs.

The discussion about covenants doesn't just revolve around balance and performance. Many players have a prefered Covenant based on looks, transmog or lore, but aren't happy about their abilities (or vice versa). Some abilities don't work for the whole class and just for some of the specs. You are punished for investing more time in the game because you won't ever find a Covenant which satisfies PVP, PVE, M+ and all specs equally.
There are other factors like utility which can never be solved without changing the ability in its entirety.

I hope you can see a bit of the other side of the argument from my answer. Most "whining" has an inherit wish to improve the game. If negativity far surpasses everything else, there has to be some cause for that. It is also not helpful to anyone if critisism and feedback is ignored or shunned. You can critique aspects of the game which in your eyes might be problematic and still enjoy playing.

[velspine]

I know if I get any response to this it will most likely be a lot of backfire because I am basically attacking a portion of the community, however this has starting to get very frustrating. I have been thinking a lot on this subject lately and I first thought it would come nothing good out of adressing it, but increasingly I feel the need to push back against this sillyness. I love this game so much and I would love to come on here to talk about awesome things, but I find myself very distracted by negativity which doesn't hold any water, most of the time.

So what am I really talking about? Well first of I need to mention that have high-functioning autism and that is somewhat relevant because I despise people as a collective (not in their individual components of course, I love spending time with certain people). Watching people from a distance behaving in groups is very interesting to me and something that always worries me. People have a tendency to rally behind negativity, not just in gaming but in general. Thats why we have riots and people march. Though some marches have good intentions and outcomes.

There is also this concept of content creators and the fact that negativity and controversy attract more attention. This feeds into this feedback loop which is very addicting to content creators. This is a huge factor of what is driving this negativity and the complaining and its speaks against its validity. Also, coming with negativity or critisism in general, not just regarding to World of Warcraft, have a tendency to make you appear as a more intelligent and sophisticated person. If you are complaining about something, you show that you have put effort into things, analyzed and made up your intelligent conclusion. Though this is hardly the case. On the other hand, if you are positive about something, you are just this somewhat ignorant gullable person who accepts anything at face value and probably is very forgiving and naive. I would say that is most often not the case at all.

So back to my autism thingy and how I don't like people in groups. When I see people even in a minority behave in a certain way I have a tendency to go the opposite direction and wonder why they are behaving in such a way. What is the reason behind it.

Evaluating the common complaints recently I find that 90% of the time they have no real proper reasoned arguments behind them and frankly if I might be so bold, say that they seem coming from posters that haven't made up their own arguments, but following a script. The sentences are formulated the same way and if there are more arguments behind it, it sounds equally the same. Now, that itself doesn't make an argument wrong. People could be posting from a script like mindless bots and come with accurate information. This just doesn't seem to be the case about issues related to recent issues people discuss.

Now, I know its provoking for me to reduce most opinions down to people just parroting others statements or like posting from a script, however that is how it appears to me and I am still open to a nuanced discussion around critisism from people who have put a lot of thought into their own arguments. However that is not what I see most of the time, though it happens from time to time.

Also I can watch a youtube or streamer with a lot of followers, and lo and behold, the next day I see people write exactly the same complaint, word for word in comment section on youtube and even here. I even saw many comments yesterday on Youtube to a specific video adressing class balance and people were writing "Oh I was so hyped for Shadowlands, but after watching this, I can't play this expansion after all" People will ACTUALLY accept a youtubers subjective opinion on something as gospel instead of trying the game for themselves.

I am going to adress the most recent complaint, but there are many of them like "BFA was garbage", "Covenants will fail". I would say both these statements are exaggurated and false. And the reality is far more nuanced. So I will only adress the most recent one for now.

The newest thing to complain about now is what has been refered to as "borrowed power". This has always existed, though at a lesser extent. We used to borrow legendaries and set bonuses from tier sets, leaving them behind as we went into new content. The argument is that Blizzard should stop making these systems and move them into talents and abilities and even spend more time working on balance.

These systems are a solution to a problem which was rightly complained about. Introducing new talents and abilities over several expansions gave us so many abilities that Blizzard decided to prune them. And we know how that was recieved. Making new abilities based on the theme of the expansion is a way to solve this issue. When it comes to balance then I think according to looking at warcraftlogs, the game has never been more balanced. But people are so obsessed with being optimal in every situation and never being at an disadvantage that even the 3% difference is unbearable to some people.

Another argument is that Blizzard should keep the systems going into new expansions. If that was a good idea then in Shadowlands we would spend 90% of our time in our garrisons, with legendary ring from MoP, having artifact weapons with 2000 Concordance of Legionfall, Azerite Armor with 6 rings, 20 legendary essences, 8 corruption effects, legendary cloak, covenant abilities, souldbinds, crafted legendaries having 90 different passive effects and procs going of all the time and you become this death machine with 140% haste all the time.

I am exaggurating a bit, but you have to see that this is not a good solution. Borrowed power is the best annoying solution compared to the alternatives.

Also I feel more and more sympathy for the developers of the game. They spend 10 hours a day or so, underpaid under bad conditions working on systems they now they must change in the future anyway because feedback from the usual suspects dictates so, just to come home and trying to connect with the community and they read posts that they should be fired and don't care about the game. It's a miracle we even have a game to log into at this point.

I will stop there for now and apologize this was a bit long. I have a lot more to say about this and since I have basically offended half of the people that post here, I guess I will have the opportunity to adress more issues if this is turning out something people are willing to discuss.

MMOchumpion gets money based off views and post, they can care less of moderating this forum. I hardly post or come here anymore due to this. WoWhead is a lot better and icy veins.

[Dystemper]

To be fair Taliesin is one of the most toxic content creators for wow.

He seems like a really nice person on the outside but as soon as someone disagrees with him even a little he will go to great lengths to literally put them down on stream. It happened a lot of times that i myself ignored until it one day happened to me aswell while watching his stream.
Its an extremely uncomfortable feeling to have him use his entire stream aswell as his wife against you simply for having a different pov(its been a while but it was something about white male priviledge). He went into true dondescension mode and i literally had no way of arguing back because he wasnt even looking at the chat at that point.

Literally a toxic person by heart.

I am shocked that people still watch him. He is a insufferable Twat

[ClassicPeon]

I am shocked that people still watch him. He is a insufferable Twat

Half a year ago or so i would have been one of them. I guess for some reason it takes being put on the spot to actually see just how toxic the guy is.

[Steelangel]

He's the Anakin Skywalker of Warcraft.

He never tried spinning. That would've worked.

[kaminaris]

Imagine actually thinking regular gear stats is the same as azerite traits/corruption/legendary effects.
Regular gear improves on your stats, they don't flesh out an incomplete class/spec like azerite traits/corruption/legendary effects.
Tier set bonuses fleshed out on an already finished class/spec.

The defense to BFA and its numerous garbage systems are becoming laughable.

Imagine thinking tier sets didn't flesh out incomplete specs lol. The problem was also once they "fleshed out" spec, next tier was garbage and your spec was ruined forever.

As for topic, just don't read forums, honestly, in game there isn't even a speck of that complaints.

[Syegfryed]

the complain get silly in the same ratio as the game itself became more silly/garbage.

i miss the time where people complained about pandas and dailies, some about balance, now the whole class design is worth complaining, since wod my arms warrior is garbage to play

[Tesshin83]

Thanks for the paticipation so far. I dont have time to answer every post, but I do appriciate them.

Take a look at the youtube comment section of a Preach's newest video about soulbinds.

I think the sentiment in the comments would be entirely different if Preach was more optimistic.

Or do you guys think they would disagree with him? These are his subscribers.

I didn't mean to come of as saying there arent reasons for feedback and complaining, my main issue was the mob mentality. That is seems obvious to me that people follow the pack blindly and this is very present in the vocal parts of the community lately. Negativity spread like memes it seems.

Personally I would rather do my own indenpendent thinking and be wrong about something rather than being right by accepting an opinion from others that I don't even properly understand.

[Gref]

@Tesshin20 @Tesshin83 never in my life watched a single youtuber as I find the concept retarded. watching twitch or youtube? just play it yourself.
That being said;

BFA sucked ass with retarded amounts of borrowed power. corruptions + essences +azerites.

shadowlands covenants should have been just cosmetics not again borrowed powers which will lead people playing kyrian warlocks for best dps. which i find something repugnant to see.

I love sylvannas and if possible I would still do whatever she tells me to do.
I did not remove the eye of nzoth either.
Both of these because I find it amusing to do evil stuff in a game where good guys -being us- always win in the end. I really wish I could screw things up in shadowlands.

I found the story of bfa all good except one or two points such as darkshore and saurfang (he was my hero since vanilla)

There is nothing more that pisses me more than people assuming I watch asmon -why the fuck should I watch someone not having a proper job, playing a game living with his mother, earning millions from other people watching him comment bullshit- See how much I know about him? I hate the internet for that. I can read about him all day here or some other dude preach or taliesin whatever.

anyway my point is i have generally negative feelings towards blizzard, what they do with wow but I still enjoy the game and am a sucker for the lore.
do not think everybody is a youtubercuck -wtf is youtuber ffs is it a job? like teach> teacher? -

I can and am voicing my opinion against blizzard without watchnig shit as I have been playing this game since its release on a single fucknig main -tauren warrior- and can easily see the game is diving into shitstorm with covenants. (only leveled 4 alts thanks to this years av exp event for the first time of my entire wow career)

SOme covenants will perform better than others. Blizz will nerf those covenants, then people are going to switch and qq about waiting 2 weeks, then new tuning then another then another and 2 years will pass and we will have the final iteration of what it should have been from the start.

I truly love this game. I owe a lot to blizzard. I want this game succeed. not fail. not bleed subs. But I honestly cannot share any positivity with what they have been doing. They are shitting on their image in my heart/mind again and again and again. until a few years ago, on this very forum, I said; if blizzard packed shit and sold it it for 60bucks, I would buy it without a single doubt. But not anymore. It is like seeing your dreams, hero etc crumble in corruption. Sad

[Fraky]

Thanks for the paticipation so far. I dont have time to answer every post, but I do appriciate them.

Take a look at the youtube comment section of a Preach's newest video about soulbinds.

I think the sentiment in the comments would be entirely different if Preach was more optimistic.

Or do you guys think they would disagree with him? These are his subscribers.

I didn't mean to come of as saying there arent reasons for feedback and complaining, my main issue was the mob mentality. That is seems obvious to me that people follow the pack blindly and this is very present in the vocal parts of the community lately. Negativity spread like memes it seems.

Personally I would rather do my own indenpendent thinking and be wrong about something rather than being right by accepting an opinion from others that I don't even properly understand.

I think of the WoW Content Creators that criticise the game, Preach is still one of the most objective ones. Yes, he will say that the current system will not work and can't release in this state, but in the same video will try to calm the viewers down by ensuring them that the system will be fixed and to have faith in Blizzard to spot the obvious problems (see his video about the different amount of time you will have to wait for the soulbinds to unlock 3 potency conduits and racial discrepancy).

But to be frank, why should he or the community be forced, in the current state of the beta, to be optimistic? Why should we pretend that everything will work out if we have precedent that it won't? I understand that the constant negativity is taxing, especially in the current environment outside of the game with Covid etc., but if there are obvious problems which should have been fixed months ago and aren't 1 month before release, then we as the community have to point that out.

If you look at the current systems and problems on the beta, then you don't need someone like Preach to see that it's broken, it is just basic game knowledge and experience from previous betas and systems like azurite. Just open the Soulbind trees on Wowhead and go through them. Every player, from casual to hardcore, will see problems with it. It is a mess and currently it seems that Blizzard stopped working on them after the initial nerfs 4 months ago.

I don't want to say that you can't be optimistic about the game, that's your prerogative. There are things you can look forward to in SL like the Raids, the story, the design of the zones. But when it comes to the gameplay and the systems, there are problems and with blizzard's current track record, these problems will persist until late into the expansion despite already being known now.

[Arainie]

In my subjective opinion both Legion and BfA were only tolerable with the last patch.

Can I ask how you rate "only tolerable" on a scale from 1 (playing genital jousting for 20 hours) to 10 (Skyrim/OoT or whatever game you see as the pinnacle of gaming). I get the sense that anything below 6 is "dogshit, hot garbage, intolerable" etc in the eyes of many gamers nowdays and to me that's an extremely toxic and unfair assessment.

[Yarathir]

There used to be more when MMO-Champion hadn't been whittled down to an iron core of diehards who will defend Blizzard no matter what.

- - - Updated - - -

I get hated on constantly just for liking Taliesin, who is in turn relatively positive about the game. Toxic as all hell and I'd leave if I had better things to do with my life.

I don't think he gets hated for being positive about the game.

Okay, let me scratch that. I'm sure some people do hate him because he's positive about the game.

But I think more people hate him because he's a smarmy hypocritical asshole who has a grand total of one joke in his arsenal and picks fights with nobodies on Twitter and in his chat comments while crying that Asmongold "punched down," by criticizing him and that channels with a bigger audience shouldn't respond to channels with a smaller audience.

[Delekii]

The amount of complaining is commensurate with the amount of badness sustained in the game design. As the badness is sustained over time, the average level of dissatisfaction rises. It's not rocket science.

[Paula Deen]

I gotta say, for once, I agree. I am all for a healthy dose of pessimism but even generally good quality people on youtube I watch have hoped on the bandwagons recently.

Its maddening. Its absolutely awesome to point out bugs, errors, and unbalanced aspects of the games for the team to fix.

What I am seeing more and more is just nitpicks against little tiny itty bitty things. The other day users were arguing as if Exile's Reach isn't even a zone because its only for new players. Which is insane because, unlike say the Trial System, it is a whole new area with new lore and quests.


I think the old addage 'As we get closer to launch the posts get crazier and crazier' rings true here generally, but I really do worry about some peoples well being the way they post.

[Forgottenone]

Too many people are entitled, too many people complain about the slightest inconvenience and when a real/big one happens they act as if life is over.

I LOVE the folks who like to say "Now I'm FORCED to do blah blah blah". No one is forcing you to do anything, you are forcing yourself. If the guild you're in requires you to do stuff you dislike you should either suck it up and do it since you want to be there, or find a new guild where you don't have to do content you dislike. MMO Champ, WoW forums, Reddit, where ever you can voice your opinion you can be damn sure there will be tons of negativity from people.