Preach: "A NEW Era for WoW" - Inside Blizzard HQ

[Archy]

You might think it’s a good thing but, uh, players typically don’t react well to having things taken away.

To get the same gear in m+ dragon flight that you got in shadowlands, you need 76% more damage. This after the shadowlands mythic were nerfed numerous times at launch.

It’s cata all over again. They’re relying on difficulty to keep people engaged because they’ve gotten rid of the time gates.

But you're not taking anything away. They're not locking out content. So you don't get the best gear out of M+. That's not a reason to stop doing them. If that was the case, raiding would be dead.

You're comparing Cata heroics with M+. The reason why Cata heroics were so hard, was that you needed a coordinated group. That's nor your average LFG team. If you did them with your guildies they were quite enjoyable. But you can't queue in M+ and more importantly a +2 still isn't that hard. You can climb it one step at a time.

But I get what you're saying. People are going to be mad. But they always are, no matter the changes.

You're right -- I should have said "in the last two years." Even said, most of those other videos are older than the average age of a MMO-C poster and the broader point still remains.

I don't see how that point remains. He HAD to make the video, because he did stop covering WoW. You can speculate if the reasons he listed weren't genuine, sure. But he didn't farm outrage clicks.

[The Stormbringer]

See the post above yours. He didn't need to "announce" he was quitting the way he did, especially if he knew he'd be coming back. (He paid for the opportunity Blizzard gave him in this video.) I criticized his video for the obvious hypocrisy when it was released, as well.

He... kind of did need to announce it? In order to inform his viewerbase. Y'know, the people who would want to know why he's no longer making WoW content? As an entertainer that streams regularly, it was gonna come out eventually anyway, so why not just sidestep all the confusion and questions by making an actual announcement of it?

EDIT: Fixed typo.

[Rexosaurus]

Bring in the original team, then we could have a proper new era.

Yeah, a whole new era of sexual harassment issues and driving women to commit suicide, maybe.

[arandomuser]

honestly video was boring, was a rehash of things we already knew
and of course preach including the lawsuit stuff sounded totally bored of the topic he clearly didnt care and looked visibily bored when they talked about their diversity intiatives and accountability, i mean hes a gamer i get it but like he could of just ignored the whole subject since he and his fans really dont care about it, or maybe blizzard forced that part in the video, probably had a big drop in viewership since going to weeb14 and decided that blizz had a change of heart blah blah needs wow content to stay relevant
atleasti kept playing wow saying i kind of dont care about their corporiate envorinment but he made a 650k view video on him quitting
and on the gameplay portion of the video -preach had to go do a whole in person interview ( i imagine costs paid in part by blizzard) for them to say " oh that thing you love we actually didnt intentionally make it bad and development is a complicated process" like its some reveleation the normal person didnt know in the first place.

[loras]

Yeah, a whole new era of sexual harassment issues and driving women to commit suicide, maybe.

To be fair: None of that says anything about the quality of the works they produce.

Think of it like the Qatari football extravaganza: When push comes to shove no one gives a shit that a few people died or suffered.

The only thing that truly matters is the outcome.

If you spend a million lives to produce a turd people will be rightfully cross with you, as understatement allows me to say, but do the same thing to build, say, something like the Roman empire and people will praise you for millennia.

[Skylarking]

Would have been interesting if preach got some shots of the team working on things but yeah probably not allowed.

I'd be amazed if they somehow manage to make df worse than sl. This expansion I have had the lowest /played of any other and yes that includes wod for what little content it had. Not excusing the lack of content but I still played that expansion so much more than sl and enjoyed it much more. Hell bfa was also a shite expansion but I still managed more playtime than sl.

[Shinchi Migi]

Didn't Preach quit because the game just sucked. Yeah it came in the midst of the Blizz hate, but that wasn't the main driving factor.

It would be disingenuous if Pyro came back, he had a very public blowup that made himself look like an ass, if he returned now, that would be a bad look.

The problem that most people in this thread have against Preach is that they wanted him to continue kissing Blizzard's ass even though they (Blizzard), at that time, were grabbing ass all over their Headquarters. These days people don't get it when a person wants nothing to do with hanging around a bunch of ass grabbers that treat women like trash, and in some cases men as well.

I honestly don't blame Preach for wanting nothing to do with Blizzard at that time. I didn't either.

[Relapses]

by their own admission wod was the most alt friendly expac ever made... and they dont intend to do that ever again lol

Even WoD had the 6+ week Legendary ring grind which was completely absent in this expansion.

[loras]

These takes always confuse me. I've always been a multiclasser so I play a bunch of alts. IMO, SL has, hands down, been the most alt friendly expansion they've ever made.

I am honestly not sure you believe yourself at this point, sorry.

WoD i cannot judge since i only played towards the end, but Legion was forme easily the most alt friendly out of the last three.

It's hard to even see any form of improvement in that regard, only "Oh hey we introduced this new system which completely fucked over alts and we nerfed it into the ground again while still keeping it as a tedious, cumbersome timesink, so we R altfriendly now, K?".

In Legion i could literally jump into pvp the moment i dinged 60 and have a decent time.

In SL it's like "Conduits? Covenant? Legendary? Souldbind? Three different parallel yet uncomplementary gear advancement routes? Stingy rewards from anything except that retarded timegated great vault which only ever gives trinkets for some reason?" and then i still feel like i'm forgetting half of it only to set myself up for a pounding because opponents have thrice my health.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I am honestly not sure you believe yourself at this point, sorry.

WoD i cannot judge since i only played towards the end, but Legion was forme easily the most alt friendly out of the last three.

It's hard to even see any form of improvement in that regard, only "Oh hey we introduced this new system which completely fucked over alts and we nerfed it into the ground again while still keeping it as a tedious, cumbersome timesink, so we R altfriendly now, K?".

In Legion i could literally jump into pvp the moment i dinged 60 and have a decent time.

In SL it's like "Conduits? Covenant? Legendary? Souldbind? Three different parallel yet uncomplementary gear advancement routes? Stingy rewards from anything except that retarded timegated great vault which only ever gives trinkets for some reason?" and then i still feel like i'm forgetting half of it only to set myself up for a pounding because opponents have thrice my health.

Do you come from an alternate timeline or something? Legion was the least alt friendly expan they ever had with complete RnG legendary’s, time gated campaigns, time gated artifact research, Ap grinding for every single spec, relic farming for every single Spec, most of this took half the expan to patch out it was a complete shit show.

[chaoticcrono]

Even WoD had the 6+ week Legendary ring grind which was completely absent in this expansion.

it wasnt a grind to get legendaries in shadowlands? I didnt play SL but i heard from people that did that it was. in particular farming torghast for it and that was why they hated torghast.

I liked wod a lot and it was a shame i didnt get to play as much as i wanted during that time.

I hated the story of wod cuz i hate timeywimy bs, but the things i liked were all the stuff i could collect for my garrison as well as being able to level with just chests and those fill the bar sections (forget what theyre called atm). as someone who mainly plays for completionism it was nice. for people who dont i can see why its not liked as an expac.

[loras]

Do you come from an alternate timeline or something? Legion was the least alt friendly expan they ever had with complete RnG legendary’s, time gated campaigns, time gated artifact research, Ap grinding for every single spec, relic farming for every single Spec, most of this took half the expan to patch out it was a complete shit show.

Legendaries had bad luck protection and did not matter overly much thanks to pvp templates, on none of my five characters did that ever bother me anyhow.
I only know it as problematic from the forums honestly, and even then it seemed only something for the biggest minmaxxers barring a few unlucky speccs.

The campaigns had timegating, but everybody faced the same gates so it mattered nothing for alts; you would catch up almost immediately (and be locked behind the same gate as the others with which you compete and cooperate, which is sucky but not an alt related issue).

And artefact power was similarly soft-capped; sure it sometimes meant the difference of a single meaningful trait, but it was so close that most of the time it failed to even register.
And even the relics though fun were so minor as to be barely noticable.

And that's the whole thing: All these specifics yet the whole still functioned well unlike SL; ding 60, poke your artefact, softcap AP (which i cannot say required any significant effort, i did not need to grind much extra after levelling) and effectively good to go.

PvP templates and Ilvl being a less dominant determinator were perhaps a large part of that, but the means by which it is achieved is unimportant next to the achievef results - especially when those results started to fall so badly as during BfA and SL.

[Aliven]

I am honestly not sure you believe yourself at this point, sorry.

WoD i cannot judge since i only played towards the end, but Legion was forme easily the most alt friendly out of the last three.

It was not, you class was shit or ever not working without legendaries (which were RNG) and heavy investing into artifact weapons, both of which were so insane grinds people have trouble switching to other spec and not even talking about alting.

It was ok towards end of the expansion.

[chaoticcrono]

blizz even said wod was too alt friendly and legion was them moving away from that. legion was only somewhat alt friendly at the end after people bitched for them to change it all expac

thats actually a recurring theme with the last 3 expacs, they were all alt unfriendly with a bunch of restrictions till the end of the expac when they reduced/removed many of the arbitrary restrictions that were in place.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Legendaries had bad luck protection and did not matter overly much thanks to pvp templates, on none of my five characters did that ever bother me anyhow.
I only know it as problematic from the forums honestly, and even then it seemed only something for the biggest minmaxxers barring a few unlucky speccs.

The campaigns had timegating, but everybody faced the same gates so it mattered nothing for alts; you would catch up almost immediately (and be locked behind the same gate as the others with which you compete and cooperate, which is sucky but not an alt related issue).

And artefact power was similarly soft-capped; sure it sometimes meant the difference of a single meaningful trait, but it was so close that most of the time it failed to even register.
And even the relics though fun were so minor as to be barely noticable.

And that's the whole thing: All these specifics yet the whole still functioned well unlike SL; ding 60, poke your artefact, softcap AP (which i cannot say required any significant effort, i did not need to grind much extra after levelling) and effectively good to go.

PvP templates and Ilvl being a less dominant determinator were perhaps a large part of that, but the means by which it is achieved is unimportant next to the achievef results - especially when those results started to fall so badly as during BfA and SL.

The legendary’s bad luck protection was absolutely horrid not only did it not protect you from getting a bad legendary for your spec it also meant you had to endless run mythic+ and clear raids on every difficulty to actually make it high enough to matter, you also had to do this for every spec and there was a soft cap of 4 legendary’s for the longest time which means if you didn’t get the one you wanted you were better off deleting your character and starting over which people did.

The class campaigns still to this day have time gates with no catch up that lock you for multiple days through the mission board. So even if you caught up on the weekly quest you were still put behind every one else and your other alts if you weren’t doing it all in Synced.

Ap’s “soft cap” was Ridiculous and lead to people farming maw of souls none stop due to there being no hard limit and it being so sort. Relics were also your main Ilvl progress for your weapon as well as giving extra ranks on the tree they weren’t at all minor.

Only if you did exclusively PvP was legion not an alt nightmare thanks to as you said the temples and disabling of most things, any kind of Pve at all had not only the worse alt experience the game ever had but even the worse off spec experience.

[Relapses]

I am honestly not sure you believe yourself at this point, sorry.

WoD i cannot judge since i only played towards the end, but Legion was forme easily the most alt friendly out of the last three.

It's hard to even see any form of improvement in that regard, only "Oh hey we introduced this new system which completely fucked over alts and we nerfed it into the ground again while still keeping it as a tedious, cumbersome timesink, so we R altfriendly now, K?".

In Legion i could literally jump into pvp the moment i dinged 60 and have a decent time.

In SL it's like "Conduits? Covenant? Legendary? Souldbind? Three different parallel yet uncomplementary gear advancement routes? Stingy rewards from anything except that retarded timegated great vault which only ever gives trinkets for some reason?" and then i still feel like i'm forgetting half of it only to set myself up for a pounding because opponents have thrice my health.

Jesus man, I couldn't disagree with you more. I actually quit in Legion because I wanted to mainswap in Nighthold and couldn't due to the way that Legiondaires and AP worked. I'd already burnt myself out trying to catch up the toon I was trying to raid on because I came into the expansion 3 months late and even with the catch-up mechanisms it was quite a grind... I actually hated playing the game because of the way it was designed. To this day it represents the only time I stopped playing this game because of the way it was designed. Maybe it was better towards the end of Legion or if you were the type of player that didn't Mythic raid so didn't care as much about the AP grind and Legiondaries... but man. By contrast, here's a toon that I boosted two weeks ago and I'm already +3'ing 20s on it.

[loras]

It was not, you class was shit or ever not working without legendaries (which were RNG) and heavy investing into artifact weapons, both of which were so insane grinds people have trouble switching to other spec and not even talking about alting.

It was ok towards end of the expansion.

Funny that i remember pretty much the exact opposite, in fact it was one of few expansions where i actively played all speccs on multiple classes.
Legiondaries were of little consequence and were given out quite generously when you needed them most, artefact weapons contained most of their powers in themselves and were behind light to unnoticeable grinds - if you respected the softcap.

I happily unlocked all mage tower appearances for my main because of that.

[Sorrowseer]

Legion was fine for swapping meains, i did.

[Yarathir]

People always show back up for a new expansion, play for maybe a month, then drop it again.

This, pretty much. WoW could have 6 more Shadowlands expansions that make people "quit forever" and they'll still pop back in for the "expansion launch hype," especially if they don't feel like they have anything else to do, anyway.

- - - Updated - - -

2021: Buhoooh I gonna quit wow! This time for sure!!!
2022: Look I'm in the Blizzard HQ Look all the money Bobby gave me!

Business man does stuff that is good for business. More news at 11.

- - - Updated - - -

Funny for the first time since WOW launched in 2004, it was surpassed in daily players in 2022 by non other than....

FF14.


WOW averaged 1.2 million daily players
FF14 averaged 3 million

SomalianWarlord is right in a way, though.

Streamerbabs do not give any fucks about FF14 and most of the FF14 community does not care about streamers and streaming other than the occasional MSQ watch-along or Ultimate race.

Which, frankly, is a good thing if you ask me.

[Simulacrum]

So I actually watched some of this vid, and are people unironically listening to this and taking even a single thing said in it seriously? It's like the most soulless corpospeak garbage I've ever seen.

Also, what the fuck happened to Lore? Dude's turned into the biggest fuckin' chungus. Jesus. Talk about giving up. This is what happens when you have a soul and start working for Blizz, I guess. It just fucking vacates your body and then you turn into a fucking golem made out of high fructose syrup.