I brought this up near the end of the video: What do you think of me playing Runescape for the first time and doing a new player review? I've never played it, and since I'm raid logging in sod now would be a pretty good opportunity. Here are my other reacts: ua-cam.com/play/PL0hAOfdoZQkIsSXnpgWVholsE2XuDaDRf.html
I'd value your input, been away from RS for some years now, however I have dearly fond memories of the game's infancy - being the 44th player to sign up for the original game.
osrs can be rough as a new player, theres decent time investment required to get the bigger picture. But I think the entire rs community would be very hyped to see you give it an honest go.
It was great dude, we share a lot of opinions on mmos I think, especially in regards to leveling. I'm going to try out runescape for the first time soon and maybe match your video :D
And for some reason the bald man saw your other vid but not this one. Im not a runescape player, but im happy i found your content from reacts. Great vids man!
@@madseasonshowthe original RuneScape creator is working on a new game called Brighter Shores. It looks similar to RuneScape and is set for early access in Q3 of this year.
Aesthetics is one of the most important forms of character progression. I made a rogue in vanilla(ended up being my main raiding character) solely because I saw a full shadowcraft rogue hanging out in IF
Hell yeah. This is what frustrates me about modern games selling the best looking armours, visual and cosmetic upgrades are still a form of progression.
@@madseasonshow Similar for me. I LOVED the way the stormshroud set looked and that I could mix and match that set with the Rogue and Druid T0 sets. True I didn't know what I was doing and was playing just for fun (crazy idea now!) but that was awesome.
Damn. Reminds me of the one time when i was hungover in bed, and i loggend into wow to hear the soothing music of thunderbluff. My GF gave me a weird look
@@Fragoso93 THAT reminds me of waking up randomly at night, not beeing able to sleep again. When i logged into wow i found a DMC Greatness for 1000 gold on the ah, worth like 5 times more
@@fev0r Happened to me during wrath classic, couldn't really sleep so I just logged in at 4am or something, server was quite dead at that time so I was just flying around the storm peaks just to wander with the music, relax a bit and I found (and got) a time lost protodrake.... best shit ever
Funny that you mentioned WoW's minimal computer requirements. When we started playing back in 2005, our computer was apparently so slow to download the graphics that my son couldn't take the zeppelin from Undercity to Orgrimmar because by the time the loading screen finished, the zeppelin had already started on the way back. He wound up having to get a mage portal. lol It caused us to finally upgrade our computer though, which had been fine for Diablo II (which is what we were playing when we were introduced to WoW).
For classic and bc I had to accept textures so low that the ground was a checkerboard pattern of 2 foot squares. And then wrath hit and forced me to abandon the family PC and finally get my own computer. Good times.
10:25 it's so funny how each expansion the eastern kingdoms gets pushed further and further east. It's incredible how Thrall's horde ever made it to kalimdor in the first place with that massive ocean and all the landmasses in between them.
They barely did make it, really. They ended up shipwrecked and divided when they first arrived, and I don't think Thrall would have survived that first day if he hadn't met and teamed up with Cairn
It also breaks so much lore from before the next expansion. Like the zandalari and kul tirans were right there the whole time doing nothing during the Legion expansion? They seen the light in the sky and were just like... nope. Lot of other lore that involves travel feels kinda muddy now.
@@Cook_A_Burra No use trying to talk sense to these people - they have made up their mind about react videos. This one actually took longer than one of my normal videos(it's 50 minutes of edited content). I could put in 400 hours into a react, and it would still be seen as lazy. But I'll keep doing them because I like them. I make them for myself and those who like them, not for the people who don't watch them and complain anyways
Cept that when we are talking new players: the fact that while it can be seen as subjective; its the players and their entitled attitudes towards new players that drive alot of decisions that Blizz ends up making when it comes to new starts. If theres anything that could help a new player added into any other part of the game than the shit starting zones and oblivious tutorials, then its walls of wailing for Blizz to deal with and the usual threats to leave the game from fanbois and veterans and many inbetween. It doesnt need to be prevalent in everything you do, certainly, but theres room for far more in game to keep peoples interests, rather than the expectation of the greater crowd to bulky people into caring about the end game only, becoming useful to the lifers, or being told to go watch videos to do the games own fucking job.
You know ... At first, i looked at your thumbnail and was like, "oh, there madseason goes like all other creatirs. Selling himself out to do react videos", and i didnt even give it a chance. But after watching it just a few minutes, i was like, "oh.... This isent a react vudeo. This is a MADSEASON react video!" In other words, i like what youre doing here. Youre giving REAL thoughts back. Youre not just talking over everything and pretending to be adding to it. Youre thoughtfully pausing when a deep thought needs to be addressed and youre trully adding to it. I like this. I should never have doubted you.
Honestly I really appreciate that. I've been getting a lot of comments about how it's lazy content by people who don't even give it a chance. 40 minutes of this is j1mmy's, and the other ~50 is mine. It's pretty disheartening to put in ~50 minutes of edited footage(this took days) for people to write it off as lazy without even watching it. Credit always goes to the original creator, but not everyone does reacts in the same way - I want to be respectful of the original channel and make it transformative and bring new discussions to the table. Sorry for the rant but yeah I really appreciate this comment.
@@madseasonshow This is the real way to do react content and nothing you should be feel any shame or guilt over. Providing new original context and ideas to already existing content is GREAT and you hit the nail on the head with this video.
@@madseasonshow I think labeling it a "react" video is part of the problem. I love this style because they are more than banal candid reactions, it's really not a "react" style of content. The effort to make this a proper video discussion is really evident, actively engaging and providing thoughtful and expansive commentary makes it something entirely different. With all the backlash against actual react content creators, putting react in the title will give some people the wrong impression. As only a consumer on UA-cam I really don't know how changing that wording might impact metrics or visibility, or if calling it a "video discussion" would even help with the rage-ready folks who won't even watch the video.
@@madseasonshow I think react content is a dangerous game to play, as it definitely rides the line between elevating commentary and plagiarism. This however, isn't a pure "react" video, as heavy editing and commentary is added. As long as the people you are reacting to are okay with this, I see no problem here. Another way of doing it would be to address a video without showing it (in it's entirety), but this breeds other issues such as redundancy of repeating their points and making another video "required reading" which can be a turn off for a lot of people.
Glad to see you're still uploading. I haven't touched this in over half a decade and don't even have Battlenet installed but now and again will still watch your videos. I made a lot of friends and memories playing the game but don't think I will ever be able to stomach what it has become.
I actually started WOW in BC classic, and I personally had a great time thanks to a few factors. A friend introduced me to the game mid way through TBC and I had watched a few videos on how to play the game and what it was about (also lore), so I wasn't really blind to what was it about. Additionally, a soon as I joined and got to level 12 a leveling guild randomly invited me. Also helped I didn't know about the leveling boost, and when I found out my new guildmates laughed at it and Blizzard. This guild was also filled with active levelers who leveled with me and so instead of an empty world and a race to max level I just trotted along with likeminded people, learning the world and the game as I went along. I also liked the TBC world and lore and learning about it via youtube and the game itself as I went along. I also stuck with the people I had leveled with once we hit max, as we were so far behind the curb of new raids coming out we were the only ones doing heroics and then Karazhan. Overall, I found it very fun discovering the world and the people with me, since I had so much to discover and do.
That's like my OG experience of BC from 2007. I started from 0 as the expansion launched. Luckily there was no level boost then so there were still a decent number of players grinding fresh especially with the Dreanei & Blood Elves being new races. Joined a guild when I got to Outland & we slowed progressed through the raids.
I remember when wow first came out I made a warlock and there was a paliden that saved me from bandits we waved and waved everytime we saw eachother all the way up too lvl 60 when we ended up in our first raid together I will always remember that guy wow doesnt have that magic now
I knew my parents would never agree to a $15-a-month subscription so I stuck to buying the game cards with my allowance money. WoW was always relatively casual-friendly comparative to other MMOs at the time which greatly helped its popularity. I don't really know what kept me going from the very moment I started playing, but I do remember the sheer scale of the game world totally amazing me.
Madseason's educated side-topic about the Northshire wolves are exactly why I love his and Asmon's videos. That super niche info that I didn't know before, even though I played since vanilla just makes my day!
I mean his videos are literally you basically sitting down with a friend to watch the video, but your friend is super experienced player that knows it all so can enhance the viewing experience. I'm an older player, but missed wow during my childhood. Playing wow and watching his videos on second screen(and nobels for lore) has been the best way to learn the game for me.
WoW was one of those crossroads in life, new friendships across the globe even after quitting the game 18yrs later. I weighed up subscribing to WoW or having a TV streaming package & figured interaction was better then vegetating on the couch.
33:11 I remember when I first got the game in like 2005 I wanted my character to be the hero of the realm. But now that I am older and the one hero trope has been done to death; I now crave MMOs where I am just a nobody, one part of hundreds of others, just eking out an existence and being part of the world.
Bro, that was exactly it. The first time I stepped into Iron Forge, it was magical. It took me several days to make it there. That trog tunnel between the starting zone and IF, almost made me quit.
With the way level scaling works I don’t feel like I’m getting stronger so much as I feel like I’m becoming unshackled or recovering from amnesia. This is partially because the hero trope. If you start off fighting boars and wolves it makes sense that you’re getting stronger and actually learning new skills as you start fighting tougher enemies, but if you start off going through BFA or even Chromie Timing to WoD you’re a general or a hero immediately while still being a Paladin that can’t use wings yet. So when you get wings it doesn’t feel like you learned a powerful new ability, it feels like you remembered how to use a skill you should have had the whole time in the context of your role in the world as you’re learning it.
Please never stop making videos. You are quite literally one of the only outlets of normalcy i have on the internet. Never stop being your cosy, down to earth self Madseason ❤
The level boost has definitely disincentivized Blizzard from creating a meaningful, interesting leveling experience. The more players are frustrated and bored by the leveling and the quests, the sooner they fork over money to Blizzard for a level boost.
Being able to pick which expansion you level from 10-60 in pretty much solved the problem of a horrible leveling experience. I remember being so sick of Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor that I'd just dungeon spam and alt tab during wait times. Now you just pick a timeline and you don't even have to worry about out leveling zones before you complete them.
Almost every encounter was a puzzle while leveling in 2005. Every class had different tools for solving. It was risky and you really could die to the Defias by deadmines. A lot. That's why I love classic leveling.
Repost; He's right about the joy of seeing your progress in real time. When my warlock received my guild's very first Azuresong, the dopamine rush lasted for the rest of the raid. A massive upgrade, looked cool af, I was the ONLY one in the guild that had it, AND I topped the damage meter for the rest of the night. If I could bottle that kind of sustained rush, I'd be a billionaire.
It's called heroin, and pharma companies already beat you to it oxycontin Edit: as a recovering heroin addict, don't do heroin or oxycontin or opiates in general.
My guild in vanilla only managed to full clear MC a few times, when I got the benediction half all my friends were so jealous. I was so high on dopamine and euphoria that after the raid my face was like an inch away from the monitor just staring at the item and pictures of what it could turn into. Damn…
I tried MoP remix today and I was completely overwhelmed by all the stuff that characters can and are supposed to do... the talent tree is enormous and unlike the classic talents apparently there are no bad talents in retail, so choosing becomes extra hard... I think I'm just too old for retail
Honestly, that's kinda what MoP remix was designed for. It's more designed for retail players for bored retail players for them to kill time until The War Within releases
Bobby Kotek and his spirit of greed. The OG WoW team made it a point to say you can buy WoW progression with your money. They knew it needed to be protected but here we are..evil won the day.
yeah i can see that i hate some players that pick on new players, not everyone knows how to run a dungeon. Now how easy wow is i don't think new players will experience this now how stupid easy dungeons are now
The low level dungeons were also very deceptive to new players. The first mobs are usually like 5+ levels below the lvl of the final boss so unprepared groups will get through about half of it before they hit a wall where the tank can't hold aggro because the mobs are too high lvl. Quests start you going into deadlines at like 15 but the final boss is 21 so it kind of misleads you a bit too.
The final straw for me in WoW was leaving for 6 months, being heroic raid geared several months after Dragonflight started, and when I came back, with the same expansion, but two raids later, my item level was so low compared to everything else that I felt like a brand new character. The everpresent requirement to grind more levels with each expansion already turned me off. I never understood how my god-like character with unique gear would overnight with the release of a new expansion suddenly be like a brand new adventurer, replacing epic and legendary gear for common items dropped from random creatures crawling around a new area. The constant fight for one more item level just turns the game into a job.
Maybe tinfoil hat but WoW tokens could be the reason - it's much more profitable to reset progress 3 times an expansion instead of once per expansion. The first thing a lot of people do when a new patch hits is load up on tokens for carries
@@madseasonshow You may be right. All my other conspiracy theories already came true, so I'm always looking for another, and this may be the next one. I just don't enjoy feeling like I'm always leveling, so I dropped the game. Your videos are the only thing I still watch from WoW. ;-)
6 months and 2 raid tiers after is not overnight. And only fools pay for carries when gearing up is so easy even if you are a casual. Is easy to blame everything on the devs. I have friends that are mostly casual. They stop playing a 1 or 2 months after the new raid. Come back, find a pug and gear up again and see the new raid. Rinse and Repeat. No wow tokens, no carries.
@@josejuanandrade4439 I returned to ESO and was able to play consistently with gear I'd had for 5 years. New content was released at a much more rapid rate than in WoW, but there is no addition of levels or fight for item level. It makes it possible to focus on the game and actual content instead of becoming viable again. No need to find a series of pugs to get gear just to feel somewhat viable. No tokens, no carries, no pugs, no battling just for item level, or even to relevel characters when the next expansion releases. For me, it's just a more player-friendly design.
Sod with the powercreep and just mind boggling design choices, still waiting for a fresh start official Vanilla launch... Cata and retail just don't hold a candle to the Original WoW map and game design of Vanilla. I just hope the dev team isn't nearly as bad as the retail team's counterparts and actually learns why SoD is at an all time low coming to phase 4.
i played wow since 2005 or so at then end of classic but i was a little fella jumping ontop of goldshire the whole time, my uncle got me and my cousin into it, he was a ret paladin who was 40 years old and didnt take my grandpa to the hospital when he was having a stroke because he was in a raid lmfao i learned to make food for me and my cousin because we lived together, a true wow player. i played the game off and on since then diving deep then coasting for some xpacks, im 25 now and ive went through existencial crisis and pondered the meaning of life, my place here, ive done a lot in real life but at the end of the day im a mother fucking wow player, even if the game end up being a disney soap opra im always back at it playing the game, ive played most of all MMORPG's, and there are a lot of fun games, but wow is a way of life and hopefully i can escape again into the world of azeroth and feel the literal fucking cold air of khaz modan once more, iill pay way more then 15$ a month if i can get addicted again to this game like i was, but the devs legit hate us, they want our money so they will give us a pat on the ass, but they fucking hate our guts and it shows through the content, if they could get rid of us all and get new people they would in a heart beat, so in that case, i will throw spears right back at them if im able to. thats my story, feel free to thank me for my service.
Maybe this is unpopular. But as a player who joined just before Shadowlands season 2 and has played through classic and retail quite extensively now as well as having played RuneScape for 20 years. I wish for a few things. 1. Take warcraft back to its classic roots where it would have players being part of the army, not the leader of it. All races having their own starting areas and quests associated as well as class quests being a thing again. 2. Revamp the dead content. When the current trilogy theyre releasing wraps up, start fresh with a new way to level and experience the old zones. Instead of having all the expansions turn into isolated end gane zones of years past. Revamp the classic to void lord story down into its own experience. Like a cataclysm but dont burn things down. Build them up. Have the bewly enpowered aspects use a time skip to mend azeroth. Have the expansions stories retold in one story and have it span the new leveling experience. Make leveling take much longer than it does now and remove paid boosts. It cannablizes the learning experience of playing the game. Drop using expansions as a selling point and go hard on isolated updates. This will take pressure off the team for needing to resell the core features every 2 years and allow more focused development in areas players want most. Which is features that make the world feel more alive again. Stuff like player housing and revamping/adding skills. Also less cinematic story telling through expansion content as people can't and don't want to keep up most of the time when it comes to the story/narrative. The story is better in the classic era because its told in small pockets around the world and isnt so much about stopping a bad guy or watching long cutscenes. Instead its about your journey to becoming the hero you imagine being once again. The big bad at the end of the leveling is just the cherry on top, not the driving force of your motivation or the cause of every obvious issue in each zone. TBC and Wrath fooled the team into thinking they always need a new villain to hate. And finally 3. Make all the previous expansion zones seemless. Let me dragonride over the sea now that so much of it is opened to us. Let me enjoy the view of every zone ive ever adventured through in one sprawling world in front of me. And the ones in different zones we could have some more and cinematic means of getting there. Like flying to the caverns below thendragon isles, we could fly into the dark portal and fly through a magical looking tunnel until it spits me out in the outlands or Draenor. Could even have a fork in the magical tunnel within the portal to decide which version you fly to. Just ideas in the back of my head while i play
Stronger counterpoint to the "you get to choose which zone you level in" argument Blizzard has (idk when it was introduced) a chapter/story system in the quest log that goes in a specific order. They have a main campaign. You could not choose to start in Thaldraszus, you had to start in The Waking Shores. And while you could technically fly to any part of The Waking Shores you wanted, you didn't really get that many quests until the campaign opened up more questing options in different parts of The Waking Shores. So it isn't even like you even have the option to level up like a sandbox. It seems like they did for one or 2 expansions, figured out players didn't like it, went back on it, but instead of reverting the change, they just kept that change. So now you have all the bad of level scaling without any of the potential benefits.
If you never completed the Dragonflight leveling campaign, you are required to follow the campaign, after that, any future alt characters can start wherever the hell they want in the dragon isles. So you’re still wrong
@@Fabriciod_Crv so we are keeping level scaling because we want alts to have a sandbox leveling experience? Thank god we radically changed one of the core elements of RPGs for the massive benefit of making the alt leveling experience non linear.
Something that really bothered me as a returning player (pause so long I'm practically new) is how group content is looked upon. WoW containing a min-maxing population is nothing new. However, what I didn't anticipate was the hatred toward sheer discoveries. There's this culture, where, unless you're a top level player, you're not meant (allowed?) to discover brand new content in form of dungeon and raid interiors. Instead, you're supposed to look up guides and come 100% prepared for everything. Because, apparently, discovering stuff together with your newfound friends is bad behaviour. This comes from the idea that not winning at every step is a waste of time. I would understand this mentality in a top tier performing guild, but not in a noob-welcome, very relaxed one. If we're going to do the same group content for months on end, why does it matter if if takes 1 weekend to figure the instance out at first?
Also had that experience in Season of discovery. Phase one was fine, i basically did a BFD run with no clue what was going on. Since i played a healer, i could mostly swim under the radar as long as people survive. But once I got into gnomeregan it killed all fun. People already knew exactly what to do "stand here", "stack for this attack". I wish I had went thru with my idea to start a "no spoiler" raiding guild, where people were not allowed to look up guides for raids.
Nice, fresh madseason video to kill some time at work! Thanks for making the day a bit better! I remember going around town collecting pop cans and shit to return to the store for 5c a piece to get money for my sub... Good times.
Playing retail WoW for the first time today must be crazy. Even with the New Player stuff guiding you a bit it's like 20 years of content coming down on you like an avalanche.
Yeah it definitely suffers from content bloat. I played the first time in vanilla but didnt really get into it until Wrath, played through until MoP but now? I wouldn't even consider going back to retail, theres just waay too much to catch up on and there's an abundance of populated private servers if I get the itch to play.
I just started playing retail wow 3 weeks ago. The issue to me is add-ons needed and no coherent story to play being new. Yes,there is 20 years of content but 18 years of it are irrelevant. I don't feel overwhelmed, I feel underwhelmed by the leveling experience. I want to play those past 20 years of stuff but it is irrelevant. Other than that the moment to moment gameplay is fun IMO.
While I'm not new to retail anymore, I was when I started in 8.3 due to COVID so at least similar shoes especially since most people just ignore shadowlands ever existed now. There really isn't "20 years of content coming down on you like an avalanche" (15, back then)-- there was a lot of content to level through and go through sure but you're not exactly forced into any of it. The expansions are fairly self-contained. I guess if someone's goal in getting into World of Warcraft is to experience the entire storyline of every zone and expansion then sure, that'd be overwhelming. Most people don't do that though. The vast majority of players do not and will never achieve the "loremaster" title. I got into WoW for the fun-sounding RP elements and the fact that MMOs seemed like a good option for social interaction when we were all stuck inside due to the pandemic, and stayed for the great PvE seasonal experience that creates fun, challenging content that can keep people occupied on a regular basis.
I’ll never forget my first time going to stormwind when I was just an 11 year old kid and being in total shock and awe that I literally just walked around visiting all the shops and inns. Was definitely one of the best experiences in WoW for me lol
BFA was mandatory if it was your first character 10-60, characters after that you could pick by talking to Chromie. Since 10.1.5 the restriction was removed: "Chromie Time expansion restrictions have been removed." however it will still try to default you to BFA.
I Loved having my toons supply each other with supplies and everything. Gear, potions, food, first-aid, and working the auction house? I remember flying routes farming Ore. LOL
I really like these new videos. I know it’s sometimes hard to get a good indicator of how your content is being viewed, but I find these videos really cozy and reasonable. It’s a good alternative to the sometimes over dramatic and angry content of others. Keep it up man
Madseason, I'm glad you've returned to making content about WoW. I gather it can be tough for you to talk about it without just digging a hole of negativity but you are by far the person I've seen that most aligns with my viewpoints on it and I think the perspective is valuable for not just blizz/developers but also for the community's understanding. As an example, many of my MMO/retail friends said they quit classic quickly because they realized how long the road to 60 was and didn't feel they could endure it. It's silly but it legitimately helps these days to have videos to point to to buttress the argument of "it's good that it's long! That's the fun part!!!" Thanks for giving your earnest view of the game and helping represent the part of the playerbase that we're from.
I subbed a few weeks back to try SoD and hit level 15 and realized I couldn't trade or use the AH for 30 days. I felt cheated. I had to go to the forum to figure it out. I haven't played since.
Why not? That sounds like trial limitations, not something that should happen to subbed players. But I don't know enough about SoD to know what you're talking about.
@@onlineperson1144 It is a new thing for new accounts on SoD apparently, it is their answer to combat bots or something. I was caught by surprise. I couldn't remember my old account (played OG vanilla to cata) so I subbed on the battlenet account I played Diablo 4 on.
Great video as always :-) One of the few people to actually do transformative react content, instead of just playing it and laughing once in a while! When I first began my adventure in WoW, back in 2005, my first meaningful interaction with other players already came at level 6. I was bumming around Northshire Abbey on my human mage (aptly named Humanmage) and I saw a bunch of people arriving, so of course I followed them, thinking some even was happening. They were apparently having a guild meeting in Northshire Abbey and I quickly got to talk with some of the people there who explained a bit about how the world worked. None of us play today, but I still keep in touch with them.
Please try Old School Runescape, you'll love it. The quests are stories that sometimes play out over multiple quests or sometimes just helping someone out just because. It'll satisfy your RPG hunger
They did a thing Dragonflight where certain lore-relevant characters have several questions you can ask them to get you up to speed on who they are, their motivations, and what's going on. I'm sure this has had mixed results because you have to consciously not click "Accept" or "Complete" right away when talking to quest-givers, and also read their answers which are shown as quest text. Maybe they should do a fully-voiced version of this, or perhaps create two versions of quest text (or even early expansion events): one for new players and one for existing players. In one, the characters introduce themselves and act like it's the first time they see you, and in the other they're at least aware of who you are (not a Champion, though).
as a new player myself (just started this past month) my list of things i don’t like are 1. questing, it’s mad annoying, especially solo questing. i’d rather just run incursions to level 2. having it use the lfg channel to find players for dungeons. it’s okay at peak times but at liek 3am looking for a brd group is hell. i would rather have the looking for dungeon option in classic/sod 3. the community. so many dick head players that expect you to already know everything. i’ve been kicked from so many raid and dungeon groups for not knowing boss mechanics. and if you don’t do exactly what they want when they want (even if they don’t say what they want you to do in chat), you’re the prime candidate for them to blame everything on. 4. not really able to experience old content. i get why wow did more of a vertical progression but it legit makes 0 sense for them to make content only for you to one shot every boss when they release a new expansion (or as i’ve been told you one shot every boss). why waste time money and resources on making new content if it’s only going to be irrelevant a year later?like ill never be able to experience tbc or wotlk and thats pretty upsetting to me. i do enjoy the world and there are some cool people and i would rate my experience positively but those are my biggest things i don’t like.
A great video from both of you. Basically summarized my feelings of two decades of playing this game. The highs, the lows, the love and the heartbreak.
I really like when Mad Season does a react video, because he really adds onto it instead of the braindead reacts where they just say "cool" or "wow" every now and then. Much respect
I would say these are less "reacts" and more "video discussions." It's using an unfamiliar perspective to explore the discussion space regarding the subject in question, here WoW, rather than simply providing "candid reactions" to content. I think this format is a bit underutilized honestly, due to the taint of the pure react "wow, cool, neat" content thieves.
1:20:00 Wanted to extend a little bit by talking about skyrim. I remember how I played day one on my X360, and how magical it was. What you did, the objects you found, sharing and hearing about others things that you didn't discover... Kind of the same, but you discovered minecraft pré-1.0 (me for the 1.5 beta), it was insane to try to makes new contraptions, I spend so many times doing redstone pistons door and was so freaking proud of doing one. You trully need to live it to understand it, I get so invested in Wrath as a teenager, I was able to kill arthas in 25 raid, with most of it in hero. I was really glad that, all the commitements I did have a clear pay off. And then Cata arrived, There was cool aspects, I mainly leveled alt because the new quests for revamped areas were mostly good, I love the Rambo guy in all humans quest zones. It was cheeky but fun, but it pretty much discard every thing I did previously. Because they were all "chores", and now you need to do more "chores" that are supposedly harder. I'm tired of minmaxing culture, having people not even saying "hi" in the beginning of dungeon run, they literally don't have the time to do it, and let's not talk about raid finder. I know that's how WoW works, the "carrot on a stick" situation that you talk about, to play to earned to not play anymore is just showing that it's not a good game, or at least that the link between you and the game isn't that good. I don't want to go after the carrot if I know that it would be push further so I needed to do more "chores". Maybe a good chunk of it was because I was still a teenarger, but in a world where every gaming website have their article about '"How to maximize each spec under the sun in 4s in Skyrim", regardless of the quality of the game, it's hard to feel the greatness of "discovery". I could only find it now it small indie game where they dare try something new, and sometimes crash (rip Spellbreaker). I wish that we could get that back for TES6. It would be nice
New players think it’s a game about orcs vs humans… just to find out it’s actually about the power of friendship and love (metzen save us pls). God forbid they reach the endgame, just to wait hours to get into a group and get denied because a 3rd party addon says you haven’t killed the boss 100 times prior. WoW is my favorite game and I never have problems progressing through the most challenging content but that’s because I’ve become accustomed to these things (reluctantly). It is not welcoming to new players at all.
On my new character with zero pve achievements i got to 1800 in pvp and have done normal raid without any issues. No guild, no weak auras. I have DBM and even thats not necessary if you have a MMO brain. People need to stop acting like this game is any harder to learn now than it was 20 years ago when there was zero sense of direction. People before just werent such babies about having to learn something 😂 jesus christ... and Orcs vs Humans? There hasnt been orcs vs humans on a cover since the 90s, wtf are you even talking about. NOBODY expects that shit 😂
as someone who has extensively played wow and OSRS, i would adore seeing your take on Runescape. I also watch Jimmy and seeing him take on WoW was fascinating. would be great to see it from the other side of the fence
I normally don't like reaction videos, especially reaction videos to videos I've already watched, but these are actually worth watching. You add so much extra commentary and insight. I love how you don't just pause the video and have a talking face over it, but actually edit in your own footage to illustrate your tangent.
Only about 12 minutes in, but I gotta argue, ever since phase 3 incursions SoD doesnt feel like it follows the "lvl through linear quests" anymore. The exp boost rushes you through zones leaaving half complete messes of storylines since they turn grey before you can even finish them and incursions have taken over lvl 25-30 and 40-50 ... I still dunnp how to feel about it. But it is weird. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth :/ Edit: My first major city was Darnassus. How come so few people mention it being awesome? I feel like Thunderbluff and Darnassus are treated like WoW Vanillas middle childs, we all know they exist, but compared to SW/IF or OG/UC they lack a bit of grandeur. Yet I also get the same nostalgic wave of belonging in Teldrassil, all of the mystery, the connection of Magic and Nature, I just relish in it ❤
If Darn was located on the classic map where Hyjal is located or feathermoon stronghold, it would be a lot more popular. The location is just horrible at any point of the leveling process and max level.
Awesome vid. Awesome commentary from Madseason, and awesome vid from J1mmy. I got a few things here - the end of the video with J1mmy at the party in Goldshire...holy crap. I was laughing so hard. The books: the older books are great. Legit, Blizz did a great job. The newer stuff..eh. But the books on Thrall, the book on Khadgar and Medihv, Lothar, Llane and Orgrim. Books on the orc clans before the Legion found Draenor. These were seriously great books. Leveling in retail: I've never been able to commit to it in BfA, Shadowlands, Dragonflight. It's a combination of mindlessness (there are very little consequences so you don't have to think, strategize, or pay attention) and bloat - so many spells, zones, characters that you have no idea what is going on. That's the worst part - why does Blizz design a game to skip a large portion of the game (leveling)? It's so dumb. Why not just make good leveling?
I watched the original video and then I watched the reaction. Totally worth it. I didn't really pay attention to the "party" part at the end the first time around, and that part was absolutely hilarious. I love how he checks out the night elf's butt.
As someone who refuses to play MMOs explicitly because of the time-consuming, grindy, addictive nature of them but would love them if I played, I think OSRS is a natural topic for you to cover. I frequently keep up with both WoW and OSRS when I chill with my skill-mastery gaming on Celeste or Sekiro, so I know an absurd amount for someone who's never played either game. Which is actually quite little compared to an active player, but it's absurd I know as much as I do. The J1mmy responses are a great segue, and OSRS has some key design differences that are extremely relevant for talking about any incarnation of Classic+ that would actually function. At least one of them is the progression differential for combat and non-combat skills, which is not as strictly linear as a singular XP-gain-to-max-level system. Imagine, say, that a more developed professions system gradually increased your max character level as you did combat and non-combat exploration, skill grinding, and quests. There is still tons of dead content once you level everything in OSRS, worsened with guides for "maximum efficiency," but there seems to be much more spacing out of that deadness. The classless vs classed core identity difference is also very interesting, and would make adaptation to a proper Classic+ format harder for WoW. Maybe some sort of D&D style limited multi-classing would be an acceptable balance. OSRS is also a great example of game expansion without too much story or timeline expansion, which seems to be what has killed story engagement with WoW. Imagine if Classic+ just dropped Northrend and decided "time hasn't progressed, there's just another continent now. Check it out." It doesn't need to be an "Epic" progression of the lore, it can just be more exploration, and more stories, set in the same time period with the same leveling system. Lean into alts, alternative playstyles like Ironman or Hardcore, and challenges related to leveling like the "Pures" on OSRS. This would require more diversified and lateral leveling options, and substantial changes to gearing but is totally doable. The "more endgame content" part of the SoD roadmap has me concerned that perpetuating the "endgame is the real game" mentality will just ruin this attempt at Classic+. Adding in some escalating difficulty raids and dungeons with linear "tier" gearing progressions is just repeating the exact same design mistakes that lead us here. It would work for a little while and generate hype, and then everyone would hit their personal "quit moment" related to progression feeling unrewarding or actually ending. ActiBlizz is high-key late-stage-Capitalism brain rotted at the executive/management level so none of this will matter anyway and they'll make the same mistakes to maximize the appearance of profit growth. Still, we have to hope and use hope to plan for a better world; in this case, a better game world.
I know you people refuse to accept this, but wow’s “endgame matters” philosophy is never going away, either in retail or classic, it’s their target audience and that’s what makes up the game’s population, just like how Mario is targeted towards people that love platformers.
@@Fabriciod_Crv I don't know what you mean by "you people" or if you just didn't understand my comment. I know they won't change this about WoW, but it's still a fundamental design flaw that isn't inherent to the genre. That's my point, this is neither intractable nor inevitable and pretending like it is prevents us from getting better games. Their target audience in general seems to be "as many people as possible," which has its own flaws. Based on this, their strategy for increasing player count is currently a bad one and also does not seem to be serving the enfranchised players particularly well. MadSeason quit retail, as one example. It's not "endgame matters" that's a problem, as that's a relevant and significant portion of the player base. It's "ONLY endgame matters" that is the problem which ActiBlizz will never fix and IMO will eventually kill the game.
@@cyclic_infinity if you look at wow’s patch history, you’re going to see that all the iconic major updates to the game are endgame focused: from the AQ40 event all the way to ICC. SoD devs also take notice of this because in phase 2, before the incursion fiasco, they already made 1-40 have a 100% xp boost so people get to the endgame quick, which is where all the relevant content is located. WoW has always prioritized endgame over leveling, madseason just weirdly ignores that and say that WoTLK classic “struggled” or “died”, when in reality it still has tons of people playing on those servers, while also ignoring the fact ICC had been out for months, so of course people will naturally leave little by little until the new content comes out (which is cata Classic), and the game hasn’t and will never die unless we end up on another situation like BFA or SL where blizzard forced terrible power systems on everyone, because the core of wow’s playerbase is endgame focused.
@@Fabriciod_CrvDude, I'm not arguing the facts here. I'm saying that strategy is outdated and seems to not be giving players the best experience, in general. If you're in that sliver of players who love it great! But this is an MMO, and if it wants to avoid the fate of "20,000 hardcore fans interacting with JSH," or more likely getting shut down, things need to change in design. Running the same design principles from 2006 into the ground is not a good strategy. They worked back then, and did for a while, but it seems pretty clear this "endgame first" strategy isn't the best for MMO design. It wouldn't even be for every iteration, I'm literally only talking about a _theoretical_ Classic+. I only mentioned SoD to reference the creative direction and design constraints the team seem to be working with, which IMO won't work for a full Classic+ style. It's the next logical step from SoD, one I'd like to see succeed as a fan of gaming in general, and that's why I'm concerned. I honestly don't care at all how a seasonal Classic progression server, clearly inspired by OSRS Leagues, is run. It's a neat design space, but obviously pretty experimental right now. You'd still have Progression Classic and Retail to endgame grind on, and SoD or whatever is after potentially as well. I really don't understand the issue you're having. Not every single theoretical iteration of WoW has to appeal to exactly you and your endgame mentality.
@@cyclic_infinity it’s more madseason’s stance that i take issue with, bro doesn’t seem to understand that the style of classic MMOs will not jive with people that like modern MMOs like retail or FFXIV, always wanting validation that he is right about what the game should be (like now he wants to know what the active player numbers on each version of the game are separately, or how he ignored the massive elephant in the room which was the blizzard lawsuit in 2021 which contributed more to TBC classic not doing well more than a level boost, or consistently in every video saying “told you so” and repeating himself at nauseum like he’s trying prove wrong the people that disagreed with him on these things, when they are more than likely not even watching his content anymore, so it just comes off as annoying more than anything). Stuff like this is why people call him a Classic Andy, which is true and i’ll always bear that in mind whenever he has *anything* to say about modern wow. TL;DR: Madseason is very much on the classic “new stuff bad, old stuff good” mentality and it’s getting annoying.
I listened to the audiobooks of a few WoW books in the past year and some of them were pretty good. Day of the Dragon and The Last Guardian in particular I really enjoyed.
Common misconception, but there are no dailies or weeklies in retail that require any attention. You can just login and do what you want. No required daily or weekly homework.
You are literally correct but to many (me included) they FEEL/FELT required. It's like we compare ourselves to a theoretical optimum future self and feel bad when we fall short.
@@boopsii i made a mistake implying my information is recent; I quit back in BFA for multiple reasons but feeling like I was expected to walk the treadmill was part of it. Could be better now but I'm not willing to find out.
Regarding running-out-of-obstacles, I, as main tank, was funneled gear in Naxx, and had full BIS early on. Of course i stuck around to hang out with my friends, and push for better times. The speedrun (or speed-walk, as it were, in my guild) is fantastic, as it is an un-depletable obstacle.
bring that to blizzard: we care more about a classic grey item upgrade with +10 armor than a +26% better epic in retail. we cant remember a retail item that dropped today but everybody remembers the big giant red sword Ashkandi from 20 years ago....
Because everyone was shit at the game and were still figuring out what was good and what wasn’t, in fact, items in vanilla are way more boring than most retail ones, the only thing that set them apart from retail is the chance on hit weapons, besides that they have nothing
@@Fabriciod_Crv No, after 15 years i still cant remember what loot i dropped in mop Remix today. Zo give you 1 Point - i can remember Pips trinket from amirdrasil
@@Nagria2112 like i said, the only reason vanilla items are remembered is because everyone was bad at the game and were still figuring out what was a good item and what was a bad item, when in reality items from it were just has boring and had even less stuff going on with them than most loot from retail, ever wonder why it’s only vanilla that people seem remember items from, but not TBC, Wrath or any subsequent expansion (excluding legendaries)?
I'd also like to add more point around 51:29 Yes, BFA is mandatory for new players as of now who just finished the Island Tutorial, If you somehow forced cancel quests or try to ignore them you are permanently sharded/Phased where almost all other players/mobs arent visible to you untill you start BFA. You can like finish a certain threshold of BFA quests (Boralis/Zandalar) then you can head back to the captial and go anywhere else. They really try so hard to incorperate this storyline of "New Recruit" who is now shoehorned in this war effort to the BFA expansion, really poor excuse of a tutorial.
i like your way of doing react videos, bringing in your own selections of videos and commenting extensively. its so much more polished than other reacting content, i can feel the effort you put in and i really aprecciate it!
MadSeason! Love this new style of video. Love hearing your take on things. Love it. Never lose those good ole videos with all the effort put into them of course cause we love those too. But these are also great! Keep it up dude. It's always a good day when I see these long ones. Much love!!
A few months ago I got my 14yo brother who only played valorant and fortnite (and single player stuff) into wow. He loved the community aspect of the game (yes, retail), talking to people who were nice to him; the quests had cool story (he did the intro into BFA into DF); he liked dungeons and hear me out, he was baffled to know that "skins" (transmogs) were obtainable in game and were not part of the shop. He is so used to buying stuff as MTX, that the ability to unlock something by farming baffled him. He is in love with the game.
Dont say sorry for pausing. You are new to this format and youer doing a better job at reacting than 99.9% of creators. You add your own content and expand on it. Good job mate
Started in wrath. Took me 3 months to level playing nearly every day because it absolutely was an adventure. I didn’t just level in my 1-80 experience. I played horde and did things like fishing in iron forge for whatever that fish was called for the achievement. Checked out every corner of the world. It was awesome. Cata and up was just about getting to end game.
41:49 My first character was an undead warlock, and upon entering the Lordaeron I was taken aback by bell ringing and that blood spot in the throne room. I was standing for like 10 minutes, completely astonished.
I started WOW just prior to Burning Crusade and played about 3 years and then quit to have kids. Now my kids are early teens and I started back and it has been very fun. I play when it is convenient and when I have something else to do I log out.
You can totally be THE HERO in an MMORPG without making it weird. The whole point of FFXIV is that, YOUR STORY, you are the most hero thats ever heroed in the story of heroing. And it works perfectly. The diference? They know how to write at SE. Write lore they respect and evade retcons or just blantantly just ignoring it. Write characters that are actually charismatic and have personality, and let alone how they do the cinematic realization of every scene, from camera work to the music landscape. Is a formula they have refined to near perfection, you can watch endless video of people just being emotionally destroyed by FFXIV and thats because is well directed, well writen. If anything, the already millions of warriors of light came to prove that stories about heroes and self-improvement are not old nor tiring, they are as great as ever, but it requieres actual talent, effort and knowledge to pull something off. "Has your journey being good? Has it been worthwhile?" - Ten years in, it emotionally devastated players, be tears of joy, sad, nostalgia, melancholy, they convey real emotions of real care. Because the story of the Warrior of Light is that good. All it requieres of you is to read. To not just press skip. There is a line a dialogue there, a character, a scene, that has the power to emotionally move you, of that in sure. For yours is a light brillant beyond measure.
Good video as always. EQ is having a couple new TLP servers launching on the 22nd. The leveling is faster than classic, but it might be fun to check out one of those servers. Enjoy your week,
I brought this up near the end of the video: What do you think of me playing Runescape for the first time and doing a new player review? I've never played it, and since I'm raid logging in sod now would be a pretty good opportunity.
Here are my other reacts: ua-cam.com/play/PL0hAOfdoZQkIsSXnpgWVholsE2XuDaDRf.html
I'd value your input, been away from RS for some years now, however I have dearly fond memories of the game's infancy - being the 44th player to sign up for the original game.
osrs can be rough as a new player, theres decent time investment required to get the bigger picture. But I think the entire rs community would be very hyped to see you give it an honest go.
Yes please. And please at least finish mid-game leveling to have a decent perspective
Not interested.
Do it!!!
so excited that you watched it! can’t wait to hear your thoughts 😄
It was great dude, we share a lot of opinions on mmos I think, especially in regards to leveling. I'm going to try out runescape for the first time soon and maybe match your video :D
Aww you 2 are cute. Its a great video J1mmy! Was surprised that the react overlord hasnt watched it 😂
I do not know if J1mmy has the time but it would be cool if he jumped into your stream when you decide to play RuneScape.
And for some reason the bald man saw your other vid but not this one. Im not a runescape player, but im happy i found your content from reacts. Great vids man!
@@madseasonshowthe original RuneScape creator is working on a new game called Brighter Shores. It looks similar to RuneScape and is set for early access in Q3 of this year.
43:40 the best early upgrades were when you finally got a proper long cape and some nice shoulder pads. That visual progression alone was so awesome
I do not like the short capes...terrible
Dude when I first started playing as a kid in 2008 I thought long cape and shoulders was the sign of a top tier player 🤣
Aesthetics is one of the most important forms of character progression. I made a rogue in vanilla(ended up being my main raiding character) solely because I saw a full shadowcraft rogue hanging out in IF
Hell yeah. This is what frustrates me about modern games selling the best looking armours, visual and cosmetic upgrades are still a form of progression.
@@madseasonshow Similar for me. I LOVED the way the stormshroud set looked and that I could mix and match that set with the Rogue and Druid T0 sets. True I didn't know what I was doing and was playing just for fun (crazy idea now!) but that was awesome.
My wife played wow for the first time in 2019 classic. She was up at 7am one time walking around stormwind just to listen to the music lmao.
Damn. Reminds me of the one time when i was hungover in bed, and i loggend into wow to hear the soothing music of thunderbluff. My GF gave me a weird look
I remember waking up 5 am before school to play extra. NOTHING had been able to get me up that early lol
@@Fragoso93 THAT reminds me of waking up randomly at night, not beeing able to sleep again. When i logged into wow i found a DMC Greatness for 1000 gold on the ah, worth like 5 times more
Good times. Games are the best when you have nothing about them and you can experience and explore everything.
@@fev0r Happened to me during wrath classic, couldn't really sleep so I just logged in at 4am or something, server was quite dead at that time so I was just flying around the storm peaks just to wander with the music, relax a bit and I found (and got) a time lost protodrake.... best shit ever
Funny that you mentioned WoW's minimal computer requirements. When we started playing back in 2005, our computer was apparently so slow to download the graphics that my son couldn't take the zeppelin from Undercity to Orgrimmar because by the time the loading screen finished, the zeppelin had already started on the way back. He wound up having to get a mage portal. lol It caused us to finally upgrade our computer though, which had been fine for Diablo II (which is what we were playing when we were introduced to WoW).
For classic and bc I had to accept textures so low that the ground was a checkerboard pattern of 2 foot squares.
And then wrath hit and forced me to abandon the family PC and finally get my own computer.
Good times.
@@yle_coyote4178 i remember raiding at 1-3 fps
oh man that definitely happened to me before
Diablo 2 was even more potato, and I remember getting a slideshow everytime I whent in the cow level. Lol. good times.
Omg how frustrating 😅😅😅 I’m glad you finally upgraded computers and staid in the game ❤
10:25
it's so funny how each expansion the eastern kingdoms gets pushed further and further east.
It's incredible how Thrall's horde ever made it to kalimdor in the first place with that massive ocean and all the landmasses in between them.
They barely did make it, really. They ended up shipwrecked and divided when they first arrived, and I don't think Thrall would have survived that first day if he hadn't met and teamed up with Cairn
It also breaks so much lore from before the next expansion. Like the zandalari and kul tirans were right there the whole time doing nothing during the Legion expansion? They seen the light in the sky and were just like... nope.
Lot of other lore that involves travel feels kinda muddy now.
In 2030 we'll have the option to play The War Within Classic...CAN'T WAIT!
ICANT
Don't forget the mandatory lvl boost to "help" new players 😂
I bet they end it with pandaria or legion
solid points - and thanks for using our lofi in the video! Really appreciate it MadSeason!
I'm in love with your channel, I have it on while I'm editing. Thank you
1.5 hour madseason video... today is a good day
barely can be called "his video"
@@Bixdood The original video is 40 min and this one is 90. That's plenty of contribution from him.
1.3 hours u mean
@@Cook_A_Burra No use trying to talk sense to these people - they have made up their mind about react videos. This one actually took longer than one of my normal videos(it's 50 minutes of edited content). I could put in 400 hours into a react, and it would still be seen as lazy. But I'll keep doing them because I like them. I make them for myself and those who like them, not for the people who don't watch them and complain anyways
Cept that when we are talking new players: the fact that while it can be seen as subjective; its the players and their entitled attitudes towards new players that drive alot of decisions that Blizz ends up making when it comes to new starts. If theres anything that could help a new player added into any other part of the game than the shit starting zones and oblivious tutorials, then its walls of wailing for Blizz to deal with and the usual threats to leave the game from fanbois and veterans and many inbetween. It doesnt need to be prevalent in everything you do, certainly, but theres room for far more in game to keep peoples interests, rather than the expectation of the greater crowd to bulky people into caring about the end game only, becoming useful to the lifers, or being told to go watch videos to do the games own fucking job.
You know ... At first, i looked at your thumbnail and was like, "oh, there madseason goes like all other creatirs. Selling himself out to do react videos", and i didnt even give it a chance.
But after watching it just a few minutes, i was like, "oh.... This isent a react vudeo. This is a MADSEASON react video!"
In other words, i like what youre doing here. Youre giving REAL thoughts back. Youre not just talking over everything and pretending to be adding to it. Youre thoughtfully pausing when a deep thought needs to be addressed and youre trully adding to it. I like this. I should never have doubted you.
Honestly I really appreciate that. I've been getting a lot of comments about how it's lazy content by people who don't even give it a chance. 40 minutes of this is j1mmy's, and the other ~50 is mine. It's pretty disheartening to put in ~50 minutes of edited footage(this took days) for people to write it off as lazy without even watching it. Credit always goes to the original creator, but not everyone does reacts in the same way - I want to be respectful of the original channel and make it transformative and bring new discussions to the table. Sorry for the rant but yeah I really appreciate this comment.
I love these react videos and I haven't played since classic released (didn't bother with tbc classic)
Thank you madseason! Your videos are excellent.
@@madseasonshow This is the real way to do react content and nothing you should be feel any shame or guilt over. Providing new original context and ideas to already existing content is GREAT and you hit the nail on the head with this video.
@@madseasonshow I think labeling it a "react" video is part of the problem. I love this style because they are more than banal candid reactions, it's really not a "react" style of content. The effort to make this a proper video discussion is really evident, actively engaging and providing thoughtful and expansive commentary makes it something entirely different. With all the backlash against actual react content creators, putting react in the title will give some people the wrong impression. As only a consumer on UA-cam I really don't know how changing that wording might impact metrics or visibility, or if calling it a "video discussion" would even help with the rage-ready folks who won't even watch the video.
@@madseasonshow I think react content is a dangerous game to play, as it definitely rides the line between elevating commentary and plagiarism. This however, isn't a pure "react" video, as heavy editing and commentary is added. As long as the people you are reacting to are okay with this, I see no problem here. Another way of doing it would be to address a video without showing it (in it's entirety), but this breeds other issues such as redundancy of repeating their points and making another video "required reading" which can be a turn off for a lot of people.
Glad to see you're still uploading. I haven't touched this in over half a decade and don't even have Battlenet installed but now and again will still watch your videos. I made a lot of friends and memories playing the game but don't think I will ever be able to stomach what it has become.
I actually started WOW in BC classic, and I personally had a great time thanks to a few factors. A friend introduced me to the game mid way through TBC and I had watched a few videos on how to play the game and what it was about (also lore), so I wasn't really blind to what was it about. Additionally, a soon as I joined and got to level 12 a leveling guild randomly invited me. Also helped I didn't know about the leveling boost, and when I found out my new guildmates laughed at it and Blizzard. This guild was also filled with active levelers who leveled with me and so instead of an empty world and a race to max level I just trotted along with likeminded people, learning the world and the game as I went along. I also liked the TBC world and lore and learning about it via youtube and the game itself as I went along. I also stuck with the people I had leveled with once we hit max, as we were so far behind the curb of new raids coming out we were the only ones doing heroics and then Karazhan. Overall, I found it very fun discovering the world and the people with me, since I had so much to discover and do.
That's like my OG experience of BC from 2007. I started from 0 as the expansion launched. Luckily there was no level boost then so there were still a decent number of players grinding fresh especially with the Dreanei & Blood Elves being new races. Joined a guild when I got to Outland & we slowed progressed through the raids.
I remember when wow first came out I made a warlock and there was a paliden that saved me from bandits we waved and waved everytime we saw eachother all the way up too lvl 60 when we ended up in our first raid together I will always remember that guy wow doesnt have that magic now
Dude you're really back. Nice.
I knew my parents would never agree to a $15-a-month subscription so I stuck to buying the game cards with my allowance money. WoW was always relatively casual-friendly comparative to other MMOs at the time which greatly helped its popularity. I don't really know what kept me going from the very moment I started playing, but I do remember the sheer scale of the game world totally amazing me.
Madseason's educated side-topic about the Northshire wolves are exactly why I love his and Asmon's videos. That super niche info that I didn't know before, even though I played since vanilla just makes my day!
I mean his videos are literally you basically sitting down with a friend to watch the video, but your friend is super experienced player that knows it all so can enhance the viewing experience. I'm an older player, but missed wow during my childhood. Playing wow and watching his videos on second screen(and nobels for lore) has been the best way to learn the game for me.
"It's not about what it has, but what it doesn't have"
-MadSeason
Best
Description
EVER!
This is why i prefer Vice City over San Andreas
WoW was one of those crossroads in life, new friendships across the globe even after quitting the game 18yrs later. I weighed up subscribing to WoW or having a TV streaming package & figured interaction was better then vegetating on the couch.
1:20 That was my parents. I had to mow lawns and buy game time cards for WoW time before I was legally able to work during vanilla.
Imagine making a game for 15 years and then realizing that the best way to improve your game is to uninstall 10+ years of updates.
How most old mmos are. Runescape is the same way in a sense
33:11 I remember when I first got the game in like 2005 I wanted my character to be the hero of the realm. But now that I am older and the one hero trope has been done to death; I now crave MMOs where I am just a nobody, one part of hundreds of others, just eking out an existence and being part of the world.
I go for that in my tabletop RPGs as well. 🙂
Bro, that was exactly it. The first time I stepped into Iron Forge, it was magical. It took me several days to make it there. That trog tunnel between the starting zone and IF, almost made me quit.
“I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.” Unexpected Arthur Dayne.
Madseason has always been the Sword of the Morning
With the way level scaling works I don’t feel like I’m getting stronger so much as I feel like I’m becoming unshackled or recovering from amnesia. This is partially because the hero trope. If you start off fighting boars and wolves it makes sense that you’re getting stronger and actually learning new skills as you start fighting tougher enemies, but if you start off going through BFA or even Chromie Timing to WoD you’re a general or a hero immediately while still being a Paladin that can’t use wings yet. So when you get wings it doesn’t feel like you learned a powerful new ability, it feels like you remembered how to use a skill you should have had the whole time in the context of your role in the world as you’re learning it.
Please never stop making videos.
You are quite literally one of the only outlets of normalcy i have on the internet. Never stop being your cosy, down to earth self Madseason ❤
The level boost has definitely disincentivized Blizzard from creating a meaningful, interesting leveling experience. The more players are frustrated and bored by the leveling and the quests, the sooner they fork over money to Blizzard for a level boost.
Being able to pick which expansion you level from 10-60 in pretty much solved the problem of a horrible leveling experience. I remember being so sick of Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor that I'd just dungeon spam and alt tab during wait times. Now you just pick a timeline and you don't even have to worry about out leveling zones before you complete them.
Almost every encounter was a puzzle while leveling in 2005. Every class had different tools for solving. It was risky and you really could die to the Defias by deadmines. A lot. That's why I love classic leveling.
Repost; He's right about the joy of seeing your progress in real time. When my warlock received my guild's very first Azuresong, the dopamine rush lasted for the rest of the raid. A massive upgrade, looked cool af, I was the ONLY one in the guild that had it, AND I topped the damage meter for the rest of the night. If I could bottle that kind of sustained rush, I'd be a billionaire.
It's called heroin, and pharma companies already beat you to it oxycontin
Edit: as a recovering heroin addict, don't do heroin or oxycontin or opiates in general.
Yes, its called herōin. Pharma companies beat you to it with oxycodone.
Meth is illegal for a reason
Meanwhile every other mage/ lock in the raid felt terrible xD
My guild in vanilla only managed to full clear MC a few times, when I got the benediction half all my friends were so jealous. I was so high on dopamine and euphoria that after the raid my face was like an inch away from the monitor just staring at the item and pictures of what it could turn into. Damn…
i just started a new classic era character 2 weeks ago, the leveling experience simply cannot be beat
I tried MoP remix today and I was completely overwhelmed by all the stuff that characters can and are supposed to do... the talent tree is enormous and unlike the classic talents apparently there are no bad talents in retail, so choosing becomes extra hard...
I think I'm just too old for retail
Honestly, that's kinda what MoP remix was designed for. It's more designed for retail players for bored retail players for them to kill time until The War Within releases
Those ads for level boosts made by blizzard disgust me so much. I have no words to describe it.
Same. It was an butchering of the games progression
I thought it was some sort of fan-made parody, as I have never seen them before
Bobby Kotek and his spirit of greed. The OG WoW team made it a point to say you can buy WoW progression with your money. They knew it needed to be protected but here we are..evil won the day.
My first dungeon experience was as so bad (compared to ff14) that I quit immediately after
yeah i can see that i hate some players that pick on new players, not everyone knows how to run a dungeon. Now how easy wow is i don't think new players will experience this now how stupid easy dungeons are now
The low level dungeons were also very deceptive to new players. The first mobs are usually like 5+ levels below the lvl of the final boss so unprepared groups will get through about half of it before they hit a wall where the tank can't hold aggro because the mobs are too high lvl. Quests start you going into deadlines at like 15 but the final boss is 21 so it kind of misleads you a bit too.
My first dungeon I asked where to go and the group kicked me. I literally just started 5 minutes ago. What an introduction to the community that was.
I will always have fond memories of my time in WoW from 2004 off and on throughout the years.
Good times, but all good things come to an end.
The final straw for me in WoW was leaving for 6 months, being heroic raid geared several months after Dragonflight started, and when I came back, with the same expansion, but two raids later, my item level was so low compared to everything else that I felt like a brand new character. The everpresent requirement to grind more levels with each expansion already turned me off. I never understood how my god-like character with unique gear would overnight with the release of a new expansion suddenly be like a brand new adventurer, replacing epic and legendary gear for common items dropped from random creatures crawling around a new area. The constant fight for one more item level just turns the game into a job.
Maybe tinfoil hat but WoW tokens could be the reason - it's much more profitable to reset progress 3 times an expansion instead of once per expansion. The first thing a lot of people do when a new patch hits is load up on tokens for carries
@@madseasonshow You may be right. All my other conspiracy theories already came true, so I'm always looking for another, and this may be the next one. I just don't enjoy feeling like I'm always leveling, so I dropped the game. Your videos are the only thing I still watch from WoW. ;-)
@@throatwobblermangrove8510 I just quit for the second time. I'm playing STALKER anomoly now. And I'm having an absolute blast.
6 months and 2 raid tiers after is not overnight. And only fools pay for carries when gearing up is so easy even if you are a casual. Is easy to blame everything on the devs.
I have friends that are mostly casual. They stop playing a 1 or 2 months after the new raid. Come back, find a pug and gear up again and see the new raid. Rinse and Repeat. No wow tokens, no carries.
@@josejuanandrade4439 I returned to ESO and was able to play consistently with gear I'd had for 5 years. New content was released at a much more rapid rate than in WoW, but there is no addition of levels or fight for item level. It makes it possible to focus on the game and actual content instead of becoming viable again. No need to find a series of pugs to get gear just to feel somewhat viable. No tokens, no carries, no pugs, no battling just for item level, or even to relevel characters when the next expansion releases. For me, it's just a more player-friendly design.
Sod with the powercreep and just mind boggling design choices, still waiting for a fresh start official Vanilla launch...
Cata and retail just don't hold a candle to the Original WoW map and game design of Vanilla. I just hope the dev team isn't nearly as bad as the retail team's counterparts and actually learns why SoD is at an all time low coming to phase 4.
my favorite part about "making it easier to get into burning crusade" is that if they wanted to make it easy they would have just made it free.
Yeah, i usually read these as: "Believe my lies and give money you sucker"
It's a way to make money from bots. The game economy can't be supported by players alone, hence they need bots.
I love seeing you branch into the content you want to make.
i played wow since 2005 or so at then end of classic but i was a little fella jumping ontop of goldshire the whole time, my uncle got me and my cousin into it, he was a ret paladin who was 40 years old and didnt take my grandpa to the hospital when he was having a stroke because he was in a raid lmfao i learned to make food for me and my cousin because we lived together, a true wow player. i played the game off and on since then diving deep then coasting for some xpacks, im 25 now and ive went through existencial crisis and pondered the meaning of life, my place here, ive done a lot in real life but at the end of the day im a mother fucking wow player, even if the game end up being a disney soap opra im always back at it playing the game, ive played most of all MMORPG's, and there are a lot of fun games, but wow is a way of life and hopefully i can escape again into the world of azeroth and feel the literal fucking cold air of khaz modan once more, iill pay way more then 15$ a month if i can get addicted again to this game like i was, but the devs legit hate us, they want our money so they will give us a pat on the ass, but they fucking hate our guts and it shows through the content, if they could get rid of us all and get new people they would in a heart beat, so in that case, i will throw spears right back at them if im able to. thats my story, feel free to thank me for my service.
Maybe this is unpopular. But as a player who joined just before Shadowlands season 2 and has played through classic and retail quite extensively now as well as having played RuneScape for 20 years.
I wish for a few things.
1. Take warcraft back to its classic roots where it would have players being part of the army, not the leader of it. All races having their own starting areas and quests associated as well as class quests being a thing again.
2. Revamp the dead content. When the current trilogy theyre releasing wraps up, start fresh with a new way to level and experience the old zones. Instead of having all the expansions turn into isolated end gane zones of years past. Revamp the classic to void lord story down into its own experience. Like a cataclysm but dont burn things down. Build them up. Have the bewly enpowered aspects use a time skip to mend azeroth. Have the expansions stories retold in one story and have it span the new leveling experience. Make leveling take much longer than it does now and remove paid boosts. It cannablizes the learning experience of playing the game. Drop using expansions as a selling point and go hard on isolated updates. This will take pressure off the team for needing to resell the core features every 2 years and allow more focused development in areas players want most. Which is features that make the world feel more alive again. Stuff like player housing and revamping/adding skills. Also less cinematic story telling through expansion content as people can't and don't want to keep up most of the time when it comes to the story/narrative. The story is better in the classic era because its told in small pockets around the world and isnt so much about stopping a bad guy or watching long cutscenes. Instead its about your journey to becoming the hero you imagine being once again. The big bad at the end of the leveling is just the cherry on top, not the driving force of your motivation or the cause of every obvious issue in each zone. TBC and Wrath fooled the team into thinking they always need a new villain to hate.
And finally
3. Make all the previous expansion zones seemless. Let me dragonride over the sea now that so much of it is opened to us. Let me enjoy the view of every zone ive ever adventured through in one sprawling world in front of me. And the ones in different zones we could have some more and cinematic means of getting there. Like flying to the caverns below thendragon isles, we could fly into the dark portal and fly through a magical looking tunnel until it spits me out in the outlands or Draenor. Could even have a fork in the magical tunnel within the portal to decide which version you fly to. Just ideas in the back of my head while i play
Stronger counterpoint to the "you get to choose which zone you level in" argument
Blizzard has (idk when it was introduced) a chapter/story system in the quest log that goes in a specific order. They have a main campaign. You could not choose to start in Thaldraszus, you had to start in The Waking Shores. And while you could technically fly to any part of The Waking Shores you wanted, you didn't really get that many quests until the campaign opened up more questing options in different parts of The Waking Shores. So it isn't even like you even have the option to level up like a sandbox. It seems like they did for one or 2 expansions, figured out players didn't like it, went back on it, but instead of reverting the change, they just kept that change.
So now you have all the bad of level scaling without any of the potential benefits.
If you never completed the Dragonflight leveling campaign, you are required to follow the campaign, after that, any future alt characters can start wherever the hell they want in the dragon isles. So you’re still wrong
@@Fabriciod_Crv so we are keeping level scaling because we want alts to have a sandbox leveling experience? Thank god we radically changed one of the core elements of RPGs for the massive benefit of making the alt leveling experience non linear.
@@jakehr3 yes, ESO literally has level scaling and it’s doing very well for itself, plenty of good RPGs also have level scaling. What’s your point?
“Um, probably depressed.”
I lost it
That info about the wolf changes from vanilla to cataclysm is why I love this channel
Something that really bothered me as a returning player (pause so long I'm practically new) is how group content is looked upon. WoW containing a min-maxing population is nothing new. However, what I didn't anticipate was the hatred toward sheer discoveries. There's this culture, where, unless you're a top level player, you're not meant (allowed?) to discover brand new content in form of dungeon and raid interiors. Instead, you're supposed to look up guides and come 100% prepared for everything. Because, apparently, discovering stuff together with your newfound friends is bad behaviour. This comes from the idea that not winning at every step is a waste of time. I would understand this mentality in a top tier performing guild, but not in a noob-welcome, very relaxed one. If we're going to do the same group content for months on end, why does it matter if if takes 1 weekend to figure the instance out at first?
Also had that experience in Season of discovery. Phase one was fine, i basically did a BFD run with no clue what was going on. Since i played a healer, i could mostly swim under the radar as long as people survive.
But once I got into gnomeregan it killed all fun. People already knew exactly what to do "stand here", "stack for this attack".
I wish I had went thru with my idea to start a "no spoiler" raiding guild, where people were not allowed to look up guides for raids.
Nice, fresh madseason video to kill some time at work! Thanks for making the day a bit better!
I remember going around town collecting pop cans and shit to return to the store for 5c a piece to get money for my sub... Good times.
Playing retail WoW for the first time today must be crazy. Even with the New Player stuff guiding you a bit it's like 20 years of content coming down on you like an avalanche.
Yeah it definitely suffers from content bloat. I played the first time in vanilla but didnt really get into it until Wrath, played through until MoP but now? I wouldn't even consider going back to retail, theres just waay too much to catch up on and there's an abundance of populated private servers if I get the itch to play.
I just started playing retail wow 3 weeks ago. The issue to me is add-ons needed and no coherent story to play being new. Yes,there is 20 years of content but 18 years of it are irrelevant. I don't feel overwhelmed, I feel underwhelmed by the leveling experience. I want to play those past 20 years of stuff but it is irrelevant. Other than that the moment to moment gameplay is fun IMO.
yea but its even worse since most of the old content is pointless some other mmos found ways to keep most old stuff relevant
While I'm not new to retail anymore, I was when I started in 8.3 due to COVID so at least similar shoes especially since most people just ignore shadowlands ever existed now. There really isn't "20 years of content coming down on you like an avalanche" (15, back then)-- there was a lot of content to level through and go through sure but you're not exactly forced into any of it. The expansions are fairly self-contained.
I guess if someone's goal in getting into World of Warcraft is to experience the entire storyline of every zone and expansion then sure, that'd be overwhelming. Most people don't do that though. The vast majority of players do not and will never achieve the "loremaster" title. I got into WoW for the fun-sounding RP elements and the fact that MMOs seemed like a good option for social interaction when we were all stuck inside due to the pandemic, and stayed for the great PvE seasonal experience that creates fun, challenging content that can keep people occupied on a regular basis.
I’ll never forget my first time going to stormwind when I was just an 11 year old kid and being in total shock and awe that I literally just walked around visiting all the shops and inns. Was definitely one of the best experiences in WoW for me lol
BFA was mandatory if it was your first character 10-60, characters after that you could pick by talking to Chromie.
Since 10.1.5 the restriction was removed: "Chromie Time expansion restrictions have been removed." however it will still try to default you to BFA.
dude I love your choice of music. The reimagining of Fisherman's Horizon around the end was really hitting those nostalgic notes.
43:48 This is 1000% the feeling of a bag drop at low level. One of the best feelings in all of leveling ngl
Adding this to my watch later . Commenting to get inspiration and work ethic of madseason to make videos as impactful. surely it's another banger
I Loved having my toons supply each other with supplies and everything. Gear, potions, food, first-aid, and working the auction house? I remember flying routes farming Ore. LOL
I really like these new videos. I know it’s sometimes hard to get a good indicator of how your content is being viewed, but I find these videos really cozy and reasonable. It’s a good alternative to the sometimes over dramatic and angry content of others. Keep it up man
Loving the videos! Man glad you’re back swinging!
Madseason, I'm glad you've returned to making content about WoW. I gather it can be tough for you to talk about it without just digging a hole of negativity but you are by far the person I've seen that most aligns with my viewpoints on it and I think the perspective is valuable for not just blizz/developers but also for the community's understanding.
As an example, many of my MMO/retail friends said they quit classic quickly because they realized how long the road to 60 was and didn't feel they could endure it. It's silly but it legitimately helps these days to have videos to point to to buttress the argument of "it's good that it's long! That's the fun part!!!"
Thanks for giving your earnest view of the game and helping represent the part of the playerbase that we're from.
I subbed a few weeks back to try SoD and hit level 15 and realized I couldn't trade or use the AH for 30 days. I felt cheated. I had to go to the forum to figure it out. I haven't played since.
Why not? That sounds like trial limitations, not something that should happen to subbed players. But I don't know enough about SoD to know what you're talking about.
@@onlineperson1144 its a mechanic added to fight botting
@@onlineperson1144 It is a new thing for new accounts on SoD apparently, it is their answer to combat bots or something. I was caught by surprise. I couldn't remember my old account (played OG vanilla to cata) so I subbed on the battlenet account I played Diablo 4 on.
@@onlineperson1144I’m pretty sure it’s anti-botting limitations
@@onlineperson1144they are trying a new type of restriction to curb rmt.
Great video as always :-) One of the few people to actually do transformative react content, instead of just playing it and laughing once in a while!
When I first began my adventure in WoW, back in 2005, my first meaningful interaction with other players already came at level 6. I was bumming around Northshire Abbey on my human mage (aptly named Humanmage) and I saw a bunch of people arriving, so of course I followed them, thinking some even was happening. They were apparently having a guild meeting in Northshire Abbey and I quickly got to talk with some of the people there who explained a bit about how the world worked. None of us play today, but I still keep in touch with them.
Please try Old School Runescape, you'll love it. The quests are stories that sometimes play out over multiple quests or sometimes just helping someone out just because. It'll satisfy your RPG hunger
They did a thing Dragonflight where certain lore-relevant characters have several questions you can ask them to get you up to speed on who they are, their motivations, and what's going on.
I'm sure this has had mixed results because you have to consciously not click "Accept" or "Complete" right away when talking to quest-givers, and also read their answers which are shown as quest text.
Maybe they should do a fully-voiced version of this, or perhaps create two versions of quest text (or even early expansion events): one for new players and one for existing players. In one, the characters introduce themselves and act like it's the first time they see you, and in the other they're at least aware of who you are (not a Champion, though).
That way my parents reaction too. They said miss me with that sub bullshit. I had to scheme to get cash together to buy time cards
the struggle haha
'told you so by the way' is something I want to hear in every single video.
as a new player myself (just started this past month) my list of things i don’t like are
1. questing, it’s mad annoying, especially solo questing. i’d rather just run incursions to level
2. having it use the lfg channel to find players for dungeons. it’s okay at peak times but at liek 3am looking for a brd group is hell. i would rather have the looking for dungeon option in classic/sod
3. the community. so many dick head players that expect you to already know everything. i’ve been kicked from so many raid and dungeon groups for not knowing boss mechanics. and if you don’t do exactly what they want when they want (even if they don’t say what they want you to do in chat), you’re the prime candidate for them to blame everything on.
4. not really able to experience old content. i get why wow did more of a vertical progression but it legit makes 0 sense for them to make content only for you to one shot every boss when they release a new expansion (or as i’ve been told you one shot every boss). why waste time money and resources on making new content if it’s only going to be irrelevant a year later?like ill never be able to experience tbc or wotlk and thats pretty upsetting to me.
i do enjoy the world and there are some cool people and i would rate my experience positively but those are my biggest things i don’t like.
A great video from both of you. Basically summarized my feelings of two decades of playing this game. The highs, the lows, the love and the heartbreak.
I really like when Mad Season does a react video, because he really adds onto it instead of the braindead reacts where they just say "cool" or "wow" every now and then. Much respect
I would say these are less "reacts" and more "video discussions." It's using an unfamiliar perspective to explore the discussion space regarding the subject in question, here WoW, rather than simply providing "candid reactions" to content. I think this format is a bit underutilized honestly, due to the taint of the pure react "wow, cool, neat" content thieves.
1:20:00 Wanted to extend a little bit by talking about skyrim. I remember how I played day one on my X360, and how magical it was. What you did, the objects you found, sharing and hearing about others things that you didn't discover... Kind of the same, but you discovered minecraft pré-1.0 (me for the 1.5 beta), it was insane to try to makes new contraptions, I spend so many times doing redstone pistons door and was so freaking proud of doing one.
You trully need to live it to understand it, I get so invested in Wrath as a teenager, I was able to kill arthas in 25 raid, with most of it in hero. I was really glad that, all the commitements I did have a clear pay off. And then Cata arrived, There was cool aspects, I mainly leveled alt because the new quests for revamped areas were mostly good, I love the Rambo guy in all humans quest zones. It was cheeky but fun, but it pretty much discard every thing I did previously. Because they were all "chores", and now you need to do more "chores" that are supposedly harder. I'm tired of minmaxing culture, having people not even saying "hi" in the beginning of dungeon run, they literally don't have the time to do it, and let's not talk about raid finder.
I know that's how WoW works, the "carrot on a stick" situation that you talk about, to play to earned to not play anymore is just showing that it's not a good game, or at least that the link between you and the game isn't that good. I don't want to go after the carrot if I know that it would be push further so I needed to do more "chores".
Maybe a good chunk of it was because I was still a teenarger, but in a world where every gaming website have their article about '"How to maximize each spec under the sun in 4s in Skyrim", regardless of the quality of the game, it's hard to feel the greatness of "discovery". I could only find it now it small indie game where they dare try something new, and sometimes crash (rip Spellbreaker).
I wish that we could get that back for TES6. It would be nice
New players think it’s a game about orcs vs humans… just to find out it’s actually about the power of friendship and love (metzen save us pls). God forbid they reach the endgame, just to wait hours to get into a group and get denied because a 3rd party addon says you haven’t killed the boss 100 times prior. WoW is my favorite game and I never have problems progressing through the most challenging content but that’s because I’ve become accustomed to these things (reluctantly). It is not welcoming to new players at all.
On my new character with zero pve achievements i got to 1800 in pvp and have done normal raid without any issues. No guild, no weak auras. I have DBM and even thats not necessary if you have a MMO brain. People need to stop acting like this game is any harder to learn now than it was 20 years ago when there was zero sense of direction. People before just werent such babies about having to learn something 😂 jesus christ... and Orcs vs Humans? There hasnt been orcs vs humans on a cover since the 90s, wtf are you even talking about. NOBODY expects that shit 😂
as someone who has extensively played wow and OSRS, i would adore seeing your take on Runescape. I also watch Jimmy and seeing him take on WoW was fascinating. would be great to see it from the other side of the fence
Blizzard might have considered eternal Wrath. I would play that.
I normally don't like reaction videos, especially reaction videos to videos I've already watched, but these are actually worth watching. You add so much extra commentary and insight. I love how you don't just pause the video and have a talking face over it, but actually edit in your own footage to illustrate your tangent.
Only about 12 minutes in, but I gotta argue, ever since phase 3 incursions SoD doesnt feel like it follows the "lvl through linear quests" anymore. The exp boost rushes you through zones leaaving half complete messes of storylines since they turn grey before you can even finish them and incursions have taken over lvl 25-30 and 40-50 ... I still dunnp how to feel about it. But it is weird. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth :/
Edit: My first major city was Darnassus. How come so few people mention it being awesome? I feel like Thunderbluff and Darnassus are treated like WoW Vanillas middle childs, we all know they exist, but compared to SW/IF or OG/UC they lack a bit of grandeur. Yet I also get the same nostalgic wave of belonging in Teldrassil, all of the mystery, the connection of Magic and Nature, I just relish in it ❤
Darnassus is a cool city but its annoying to travel in and difficult to find anything
If Darn was located on the classic map where Hyjal is located or feathermoon stronghold, it would be a lot more popular. The location is just horrible at any point of the leveling process and max level.
Awesome vid. Awesome commentary from Madseason, and awesome vid from J1mmy.
I got a few things here - the end of the video with J1mmy at the party in Goldshire...holy crap. I was laughing so hard.
The books: the older books are great. Legit, Blizz did a great job. The newer stuff..eh. But the books on Thrall, the book on Khadgar and Medihv, Lothar, Llane and Orgrim. Books on the orc clans before the Legion found Draenor. These were seriously great books.
Leveling in retail: I've never been able to commit to it in BfA, Shadowlands, Dragonflight. It's a combination of mindlessness (there are very little consequences so you don't have to think, strategize, or pay attention) and bloat - so many spells, zones, characters that you have no idea what is going on.
That's the worst part - why does Blizz design a game to skip a large portion of the game (leveling)? It's so dumb. Why not just make good leveling?
Madseason voice so relaxing tho
I watched the original video and then I watched the reaction. Totally worth it. I didn't really pay attention to the "party" part at the end the first time around, and that part was absolutely hilarious. I love how he checks out the night elf's butt.
Too bad Nostorlius is no longer around
Turtle wow seems a good option for me
@@sabri_95818Shame it's run by crazy people.
I can sorta vouch for twow, seems like a decent place
Your choice of BGM remains top tier! 🔥
Talking about microtransactions to Barrett's theme is either accidental or deliberate genius.
As someone who refuses to play MMOs explicitly because of the time-consuming, grindy, addictive nature of them but would love them if I played, I think OSRS is a natural topic for you to cover. I frequently keep up with both WoW and OSRS when I chill with my skill-mastery gaming on Celeste or Sekiro, so I know an absurd amount for someone who's never played either game. Which is actually quite little compared to an active player, but it's absurd I know as much as I do.
The J1mmy responses are a great segue, and OSRS has some key design differences that are extremely relevant for talking about any incarnation of Classic+ that would actually function. At least one of them is the progression differential for combat and non-combat skills, which is not as strictly linear as a singular XP-gain-to-max-level system. Imagine, say, that a more developed professions system gradually increased your max character level as you did combat and non-combat exploration, skill grinding, and quests. There is still tons of dead content once you level everything in OSRS, worsened with guides for "maximum efficiency," but there seems to be much more spacing out of that deadness. The classless vs classed core identity difference is also very interesting, and would make adaptation to a proper Classic+ format harder for WoW. Maybe some sort of D&D style limited multi-classing would be an acceptable balance.
OSRS is also a great example of game expansion without too much story or timeline expansion, which seems to be what has killed story engagement with WoW. Imagine if Classic+ just dropped Northrend and decided "time hasn't progressed, there's just another continent now. Check it out." It doesn't need to be an "Epic" progression of the lore, it can just be more exploration, and more stories, set in the same time period with the same leveling system. Lean into alts, alternative playstyles like Ironman or Hardcore, and challenges related to leveling like the "Pures" on OSRS. This would require more diversified and lateral leveling options, and substantial changes to gearing but is totally doable.
The "more endgame content" part of the SoD roadmap has me concerned that perpetuating the "endgame is the real game" mentality will just ruin this attempt at Classic+. Adding in some escalating difficulty raids and dungeons with linear "tier" gearing progressions is just repeating the exact same design mistakes that lead us here. It would work for a little while and generate hype, and then everyone would hit their personal "quit moment" related to progression feeling unrewarding or actually ending. ActiBlizz is high-key late-stage-Capitalism brain rotted at the executive/management level so none of this will matter anyway and they'll make the same mistakes to maximize the appearance of profit growth.
Still, we have to hope and use hope to plan for a better world; in this case, a better game world.
I know you people refuse to accept this, but wow’s “endgame matters” philosophy is never going away, either in retail or classic, it’s their target audience and that’s what makes up the game’s population, just like how Mario is targeted towards people that love platformers.
@@Fabriciod_Crv I don't know what you mean by "you people" or if you just didn't understand my comment. I know they won't change this about WoW, but it's still a fundamental design flaw that isn't inherent to the genre. That's my point, this is neither intractable nor inevitable and pretending like it is prevents us from getting better games. Their target audience in general seems to be "as many people as possible," which has its own flaws. Based on this, their strategy for increasing player count is currently a bad one and also does not seem to be serving the enfranchised players particularly well. MadSeason quit retail, as one example.
It's not "endgame matters" that's a problem, as that's a relevant and significant portion of the player base. It's "ONLY endgame matters" that is the problem which ActiBlizz will never fix and IMO will eventually kill the game.
@@cyclic_infinity if you look at wow’s patch history, you’re going to see that all the iconic major updates to the game are endgame focused: from the AQ40 event all the way to ICC. SoD devs also take notice of this because in phase 2, before the incursion fiasco, they already made 1-40 have a 100% xp boost so people get to the endgame quick, which is where all the relevant content is located. WoW has always prioritized endgame over leveling, madseason just weirdly ignores that and say that WoTLK classic “struggled” or “died”, when in reality it still has tons of people playing on those servers, while also ignoring the fact ICC had been out for months, so of course people will naturally leave little by little until the new content comes out (which is cata Classic), and the game hasn’t and will never die unless we end up on another situation like BFA or SL where blizzard forced terrible power systems on everyone, because the core of wow’s playerbase is endgame focused.
@@Fabriciod_CrvDude, I'm not arguing the facts here. I'm saying that strategy is outdated and seems to not be giving players the best experience, in general. If you're in that sliver of players who love it great! But this is an MMO, and if it wants to avoid the fate of "20,000 hardcore fans interacting with JSH," or more likely getting shut down, things need to change in design. Running the same design principles from 2006 into the ground is not a good strategy. They worked back then, and did for a while, but it seems pretty clear this "endgame first" strategy isn't the best for MMO design.
It wouldn't even be for every iteration, I'm literally only talking about a _theoretical_ Classic+. I only mentioned SoD to reference the creative direction and design constraints the team seem to be working with, which IMO won't work for a full Classic+ style. It's the next logical step from SoD, one I'd like to see succeed as a fan of gaming in general, and that's why I'm concerned. I honestly don't care at all how a seasonal Classic progression server, clearly inspired by OSRS Leagues, is run. It's a neat design space, but obviously pretty experimental right now. You'd still have Progression Classic and Retail to endgame grind on, and SoD or whatever is after potentially as well. I really don't understand the issue you're having. Not every single theoretical iteration of WoW has to appeal to exactly you and your endgame mentality.
@@cyclic_infinity it’s more madseason’s stance that i take issue with, bro doesn’t seem to understand that the style of classic MMOs will not jive with people that like modern MMOs like retail or FFXIV, always wanting validation that he is right about what the game should be (like now he wants to know what the active player numbers on each version of the game are separately, or how he ignored the massive elephant in the room which was the blizzard lawsuit in 2021 which contributed more to TBC classic not doing well more than a level boost, or consistently in every video saying “told you so” and repeating himself at nauseum like he’s trying prove wrong the people that disagreed with him on these things, when they are more than likely not even watching his content anymore, so it just comes off as annoying more than anything). Stuff like this is why people call him a Classic Andy, which is true and i’ll always bear that in mind whenever he has *anything* to say about modern wow.
TL;DR: Madseason is very much on the classic “new stuff bad, old stuff good” mentality and it’s getting annoying.
I listened to the audiobooks of a few WoW books in the past year and some of them were pretty good. Day of the Dragon and The Last Guardian in particular I really enjoyed.
Retail in DF is so much better no grinds nothing like emisary weekly , mythucs raids pvp easy and good
ohhh yeah a long one again
Common misconception, but there are no dailies or weeklies in retail that require any attention. You can just login and do what you want. No required daily or weekly homework.
You are literally correct but to many (me included) they FEEL/FELT required. It's like we compare ourselves to a theoretical optimum future self and feel bad when we fall short.
@@xintrosi6829 like what? There’s nothing in retail that would make you fall short if you don’t do it.
@@boopsii i made a mistake implying my information is recent; I quit back in BFA for multiple reasons but feeling like I was expected to walk the treadmill was part of it.
Could be better now but I'm not willing to find out.
@@xintrosi6829 oh I’ll give that to you. I quit BFA as well. Gave SL a try and quit. I love DF. I wish the expansion lasted longer :(
Regarding running-out-of-obstacles, I, as main tank, was funneled gear in Naxx, and had full BIS early on.
Of course i stuck around to hang out with my friends, and push for better times. The speedrun (or speed-walk, as it were, in my guild) is fantastic, as it is an un-depletable obstacle.
bring that to blizzard:
we care more about a classic grey item upgrade with +10 armor than a +26% better epic in retail.
we cant remember a retail item that dropped today but everybody remembers the big giant red sword Ashkandi from 20 years ago....
Did somebody say, [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]?
Because everyone was shit at the game and were still figuring out what was good and what wasn’t, in fact, items in vanilla are way more boring than most retail ones, the only thing that set them apart from retail is the chance on hit weapons, besides that they have nothing
@@Fabriciod_Crv No, after 15 years i still cant remember what loot i dropped in mop Remix today. Zo give you 1 Point - i can remember Pips trinket from amirdrasil
@@Nagria2112 like i said, the only reason vanilla items are remembered is because everyone was bad at the game and were still figuring out what was a good item and what was a bad item, when in reality items from it were just has boring and had even less stuff going on with them than most loot from retail, ever wonder why it’s only vanilla that people seem remember items from, but not TBC, Wrath or any subsequent expansion (excluding legendaries)?
I'd also like to add more point around 51:29
Yes, BFA is mandatory for new players as of now who just finished the Island Tutorial, If you somehow forced cancel quests or try to ignore them you are permanently sharded/Phased where almost all other players/mobs arent visible to you untill you start BFA. You can like finish a certain threshold of BFA quests (Boralis/Zandalar) then you can head back to the captial and go anywhere else. They really try so hard to incorperate this storyline of "New Recruit" who is now shoehorned in this war effort to the BFA expansion, really poor excuse of a tutorial.
Use me as a “we already know this gon be bad” button
fr
i didn't mind using the island expedition starting zone over say the goblin's, but "revamping" kind of seems around the corner
i like your way of doing react videos, bringing in your own selections of videos and commenting extensively. its so much more polished than other reacting content, i can feel the effort you put in and i really aprecciate it!
MadSeason! Love this new style of video. Love hearing your take on things. Love it. Never lose those good ole videos with all the effort put into them of course cause we love those too. But these are also great! Keep it up dude. It's always a good day when I see these long ones. Much love!!
That Tiger Electronics name and sound drop 👌
Love these videos! Even though I've already seen most the videos you cover, hearing your take on things is very interesting.
its so relaxing to watch ur videos while playing minecraft on the background lol. great video
A few months ago I got my 14yo brother who only played valorant and fortnite (and single player stuff) into wow.
He loved the community aspect of the game (yes, retail), talking to people who were nice to him; the quests had cool story (he did the intro into BFA into DF); he liked dungeons and hear me out, he was baffled to know that "skins" (transmogs) were obtainable in game and were not part of the shop. He is so used to buying stuff as MTX, that the ability to unlock something by farming baffled him. He is in love with the game.
Dont say sorry for pausing. You are new to this format and youer doing a better job at reacting than 99.9% of creators. You add your own content and expand on it. Good job mate
That song @ 5:16. "Is this classic or is that classic?" The only reason I haven't left retail to go to classic is I don't want to leave my toons.
lmao the goldshire inn part at the end was the best part
Started in wrath. Took me 3 months to level playing nearly every day because it absolutely was an adventure. I didn’t just level in my 1-80 experience. I played horde and did things like fishing in iron forge for whatever that fish was called for the achievement. Checked out every corner of the world. It was awesome. Cata and up was just about getting to end game.
41:49 My first character was an undead warlock, and upon entering the Lordaeron I was taken aback by bell ringing and that blood spot in the throne room. I was standing for like 10 minutes, completely astonished.
My friend was sort of railroaded to horde as a new player by irl buddies. But I told him, wait til you see ironforge. It's the moment I was hooked.
I started WOW just prior to Burning Crusade and played about 3 years and then quit to have kids. Now my kids are early teens and I started back and it has been very fun. I play when it is convenient and when I have something else to do I log out.
I always loved how you used the cloister of trials music for your audio bed
You can totally be THE HERO in an MMORPG without making it weird.
The whole point of FFXIV is that, YOUR STORY, you are the most hero thats ever heroed in the story of heroing. And it works perfectly.
The diference?
They know how to write at SE. Write lore they respect and evade retcons or just blantantly just ignoring it. Write characters that are actually charismatic and have personality, and let alone how they do the cinematic realization of every scene, from camera work to the music landscape.
Is a formula they have refined to near perfection, you can watch endless video of people just being emotionally destroyed by FFXIV and thats because is well directed, well writen.
If anything, the already millions of warriors of light came to prove that stories about heroes and self-improvement are not old nor tiring, they are as great as ever, but it requieres actual talent, effort and knowledge to pull something off.
"Has your journey being good? Has it been worthwhile?" - Ten years in, it emotionally devastated players, be tears of joy, sad, nostalgia, melancholy, they convey real emotions of real care.
Because the story of the Warrior of Light is that good.
All it requieres of you is to read. To not just press skip. There is a line a dialogue there, a character, a scene, that has the power to emotionally move you, of that in sure.
For yours is a light brillant beyond measure.
Good video as always. EQ is having a couple new TLP servers launching on the 22nd. The leveling is faster than classic, but it might be fun to check out one of those servers. Enjoy your week,
I'm so happy to be spoiled with content recently thank you so much
@40:50 that gave me chills as well! Great video and comments, very on point and sadly all so true