Some WoW Players are VERY MAD at ASMONGOLD😂 

World of Warcraft, the game that everyone views you as nothing but a number. Wanna do the content? Gotta have the logs. Wanna get the logs? Gotta do the content. No wonder new players don't stick around cause instead of doing the content, they're getting the esports treatment.

Even for classic, I wish there were no addons. If some functionality is essential for the game, it should be included in the main package. Otherwise, it is just trivializing the content.

I agree with Asmongold that there is too many raid difficulties that makes game scaling go crazy every other expansion and it's not really fun to see your character do less dmg then ten years ago. What i would do instead is... i would add invidual rating based on ppl performance in lfr. So players could see some improvements. I would even give people some nice title or transmog if they did well. I would add bots to LFR if there is not enough players. Then i would add scalable difficulty raid similiar to flex raids we had in mop. This difficulty should be much higher then lfr but nothing crazy so it could be done with any setup. Make these raids scalable from 10 to 40 players. This way everyone in your guild can play and noone is left behind. Everyone can get good gear and everyone is happy. Then implement mythic raids that don't reward gear but trangmog, titles and mounts. Make this difficulty crazy hard. Harder then what we have now. Gear progression should be something like this: quest rewards/leveling dungeons>hc dungeons/lfr>mythic dungeons/flex raids. Raid rewards are 10%ilvl higher then dungeons/quest rewards. IMO Blizzard is feeding players with too much garbage that keeps players busy but this only makes game worse. I think for casual players endgame should be mythic dungeons not raids. Also mythic raiders should not be forced to waste their time on split runs but playing hardest difficulty. This improves game for everyone.

In retail killing a boss after hours of progression doesn't give a spike of dopamine anymore, but instead its just a relief. Something has to change, i know dozens of people i raided with in the past. They just quit long time ago, same as me

I literally quit playing WOW because of this exact issue. Having only ever made one ticket in the 15 years I played I talked to whoever answered my ticket and they didnt even think I was making a valid ticket and told me that no one plays like that and made me feel so inferior to them I pretty much let him know I would never ever give him a cent of my money ever again.

glad to see this years old convo picking up more steam

Since Max said he wanted some retail players opinions here is one. As a 2800 M+ IO player and AOTC guild leader of a small friends and family guild, I agree with Asmon on most things here. I prefer smaller groups so I don't think I'd like the 40-person raids, but I don't like Add-ons or all the complicated interactions between abilities. I really enjoy watching the RWF, but as a player I would prefer the simpler life.

Retail players are massive victims of the sunk-cost fallacy.

Asmo is right 100% on this. World of Addons, World of the Last Patch, World of 1000000 Buttons to Push, World of Parses. Meh. No thanks, yoloing SOD for now.

if raids scaled to 40 cool but making them only 40 means that my guild of 15-20 raiders that have been raiding since bc wont be able to raid any more.

As an adult I support civil discourse and sharing ideas and opinions without resorting to calling someone I disagree with stupid.

10:40 - 11:10 that's where I'm at mentally also, Veteran players like us aren't going to put up with this stupidity and madness anymore @Staysafe, We know the drill ❤

We need class pruning but also add more non combat abilities that add to the class fantasy like druid travel form or rogue pickpocket and lock pick

IMO 40 man raids is the worst part of classic, I always play classic servers until 60 then quit because the raids are terrible. IDK why anyone would want them back they're such a pain in the arse to organise let alone the other problems they have. I think they should go the other way like SoD and have 10 mans be the raid size. Playing with friends is way more fun than playing with 20 odd people you're never spoken to and 10 that you barely know because the guild is so big.

1. Challenge is no longer a virtue. 2. Patience is a thing of the past. 3. Skill is secondary to gear. 4. Failure is not an option. 5. Group play is a thing of the past. 6. Risk is a four-letter word. 7. Homogenization is the norm. 8. Creativity is stifled. 9. The game world is a theme park but don't hold hands. 10. Cooperation and collaboration are seen as relics of a bygone era. 11. Most people think the game is a job. 12. Apparently the developers are the enemy. 13. The game is disposable. This is what the negative bias that happens in circles that churn opinion as objective facts and dwell around it for too long. I am being as callous he is. Seeing the shitters in SoD have a powertrip and ask for logs is right down pathetic.

He´s Absolutely Right! In order to bring more players into the game, do the game have to be easy to understand and play without any obstacles. Addons are first obstacle people run into, because addons are a huge burden for many people. Then we have the spells, there are too many of them, and as the last thing, any group content in the game feels like its made for the hardcore players

So he wants to limit the game to a certain audience instead of opening it up by having options. You dont have to mythic raid, you dont have to min-max your 20 spells, but for those who enjoy that, you can do it. But you'll get by just fine by not doing it as well and play lower difficulties. I'm pretty sure people would not flock back to modern WoW by doing these changes. Asmongold usually have somewhat good takes but I dont think hes thought this one through.

Who in the hell does he think is keeping WOW going? It is the sweatiest of the sweaties for the last 20 years that have been playing the game. Blizzard does not acknowledge Asmongold anymore. I think his feelings are hurt lol.

as long as executives have a say in the final design of the game the game will never be fixed. Classic's team has had more leeway in design (since Classic was an overwhelming fucking success) hence SoD being successful. Hopefully they can turn what theyve learned in SoD into a true fully fledged classic plus

Ulduar hard mode would be to hard for 40man raids you could barely find 25 people that could do it. For 40 man raids somewhere between black temple and sunwell would be ideal.

Im playing classic era for the last 3/4 years, and Im having a blast like I havent had for a long time. Maybe since Legion.

I agree on his addon opinion for sure. The devs should be putting some of these things in the game rather than outside addons.

I am a retail player and miss that wow are funn to play. I am agree that it got to many addons in WOW and if you dont understand weak auras or dont know how to use addon, you will never be the best player in wow. Are missing to play the wow, but is hardcore grinding on the gear, mounts, pets and gold etc(or the rating inflation in solo shuffle) PPL are fleeing from the game for years and years now, I do always hope that blizz will wake up and change over the whole retail wow

I would 100% love these changes. While I do love the harder difficulty content, I would not be opposed to these changes and would support them.

Something that asmon doesn't have is Data. It's crazy how someone with a spot at a budding game production company thinks that the only metric that plays in what's going on is the addons or the runback to the bosses being long.

i hope asmongold someday plays Everquest on a TLP. because i feel like he would actually enjoy it even if the game is not streamable. i think anyone who is burnt out with retail wow should go play EQ for like, a month. it'll be a pallet cleanser and it might show you a new prospective on MMOs.

As a lurker of the wow community: remove addons, streamline the content and simplify classes. Gotta say im not a asmon fan by any means but he has some good points. I just skip over games nowadays that have +30 different usable skills. Its 2024, theres no need for it, you can still express mechanics/skills with a simplified kit (look at league of legends).

The first thing Max said was just confrontational and also kinda devalues the whole discussion with the "im outnumbered here" meaning that even if he was objectively wrong (which he isnt) its because of fan boys rather then the quality of the arguments. I would say Asmon is correct however I fully agree with the retail community wanting the game to stay the same, i wouldn't like retail players making demands for Classic content.

I would prune classes and have LFR-Heroic raiding only. Raiding would be flex 20-40man.

40mans are fine but with something like SoD its not. Most guilds are averaging around 10 members. Plus the amount of gate keeping you have going on with pugs, unless you are able to friend up multiple guilds into co-runs and the more they push 20mans and soon to be 40mans come p4 im sure you will have a huge content engagement drop.

25 man should be the cap. I hated 40 man raids it was always annoying. Note: This hate does come from vanilla. So i’m not opposed to trying.

I agree with everything except the 40 man raids. Finding a minimum of 20 competent people is hard enough, let alone 40.

They're having that reaction to asmongold because they agree with him deep down and are struggling to come to terms with it and don't have the tools to do so.

No way! People get mad when one of the biggest gaming streamers, who supposedly loves wow, says some of the dumbest shit that would ruin the game?

I have played wow dragonflight since season 3, did 3k score on m+, did hc raiding, then quit, im playing sod now, also in this past year i did an hc run till 60, now im starting leveling on wotlk so i can try cataclysm, all to keep my self away from retail wow. I guess my opinion dosent metter too😂

I hate the WoW community, they don't realize that 90% of the player base has quit for a lot of the reasons Asmon talks about

Out of all my time raiding I have to say flex raids were my favorite, and only thing that I felt was good during MoP. Would be a cool addition to retail and classic. Alot of times its harder to coordinate 40 mans. Atleast with flex, all sorts of folks with all sorts of friend groups get to raid. Making shit accesible, and also not trivial is where the Balance must be met.

I understand why some people are upset about his first 2 arguments. But there is no way, that even the sweatiest players don't see how addons are ruining the game.

Nobody reasonable said he wasnt allowed to have an option they just said his opinions are terrible. The majority of it is just extreamly out of touch and not at all what players acually want

Nothing will bring people back to retail plain and simple, its slowly dying and it sucks for the players still riding it out.

Dude lets be real there is no way blizzard will bring back 40 raids, in a world where ppl are asking for 10 man raids...and retail is ok as it is with the m+ and raid format , m+ is one of the most popular pve content retail has ever had , it will not change for some ppl who left the game, the ones who left will never come back no matter what blizzard changes.

Notice the players so actively against those changes are the ones who rely on wow as a career and further proves asmon's point.

You'd think blizz would want the opinions of people who don't play but would like a reason to come back

retail sux, its not even a game anymore. Buy gold for money, buy boosts get all the loot , done

Asmongold was absolutely right. If you need addons to play in a raid then there's something fundamentally wrong with the game.

The kids nowadays are not interested playing a game where they have to pay a monthly sub. Most people I ask about the game they stop listening when I say you have have to pay each month.

If Asmongold quits then that means there is about 15-70k people that regularly watched randomly twitch stream everyday of week to reconsidering how they spend their time online. He is almost like cult leader so these people might quit wow. There is some type of burnout feeling involved when patch has 6 months that farming takes over 3 months to get and nothing else to do.

Esports has had the most negative impact on games like WoW. PvP was already toxic af and the continued pressure on PvE players to switch over to PvP (in the form of mog and mount rewards) has led a lot of players to quit or at the least ignore all of the PvP aspects of the game. The problem children of WoW changing for the better are players that reach high ranked PvP status (PvP dog elitism) and longtime players that play all day every day in their mom's basement screaming that "it doesn't fit the lore" (story puritanicalists) or "they weren't here for that" (AOTC hound elitism). Eventually things change, but a net negative change is always being called for by the previously mentioned groups of players. Newsflash!!!! Stories evolve and grow, people hate missing out on fun they could potentially have and PvP (or at least it's associated toxicity) just needs to go altogether.

i played retail since tbc, although i dont always agree with some views i agree with the add ons and spells comment he makes however the 40 man raids i dont agree with some guilds community have trouble getting 10-20 people together these days to raid, but i do agree the raids arent really fun any more the last time i raided properly on a rota was in legion in mythic progression raid i didnt find it fun even though i loved legion and mythic progression raiding killed raiding for me in its entirety i dont bother with raids anymore i want to have fun not be stressed for hours on end just my view.

I quit retail when it stopped being an MMO and became a racing game: Gran Autismo

he is right. Dota has 4 abilities and it still more complicated than wow. 10 spells is reasonable. I know its an mmo but if you can combined 10 spells in sets of 4 there are still too many combos to test for any one person.

I think retail needs a full reset or something to be saved at this point

The only addons that I could agree to remove are combat addons, DBM and Details for example. Using WA to show class CDs in a different way is fine. Addons like Vudoh that add QoL to healing also are fine, you take something like this away and healers will vanish, no way I am healing with the default UI. Having only 40 man raids? Fuck off, raids that large are dog shit. Less difficult dungeons and raids? Retail has less difficult tiers, not everyone needs to complete ultra hard content. I don’t clear mythic raids and I don’t care. Less buttons? Sure some abilities should be removed, but there are easy to play classes also.

I love Asmon, but it's obvious he has never healed or had to decurse in a raid.

retail players have to try and shit on classic. classic players could careless that retail is a thing.

I agree with most. I do like smaller raids. Also LFD I don't takes away from the social experience like people claim, as other games with it are still very social (FFXIV for example.) LFR maybe. The over complexity, the need for mods, the insanity of mods, 100%.

If anything I would say the opinion of Max is invalid, for the simple reason that it is his job. His whole world revolves around WoW being as competitive as possible. It's no longer a game to have fun in, it is a sweaty job you can make a living out of. I want to listen to the guy that wants the game to be fun.

Besides 40 man raids I agree with Asmond he still has the classic mindset when WOW was one of the top games having a huge player base to pull in from for raids that's not the case now at all. I think flexible raids are the best thing to happen to WOW I can't count the times we had to force people to step out to reach the 10/25 player limit and I could never be one to step out because everyone was like we need your dps so I had to feel bad always taking a spot. I'd also say professions in retail also need overhauled its complicated for the sake of being complicated not fun at all.

every, single item he said is NEEDED to revive WoW. otherwise, it's dead and will never come back.

Most People rejected his mesage. They hated Jesus because he told them the truth.

People who enjoy classic are supporting one side and people who enjoy retail are supporting the other side. There will be no reconciliation between these 2 opinions. Personally, I will just continue playing Classic since its easier and requires less of a time commitment.

Not sure how this is massively different from Wildstar. Guessing the aesthetic is pretty different. Game play was very similar to WoW though. Had 8 skills If I remember right, had 40 man raids and the difficulty was around Ulduar I'd say, at least the 20 man raid. 40 man raid did have a really hard first boss but like 20 guilds ever did it anyway

Instead of all raids being 40 mans, I would want a minimum of 20 to a flex to 40 max, therefore they can still scale bosses to the 20 like mythic now and people can still contest of they need more people, however I can see this work both ways. As in make raids for 40 mans and flex the difficulty to if people can only raid with less than 40 people. Saying basically only true downs of bosses done right are by those guilds with 40 man raids.

in the end its never going to feel like a "world of warcraft" as long as we keep doing seasonal content and making gear from old raids irrelevant , the best thing they could do for the game is making level cap increases very rare to non existent get rid of item level and just give us a never ending season , It will never be a "world" if every spec only has one tier set and were only ever progressing one raid at a time, I think we need to get rid of the idea of any content dying how cool would it be if we could go to every raid in the game and they all have different tier sets that are just as relevant as the others I mean why were we ever making gear not matter it seems like a waste, the warglaives of azzinoth should always be the warglaives of azzinoth not just a transmog. Guilds should have to come together on raid nights and decide which of the 58 raids wow has to offer they want to do and all of the gear from them should matter in different ways and situations.

The only one of them I dont agree with is 40 man raids. Going back to classic ans trying to get 40 players on board to do soemthing is a pain in the ass. I see nothing wrong with 10 and 25 mans to me the smaller the raid group the tighter nit your guild and raid team is and it makes it much easier to get everyone on the same page.

These days they get mad at you on the forums and hide your comment if it is anything negative about the game at all. They want you to just shut up and pretend you love it all. That hurts the game. Our complaints are what they USED to use to make the game good.

RaidOrDie, that is your mantra. The logic that brought retail to it's knees in WoD.

I like his suggestions. 40 man also gives the BEST gear.

It makes me sad that people can't stop making bad arguments, and even worse when the other side assumes that is the only argument and dismisses the whole thing out of hand.

He gets backlash because he misrepresents the current aspects of the game he claims he dislikes in order to critique them and then makes suggestions based on that warped perception he has, he even admittedly said he stopped raiding in Legion, for him to have actual critique of the current state of Mythic raiding he would have to play it (a lot of things have changed since legion), that disconnect is evident by the amount of people who point it out, he's being attacked for misrepresenting a large amount of the current content and player base not because of his opinion, everyone has an opinion that's never been controversial.

Retail is where it's at and Classic is where it's at. Regardless it's good to hear other folks opinions, though I don't agree on all points with Asmon on this the add-on thing is a winner. Since when was someone having an opinion over a game some sort of crime. Want my opinion take wow remove everything including the lore and replace it with Hello Kitty Island adventures with nothing to do but Archeology and cooking. If that ruffles your feathers then sorry you have an issue here's a tissue. Also add flying monkey mounts.

Coca-Cola should totally try a Blue can.

It's all about gear and dps and spec.. No just playing for fun as anymore..so serious all the time..

Honestly, I actively play this game and was sweaty m+ guy (and did a bit of mythic raiding but it doesn't count) and I think that addons are a plague to this game, they are stupid and make game a lot easier, removing player skill in a lot of ways. I am for sure up to purge all addons, although I don't agree with raid difficulty take.

I would rather them make a new game with those parameters rather than try to make WoW fit into them

40man raids give it so much better atmosphere and just overall make it feel a lot cooler. I started playing the game in BFA, played WoW for prob around 5k. hours and I quit at the start of dragonflight losing all hopes for the game. Half of the game is gatekeeping people treating it like its a job interview and you need to show them 10years work of experience just to kill 1 boss or run 1 dungeon. Making it all 1 difficulty somewhere in between hc and mythic would go along way. Focusing on the 1% players really aint it, your average players WoW experience right now is absolutely atrocious. Removing some addons might be beneficial so you dont have to balance all the fights around them but totally removing it seems just stupid, I want my UI to look the way I want it to and not have to deal with the default mess. Also I would strongly believe there are addons helping people with disability to even play the game. Also details is like half the fun, even in version like classic or ff14 or gw or any of these games. Its so much less enjoyable and just braindead button mashing if you dont focus on doing as much damage as possible. Not having it really takes away a lot of the fun for me.

The main issue you don't seem to understand is that retail sheep don't care about player count really, they never seem to even argue about player numbers, players dropping, players not starting to play and so on, they only care about doing a meaningless raid that has no real meaning and farming the same damn dungeons with bit of difficulty spike so they can "brag" they done it to their guild in which is around probably 20 people since no one really plays this spreadsheet simulator. You arguing on a very valid and crucial point but the other side don't really gives a flying f about it they only care about putting a V next to a checkmark, its a pointless arguement.

He's mostly correct, I just think the 40 man raids only thing is dumb. And I like 40 man raids, I just think flex is the only smart option for the game, for all difficulties. 20 man only mythic was one of the worst ideas the devs have ever had, and the playerbase was delusional enough to defend them for it.

40 man - the best raid comp in wow. Huh? Its worst raid comp that exist and this is why it never happens again in pve.

I got a stat for you. 90% of the 90% that quit the game will always quit the game. They play WoW for a week, palworld for a week, helldivers a week, deeprock galactic a week, vampire survivors a week, etc. etc. etc. forever and always. Why? Because they are trained consumers. Don't specialize your game for them, because designing a game for the casuals is super fun and awesome FOR A WEEK.

Removing add ons and replacing with in game features is such a good idea

Asmongold is right. As a huge wow fan, i can't stomach retail (and haven't for years) addons are a plague, blizzard needs to redo the UI. They really need to squish abilities into 10 or so like asmon says. Needing a dozen plugins to time your shit to play is a joke. I played retail for a month in dragonflight and i dont even know what the dungeons look like, as i was staring at 50 different squares and timers letting me know how to play, and if i didnt have that i would be screwed. People cried when they first level squished, now its been done a few times. Squish the abilities, people will cry and be upset, and guess what they are so sweaty they will keep playing anyway. You might even get some actual MMO players back instead of actionRPG andies

I believe Blizzard is listening to player feedback more than they ever have. The "My opinion should be held sacrosanct" mentality via Twitter is toxic and I think Blizzard has done that for their own game long enough for us to see why that approach will get us nowhere!

Im a asmon viewer since the old days but I dont agree with him on this one, hes just trying to turn retail into classic(that wont happen anymore), I think a real classic+ would solve this problem cause there's two kinds of wow player now and they both want different things

They keep saying Asmon isn’t important because he doesn’t play WOW. If it wasn’t for Asmon I never would have played classic in 2019 or SOD now. He hyped those games and brought in an audience including myself. Those try hards on reddit/twitter do the opposite and make me not want to play.

I feel you BUT picking on your example let’s say I’m a popular streamer and I say to get back drinking coke instead of Pepsi they need to change the formula and add more sugar to be even sweeter. Now, all of the people drinking coke don’t want that, do they?? And that’s the point. You don’t like the game as it is now? You don’t play. You don’t force all the million of people currently enjoying it the way it is just because you think it’s crap.

This whole conversation feels like both sides are operating under the premise that there is a zero-sum competition between Classic and Retail. But that isn't true - Blizz has been running 2 MMOs (or 4, if you consider how we now have Era, SoD and Wrath/Cata simultaneously with Retail). Clearly Blizz is more comfortable with trying out new things and experimenting. As long as they aren't running like 12 versions of the game, the risk of fractionating the playerbase is low. Asmon's ideas are basically just Classic but paring back a bit of the tryhard qualities like addons, parses, etc. If anything, removing addons and especially parses/logs would be MORE like how Classic was back in 2004 for the vast vast majority of players. Blizz should give it a shot on 1 server at some point. I would definitely come back for it. As for the Retail mythic raiders on Twitter, I very much get the impression that they view an intentional dumbing-down and casualization of Retail as inherently a threat to their existence and what makes them special. Clearly some of them have built their identities off of their skill at the game. And that's fine honestly, that's what MMOs are fundamentally - a time sink to ascend a hierarchy from the ground up, which is especially attractive when real life isn't going so well. Or when real life is boring, or unfair. But the fact that guy is saying stuff like "this needs to stop" as if it's some existential threat and Blizz can't possibly grow the Classic team while also maintaining the current Retail team's size suggests he feels personally affronted when he really has no right to be---unless, of course, he has sunk so much of his sense of identity into the game that he feels it's an attack on him just to criticize Retail...

Also Asmong has been talking about this to for years not just after Plunder.

My 8 year old nephew, the next generation of gamers, isn't going to be excited to get into WoW because of less abilities, no mods and 40 man raids. This is classic-andy-copium masquerading as accessibility because they think the game just needs to be easier in terms of mechanical skills but harder in terms of social skills in maintaining a big active guild - which unsurprisingly is effortless to someone like Asmon when you have an entire army of people ready to do whatever he says. Ya know what excites new players? Plunderstorm. The feeling of not being lightyears behind players in terms of the collection of lived experience, achievements, toys, mounts, transmogs, pets, knowledge of mechanics echoed over every expansion, etc. Why does that work? because it's basically a new game entirely where that huge "collection" no longer exists or means anything, and new players feel like they're on equal ground in new exciting uncharted territory.

10 man raids and we’re talking. 40 man raids is the worst

"40 people is too many" - then why do you have EVERQUEST 1 RAIDS that have 72 people in them? 40 man player limit isnt the problem. its the players who dont like 40 mans are overly vocal in their opinions.

Ofc you can have an opinion, but that doesn't mean it's a pertinent opinion.

I only dislike the idea of removing the addon as an RPer I kinda like having TRP addon

what is the argument for bringing back 40 man raiding? Is it so 25-30 people can carry 10-15 slackers through a raid, lets be honest here. if all 40 people contribute as much to the raid, you get speed clearing (BWL in 10 minutes), the reason it takes longer is because only 25-30 people are doing the work of 40, so why have 40? 8:00 This is why they have the question after you unsubscribe, it's to find out why you quit.

First thing I've agreed with him totally in a long time.

Asmon should just reply to these people with a screenshot of his /played and a comment with something snarky like "Sorry, you're not allowed to talk about this unless you have atleast X hours" I guarantee he has more played on his main than these people who fotm reroll for each tier minmaxing.

Either cater to a smaller group of ppl and milk them dry or go mass (or at least larger) appeal. The choice is up to Blizzard.

I quit wow towards the end of Mists of Pandaria because retail even back then wasn't fun. 3 versions of raiding, super bloat on spells, pvp was so over the top casual players couldn't even get rewards, old content was completely invalid, etc etc etc. So I stopped playing wow for years and only classic brought me back to the game. I probably wont play cataclysm either and stick to season of discovery. Here is an analogy. Think about your guilds and how a lot of people burn out and quit the guild over not getting a chance at the best loot. That's basically been the game itself for years where 95% of players have no chance at the best loot. Why bother?

Asmond is following down my path. His opinion is right for him, but wrong overall. As you age you just grow out of gaming. I can still play wow off and on when I get time, but I can’t sit and play 10 hours a day like I did when I was younger. That’s ok. I might play classic 2 weeks, take 6 months off, play 4 weeks, take a year off, etc. that’s how I want to play. For people that love playing 10 hours a day have fun. I don’t blame the game for me not enjoy long term gaming. If classic came out today I would not enjoy long term play like I used to. He needs to accept he’s getting old and his brain is telling him it’s time to change priorities and the part that used to have time for gaming is being pushed aside.

Retail is a gutted husk of the game many of us played. In classic leveling is fun and you never know what you will see to get to 60. Meanwhile retail is like shut up here is max level now join Disneyland where every tier we rush you through even if you didnt do any of the other content.