A͏s͏mongold Reacts To "The Decline of Blizzard" | By The Act Man 

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Awesome reaction video. Love your commentary on my video! This has been an awesome watch. 35min in

seeing this in 2021. man did blizzard decline alright.

" Your Reddit has better art. " That actually aged really well considering all the Y'shtola art.

My favorite thing about the "You think you want it, but you don't " debacle is that it happened to XIV as well. Yoshida, at a fanfest, was asked if he'd consider doing 1.0 servers. The man burst out laughing halfway through the question, even before the translator started translating the question, and responded with a single word. "N I G H T M A R E." There would be no classic servers, but because it was handled in such a charming way, the fans smiled and went along with it. Also 1.0 was boo boo bad, objective garbage fire.

No one is mad about Blizzard not taking a side on Hong Kong, they’re mad because Blizzard clearly took China’s side on the issue

chat: "everyone loves cd projekt" This didn't age well 😂

Mans reaction to a 30 minute video is feature length that’s amazing, love this guy and act man as well

Blizzard: you don’t want vanilla and we won’t provide Fan: I’ll make my own Fans: Yes! Blizzard: REEEEE! YOU DONT WANT THAT!

Blizzard's like that old friend that asks us for a loan and we give it to him remembering how he used to be before he got into drugs and legal trouble.

Them CD Project Red comments didn't age well LOL

As someone whose first true mmo was FFXIV I was surprised by the divide that dungeon finder caused. As long as I played 14 there was always a duty finder to queue for dungeons and later raids. It never really stopped people from grouping it just made it easier for solo players to complete stuff because dungeons were tied directly into the story

TBH some of my favorite WoW experiences were putting together a dungeon group in vanilla private servers and having to cold-call anyone I could find in /who in the right level range just to get the shit going in less than 20 minutes before people start signing off. The sheer amount of player interaction that was required to get anything done in vanilla was a beautiful balance that I've never seen nailed in any other game and ever since WoW classic launched, not only have the classic servers died but the private vanilla servers died as well. It's truly disheartening.

"Fallen from grace" is an understatement from what is happening now. just wow.

Oh and his point about Iwata coding Gold and Silver is 100% true, he also helped out loads in more than just that Pokemon game, he helped Gamefreak aswell as loads of other departments within Nintendo itself when it came to coding and such as he himself was a programmer. He was a freaking legend and it breaks my heart to think he is gone and that we will probobly never see a CEO of a billion dollar company with such a big heart.

"how could blizzard continue to get into legal trouble" Blizzard: "hold my beer" FBI: "SUCH DEVASTATION!!!"

They casters put their head down when he started putting on the goggles and mask. The casters didn't know what he was going to say, but had an idea it wasn't good. The Caster's themselves do not have the ability to stop the interview. That is production and the director there. A smart director there would of cut the feed and gone to commercials. fine the player fine, technically he did break the rules, but it still feels baD, and it is hypocritical. But the CAsters had nothing to do with this.

Asmon touches on something I learned from DMing dungeons and dragons. Give players what they want and are expecting from you, but do it in a way that they weren't expecting. If you pull this off correctly, it leads to player satisfaction every time.

I love how the crowd cheered more for the player asking the question than they did for the blizzard speakers during the diablo immortal announcement.

44:43 love how everyone in the chat was so sure about next expansion (shadowlands) being good. that aged well.

I first played DOTA in 2004 in the 6th or 7th grade and soon after got more involved and interested in the community. I distinctly remember from the beginning the DOTA community with great vigor voiced a demand for support from blizzard to allow the game to reach its full potential. Blizzard did absolutely zero to help foster a community of passionate gamers, Blizzard just ignored the community and wrote DOTA off as being nothing of value. It is simply impossible to imagine how far they had their own heads up their own asses.

"Next expansion is hopefully good" and here we are again with Shadowlands LOL

lol, why would a convention for pc gamers want to see a mobile game introduction. That shit was so funny

1:18:34 a moment of silence for the poor souls who wrote "Cd project red" at this very moment

Disagree with what Asmongold says about the Blitzchung situation : even if Blizzard was "justified" in punishing Blitzchung, firing the casters was one step too far. Maybe they knew what he was gonna say ? What if they didn't? What if they realised it too late ? What happened to innocent until proven guilty ?

The best part of WoW when it came out was after playing soo much WC3, seeing a huge treant walking near you, leaders, etc. was so awesome

My brother-in-law literally talked to a blizzard dev at that Blizzcon about diablo immortal, and how it was so out of touch. The dev straight up told him, "it's not for us, it's for China". This is especially telling because it was BEFORE the Blizzard/China censorship controversy.

I lived for those 'getting the band back together' days... It was immersive, and made me feel like I was actually IN the World of Warcraft. (Edit: Oh gods, Scott's Tots?! lol)

Dont you guys have phones?!

I work for a studio that makes Game Cinematics, the reason that other game's cinematics have caught up/better than blizzard is because they are all outsourced to studios that are dedicated to making Cinematic Trailers/Cutscenes etc. Blizzard is actually a big client of ours.

Asmongold is mistaken about the Blitzchung and the casters. Prior to putting their heads down, Blitzchung already said that he supported Hong Kong (in Chinese), but its muffled due to his mask. Subsequently when asked about this, Blitzchung admitted that he never told the casters

For me classic was what made me realise what I really enjoyed in an MMO, the social interaction and community. Retail has none of that.

You know the video is before Cyberpunk when the chat says CD Project is a good videogame company

"Make a good game, make money" You are forgetting most of the people who knew how to make good games left the company by their own choice or have been fired. Its like if you asked David Benioff & D.B. Weiss to write the final season of game of thrones instead of George R.R. Martin. Oh wait...

The person who got doxed, was a GM on the forums, who wrote his information on the thread, the one that had like 11K comments, to show how safe it was, and that most people we’re overreacting. Within 20-30 mins, it backfired and people started posting here he lived and were his kids went to school Etc etc.

Square Enix were ahead of there time with graphics ats this time

I agree with you to a point on the 'politics' issue. That cut-off/distinction being when laws, especially human rights laws, are being broken! Otherwise we end up with no whistleblowers and thus these atrocities ever being exposed and given the light of day! To just have a 'blanket' excuse to not be able to expose these things because of an 'agreement' made likely in all good faith at the time is tantamount to "I was only following orders"!!!!

I like how every time Asmon watches someone w/ a lick of creativity his chat says "loser" "this sucks" "weirdo" etc. But they'll eat up WoW animations/machinima up like good little kids. Wow!

37:20 "And now you don't remember the dungeon" truest fucking shit I've ever heard.

The Sha was an awesome idea in retrospect. Opposite of Chi energy and the physical manifestation of negative emotions like Greed or Hate. Not to mention Timeless Isle was alt friendly, hunting rares and the hidden treasures. There was a lot to do actually. The Klaxxi are still one of my favorite races/factions in the game with their amber preservation system. MoP was more or less, pretty much the last great expansion before all the time gating progression/mobile game mechanics began appearing in WoD/Legion/BFA/Shadowlands. Fortunately I quit shortly thereafter, skipping WoD completely because Metzen left and knew it would go downhill, only to return for the 1st part of Legion but growing frustrated after not getting one legendary drop while everyone around me had like 2 to 4 and this was before the first patch. They also had started leveraging their Team A and B for the project which became Overwatch. Now that I'm thinking about it, BC when I started was so otherworldly as an experience, looking back on it all. My first MMO in the early 2000s, what a time to be alive. I bought an account off some sketchy website to play with my buddy who was max level at 70, the guy had an Undead Rogue and Tauren Warrior lol. I log in for the first time and immediately this green text starts scrolling and I see a pop-up appear saying something about summoning. I'm immediately invited to a group and thrown into the 25 man Gruul's Lair. Now I had watched some RU-vid videos to prepare for leveling as a noob or like what classes seemed cool, but had no idea what raids were or even what a rotation was, haha. They thought I was the dude who sold me the account, so I rolled with it for a little bit until they kicked me out for not talking in Ventrillo and being sus as hell, always forgetting to poisons on my daggers LMAO!!! I didn't mind though, they literally gave a Druid tank the Dragon Spine Trophy haste trinket after I'd been raiding with them for 2 months and saved up my DKP for that one item. I still think about those times, so many good times raiding Karazhan with my other guild and friends, being taught how the Chess event worked when I was new, how to summon Nightbane and getting his shield to go with King's Defender... running the heroic dungeons to get the key in Netherstorm, fighting with the Alliance at the summoning stone lol. Ahhhhhh, such nostalgia which I'll always hold precious. So sad how Blizzard has fell to the wayside.

i know this video is pretty old, but I kinda hope he does a reaction video about "Pandora's Box", I absolutely LOVED that documentary. I know it's a 2 hour long sit, but I loved every moment of it and it had amazing editing.

Missed a chance to say "Stay a while and listen..."

53:36 While I agree that a business does not need to pander to its employees, getting fired just after finishing a big project just to deny you of that big bonus paycheck speaks volumes of the company's atrocious practices. I sure as hell ain't putting my resume towards them when I know that whatever work I do for them is much better done as a simple contractor/freelancer rather than an employee.

Surprised Asmon missed out on custom maps. - Also, the note about the Activision-Blizzard merger not being contraversal at the time. Asmon is correct, lots of people were concerned. Of course, even when it was first announced, we knew the negative effects would not be instant so there was still optimism knowing the short term was going to be fine.

53:00 it was still very sh*tty and shady for such a large scale lay off, there's no way all of those people deserved to be fired as Asmon alludes to. And even so it's poor business management and practice up to that point where such a lay off was required, that is still Blizzards fault. Not only that but the timing and figures do show that, a least a portion of the money gained from firing and not paying those people, went straight into the executives pocket and it's disgusting greedy behaviour

"almost" all of the great minds that made Blizzard are gone. There are so few of the OGs left the company is nothing but a shell of its former self. It's really sad. Like losing a friend IRL. RIP Blizzard Entertainment.

1:22:47 The problem is, we've reached the endgame. Over the past several years, major game companies have done experiment after experiment and realized something big: They don't need to make good games to make money. In fact, they can put out broken dog shit and fans who are dedicated to the series/IP will buy it regardless. Then they'll buy a minor update dressed up and sold at the price of a new game the very next year. Fill it with MTX like in-game shop goodies and they will keep paying without hesitation.

AS far as dungeon finder right now, I kind of like it. I've played off and on since Wrath, never seriously, but in order to LEARN an instance I find LFR useful. 4 other people, randomly chosen, that I'll never meet again, is great. Once I figure it out, when I'm "pushing content" at higher levels, I can still gather friends and go to the instance's location and alter the difficulty manually. Best of both? Who can say, but I'm a fan.

I don't know why but hearing the Human OST at the End of Act Man's video made me Emotional, like actually, after hearing all the shit that went wrong and just hearing that beautiful start of the OST, the Choir singing in the background just me made emotional, like damn bro.

When they said "Don't you guys have phones?," they literally could have answered that one question with "Yes, we are trying to reach out to a different market demographic," and been professional about it. It would have made sense, and likely sated a lot of the problem that was seen. They would have gotten shit for it, but they would have been truthful, and it would have eventually calmed down.

The way asmondgold handles recation videos seems really respectful, he always links the creators stuff and he's super respectful

I like how your friend malded at economic systems, but you were able to rein him in and provide a much more comprehensive perspective to the issue. Kinda rare thing to see nowadays.

This really reminds of times when video games were a niche and people who made them genuinely cared about their players Now it’s just business, like stupid TV shows or news

I'm actually still boycotting blizzard games over the blitzchung situation xD

In hindsight, I am so extremely happy Blizzard didn't get Dota.

Yep back then it was amazing, almost feels like a dream, I played burning crusade for so long along with warcraft 3 it was insane. Its sad what happened

Blizzard telling that poor kid he didn’t want classic - really that was the mindset there wasn’t it. “You *think* you want a workplace free from sexual harassment, but actually you don’t “

I used to adore this game, over time more and more of the game seemed to be created with the metric that'll almost force players to put in endless amounts of time, just to keep up to date with what was almost expected from all individuals who wanted to play at a high level. It's almost as if the design team who started had all dropped out by Lich king, and all these new developers just wanted to maximise cash flow, not user experience.

44:20 this is why FF14 devs have to play the game as part of their job role.

Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Diablo, Starcraft, holy shit those were good times. Reminds me of like Bullfrog's quirky games such as Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital, as well as ID Software's cheeky Duke 3d, and the sound centric Quake 2 intro. Those cinematics. The lore. The gameplay. When games would be games, and just blow your mind with the content they offered. Some games I wish there was a way to forget I ever played them so I can re-experience that first time high playing them. I never played Starcraft 2. I really should if I can find the original version.

I wonder if Mists of Pandaria was made to bring in general audiences because in a similar time frame, Kung Fu Panda 2 came out like a year earlier, but was announced the same year.

The casual "and now you don't remember the dungeons" at 37:27 as he reached for a drink was the most scathing thing I have heard in here oof lol.

Best part about Nostalrius is how well their servers managed even without layering...

Asmon is actually spitting straight fire this whole video on just everything

The thing that got me about MoP wasnt the raid finder, i actually enjoyed it as i had to become less active in the game and it allowed me to keep playing and experiencing content. My issue personally was when Siege of Orgrimmar was the newest content for about a year straight. I got tired of paying for the same shit every week so i stopped.

Damn, when Asmond said “and now you don’t remember the dungeon” as a comeback to the CEO saying people don’t remember spamming “LF Tank” in the chat…damn that hit like a brick but so true

I feel like the transition from Blizzard to Activision-Blizzard is modeled after the transition of Arthas to the Lich King. Edit: To expand... it's such a tragic thing to watch that melts your heart. But the small, additive choices that lead from start to "the breaking point" are individually understandable

I personally invested the majority of my wow time in the MoP expansion and I enjoyed all of it

The fact that a blizzard fan stood up and asked if diablo immortal was an out of season April fools joke

Bobby and Activision clearly a big point where it went wrong. Bobby was thinking how to leverage Blizzard IP for profit before ink was put to paper

I've been playing WoW since BC. Since then, I've always wanted to go to Blizzcon. Every year I asked my parents, they said no. Finally, at the age of 23, I was able to go. Blizzcon of 2018. My first and only time I went to Blizzcon. The worst experience and a real let down. I didn't even go the second day, it was that bad. It was a sad day for me. :/

Seeing this a year later... it certainly aged like fine wine and it wasn't even half of why Blizzard have become shit.

"How little do we have to do (i.e. spend) to get away with the price we are going to charge our fans?" has 100% become THE question with most, of not all, of the big studios, not just Blizzard agreed! Then there are tactics like releasing incomplete games so you can charge extra for DLC later! This happens in other companies to. Do you think companies like Gillette didn't have the ability to put five blades on a razor back when they were promoting the next 'upgrade' of two blades and then three etc?

Warcraft 3 was my childhood, my teenage years. My favourite game by far and it literally made me jump out of my chair from excitement when they said they would remaster it… blizzard, one of the best game developers I thought ( never played wow ) how could that go wrong? I’m a sceptical person and never got hyped for any promises or early acces games. But for this I was actually hyped for a full year. Imagine the sheer disappointment and hatred for blizzard when they released the reforged.. that was truly the day blizzard died for me.

Dude he's still streaming, this was uploaded the second he was done watching the video live

Here's something about the "Nostalrius" topic I Know a friend who talked about how he ran a server back in the day, and that had a huge following as well as how he made a lot of money with his partners on it. the story sounds extremely similar in the way that it was closed down willing by a cease and desist, that it was a vanilla feel, and how it ran well, and had almost no lag, it'd be no surprise considering he was a network engineer and has an older server rig that we have run servers on a few times before, with the performance being a lot better than any hosting service I've ever played a game on! He was still a bit upset talking about it, and I think it would be cool if that was him ngl Cool and interesting dude, very secretive though...

man anytime people talk about warcraft or blizzard, it seems warcraft 2 always gets overlooked. I remember playing warcraft 2 for days on battlenet, playing lightning archers, BGH, mini BGH (one of the best maps ever created imo) the lobbies, the clan channels and sometimes just chatting with members, clan wars, and of course the win-loss stats that was the measuring point for all.... man i miss that game

EVERYTHING makes sense once you include a simple element: GREED.

blizzard: "you want BFA" me: "i think i do, but i dont"

i remember the launch of d3 differently, but maybe it was because i had it on my ps3 at the time, game launched completely fine, it like a week later where modders roomed everywhere and dropped op af items and let u one shot everything, it was the best thing in my life, and it had that huge modding community until sony got rid of the community tab and made every game worse because it was gone, wish you couldve experienced it on pc

This all comes down to " Passion " , there's a disconnect somewhere , once you've benched marked yourself its hard to keep it going with the deadlines as you're are expected to release expacs every so many months/years . I think it comes down to where Bliz needs to go away and reinvent themselves , that might take a few years , or never

I stopped supporting Blizzard in anyway after the Blitzchung thing.

"Remember the old days when you had to spam "looking for a tank" and now you click a button and you're in? You don't remember that!" "And now I don't remember the dungeon.". Asmongold really hit the nail on the head in that off-hand comment. If I tried to list all the dungeons in every expansion, my memory would get spotty around the end of Lich King (what were those last 5 mans called again?). MoP is probably the last one where I even remember all of them. After WoD it's just a blur of shit.

The cinematic preview for Starcraft they had on Diablo game menu was mind blowing to me at the time.

I remember I tried to get into Diablo 3 on my grandma's shitty all-in-one computer for half the night when it dropped, until she finally convinced me to go to bed at like 3am. Played the game the next week or so, and came back to play it like a month later and was met with a "Your Blizzard account has been banned for auction house manipulation in Diablo 3" when I had never even touched the auction house. Tried to appeal it, asked if someone else had logged into my account when I talked to support and the guy said I was the only one who had been on. No suspicious IP logins. Straight told me he couldn't help me and the ban was irreversible despite him even saying it was a bullshit ban. I don't think I even got back into WoW or Diablo 3 until like 2016/17 when Legion dropped. Had to make a new account.

The casters didn't know, this was confirmed by blizzard Esports staff at the time which is why the backlash got bigger. They put their heads down because of the mask. But as we all know Asmond is never wrong KEKW

1:25:00 Putting aside how bad CD Projekt was in nailing down their release date, it's crazy how much this statement changed since Cyberpunk came out

I know this is a kinda old video, but something I have to say is in reguards to the Blitzghung thing, I believe that the commentators, badgered him into saying what he said (and then ducked out of view of the cameras when he said it, as if that's going to help)

Mists of Panderia is when I left. I have been playing games like Dying Light and The Last of Us 1 and 2. Then....then....I started playing Final Fantasy 14 about 2 months ago and all I have to say is...I LOVE IT! I'm happy again playing an MMO and it blows WoW out of the water! It's qn amazing game and I feel like I'm back.

1:18:25 McConnell: "No, no no, there's some good ones." (referring to the question if there are any good gaming companies." Chat: CDPR! PepeLaugh, they didn't know.

1:01:45 This part just makes me livid. "Obviously they colluded and allowed him to break the rules of the tournament" Does this man only listen to HALF of the facts of that incident?

38:22 imagine having a guy with that atrocity of a haircut telling anyone: "You're out of touch"

Quando vejo a empolgação da galera falando sobre os antigos jogos da blizzard, bethesda, bungie. Sinto um pouco de inveja de não ter participado disso. Alguns desses jogos continuam sendo importantes pra minha vida, mas não ter a oportunidade de aguardar lançamento, conversar sobre, jogar com amigos...

"The shady thing is that they rehired these positions" This is actually pretty common in triple-A game companies, especially these based in countries when work laws are pretty loose like the USA. There is that thing of burning out when you expect your employees to be over 100% daily so that they can push out more work, but the cap on it is that it makes people require rest to -eventually- get back from the stress and tiredness it produces, both physically and mentally. What companies came with in response to that is the crunch. It consists in spreading tasks, organising work and putting a big focus on KPI and productivity so that your employees work far more than is healthy while on a project, then releasing that project far sooner than would have been healthily possible. Then, instead of having to wait for your workforce to rest before starting another project, you lay the crunched employees off and hire new, unbroken, dream-headed ones and start over. The people who are thrown away by these game companies are mostly people who aren't hirable anytime soon anyway because they have been worked to death and need lots of rest, sometimes counselling. What Blizzard was doing then and does now is not anywhere new, but it pains me to know that my -former- dream game developer is doing crunch. When it comes to Warcraft 3, this is just this in play. They have axed away resources from this project to reinject them elsewhere, mostly overwatch, but still made it so that they could have something to announce during BlizzCon. So, basically, the reforged thing was a way to have something to announce, run away with the cash people paid and then move on as if nothing happened.

One of my favourite gaming memories was when PoE announced a mobile game at their convention, and everyone thought it was a joke, a dig at Blizzard and Diablo Immortal, but then it turned out to be real.

Actually there are many people who looked forward to having Pandas in game, mostly those that played Warcraft 3 before WoW. For every new expansion there are people are asking for Pandas, I think the actual problem is the time of release. WotLK kinda snuffed the interest of players that came from WC3, and by the time MoP arrived it was a completely different generation of players, most that don't really give crap about WC3, and thought Blizzard introduced Pandaren to jump on the Kung Fu Panda hype train.

47:20 I believe that they were supposed to announce DIV there. Diablo was the key note on that BlizzCon, and for what I've gathered over the years, the ideas was opening with a Dialo IV 2 second cinematic showing the DIV logo, talk about 5 minutes about it, and then Immortal to fill the rest of their stage time. But like 1 month before BlizzCon Diablo IV production had gone through shit for like the 4th time, changing game director again, possibly starting production from scratch, so they got the plug pulled on the announcement last minute, and they had to make Immortal the main announcement of the whole BlizzCon. In fact, Diablo was going to be massive on 2018, with the announcement of the TV adaptation, that also got cancelled short before, and something else I can't recall now. Few months before BlizzCon they had said there would be 4 Diablo announcements coming, it was the DiabloCon. 4 Diablo products were going to be announced on that key note, and instead Immortal was all they had. Quote-unquote had, as due to the massive backlash they had to go back and delay even that game, that intended to be the reprive until DIV dropped, to Q2 2022

"No King rules forever my son" :(

Asmongloid had a tard take about layoffs and completely missed the point, of course it's profitable to lay off people but employees deserve the dignity of at least some job security and he completely ignored the point about CEOs getting 50 mil bonuses and pay because they leech the company with embezzlement. Asmongold doesn't realize the economic system is two sided and the owners and employees both factor into the balance. People want the best possible deal either way so if your employer fires you to save some money that's not worth

I remember getting my very first mount back then on wow was the most juiced about somthing in a video game I've ever been lol I believe at that time lvl 30 is when you were able to train for your first mount