How Blizzard SOLVED The MMO Problem
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- Опубліковано 2 лип 2024
- The Forgotten Prince walks Tamriel, and chaos follows in her wake. Investigate the emergence of Ithelia and explore the Colovian region of West Weald in The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road. wehy.pe/y/1/PreachGaming
Today we take a look at how the face of the MMO genre is changing across WoW and all the other titles out there, and how Blizzard seems to have stumbled on the solution... and no one else can do it.
In Part 1 we'll be focused on WoW for the most part and we'll be discussing the other MMOs in more detail in part 2 very soon.
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The Forgotten Prince walks Tamriel, and chaos follows in her wake. Investigate the emergence of Ithelia and explore the Colovian region of West Weald in The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road. wehy.pe/y/2/PreachGaming
Destiny 2? Uhh.... didn't even know that game was still a thing.
WoW has shitty graphic with target system, has not combat, is garbage.
@@marcodeluca8784 WoW has good graphics (though cartoonish), with ROCK SOLID performance. IT's a billion $ a year game--with good lore.
nice click bait cancer
13:12 EVERQUEST is 100000% better than this garbage
and fun fact
THIS CANCEROUS COMPANY COPIED ALMOST EVERY SINGLE THING FROM EVERQUEST
including the monthly tokens
including the new time lock progression servers (SoM and SoD)
INCLUDING CLASSIC
so you can continue to try and gaslight people but none of us are buying your load of buIIshi† you are selling
On a completely different side note, haven't watched you since the PG days and god damn have you lost some weight and look better dude.
Cause he stopped only playing wow 7/365 8-12 hours a day
@@mikev5486Right, I am sure that's it. And not a better diet and working out 😅 I play WoW and go to the gym
Preach Looking Sharp!
He does. But that hair transplant did not workout.
@@Aybo1000 as an old bald man, I 100% disagree with your needlessly mean comment
The WoW bubble reminds me a lot of how Disney builds their parks. They fill it with everything they believe a customer could want with the intention that the customer never feels they need something from outside the park and thus spends all their money within.
just like any good casino
The war within? 😮
Let’s give RuneScape some credit for sparking this industry wide shift towards rehashing classic content
ESO Sponsored this WoW commercial?
Part 2 must be a banger
Same company, a sub is a sub except for when it is a microtransaction.
@@Alteredfrenzy lol, I totally forgot M$ bought both... murican anti-trust laws are a scam...
I think the whole ecosystem Blizzard created might help with keeping the experienced people engaged, it doesnt help with the new player struggle or community behavior issue, as well as the boosting community situation.
also they did so much permanent damage to the lore that a lot of people will never come back
boosting situation? they can play sod, dont see problem
they intend to fix the NPE as soon as they can, but with the NPE turning to Dragonflight in a couple months, that will at least have the NPE in a better state than it is right now.
@@Jayceiscool Telling me I'm being "kept in their ecosystem" sounds like some matrix shit which makes me even less interested in returning.
@@Jayceiscool the fact that there is no way for me to play the pre-catalyst content in retail is one of the main reasons i refuse to play the game
As someone who likes to watch multiple hours long video essays I was so surprised to hear that a 14 minute video is already very long lol
Thats just youtube in a nutshell for you
This man is very good at informing!!
yes but if you break it into two videos you can get two sponsors in
unfortunately, that's where we are as the general public consuming content. short to the point, Contant is what most people are consuming nowadays.
@@shoresd1 i disagree half the people i follow on youtube still drop 2 hour essays on video games all the time lmao
No, don't remind me, that we don't have wildstar anymore 😢
Still my favourite mmo by far
i almost thought everyone had forgotten it! i was so sad when it died, it felt so good to play
Wildstar is the perfect example of a studio snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It was an incredible game but Carbine Studios did everything in their power to break it. Eventually, they succeeded. RIP Wildstar.
@@phandaal Sorry what? it wasnt Carbine that ruined the thing, it actualy was NC Soft who broke the studio down and forced them to shut down.
@@Rhanith NC Soft was happy to let Wildstar run and bring in whatever funds it could, and even planned to use Mondo Zax as a playable character in a new MOBA game. Then Carbine's studio heads basically stole money that NC Soft had given them for a new project. Combined with Carbine driving their own customers away, that was the final straw and NC Soft shut the studio down. Wildstar was just a casualty of Carbine's mismanagement.
all the fomo/seasonal stuff makes me not want to play. why on earth would i want to play something i might enjoy only to have it taken away?
yea i had enough of that type of game design
its far better now compared to bfa/shadowlands and even legion but it still sucks to be on a seasonal rotation. wow worked best when blizz just continued releasing patches to tell a narrative through dungeons, raids and questlines and then released the next expansion only when they finished that narrative
once you earn something you keep it, nothing is taken away. you may not be able to get it after the season is over but if you play during the season you keep whatever you earned.
@@Ty-oe4dr what is better? Remix? Season of Master/Discovery? compared to.. what, exactly?
It’s a fantastic business model. Make stuff people hate and complain about. Stuff that you openly agree is what is killing the genre. But just keep making it.
Maaan you mentioning Wildstar just opened up old wounds. They killed themselves off before it even had a chance to live. Coupled with financial issues from the publisher, all but sealed its fate.
Hurt my soul almost as much as knowing it'll never get a proper alternative server and NC soft is too dumb to try to re-release it.
Wildstar had a LOT of great content it's pathetic they could not keep the servers up or at least somehow help people run private servers.
Think i saw someone doing a youtube about a private server the other day, not something I played historically but it came up in my feed, try looking it up
Ironically enough, this solution for player retention is a nightmare to player acquisition. A curse in disguise.
Or they could just, you know, make a good game, make good content patches and let players naturally come and go instead of a subscription deathgrip with FOMO seasons. Maybe let players give a way to make their own content, player housing, encouraging socialising, helping new players.
@@cattysplat you're preaching to the choir!
@@cattysplat you think vanilla didn't have FOMO? take a month's break and good luck getting your raid spot back in a decent guild
They didn’t change the game. They just gave accessibility to vanilla content. The same thing EQ has been doing for years. The unfortunate reality is that retail wow is broken and has the least amount of content of any mmo. It has no cohesion, it’s only content is the latest expansion, with little time walking events.
Hell they can’t even put it on console. Retails been so pruned in class abilities that there really is not an excuse.
What they have done is not grand, it’s a bandaid fix on an issue that will never be addressed.
I literally can't think of a one person I know that plays WoW who would play more than one version of the game at a time. Everyone I know is either playing retail and ditching classic or playing classic and ditching retail.
I don't even engage in stuff like classic tbc, I'm an old world classic andy, but I also don't play much. SoD phase 1 was fun, hc was fun etc.
I'm playing cata classic and retail. Now you know one 😂
@@nohobo95 Same.
i'm playing sod, hardcore, and panda remix currently. I really enjoy the fact that there are so many options and different ways to play.
I played both.
cata suffered as the classic team is not capable of working on classic and sod at the same time. Cata fixes have vanished as all focus is on saving sod from failure.
I'm not sure I agree that WoW solved the MMO problem. Nothing has really changed, players are just spread across different versions of WoW, which isn't necessarily a good thing in the long run because it still leaves players to disconnect from their friends as they go about playing different versions from each other. Also, those versions of WoW still use the same formulas that WoW used for the last 20 years, just with some differences for special modes like SoD, etc. so the risk of burnout is still very much present.
The main thing WoW has I think is nostalgia at this point. People who grew up on WoW have trouble enjoying other MMOs because they do certain things differently from WoW, so they always end up going back to WoW. It's not because other MMOs are bad or worse than WoW. The simple fact that those other MMOs are not like WoW is enough to discourage WoW players from playing them. But as someone who didn't grow up with WoW as their main MMO, trying to play WoW is often jarring because it feels like they've abandoned anyone that's not part of the existing core playerbase.
With all that said, I think the MMO problem is unsolvable. The best you can do is to just delay the inevitable by delivering good content that makes players want to experience it.
Yeah, additionally, the games story progression is a complete mess, in retail with chromie time, not to mention dragonflight is very obtuse with how many questlines come up at once due to catch up mechanics. Really, though, the key areas where current WoW stumbles most are developing a healthy community and reasonable difficulty scaling. There's way too many versions of any one raid. There's a reason why WoW did so well in the early stages, like preach said, because it was easy and communication was emphasised due to lack of built-in group finders. Now I'm not saying we should remove group finder or anything, but they need to put more effort into developing tools to help guilds and server communities flourish.
Well said.
yea i was like that for a long time too like some mmos got things like player housing and 50 classes but no swimming mechanics or mounts or even wow style quests .i used to think it was weird when a game didn't have features like that but now i am fine with it because it has other cool things that are not in wow and i thought wow was weird too when i first played it compared to runescape i didn't even get the concept of classes and healers and tanks back then and despite being more advanced than runescape in most ways . it had no player housing and you couldn't chop down trees for some reason .
MMOs spent 15 years trying to copy WoW only to find that becoming a WoW clone still got you ignored and abandoned by WoW addicts anyway. If they had stuck to making unique gameplay they would have kept their fans and given bored burned out WoW players a desire to play something completely different.
@@cattysplatI mean ffxiv is doing well but honestly it’s not an mmo to me. I put over 400 hours in that game. It’s a single player game with occasional dungeon or meeting people in towns.
I was NOT expecting to see Pure Pwnage clips this day
Also highlights just how ancient WoW is and uh, many of us are. 19 years ago.
The nostalgia hit so hard from that clip
i still dont know how i came across pure pwnage when i was like 10-11 but my god it still lives rent free in my head
as someone who has tried to play all 3 versions of wow (retail, sod, cata) its very hard to avoid burnout and to me it comes down to personally deciding which versions to drop in favour of the others. i stopped playing sod and cata aside from logging in to level every now and then to avoid massive burnout. not to say all the blame is on players if theyre burned out b/c blizzard def does release a lot of things in a very short window which feels super stressful if you want to play all 3
My solution is to just play one version at a time.
I can’t play any version of WoW anymore. Played since 2004 launch and dipped into every single expansion except for Dragonflight, and I have zero motivation to even go back now. I tested my theory when I got 3 free days to try Plunderstorm from a twitch streamer recently, and that simply killed the desire to ever put down a cent to play anymore.
Nothing old or new caught my fancy in that 3 day period, the nostalgia dried up so long ago that it’s just a dream of a bygone era.
@@Ryotsu2112 Funny, i been playing since 2004 and im not bored at all. But i pretty much just stick to retail, since i dont see a need to replay all the content i did already play for years. Plunderstorm was a blast tho, once i got the hang of it and went in with a mentality of not caring if i win or not, kinda like i used to back in 2006 when i was grinding for rank 14. MoP remix was fun to play for a little bit. I got all the xmog i wanted in like 2 or 3 days and called it a day there.
I always get invite to the alpha, and TWW was no exception, but i only tested the changes in talents as i dont wanna spoil thoe whole expansion for myself, maybe that's why i am not bored of the game? Who know, maybe diferent mindset? DF was good, actualy realy good imo. I had a lot of fun, and i can't wait for TWW to launch. Currently i am getting a batch alts to 70, i have like 10 alts or so i dont realy play, and are my like grind characters,, characters i use to grind things like pets or xmog, that i leave parked in front of a special rare or raid, and don't realy touch or lvl till the end of an expansion.
@Ryotsu2112 actually agree with you being out of the game playing daily since legion went back for bfa thinking something about pvp would change but played enough to know I was over it
@@Ryotsu2112I’ve been playing wow as long as you and you hit the nail on the head. I’m convinced these long time wow players aren’t even having fun anymore. They just don’t know what to do at this point. This panda remix thing is boring trash. The game is just terrible now. Classic is cool but I’ve played it so many times I’m out. I’m bored of hardcore even. Blizzard just needs to come out with a new mmo entirely but honestly that wouldn’t help. New mmos are bad to. They ruined the entire genre. It’s all about participation trophies there is no challenge anymore. Imagine Elden ring, from soft, made an mmo. That would be amazing.
9:10 on the subject of "no one else can do this" Runescape has been doing it for years now and with more successful seasons to boot. Like its a good structure for an MMO experience, but at the same time I dont think that Blizzard are totally aware of how best to design this type of experience. They should be taking notes from places like runescape for this kind of structure but they dont really seem to be.
In addition there are games like FFXIV that dont follow this structure, and yet do just fine. Better than fine in fact.
It just feels strange to say that they have solved the MMO problem, when others have already done their solution better and other competitors have also not done this and also still been doing gangbusters.
I urge you to look at RS3/OSRS/OSRS Seasonal structure, because its exactly this ecosystem, and they have been doing it for a long while and very successfully.
It's more of a doubling down on having a deathgrip on WoW's remaining audience. Desperate to not let anyone else go with relentless FOMO and distraction. "Please don't look at the competition! Look a new shiny thing you'll miss out on." It doesn't bring in new players and really isn't anything new from Retail's relentless chores of old.
Came here to comment this about Runescape but had to make sure no one beat me to it! So true though! Can't give the credit to blizz at all for that one lol
I don't like splitting my time on different characters across different WoWs. There's just too many versions of WoW that I don't feel like playing anymore.
Oh man, that Total Pwnage clip. The nostalgia, World of Warcraft is a feeling, much like being forced to admit I'm now that old
Hey Blizzard if you are watching this video. I am one of those people Mike mentiones at the end, who plays a lot of the modes and still have to go through life. That 30'ish release window is definitely too tight. YUP. If you could pace things out a little bit more would be nice. Like its a bit of a hell nowdays, work, family, Retail, Remix, Cata and so on. Its millions times better than doing the SL season 1 dailies in Maw and choreghast. But again, you could ease off the pace a tiny bit.
It's a great principle in theory... but it hinges on being interested in the WoW bubble to begin with, which a lot of people have sworn off. Great if you're a long term player who can pick their favourite era, but there's nothing really for new players/actual growth.
And nothing for truly new content/a future for a lot of these ventures. I think the unspoken extra side of this is something a lot of people have feared with the Worldsoul Saga, essentially Retail is just getting big patches that can fit this new cadence. This is the slow, actual managed decline of WoW, where the themepark is no longer the zones but physically the MMO itself.
all they're doing with worldsoul saga is taking out the content luls that happen at the end of expacs.. so instead of 4 months of the same repeated content at the end of the expansion, we just go to the next expansion.
I don't think new players/growth is something that Blizzard can realistically expect at this point. It's been 20 years. Anyone who gives the slightest fuck about WoW has already played it.
@@Xero_Kaiser You'd think so but I constantly run into new players within the guide system and even some people I know IRL have taken up the game without having played it before. It still pulls in new players and I think the reason mostly comes down to streamers, and events like MDI, AWC and RWF.
@@FAMIB Us old heads really are a bunch of doomers. Young people are playing our favourite games all the time, they're popular games with fun gameplay for a reason. You just don't notice them when your chasing ingame chores or only raidlogging with the rosters. The sprout system in FFXIV actually lets you notice them which is huge for helping both veterans and newbies get together.
The winds wont change until a new MMO hits the market that draws people to the game that dont play games like WoW did.
GW2 is my drug!
For those commenting, Mike definitely thought this video was longer when he recorded it 😂. In any case adding on the second half would have been too long in one video.
*Entire foothold of the MMO Genre change*
In my head: "The drums of war, thunder once again"
Preach : this video is already very very long (14min)
Me : watches 1 hour + long videos on a daily basis
I definitely wouldn’t mind a longer video lol
Innit. My weekly Cultaholic wrestling podcast, if they're over 4 hours, the comments section rejoice rather than complain.
Remember, the Algorithm considers more that 10 minutes as long. I personally like a good deep dive no matter the topic. Even if the video takes me a couple days to finish.
@@reffa2858 really, that short to be considered a long video, interesting🤔.And same I love a good deep dive.
The Nostalrius domino-effect is growing ever more consequential.
I think the oversaturation has hit. Between wrath into Cata, Sod phases, and Retail. I found I just don't have the time to play it all, oh and MoP remix. I've had to drop SoD, so that I could finish up toons on Retail. I still want to play Cata, and so I have to spend time there, I played Remix for a bit, but the grind I saw before me has kind of cause me to put that down. So I've been focusing on Retail and Cata.
It is a nice problem to have, having TOO much WoW to play, compared to the past, But it is still a problem.SoD phase 4 is coming out, and I played none of phase 3. I still want to get some things in Remix, but having to spam Mplus to upgrade gear on Retail toons takes alot of time. I'm also in the Beta for TWW and I put some time in there, but yet again Retail is my main game, and between it and Cata i've had to just sidline alot of things.
Same. I feel overwhelmed and feel like I can't do things I want to do. I hated Plunderstorm (and just didn't do it - very grindy, not fun, but missed out on some mogs). I enjoyed Remixed, but heard about the toxicity of level 70 group content for anyone who preferred to get goodies (the REASON I even play Remix) over upgrades. I don't mean RAIDS, but rather Heroic dungeons. So again, it's THAT community again. But I'm also trying to get stuff done in Retail. I wish they hadn't dropped Remix about the same time that Season 4 began. I have busy friends who can't get much done at all since there's just too much to do. Burnout is real.
But Remix IS Retail... All the items transfer over at the end to retail.
Remix is so easy, especially group content. Skipping phases like crazy left and right. And bliz already doubled the bronze output from Caches. Its actually the *least* burnout I've felt with WoW in ages.
I miss the pirates of the Caribbean online it had real fun black flang style combat
I like that at 8:30 there is exactly zero overlap between all three. Perfectly drawn :-)
I finally completely uninstalled all Blizzard crap from my pc. I watch you because you are entertaining and informative. Blizzard needs to choose one or the other. Either a monthly subscription or a one-time buy in. I quit when I did the math and found out I would have to pay OVER $250 USD to buy the all the DLC to catch up from my 2.5-year break and still have a monthly sub fee. And I don't even like most of it. Blizztard Entertainment is just greedy.
Unfortunately for Blizzard, there's really nothing they can do to bring me back at this point. I came back briefly for the launch of vanilla classic and again for the launch of SoD, but left after a few weeks when the nostalgia wore off. First, my love for the Warcraft Universe is dead. They killed it with BfA and SL. I just don't care anymore. Second, the worst part of WoW isn't the game, it's the community. After experiencing so many other gaming communities, I realized that WoW's is not "normal" and it's not something I want to revisit.
Which MMO has this amazing community?
@@brkus2665 Some fringe MMO with so few players it can barely be called an MMO.
Yep I second this a lot, the way they handled the lore was the final straw that broke the camel's break to me. I even jumped in on the DF trial they did, played the first few levels and was just outright bored with it, I didn't care the world I was playing in anymore. The future going forward on Retail just isn't something I'm looking forward too anymore. I don't even think the devs have really changed either, they are doing some things people like but overall are just making less controversial design choices on the game that makes it look like they are doing better - MoP Remix drama has a good example of them not having changed at all.
It would legitimately take a WoW 2 to bring me back properly I think, perhaps a classic+ since I vibe with that era of the game far more nowadays since it feels like a world you adventure in and less of a game that's trying to put you on it's hamster wheel.
yea they keep making bad moves and never learn
@@MyndZero the only two mmos I ever played I played because I cared about the world. Warcraft and Lord of the Rings. To me, that is the most important thing.
RuneScape has had seasonal and "classic+" for a long time with great success. Nice that Blizzard is picking up on the trend but they didn't solve shit. Oh hey maybe someone can point at older examples than RuneScape even, nothing is new under the sun.
Oi, Pure Pwnage. We're so old.
That show was so good!
I'm simply at a point of my life where I can't dedicate time to an MMO like Wow. Exhausted, limited on free time and the idea I would have to do virtual "chores" when I can't muster the willpower to do IRL ones just drains me before I even log. To hell with their ecosystem.
You'd have be jobless and endless time/energy to keep playing WoW, even just retail.
that was a very nice video Mike. I look forward to part 2!
Solved is a very strong word for what was presented in this video.
Thanks for pointing out the WoW bubble. Time to bust out imo.
Very interesting video, I've been subscribed for years since my first friend made through WoW introduced it to me. Sadly he passed away some years ago, but I am happy I can turn on the notifications for the next vid.Thank you Preach, keep it up 💕
Isn't this too one-sided optimism without offering any counter arguments? Are we going to neglect the fact that having 4 different versions of WoW has divided an already segmented community even further? That the quality of all the game modes has lowered due to the fact that they must QA and develop 4x the amount of content?
I get he is optimistic about Blizzard but a more balanced, unbias look at the pros and the cons of such an endeavor would have been more useful.
I didnt play retail before and I never will. They added me as an intermediate wow classic (old world) player. How is that a bad thing?
The bubble makes it so I'd constantly be getting gear. I unsubbed because I can't stand getting gear, I just wanna have chill mythic raid nights, I don't care for gearing up, I just wanna raid log.
And it's not like I can't get BiS, I just don't want to do it again, whenever I already did it 6 times. It simply takes too much time.
Game feels like a job. I have a job. I dont need another job! Thank you! As far as I can remember a game should be fun for the players playing it right?
same boat luv mmorpg gaming but no matter what eventually we get behind and the jobless and richkids dominates attending every events 24/7 which some streamers pretend that its normal for everybody to dishout like 12 hours a day to be ftp relevant.
Preach i love you, and WoW however I'm afraid that Jagex, with their game Runescape had most of these ideas before Blizzard did. Re-releasing 'Old school Runescape' enabled them to keep customers in their eco-system.
That WoW bubble has burst for me a while ago now. Don't see myself returning there any time soon.
3:12 osrs isn't "doing great" its doing better than it ever has and is a 20 year old game and in the top 3 most played mmos.
I can confirm, it does happen. I am one of those guys with a career and a family and I also play retail, cata, sod, d4, FFXIV and a few other games. It was easy for awhile because Blizzard would have huge content draughts, but now I am being forced to choose between things like P3 SOD or MOP Remix, can't do both. Something has to give, usually it's sleep for me lol. I would very much love it if there was only 1 version of wow, but none of us can agree what that should be. There are things about retail I love and hate and things about classic I love and hate. I think it's going to be a growing problem if Blizzard keeps cannibalizing their audience.
Life is full of choices, the choices offered at the end sounded a lot better than "I forgot to do Torghast". Having too many fun things to choose from is a waaaaay different problem than having too many chores to do.
I'm just sad Vanguard: Saga of Hereos doesn't even make the failed list anymore
I started with Ragnarok online as first MMO and then went to Neocron. Neocron is not online still. Some developers took over the rights for Neocron 2 and created Neocron Evolution. That is still updated until this day yes. As I'm playing it again. Best MMO I ever played, better than WoW. Too bad the players base went down when they went from Neocron 1 to Neocron 2. Hopefully people re-discover the game.
The players solved the mmo problem for Blizzard. We just left.
And then we returned.
You left, but you're here watching a 14 minute UA-cam video about World of Warcraft and Blizzard. People who are actually done with WoW don't constantly remind everyone, they just stop playing and find new hobbies.
@@jacobshaw9820Preach does more than wow. And he has his own nostalgia and access dreams so tries to be positive. It's a losing battle. Wow will always disappoint.
@jacobshaw9820
Many people watch out of curiosity.
For example, I played the original WOW but I abandoned the game at level 20, around 100 years ago but I like to look at the copium about this game.
@@UA-camChillZone Neah, that argument is not valid anymore. It's halfway through 2024. People still reminded people that WoW is dead and that they left. Bro, it's still the best and most played MMO by far. Stop lying to yourselves. Just quit and be done with it. I've taken even 2 expansion worth of breaks cause I didnt like it and u never saw me commenting how I didnt like it and its dead. It went on fine without me.
always good to see main channel preach content like this
Looking good dude, skinny king! 👑
My dude has the hair, he's losing weight and looks like he's been working out. I'm happy for him.
Not skinny, just strong and healthy
Preach! Have not seen a video of yours in quite some time, brother you’re looking great! Very glad to see!
Where is the animated clip from that starts at 11:27?
So Everquest fixed the MMO problem. Not WoW.
The real "wow bubble" is the one where the majority of the player base doesn't see anything outside of wow and assumes that they invent all the things they copy lol
@@mierkov5204 One of the ironies in WoW's downfall was that there were no more MMOs to copy and steal new ideas from.
A fellow Neocron player here from back in the day, played on Saturn and Pluto (1 character servers are still a cool idea). Even back then, a small MMO like Neocron could still have success with a dedicated fanbase of only a few thousand players, you don't need millions to have a good time and the love of a game can go on for decades, as long as there's a way to play it. The dream of the perfect MMO FPS is still out there and never been realised.
Like the subtle touch of the Dawntrail lanyard on your co host sitting on the couch 😂😂😂
ESO is actually a fun and in depth game. The massive amount of content the game has is insane, it would take a new person a good 6 months or longer to experience the game in full. The player housing is so cool!
Looking slim Mike! Great to catch up.
I wont lie this last couple months was a lot of content that launched right at once and it was pretty overwhelming kinda wished they were spread out a bit more.
1:58 best part
New setup almost looked so good, I thought it was green screened...
I'm in crippling agony after that "I'm not a coward" clip. Thank you, Mike.
when the whiteboard came out I thought he was gonna draw another dong, almost got disappointed when he didnt.
Releasing SoD 2 months after HC released gutted HC servers as everyone left to try the shiny new thing and most stayed or stopped playing HC. It was a sad time.
Everquest has been doing this for years in the form of their time locked progression servers. It works and it works very well.
Only problem? The whole bubble is medicore and uninspired. The marvel movie of mmos
Me and all my friends play WoW and not a single one of us playing the same edition/expansion. The divide is uneal, not to mention very annoying.
Great video preach! Keep em coming!
Great video. I always like these "analysis" style videos you do. The Blizzard strategy worked on me - Remix pulled me back in after 3ish years away, then I tried Dragonflight and enjoyed it a lot. Before, I had 1 max-level character I did everything I was interested in on, and a bunch of half-abandoned low-levels because the grind was intolerable. Now I have several maxed out in just a few weeks. If I get bored of running through DF again, I jump into Remix for a speed-run. That variety has been keeping it fresh and means I don't feel obligated to do any one thing. It will be interesting to see what seasonal content comes after Remix, and if they keep any of the mechanics.
Damn Preach you lost a lot of weight. GG bro
I can say from personal experience, I felt like that from Shadowlands and never have returned since. I tried other MMOs and didn’t connect to any. To be absolutely honest I think I might return for Midnight or Last Titan, the final step for me is an engaging story…
Maybe a slight counter-opinion to this, but for context I'm someone who quit during Shadowlands 9.1 and hasn't gone back to Modern/Retail since. I dabbled in a few games of Plunderstorm but it didn't really appeal to me too much. I haven't played MoP remix. What I did get back onto the WoW train for was Season of Discovery, and phase 2 and 3 of that pushed me to try WotLK Classic in the lead up to Cata, which I'm now raiding in.
It's quite apparent to me that Blizzard simply doesn't have the resources to maintain this kind of content loop right now. It was blindingly obvious to anyone playing that Cata was not ready to launch when it did because the dev team had been focusing on delivering content and updates for Season of Discovery. When Cata did launch, it was suddenly all hands on deck to fix the major issues, and as soon as it was in a "mostly working" state, it was also clear that it's now all hands on deck to deliver Season of Discovery phase 4, because all of the non-critical issues with Cata have been left untouched for weeks.
I also don't feel the desire to play the other WoW options because it would burn me out so quickly. MoP remix looks like it might be fun but the fact that its limited almost makes me want to play it less. I do think in general it's good that Blizzard have finally realised they've got 20 years worth of game that they can deliver to players, but I question the implementation of some facets.
I have no opinion on these things from a Modern/Retail player view, but I've heard opinions from people that the current season feels very phoned in, and that all the attention has been on Plunderstorm and MoP Remix which are siloed modes that don't interact with Retail at large. I think there's also the obvious elephant in the room of The War Within and the fact that it is (rightly) taking development precedence.
Something I think WoW is missing in my opinion is more long term casual content that is designed to encourage grouping up with friends or other players. This is something FFXIV has for example with content like Eureka/Bozja, certain steps of relic weapons, deep dungeons, variant dungeons, ocean fishing, moogle tomestone events, and even the Gold Saucer. It's all stuff that you can do yourself to some degree but it all either naturally encourages you to group, or puts you in proximity of other players doing the same thing as you. The WoW I'm playing now feels like it's missing that element in some ways. That sort of content stays evergreen and can keep people 'in' the game without making them jump between two/three/four different versions of it.
an mmo that i always go back to once a year is dungeons and dragons online. Played it since its release in.. 2006? It's not an amazing game, but it's nostalgic and extremely unique.
Blizzard could easily make more money by keeping one "era server" for each finished Classic expansion (one TBC era server, one Wotlk era server, etc), so that everyone can play any expansion at any time.
And of course, players could always have the possibility to transfer their classic era characters to the next era expansion for free OR pay to duplicate the character (so that one version of the character stays on the current era server and the other version of the character is transfered to the next era expansion).
here's my issue
I want to play wow with people who don't play wow
"We're gonna get those Deathbringers' Wills."
PFFT. Good luck with that one bucko. We know what's actually gonna happen.
I've already hit that overload point. I basically am a weekend gamer and I haven't bothered to even try sod because I know I just won't have the time to play essentially 2 mmos
that make love not warcraft episode really takes me back
I have watched so many people bleed out of Season of Discovery in the last two months alone. They did not go back to retail or any of the other WoW themed distractions.
One downside to this bubble is they have no reason to fix retail if they plan to sell various versions of old content. I stopped playing WoW due to the terrible leveling experience that's in retail. They just want to force you to end game as fast as possible, preferably get you to buy a boost. I just want leveling back, old crafting and farming that's still relevant, 1 to max should always still matter, but it don't Blizzard.
Plus content bloat can be confusing and also lead to FOMO. Sure it looks good on the quarterly report to retain players, but that don't always equal a good game.
The issue with these game loops and "retention" is that there are too many games doing it now a days. Every game wants you in their world at all times and there's just too much out there to enjoy. I'm someone who has an abundance of free time and it's still too damn much. Companies need to be more like Palworld. "It's okay to go away and then come back" should be a mentality for all games. Not "OMG WE NEED YOU 24-7!"
I always loved the quarterly cadence of updates that ESO had managed. I was surprised when New World started trying to do "seasons" because I knew what an undertaking that was... Unfortunately they couldnt keep up with it.
It's a very impressive cadence of releases. It will be interesting to see if it's sustainable. Either from the point of creating this content or players feeling deluged by it. For now, it's absolutely the right move.
To this day i still miss Wildstar and fully believe it could survive with a rerelease, some tweaks and a bit of extra content.
The core functionality of thst game was just so good man.
I love the analysis and numbers presented in these videos. Thanks for the breakdown. Gotta say though, even if Blizzard has a ton of content, if the ocean of content is not fun then why bother taking a swim?
Preach, this is legitimately a high quality upload.
tldr version: they didnt, stop paying blizzard to work a job for free
What about the overlaps between mop remix, and cataclysm classic?
They've solved it by making me not want to play.
Paragon video never coming out. ☹
Been playing WoW since 2005. If the universe allows it, I will still be playing in 30 years time.
The WoW bubble is exactly why I don't play WoW. It's a series of the same game with different modes basically. Not my style and I don't think adding modes "solves the MMO problem" as I don't see it as a problem to get bored with any game after awhile, no matter the gameplay or story. The idea that a MMO or any game has to have players engaged for infinity is a pretty ridiculous. Its not a problem that a game's appeal changes.
It solves the MMO problem by making a series of pens to keep their sheep in. LMAO
@@HotaruGlaive Exactly! I don't need to feel branded and trapped to pay to play. I can do that myself without the BS.
it solves the problem some mmos have but in a bad way its like a worse version of the osrs concept
If you didn't feel FOMO before, now imagine trying to play 4-5 different versions of the same game to ensure you don't miss out on collecting everything. You push your players too much they will burnout or just stop caring when they inevitably fail to keep up with the grind.
@@HotaruGlaive I think WoW is great if you play it as a casual game. Unironically. Most people who play the game do not care about the lore or base game and seem to only think high end M+ or Mythic raiding exist. It definitely could be better and they've made some big mistakes but there's a reason it's the most popular MMORPG by a large margin.
8:44 I was expecting him to say "so you can now sod off".
Bros videos improved so much over the time
Its still hours and hours of grinding in WoW. They just rotate where that grind is.
i doubt blizzard actually solved shit
Blizzard's solution is amazing actually. Steal the good shit, put it together into one game - polish it.
Not that I play their games, never found them lot of fun, besides SC 2, but this is what they do well.
Wonder if part 2 will include all the huge changes Lost Ark is getting soon.
Developers realized that attracting people with good content rather than locking half baked content behind a 12 week time gate is more appealing