Exactly why I tapped out, moved to XIV, and been having an amazing time there. Not a casual player by a long shot, but an adult with responsibilities and limited time and dont want to spend it grinding pointless chores any more.
Exactly WOW is not that much harder it just a gigantic long list of chores that requires gigantic hours of daily grind for 10 hours a day every single day of the week or you will be too weak to join the raids and also downloading 3rd party addons that is made by random strangers online to participate in the end game raids. (That could likely be infected with viruses or rootkits giving a stranger access to your computer) In FFXIV you have none of that you are not required to install 3rd party programs and there is zero daily grind to participate in end game. All you have to do in FFXIV for Raids is just get the highest item level gear that you can get at the moment and that is it and maybe consume some food for buffs.
@@patyos2 I completely agree, once I figured out that after I was done with work, came home to play wow, and I had more "work" to do , thats when I jumped ship to FFXIV as well (over 2 years ago). That is not what games are supposed to be about. I enjoyed my time playing before I quit but that was the straw that broke the camels back.
All ff14 is is gringld of pointless chores. Its just that you can't skip them there so you don't feel like a sucker for progressing. I klonów lazy bastards don't want to admit it but the road has to be long angle hard and unavoidable for the fruits of that labor to taste sweet.
I recently had the experience of coming back to WoW to try out 9.2 and noticed something interesting: leveling up my fury warrior felt like a lot of fun, especially doing random dungeons and BGs at low level as well as the mage tower at around 54, but once I hit level cap I immediately wanted to stop playing. The reason why I wanted to stop is because it became apparent to me that if I want to continue to be viable in BGs, dungeons, mythic+, etc, I would have to farm renown, do all the torghast stuff, do the 9.2 questlines, figure out the legendary system and more, just to be able to play the game I had been playing before I hit max level. Obviously every expansion has required newly capped characters to farm out gear in order to be viable, but I just don't want to deal with 6 different systems in order to be caught up. I don't want to have to watch an hour of Dalaran Gaming or Bellular or whoever else just to understand what is going on. I miss the days before Legion when all you had to do was do a bunch of BGs, low rated arenas, dungeons and normal difficulty raids to get caught up. I played every expansion from Wotlk - BFA, and the only reason I was ok with all the systems is because I had them finished on my main at the same time everyone else did and I wasn't interested in alts. I just feel like I'm going to have to give up a huge amount of time in order to get my warrior ready before I can even really play the game. It should be noted that my highest level of play is mythic raiding and 1900 rating in arenas, but I just can't care anymore.
The saddest part of this is that when it's good, WoW is so good. They've just actively made it not good. I loved WoW pvp before Blizzard decided to punish us casuals enough to make us all quit. Old school pvp was good because of resilience. A dedicated pvp stat and comparable stats on the pvp gear. You didn't have to play 8 hours a day to progress, you didn't have to pve ,or do stupid attunements, you could just kick ass in bg's and arena all day (and be completely irrelevant in pve) . Genuinely the most fun i've ever had in a video game.
They put a hardcore raider in charge of development and PVP went down the tubes.Raiders wanted their memorized dance steps in PVE to give them a leg up in PVP and Ion's team delivered.
I personally dissliked resilience because you had to farm pvp to get it. Couldnt just get a fresh 70 and go into bgs. Or i could but it was way more punishing compared to classic when i had a fresh 60 and went in. And if i farmed that pvp gear. It was useless in PVE since resilience didnt so anything there.
@@86Corvus And those people threating to kick me out for doing 0.7% DMG less than I should according to Icy Veins' metas are supposed to be my friends?
I think the problem is when two random players who enjoy the game in different ways come together to do a not difficult content together. If one of them is just there to get immersed in the experience and complete a quest not giving a crap about efficiency, while the other player just wants to get it out of the way as soon as possible they will inevitably get frustrated at each other. And of course neither of them is right, but how do you solve this issue? Should you just do group content with people you know from your guild? Or should we be able to flag ourselves as "casual" and "dedicated" players so we don't ever group up in the first place?
Thank you for making this video that explains my suffering with this game that I like. I want to do things in the game but its crazy how I need to research everything! I got no time as a family man its sad and frustrating :(
Just play the game dude. I've cleared every tier on heroic for two expansions and never once played an optimal build of any kind. You will do better in any content by spending 10 minutes looking up some basics and 10 hours just playing and practicing than by spending 10 hours looking up which optimal BS you need to be 100% perfect build. People keep telling people these scare stories about how every raid group or M+ group will kick you if you're even remotely suboptimal, and it's just bullshit. It'll happen in a handful of elitist groups at most, and you really won't be getting there without a lot of practice anyway.
that mean the game is not for you, wow is ez, and have some basic mechanics share for alooong time, if u want do do heroic raid then u need to practice, if not just do LFR, if u cant do LFR thats means u cant even watch a 10min or less videos explaning the boss, is ez but u need to practice mechanics and improve, i cant o dont want improve and just relaxing and dont think, then the game is not for you, the improve of the player and learning mechanics is a key aspect of the game its like the dificulty in souls games, one u know what to do, the dificulty drops aloot, same in wow, when u know the mechanics is just question of practice
@@TERFStomper IT's not? WoW is pro casual as fuck. - There are tons of guides for everything - Almost Entire community already knows what to do so you can go ask anyone for help - There is LFR to beat the entire game in one run
WoW has evolved from "I'll help you and you help me" through "a group of 5 all doing their duties to a varying degree of success" to "dps measuring contests" in raids. People project those extreme standards into easy dungeons and it creates toxicity. And well, casual like me - just has no understanding of concept of competitiveness in a group. I'd be going through a dungeon, somebody would say: "your damage is on the floor" (rightfully, because I don't bother inserting stuff in sockets) And I'd be: "Huh, what? But why? we are doing this allrightly, no?"
I bitched about exactly this problem years ago when comparing WoW to EverQuest Online Adventures, a little known PS2 MMORPG that felt like early WoW in a lot of ways. EQOA was all about working together, nobody cared about your gear, your stats, none of that unless your tankability was trash or your heals were weak. That's it. Just show up, participate in the grind and roll for loot. The main point of the game was communicating with others, working with others and farming for gear, gear, gear and there was so much gear it's staggering. Nobody looked the same aside from epic weapons since they were class based. I have the old strategy guide and the droplist is almost Bible thick lol. Having so many items put a more rare % of drop rate on rare items but MAN was it cool when you got one to drop, or could afford one on the auction. Just a very different time, totally different feel, almost a different genre. Much less questing, much more grinding mobs in camps and seeking out rare drop locations, but when you did quest it was EPIC long, usually hard as nails, and extremely rewarding all within a open world, no loading between the world and dungeons.
Wow was always like that. The difference nowdays is taht there are streamers that will make up stuff for their own profit and you will believe them :) im saying you are an idiot. WoW is pro casual as fuck. - There are tons of guides for everything - Almost Entire community already knows what to do so you can go ask anyone for help - There is LFR to beat the entire game in one run
OMG this is so true. Once you are diving (or forced to) into raiding, oh man the game is no longer a fun RPG, it is just numbers, numbers, and bigger numbers. If you don't follow this path then you'd be accused by your guild for not "dedicating enough"... Sorry I just got burnt out badly because that no longer felt like why I started playing this game.
I've recognized the same pattern in some other games, namely YuGiOh (Duel Links and Master Duel). When it finally hit me, I asked myself only "Do I figure ALL of these possible opponents' decks, or do I NOT waste another few years of my life". I loved WoW, but farming took the life out of the game.
I considered myself a hardcore player going back to TBC. But looking back at raiding, even as early as Cataclysm, my guildmates would raid log maybe 10 hours a week and we would eventually clear all content. Those people are now long time friends, but they don't play WoW anymore because the amount of systems and daily/weekly grinds are just so overwhelming that looking at a simple list of them is enough to give up and quit. I play games 30 to 40 hours a week, but not in WoW. These horrible systems are not fun. I just want to raid and do dungeons with my friends. Let's put away this delusion that a casual player isn't capable of high-end raiding. I did it with a close-knit guild through 3 expansions almost 10 years ago. We all ran addons, researched boss mechanics, min-maxed our gear and rotations, and cleared every raid on the hardest difficulty. All of this with a very casual schedule of only 10 hours a week. This simply is not possible in the current state of WoW and it is killing the game.
I explained this to one of my friends who started in Legion, that my guild and I would literally play sometimes one day a week and we would still clear raids and he said it was BS all the way untill classic came out and he saw people clearing raids in 30 minutes.
10 hours a week. 2 hours every work night. Or 5 hours each weekend day. That still sounds like a lot of time to spend playing a video game, especially on a regular weekly schedule.
it's a little sad how small the crossover is. That video is 550k views, this is 30k views. Asmongold was even nice enough to provide the link which is how I got here. This video deserves more views.
Found your video from watching Asmangold. Excellent video & so very true about Wow! You’ve got my sub! One thing that’s been bothering me for years about Wow is making you into a “competitive” player even if you don’t want to be. Endless grinding for gear that only gets erased with a new expansion. One way I tend to get around it & actually enjoy the enormous game is to grind to a certain point & then focus my attention on mount collecting. It’s so rewarding to work hard & get the reward that will remain with you for the life of the game without getting your time & effort stripped away with a new expansion. Keep up the great work & thanks for your time putting out your videos ❤️
Relate to this so much. I stopped raiding at the end of Nathria, I just didn't have the time to keep my char at the level it needed to be for Mythic. I was also a guild master and the strain of keeping a team and guild going was just getting to much. WoW was starting to feel like a job rather than something I did to have fun with my friends. One of the things I disliked the most was the was M+ was tied so tightly to raiding. I'm all for dungeon progressing leading on to raids but the time investment needed fo M+ just so you could maybe get a chance at a bit of gear was one of the main reasons I stopped. Our raid team insisted on farming M+ to raid and I just wasn't willing to do it anymore. One of my other huge issues with how the game has changed was when they changed the end game raid size to a fixed 20. I had been a 10 man raider since I started and when we were forced into doubling our raid team (plus extras for the bench), or stop raiding. I feel like we lost something really important. With 10 man we could play with our friends, maybe make some new ones through pugs and recruiting. It really felt like a proper team. With 20 man you were almost always forced into playing with people you wouldn't normally get on with and more often than not, it created drama and tension. It just felt like a bunch of people who turned up at the raid then went our seperate ways. I also noticed a lot of the guild loyalty/spirit went away as people would just continuiously guild hop bc there were always people recruiting. There didn't seem to be any real incentive to stay with a guild. I've seen a lot of people guild hop the second you come across a difficult mechanic. Raids used to be about working with your team to down a boss but I think it lost a lot of that since the inception of the 20 man mythic. I really agree that with all the borrowed power bullshit and complicated rep systems, the game just isn't inclusive of people who aren't willing to invest a substantial amount of time. The part about the addons too and don't even get me started with raider io, I hate that shit. It's created an elitist market where if you don't have the time to grind up your score you can't get into a group. Doesn't matter if you are a capable player, they just look at your score and say nah. I really hope they do something with this next expac bc I really miss the game, It was a big part of my life for years and I do feel little cheated by Blizzard with the mess they've made of endgame content and the game as a whole, just catering to the hardcore players. also FU Activision you bunch of cocks!
I am with you here! I used to be a casual player, playing the RPG and reading all quests. But in order to do end game content, you literally have to download all these addons and grind out gear to even attempt to get into a group that could possibly do it. Then once in, it's like you have to do a dance just to beat a boss, and if 1 person messes up, you wipe and do it again. It sucks, I want to go back to casual.
Awesome video and agree with you on many points. I'm a hardcore gamer of casual content so SL and it's convoluted mess designed for only Esports has ruined the game so I have been unsubbed for almost all of it like most of my friends. I never want to do M+ again, I rarely raid and don't want to be forced into Arena which is the least important part of PvP. With that said I'm Hardcore because I want to play 40+ hours a week. I read and have wrote guides. In BFA I did World Quest for every zone, I did WPvP all day, sometimes I'd just log in and do BGs for 6 hours. I'd grind out 1,000s of Island Expeditions to get the highest Azerite. I love playing the game but my way since it's my time I paid for. Players should be able to focus on what they enjoy not what the Devs want. The problem is Blizz wants you to play their way instead of letting players create a way to enjoy the game. It's rigid and unacceptable for the majority of players. A Devs job is to design a great game and get out of the players way. Let them create fun ways to play the game they designed the Devs never imagined. The Devs lost sight of this. Everything has rating attached to it and ranks which is lame. Everything has some pointless time-gating grind to it that isn't fun. Casual players need a chance to get into the game and get awesome gear to enjoy the content they love. While BFA was far from perfect at least 8.3 was fun. So all my grinding of what I enjoyed allowed me to compete at high levels in RBGs as one of the Top Prot Pally in NA, I did cheese the Raid doing 30 Tanks with TD stacking SotW (most fun in a raid ever) Blizz never gives players a chance to play how they want. It's a shame. I rather be the top BG player or WPvP then top player in Arena. However M+ and Arena now is all they care about. I Wish Esports would go away, it ruined the game. This game could of been so so much more. I rambled but I'm just sad because I want to play WoW but it's just impossible to play now in it's current version. Good luck :)
There is no pause option for Mythic+, an instanced event that takes 30-40 minutes at a time. That should tell you enough about Blizzard's approach to casuals. Weirdly enough you'll find as many people defending this and opposing a pause button as well. Seems insane to me, even PvP games have a pause button, some even have uninterruptible (for a specific time) pauses depending on if someone is disconnected or not.
What PvP games have a PAUSE button ? Can you pause a League of Legends match? Dota? Fornite? Pubg? Hearthstone? Rocket League? Counter Strike? Overwatch? I literally can't think of an online pvp game with an actual pause button...
@@PiFsc2Dota 2 has a pause function. It's one of the most highly competitive games there is, and it has a pause button and lets you talk to your opponents, which is also something Blizzard is against. You don't even get to talk to your opponents during pet battles, which is insane to me
Came to this video a year+ late finding it on Asmongold's channel via random YT suggestion. And, to be blunt, your video IS SPOT ON. My spouse and I played Classic WoW (when classic wow was... only classic wow, no expansions yet) after playing many other classic MMOs of the past. We quit classic Wow, playing as a duo, in our low level 50s when a group began to be required to even complete basic quests. We came back years later in the middle of the Wrath era, joined a newer raiding guild looking for players, and they were desperate for (a) members and (b) people who knew their class (yes, this was true even then). However, we told them we wanted to play the content, so we did. Classic, leveling in Burning Crusade until level 73 (and enjoying the content), then... we finally did it, went to Wrath, got to 80 in the first two zones. From there... Your video begins for us. The systems weren't as complex then, but it was still dungeons, then heroic dungeons, then daily Trial of Champion, then learning the raid mechanics and getting raid specific add-ons (instead of only the ones that fixed problems with the overall game itself, like the bars, buffs, debuffs). By the end of the expansion, we were being picked for 10 and 25 man raids because we'd outclassed many of the others that were available. But... go back to that "having fun" and "content" and "work required to get here". We didn't play for a while after that, came back in BfA, repeated the process here with another new guild, got about halfway through the raids before the guild stalled out. (At least for me personally, one fight where you had to be able to see the full color spectrum made me unable to truly do it... being colorblind.) My spouse wanted to go back in Dragonflight, we played a month or two, did the research, and said... "we can't do this" (the time and research commitment). So... as others have said, moved on to FF14. Even there, though... we are barely into it due to low time availability as "real life" takes hold. How do you ruin a game? Having to min max in it to actually play it.
This was my first expansion (started in Shadowlands Prepatch), so I completely felt everything that you said in this video. For example, after I was just doing whatever, didn't know about mythic dungeons, mythic+ etc and was just grinding anima to upgrade my covenant set (I went venthyr for Rogue, which was apparently the worst selection for 9.0), didn't know how to get into raids, didn't know how people where getting 200+ ilevels "so quickly". Didn't know about the weekly quests that gave chests of normal or heroic Nathria level items either. Some other Turkish dude that I saw in the Maw started talking to me (because my name was Turkish-adjacent) and gave me some info etc. None of this information was conveyed to me ingame. Had to look up guides etc. Even in things like BFA campaign you do until level 50. I had no idea how to do the War campaign and unlock followers etc. And the quest order was so screwed up that at some point Jaina was both leading the Alliance charge and was in prison for being considered a traitor to Kul Tiras. When I decided to do the Legion questline, I couldn't even continue after some point because Anduin wasn't there, Turalyon was, even after abandoning and trying again. The GM's response to my ticket: Check out Wowhead...
I wouldn't recommend wow to anyone who never played wow in the past. The game is far to messy to understand. The story is non existent for a new player, it is impossible to get an idea of the full story through playing the game. I could go on for days... anyone who wants to play wow for the first time should play ff14 for real getting into wow cost me so much time. I can't recommend it to anyone new.
@@Jubafree When I was a teenager, I played WC3+Frozen throne and had finished Rexxar's campaign. And funny enough, BFA was very involved in the continuation of that threadline (Daelin Proudmoore's death at Theramore). I also loved the zones, the pirates, the Eldritch horror and the Blair Witch concept (seriously, those three stuff are like my favourite 3 concepts). It wasn't until I checked out a completely new player's (someone who hadn't played WC3+Frozen Throne) video about BFA that it sunk in. The game doesn't even inherently explain to you who Jaina is. While the gameplay and story of BFA were very enjoyable, it also dawned on me that apparently a lot of the stuff I had just breezed past was related to past events. And I get that people are going to say "Well, if you start a TV series from the middle you wouldn't understand it either" and that is true, but I can just go back and watch the previous episodes. I can't do that in WoW because half the game is deleted and the other half is out of order. The game gives you literally zero way to go through the entire story.
@@Riplee86 I'm not even sure I got through to a GM. It was so unspecific and unhelpful that it might have been an automatic response. although I guess the second reply would have been from a GM.
@@Jubafree ff14 is also bad, for different reasons. Instead of ( I don't know for sure, never got that far ) of hardcore raiding you *have* to play through a practically single player mediocre novel for several dozen hours. I only started playing it because my friends started playing it and we wanted to play a game together. So imagine my shock when the msq was designed in such a way you could hardly actually play through with friends. There's no excuse for mandatory party dropping to progress in what is supposed to be a multiplayer game.
All this rubbish is just a result of having game devs that don't understand what casual players like, want or aim for. Too much focus is on players being good rather than them having fun.
WoW is pro casual as fuck. - There are tons of guides for everything - Almost Entire community already knows what to do so you can go ask anyone for help - There is LFR to beat the entire game in one run
OK, just had this video pointed out to me. So much yes, it's insane. I have subscribed to WoW since the start. I have the brass orc. Our children are now at university, but as little ones they sat on my lap as we plunged down and zoomed up on the Deeprun Tram. How they shrieked for joy when I flew them oh so close and nearly into a tree before swerving out of the way at the last moment, or hitting the branches and then tumbling to the ground. The magic of exploration, of well... doesn't matter. I have exalted every rep (well, close anyway), maxed out my professions at every expansion and yet - I haven't raided much. I think it was Deathwing's back that broke me. I just lost interest in having to min-max everything, to watch hundreds of hours of videos etc. etc. I just decided to enjoy myself again, but it comes at a serious cost. The rest of my guild are also long-term players like me. We've been friends for years, but I don't raid with them. I do the odd Mythic+ at a low level if they are stuck for someone, but otherwise I just play alone, because that's what happens now if you aren't perfect. Hell, I even hear people bitching in general chat if someone doesn't get an interrupt off for the shifting stargorger that needs perma-interrupts to kill inside a day or two of game-time, or they don't know how to get Garudeon and why it matters if you do x when near mob y. The IDC group don't exist, unless they are players who finally go, do you know what - screw this, I'll find something else to do. Our boys used to love this game. Now they don't play at all. Nice one, Blizzard. Great video. Oh, I play about 3-4 hours a day and I still love exploring and looking at the world.I make a lot of new characters and try out different play-styles, hoping to find something that I will want to learn perfectly so that I can go and play at the top level with my friends again. Not happened yet. A huntard I have been from the beginning and it looks like I shall remain one until the end :)
This hit home. I'm one of those casual players. I used to do dungeons when the idea was to have fun, make friends, explore, level, and get some gear. Not to finish in 10 minutes then move onto the next one. Now you worry if you don't perform to others' expectations you will be kicked because the ONLY goal is to finish as fast as possible. To me that is not my idea of fun. So, I just level alts until maximum level then stop playing until next expansion.
But always has been like that they kick you, even if you tell them is your first time in certain dungeon, they are go go go they don't even talk to you, they just want to finish it as soon as they can, there is no fun, I can count the times I landed with a friendly and nice group with a single hand and that's sad.
Damn, Asmon watches a video and your subs go up by 500%. Definitely earned. This is one of those videos that really should have at least several hundred thousand views, I was actually shocked when he showed how underviewed it was. I would suggest spamming your videos everywhere you can think of, from Twitter to Discord to Reddit etc. Good luck man, I'll be along for the ride!
Really well thought out and presented video. I think the intensifying of time-gated content that is ultimately banal and shallow in nature is just a byproduct of a corporate environment that only knows how to 'read' the health of a game via quarterly reports. These features are essentially just stop-gaps to artificially extend content so that players don't complete a patch and unsubscribe before the next one drops, rather they play through the entire lifecycle of an expansion. On the other hand, I've seen every single online game I play devolve into the min-max mentality and this is just an unfortunate byproduct of the omnipresence of the internet. Sure, guides and walkthroughs and theorycrafters existed in 2004 as well, but it was hosted on lesser-trodden corners of the internet in highly specific forums or other insular communities, rather than Twitch, Reddit, and RU-vid and websites and wikis that thrive off of ad revenue and have a vested interest in drawing in a global audience and growing as large as possible. This might also be disingenuous and I'm not denying a profit motive didn't exist at the time, but games with SOVL like 2001-2008 Runescape or 2004-2009 World of Warcraft were also genuine passion projects not run by ghouls in suits reading profit margin spreadsheets all day. I'm pretty jaded from seeing what Runescape and World of Warcraft became, but even Classic and Old School Runescape suffer from the same information permeation. The way I see it, before the internet became omnipresent, only 1% of players were dedicated elites who largely kept to themselves and were a unicorn in the wild, and the other 99% essentially played an entirely different game. With mass-media and huge proliferation of information, 1% of players are still dedicated elites, but the next 20% of players actually have a chance to emulate them on a massive scale, and they do so wholeheartedly. These are the most active players of the game, they log more hours than the bottom 80%, and though the 80% are the majority of the playerbase, they are still the minority of players online at any one time, and are more likely to encounter the top 20%, who, whether kindly or viciously, will 'get them up to speed' and offer guides, tips, suggestions, and content creators to follow to learn to play the game 'properly' and this is something I'm guilty of myself. I think this is generally bad though, easy access to information like this essentially artificially creates knowledgeable players out of those who would otherwise have been ordinary casuals. Saturating a game's community with players of this kind is what sours it because it creates an endless loop of evangelization. All of the game's mystery slowly becomes sucked up until it just becomes a numbers game, as you said, because everything else is already datamined, optimized, and solved, often even before the content has officially released. I don't really think there's any way to fix this in the industry as a whole nor do I think a specific solution exists for World of Warcraft. I'm content to just watch these games gradually die since all the SOVL and passion dried up. Now this is really cynical, and it probably sours my whole comment, but there will never be a quality title ever again, mass-adoption of the internet literally doesn't allow for it, so people should just play whatever gives them the most enjoyment to cope. I'm just going to keep playing Old School Runescape with my friends, because it lends itself to solo and small group-play largely untouched by the monoculture that undeniably exists within the community, and wow private servers that, granted, are largely solved, but don't have massive Reddit and RU-vid platforms allowing for a much more organic and nostalgic stratification of the playerbase.
Great video. It echoes a lot of the issues that I have with the game. I've since moved on to FFXIV, but still wish that WoW could reach its peak potential again. Earned a sub.
I miss so much my early days in wow. I started playing in WoD, and it was wonderful for me, I was always doing something, jumping from expansion to expansion, until I got to the max lvl and waited for Legion to drop, when it came my sister bought for me, and it was magical, doing a bunch of quests in that new world, playing my first DH, it was amazing, until I did almost all the zone quests and the patch for Tomb of Sargeras dropped, and i wanted to do the raid, but i didn't knew how, i couldn't use the Raid Finder because I was too undergeared and didn't knew how to get better items, and it was like this for the whole expansion, until it finally ended and BfA dropped, and my will to play kinda dropped, i just came back to play WotLK Classic, because people say that expansion was amazing, and now, here I am, slowly trying to get into the game just to have the same fun I had before, kowing well that this will never happen
I once played WOW for a month (already a few years back) and I agree with many things you said. I knew nothing about the game so I just started playing it. I never installed any addons of anything. Of course I messed up in dungeons quite a bit and many times I got kicked, which really annoyed me. Many people expect excellence and forget that you are just playing a game for fun. On the other hand I also have to say that I had many very nice experiences with the community. One person invited me into her guild and showed me around a lot. She also just gave me Gold for Heirlooms to buy (she also told me that heirlooms exist, LOL) But this really shows as well, that without knowing people who know the game who can explain stuff, playing becomes really difficult... For me personally, the community was WOWs biggest strength and weakness at the same time. What actually killed WOW for me were two things: - the game is so repetitive and the grinding just wasnt for me - with the monthly subscription I feel like I have to play a lot to get the most for your money, but I am someone, who may not play at all for two weeks because I am busy a lot with work, friends, etc I actually never made it to the endgame
As a casual player I completely agree. I've taken over year long break from WOW at a time and everytime I return I feel completely lost on what I have to do just to catch my gear up. For me one of the saddest parts is a lot of the story content is locked behind the raids which I didn't engage in due to "skill gate", and as a result I never got to complete any of the campaigns. The other thing I find quite disappointing is as a leveling character you are unable to carry out let's say 30% of content because the majority of the player base lives in the endgame. What I mean is if you are leveling and get a quest to complete a dungeon, raid, or take on an elite foe (the ones the quest says recommend X amount of players) you will not be able to do that so you're only choice to experience that content is to ignore it, move on, over level and comeback and solo it. I never finished Legion as example and in order to experience the story chronologically I am getting a character to 60 to just solo it because nobody is around to help me murder say Gul'dan
It's totally not worth trying to get the best gear from the current expansion (unless you are a hardcore enthusiast) because it'll all become obsolete from even moderate gear in the next expansion. The problem is you miss out on the story and cutscenes exclusive to the raid content unless you queue up and wait an hour via the group finder (and even then, you may be dropped into the MIDDLE of the raid) or wait until the next expansion so the level cap and gear strength is raised allowing you to solo the old raids (I had a blast doing IceCrown like this as I totally missed it and really wanted to know how Arthis's story concludes and Deathwing's began).
I too, end up doing a lot of old raids, probably more than i do the current ones, just because I can jump in complete some content to see the story and bosses, and roll the dice for some transmog. And I spent a lot of time raiding, even at the beginning of Dragonflight...
It's nice playing the old raid content at your own pace too as there is no group you have to keep up with if you solo. I took time to enjoy the varied scenery in IceCrown.
I am defiantly not a hardcore player, I stop playing as soon as it gets a little complicated... But I very much enjoy your videos, you are one of my new favorite channels ❤
Keep it up mate, Asmon checked your video on his stream so subs and views from there if you want to know. We all enjoyed your content and agree with you. Have a wonderful rest of the day (I guess it is kinda good day for you right? :p )
Saw this video on Asmongold’s stream - I started playing WoW abt 7 months ago or so. I felt EVERYTHING you said. I felt alone in this; now I don’t. But…I’m not sure Blizzard cares about us New Players. That sense of wonder is still something I feel though, thankfully. Subscribed to your channel - thank you for the hard work you put into this video.
Former Mythic raider here - my last CE was Castle Nath. and I can confirm this to be 100% accurate, real and true. Noped out of the game at the end of August. Was thinking of coming back, but then this video gave me the splash of cold water to the dome as to what I would be walking back into 😬
I feel this video is spot on, because as someone who did Sunwell in BC before Wrath, who enjoyed BC, Wrath, and fell off in Cata and Came back for Mists and Legion? This is on point. I love the world, I love playing the game, I don't love the grind. I am a casual gamer anymore, I grew up so my life isn't dedicated to achievements in games. I think a good way to say it is, I am deep into the lore, I want fun memorable experiences and having played other MMO's like Guild Wars 2 and FF14, from that experience I still love Warcraft, but I feel it is very dated and focuses on a very small subset of players that honestly has lead the developers astray with their demands. Raids are cool, but they are massively time-gated and to have story behind that sucks. Having a story version of raids and dungeons would be a good step in the right direction, give people something to do and then have challenge motes for them, have the various difficulties. Let the casual player experience the world and story that has been crafted, remove the punishment mechanics for playing for the story instead of min-maxing. Hell disable addons again. I think it is reasonable to make the game around giving people fun stories to experience and fun gameplay to go through. Sure have the grind on the side to get the super cool gear, that's good tbh, it gives the incentive to come back to get your fashion game on point, it gives goals for players to work towards to keep us coming back. And I like that, if there is a cool weapon or armor I can get from putting time in to get something, awesome, I also say, don't time gate it, I time gate myself due to having a life outside of gaming. I have work, I have a partner, I have friends who live nearby that I visit on my days off, I go hiking. But I still love my games, I love Elden Ring for as much as it crashes on me. And that game is honestly more friendly to a general audience than WoW and not for the FOMO of wow having a subscription, no because I can make my own goals and take my time to go get some cool armor or sword, there are interesting questlines to explore, plus the challenge of the main quest itself. This is equally true for basically every game I have enjoyed over the past 25 years. Morrowind, Dark Souls, Ace Combat, Armored Core, Supreme Commander, Starcraft 1 and 2, Warcraft 1-3. A lot of it is "here is your end goal" but how you get there is fun, sometimes it is more handholdy sometimes you have a map to explore and you stumble on neat stuff. And you know I spend my time learning lore about WoW even now, going back to playing I looked up how to optimally do PvE set up so I can level without wanting to hurt myself for paying a shit spec for PvE. I also enjoy Battlegrounds, I don't do it often and get my ass handed to me but it's fun, and that's the point. I am having fun experiencing the game, and more so the stories of quests along the way. I did raiding in the past, it was stressful getting into it and the time commitment was what ultimately made me stop but I started because I wanted to _see_ the story that was there. Because as a casual player in BC you don't get to see the end of so many questlines, or even see a number of important story questlines in the expansion. And ultimately that's what killed Cata for me. Mists was better due to a lot of the story was in the questing itself but again the conclusions for the big plots were in Raids which as someone who can't commit to those time commitments it sucks? The biggest one that hurt was Legion, because I was deeply invested in the storyline of the Burning Legion starting back in WC3. So when I had to, because again time commitments, read what happens and watch the cinematics online it sucks as a lore nerd. Furthering this, I used to play Warframe, was fun for a number of years but it always sucked when you got time-gated on a quest because you had to wait 24-72 hours for something to build. Like come on, that sucks. For someone who plays multiple games in a week that means that one day I play warframe I get through a single mission to be told to come back tomorrow, but tomorrow I'm hanging out with friends to play some comp stomp in CnC3. So it waits a week or two, until I hit the next time gate. Warlords of Draenor sucked to get through for me when I was catching up for Legion because of this. Worse was that over time I came invested in that story as well but I never finished it due to I just couldn't blow off my friends wanting to play or do other things. Ultimately WoW has lost casual players by becoming for people who don't care about the sub cost because their identity is as a hardcore wow raid grinder or they just have so much money they can just not give two shits and burn sub money every month and log in to do pet battles for half an hour once a month. And it sucks, like yeah game has always been grindy, but that's okay, but honestly, Vanilla WoW had this issue to begin with, every big interesting story ended in a raid, AQ for example. Big lore stuff gets locked behind stuff most players will never get to do, meanwhile FF14 and GW2 you get the whole story, FF14 I think does it better with having a story version of raids and dungeons, which gives a taste of what is there for gear. And those who want to come back with LFG or roulette and clear them for nice rewards. GW2 goes a step further and raids, as well as dungeons, are side content, they are their own stories, often building off of a zone's side plot which grounds them in the setting and I think that might be what WoW needs to do. Let the story be the story, let your casual players experience the whole story instead of locking it behind a bunch of stuck-up gatekeepers who demand more stuff only they can enjoy. We don't need more arenas, we need more good battlegrounds, we don't need more raids, we need more story instances where you can take a group in or have bots. Give achievements for doing them on harder modes with other players, but give the same rewards, let them get fancy titles for going out of their way to do the hard options. Then the game is fulfilling for your causal audience and your hardcore audience. I want to enjoy WoW, but the grind doesn't work with my schedule making me spend less time and less money on it over the years. And given the charts of active and subbed players floating around, I think that is part of the issue. Casual players feel like there is too little to do, and without casual players, well, there is no MMO. And it might as well be a P2P dungeon game that you just charge $60 up front, and $30 for each new set of dungeons and raids that people connect to and clear with nothing else to do.
3:54 Completing the Intro the first time IS important, however it is annoying that there is so much you can't skip on a second toon. You actually spoke out why I stopped to play in BfA's last patch after getting Ahead of the Curve. I started to play again now in Dragonflight, am playing for a good 5 months but I don't Raid or run M+ dungeons. There is not allot to do, if you don't Raid or run M+. I also like it that Final Fantasy 14 does not have addons.
I really like the vid, but I would just like to say the idea that casual gamers play 2 hours a day is not really accurate. I am significantly more casual in my gaming than I was 10 years ago, but I am still semi-hardcore. However, I don't really play games in 2 hour chunks everyday: I play very little to not at all on the weekdays, and when the weekends come and I have nothing but free time I want to slam a game in 6-10 hour chunks. And that is one of the major problems WoW has for a casual audience: the devs don't actually understand how people like me engage with games. I have no interest in a game that tells me I have to long on for a few hours every day to do chores, because I don't necessarily have the time, especially during the week. And I'm not married and I don't have kids, so my time is less constrained than most people.
Very true. I definitely think that "Casual" can have a lot of different definitions. Even though the video uses an average to quantify Casual Gaming, really its more of an attitude or way of playing a game that defines being a casual. Which is why more players can identify as casual than super hardcore!
I agree with you that this is not a game for people that have little time to play. But the term 'Casual' is subjective. I play the game about 40 hours a week, but I mostly spend it farming for transmogs and mounts, maybe level some alts. I dont raid (not even lfr), i dont pvp, i dont know the story, i havent done zereth mortis at all. But by YOUR definition, im somehow not a casual gamer? I just dont think the time alone (2 hours a day or less) is enough to define a casual gamer. And isn't that what this whole video is based on?!
My guy, 40 hours a WEEK is a second full time job worth of time. That is not fucking casual. Hardcore isn't "top end, highest difficulty content". Making that single game such a substantial part of your daily life is.
I enjoy questing and exploring zones, leveling I do like ( just not 15 times ), I go LFR because of the visuals, it fast and fun ( I'm a healer - no wait time), The main story is interesting but sometimes hard to follow. The dungeons are pretty entertaining. All in all I play about 16-22 hrs a week. I consider myself casual. Still playing after 17 years.
I have hope it is improving. I feel that true matchmaking is the answer. It allows a solo player to que into group content. I think there should be solo ranked ques for each boss and you only get X attempts to proceed or you fail. like lost ark guardian raids. You can also vote to surrender. Blizz is also doing rated solo shuffle for arena and that is breathing true life into my excitement for dragonflight
Great point about having clicked on this video makes you jump out of the casual space. I really think we need a term like "prosumer" (in between pro and a general consumer) for the gaming space. I generally don't min max, or repeat content to grind RNG, etc. Nor do I compete to be the first in world to do X, Y, or Z. I tend to value immersion and escapism more than effeciency. But does that make me a "casual" gamer when I do, in fact, play games for multiple hours daily, spend an equal amount of time watching videos and engaging in the community and almost every hour beyond that is either spent thinking about games, or actively making them. I feel like there is a lot of grey area between a person who will buy a new release, play for a weekend or two with friends and then forget about gaming for a few months until the next hot thing on the one hand, and a person who min maxes for the most effecient build in the game and clears all content in the first week on the other.
Somehow it sounds like WoW classic was more casual-friendly despite it taking me 200 hours to get to lv60 and another 50 - 100 before I was ready to raid. I joined a raid guild. I wasn't playing the best class or the optimal build, but I had the core parts correct and some of the gear I needed. I installed 4 addons, including a DPS meter which wasn't specifically required, and I did my first raid. My guild was even nice enough to allow me to respec to boomkin, which meant I didn't really contribute to their raid progress. I still kept a position in the main raid group. I suppose the only thing not "casual" friendly was that the guild demanded activity. If you showed up to a raid once a week you could almost always get in. If you showed up for one raid every two weeks, your spot might get taken by someone more active. If you showed up once a month and played Mage, you'd never get in. I did 2 - 3 raids per week since dedicating 3 hours per day isn't an issue for me.
Holy shit. Finally someone explained. I went back to the game in 2020, when a friend convinced me to play retail and leave classic. Worst decision ever. I didnt understood the game and got bored in a week. Went back to classic levelling. Just casual things.
Great video and break down. For myself I started in Legion and tapped out at Shadowlands because I found the content pretty repetitive and the pure lack of respect the Dev team showed for the consumer or their time angered me. Everything was time gated in some way as if that would improve the experience or make me feel better about the things I acquired. Only it made me feel *WORSE* about it. I felt like I was being cheated out of my time and money on the vague promise "that things will get better with the next patch or expansion!". And it never did. Then came Shadowlands... The Maw was a humongous slap to the face. Not only could we no longer fly but we couldn't even ride for the longest time and there were mobs nearly every 10 feet. Add in that wretched Jailers eye, which didn't reset if you were still playing during the daily reset. Found that out the hard way. The end result was an unfun insulting mess... and the community supported it. Or at least parts of it. You'd always have someone come running to Blizzards defense saying "If you don't like it quit!" or "That's just your opinion". While those statements are 100% accurate the problem is that you'll see a ever shrinking pool of players because some get bored of the grind, others the toxicity until eventually you are left with a sub total that sure isn't the 10 million that was active during 2014. Add in the rumour of the devs straight-up *HATING* the player base. Like.. if you hate your job or customers change jobs. I work retail. I don't hate my customers, well not all of them any way. For the record while Classic/BC WoW is a grindy mess it is a hell of a lot of more fun. I just stopped because I couldn't stomach giving AB money after the wide spread harassment issue came to light. How we treat others matters, at least to me. Addendum: No shade thrown at HC players, but I find treating a game like a job makes it unfun. I want to explore and find my own way of doing things, not mimic someone else.
Not to mention the toxicity that is the hardcore raiding community. I remember trying to get into raiding once, I was new but wanted to learn. People were so unwilling to be patient and let me learn as a new raider that I never go invited back. Can’t make new raiders if there can’t be any new raiders accepted.
I've heard about WoW; but damn that's tough. Guides, 5 add-ons, and daily tasks make this a bad job, not a game. Thanks for providing an indepth look at this game. Really makes me appreciate the quieter single player games I enjoy.
"Where are the other 70% in the middle?" "Playing FF14". Shared the same sentiment of the middle 70% being pushed out ever since Cataclysm and it's only gotten worse since I quit back then and temporarily returned in 8.3.
The mythic plus score system is what made me finally leave the game. it turned the last casual aspect of dungeons that i loved and turned it into elitist / e-sport content that I despise entirely.
So I fell in love with Warcraft and Warcraft 2. Kinda liked Warcraft 3 and was blown away when World of Warcraft came out. I’ve tried playing it like 7 or 8 times. I just can’t play late game. It feels like I need to be a computer programmer to play the game. I’m sure everyone that sees this disagrees but I am not a pro gamer. I’m not really even good at video games but I do love them. I’ve played w1,w2,w3 battle for middle earth 1 and 2. I just found out about Final Fantasy 14 and I love how it’s setup. Honestly don’t know the story because I can’t get into the grayish anime stuff but it’s fun.
I played casually in Early Pandaria (pirate server), late Warlords of Draenor, and early Legion, then come back for Battle for Azeroth and stop playing pretty fast (like 10% of what I play was just leveling up) Always as a druid healer and doing what I feel was fun and sometimes trying to gear up a bit. The most fun I had was in Pandaria for one reason: I play a ton of PVP(no arena, just bg), and to get better gear, I just had to buy armor with the honor coins I got by playing, was having fun and getting stronger. With Draenor I did mainly quest, PVP (some arena, some bg), and things in the fort that you build at the start of the expansion, and feel like I didn't get stronger, I was "forced" to repeat the same 5 dungeons over and over again to get +2 gear score, and they are fun the 1º or 2º time you beat them, the 15º is not. And maybe I miss remember, maybe it was just slower, maybe I was doing it wrong and I am stupid but I don't remember getting stronger playing what was fun for me in Draenor or Legion Recently I play New World and it accomplish two things for me that wow didn't. (Althoug I left New world for the absurd amount of what i feel was a lack of QoL feacters but that is not important now) First actively try to gear up, and this is simple is I had fun fighting mobs and doing dungeons that give me better gear, and is not that getting gear was fun, it was that playing was fun, I didnt know what to do so i look up what i have to do to get gear so i can play (have an objective and not just fighting mobs for the sake of fighting). And i had 2 options, profession and dungeons, didnt like profession so easy to choose. But mainly the fact that one dungeon run had a ton of rewards so doing the same dungeon more than 3 time was unnecessary because you already get all de gear you need, you have to get to the next dungeon before you get bored of the previous one. Second, it "forced" me to play with a guild because I wanted to go to a guild war and so I get into a guild and was planning to just play in the war as is any bg in wow. Then right before the war started, people start asking everyone to join a discord for the war, and that snowballed into what I think is a similar experience of a mythic raid in wow (Don't know because I never play mythics raid) but without the "need 564 gs and X addons and know boss mechanics to join", I went full blind, didn't know how even war works and just follow orders of someone in a discord call and had one of the best experiences in a MMO. And wow don't have anything like this, you want to experience a raid? Git gud or use raid finder for what i think is not a comparable experience. It doesn't have that content where GS/skill is irrelevant just need a leader that guie you and when you experience that you can get to be a leader and guide others. Always felt like I should already know what a boss do when is my first time
I'd like to stand in the defense of the casual player... It may be true that I feel too lost on Modern WoW so I stick to Classic, and I am most familiar with Wrath. In Sholazar Basin you can start the quest chain that would let you choose between two tribes ( it's a very tragic story ;-;) - and this made me think about the segment in this videoclip where... you ( as the player) choose the... faction (?) that grants you different perks. I won't argue for Shadowlands whilst in Wrath you do get to spend time with both tribes so you have that gap there which would in a way let you decide which... vendor items, um... look the prettiest :,) Wish you a pleasant day to anyone who reads this! ^_^ P.S. Just wanted to add that it felt so good when you accidentally walked in on the quest that kicks it off on Wrath and you find out about stuff you might've not figured otherwise.
I was told by the customer service rep I spoke with when I quit WoW near the end of Mists that "grinding is the essence of MMOs, right?" I was an altoholic and I just wanted a few things to make that less grindy. I didn't want to do something for each alt. I didn't mind grind.
When I cancelled my sub (midway through 9.1) I was asked to provide a reason. I wrote that I had just realised I was paying a monthly fee to log in and do chores in the game rather than having fun. Never again Blizzard.
On the subject of "Takes time"... it also wasts your time when you have to wait for "Timers" to reset, so you can continue your "takes time" grindy activity. IMO, there should never be a time-gate on activities. I can understand it existing on story, as it's delivered over the patch-cycles. But I never understood activities and unlocks being gated behind some timer on top of some currency requirement. Why isn't having the currency enough to progress? Why am I asked to stop playing because the "Timers" have made me run out of things I can do to progress? On a related topic, why is progress so heavily tied to playing daily? What if I don't want to play every day, but I do want to spent all of my Saturday or Sunday playing? It's simply impossible to make the same progress on a single day, even if the time-investment could be the same. Great video btw.
So much of what you said applies to Monster Hunter World. People don't want to attempt some of the harder bosses with me because I'm just here having fun with a non-meta super tanky lance build instead of the meta full damage builds.
very true! thats why i put WOW on hold for 1 or few monts and go to another game, then come back.......when i feel is to much time wasting! quit again then come back when i feel to......... 2 thing it gets me angry : Loot sistem ( why manual pickup- sometimes the mob is 100 meter away if it runs, fall cliff watever....BIG time waste) turning qest ( eveven worse going back and foward completing qest from same mob Awsome work with the video!
I happened to check out Asmongold's stream just as he was starting to do a react to this video. I don't know if he's going to put that reaction on his YT channel or not. But I will say that I was immediately impressed by your presentational style as well as your knowledge of the game And your ability to convey that knowledge And your willingness to compile this video. Of all the streamers out there, I think Asmongold is a great one to get noticed by. I look forward to watching your other material and to watching your new material. I played WOW for a brief period when it came out. I look forward to watching your POE videos, since I have played a whole lot more of that game.
@@HeresorLegacy I came here from that video. his reaction was... awful I thought he was being sarcastic and "acting dumb" until the act never ended and I realized he was actually just that annoying. I've liked some of his videos before but god damn was that reaction AWFUL
That is, I believe something that also threw me off from Elder Scrolls Online. Despite the sheer amount of content that is present there, I couldn't push myself to play this game while having in mind that I'll literally have to play it every single day for at least few hours to actually achieve something that may (or may not, who the heck knows?) prove to be the top tier fun in ESO. My problem with most of mmorpg games these days is that they don't necessary reward casual, everyday activities as much as they could. Instead, they force players to engage themselves in a deep dive mechanics-oriented content and spam it until you get what you want. There's no middle ground, nothing between being an absolute "IDK what I do" and "I played the game for an hour. Did three quests and felt a sense of accomplishment by saving those good fairies and getting some cool-looking gear". Nope. Instead, it's like having a damn job or something. Awful, if I think about it. And... there's another layer to it: due to the fact that I pay for the game (or paid for it a substantial amount of money), I feel obliged to play it. There's no "I can get back to it later". Well, technically I can, it's not a big deal. But in reality we both know how these things work - most of people ain't some cash tanks and they can't afford to spend their money *snap* just like that. So they force themselves. Hence the reason why I dropped out of most mmorpgs.
Asmond Gold reviewed your movie. He said you make really great content. As a casual player, I thank your for making this video. It echoes everything that I have been feeling about the game. You got a new subscriber.
Great video. This isn't a problem with just WoW... it's also many other MMOs. If someone goes "it gets fun in the endgame", I immediately uninstall. I will not sit there for hundreds of hours to have a chance to have fun. Games should be fun from the get-go.
Never played WoW but most of the concepts you present are brilliant and should be the standard for all modern MMOs and the direction old MMOs should take. Good video
WoW is still great for its smooth combat and engaging classes. But when you have an endgame like this, that caters to the dedicated players, and has too much focus on raiding, the game becomes very unattractive to everyone else. It really doesn't help that Blizz seems to care less and less about PvP and M+. I am glad I moved on from this game.
20 year-old game with a 2-second global cooldown has "smooth combat"? And "engaging classes" when the entire community agrees class design peaked 15 years ago and has never reached the same quality again? Let's not even begin talking about how the need for add-ons and lack of visual clarity completely butchers WOW combat and how the impossible-to-balance borrowed-power system make classes borked and shoe-horned beyond belief if you want to play the game in any half-decent capacity. And as the video states, if you don't, no one will want to play with you. I'm sorry but only a MMO player who has never played other games (or genres) in the past 20 years can say that.
I agree with everything in this video. But sometimes I’m surprised how players in India , China or Brazil who don’t even speak English at times (or English isn’t their first language) are able to figure it all out and be meta level. They find everything out from the internet, guides addons everything and are able to play hardcore with less time than people in developed countries and are also able to perform with the same level as some hardcore players in USA or Europe. In the end this game is a game for nerds. It will always be. Nerds love looking up guides and reading stuff and downloading and customizing addons and figuring out the meta and fastest way to grind that meta and get to the top. It’s literally a race from the start of day1 of an expansion or patch. The more guides and data they look at and learn from the faster they rise and get accolades. It’s the same as learning how to git Gud at call of duty or any good sport. You have to learn the techniques and buy the tools and gear to play that sport. Sometimes even get yourself a coach. It’s the same here. The guides and addons are like coaches and gear that you’re using to figure out the game better and perform at the best possible level. That’s the fun in the game too. I enjoy actually looking at guides and grinding the “meta”. Then I get bored in a month or two and there’s no content left I will play alts and just have fun in the game, choosing whatever non meta spec or class or legendary or covenant. I know that there are players who don’t enjoy looking up guides and want to figure things out for themselves but the game is a grinding game. If you want to enjoy the game that way you have to learn to enjoy the grind too. Or else look up a guide and grind less. If you complain the game is grindy then here’s some news for you, the game used to be even more grindier in the past. That’s the game design from day 1 , 18 years ago. If you’re still playing this game after 18 years and paying 15$ a month to grind and “figure things out” on your own and then complain about the grind then it’s your fault.
When I played WoW from '06 to '18 I probably played 16+ hrs/wk but now I would probably only be able to get 2-4 hrs/wk (the lower 10% as said in the video) despite me exploring, actually enjoying questing and doing professions. Never was able to raid much partly because of everything discussed in this video. Good job on articulating this issue.
Wht issue? WoW is pro casual as fuck. - There are tons of guides for everything - Almost Entire community already knows what to do so you can go ask anyone for help - There is LFR to beat the entire game in one run
@One above all The issue is that to be a casual raider, the work required to be raid ready takes up most (maybe all) of an average gamer's play time. Raiding is where the focus tends to be with gear and story and general experience. I have only witnessed the parts of WoW's story locked behind raids thanks to people sharing them on YT. You do bring up good points. The only time I have been able to raid was in MoP & Legion thanks to LFR. That was when I played WoW for well over the average 16 hrs/wk. Now that I have less than 8 hrs/wk available to me, I won't even bother with current content because I know I won't be able to keep up with my roughly 30-60 mins every other day available to me for WoW.
Great information. As a former WoWddict… playing ungodly amount of hrs during HS/College. I now know if I come back to classic, it will be in a solo role looking to re-capture my love for the retconned lore. Btw shout out to flying buttress for reading the books and helping me fall back in love with the lore.
I’m a returning player that was a hardcore raider during WOTLK and Cata and holy shit the games now full of so many features and dailies you HAVE to grind out that feel like borderline mobile game systems… comes off more like a choir than a game at times.
Damn I always considered myself a casual because I just didn't do mythic raiding, high keys (20+), or pvp above a 1600 rating. According to your description I'm a hardcore player. I like raiding and M+. If I wasn't doing either of those I just wouldn't be playing this game. But I think the main reason I've stayed around for so long is because I like playing with the people in my guild and others who I've met throughout the years.
I definitely think its hard to say what a casual player actually is, so take it with a grain of salt. The "Casual" experience can differ for everyone but it may just be a way of playing the game rather than actually quantifying it like i've done in the video. Regardless i think your reason for staying is 100% the same as mine, and in my personal opinion is probably the best reason to stay.
Great vid. I’m a returning player. Started during WotLK and it felt like a walk down memory lane while you listed those add-ons. It was funny when I started to raid it was actually exciting looking through the available AOs. But some of my old buds were complaining about wow and now I understand where they’re coming from. Great explanation.
you are spot on! Thank you! I just tempted to play wow again after years of being away, and its not doable anymore. I was grinding away at an elemental shaman. Once I downloaded the DPS meter, it stopped being fun. A level 12 Resto shaman beat my lvl 48 elemental shaman. I was embarrassed and realized I needed to do a whole bunch of homework to figure out what I was doing wrong. and then I said screw it. I have a life. and canceled the subscription.
That's something it always bothered me about MMOs in general, but WoW still takes the cake. Yes, they need to keep players engaged and playing for longer, so their solution is to make progress snail-paced. I understand them not wanting players to get maxed so easily, but there has to be other ways to keep players pumped with the content. Blizzard seriously needs to watch this video. I hope some of the devs do.
You forgot to touch upon the biggest thing gating casual players from enjoying the content to it's fullest AND what directly contributes to the toxic exclusion by hardcore players... AOTC. While, alone, this isn't a terrible thing. What has happened, is this has become the biggest thing hardcore players use to exclude people with actual lives from enjoying the content. I played this game for 15 years and I got sick and tired of having my time disrespected by not only the devs, but also the hardcore players that would invite people in to get AOTC only to kick them when the boss was at 10% health to keep people from getting AOTC all together. It's that toxic mindset that Blizzard has engendered and nurtured. I spared no tears when I left after Shadowlands dropped.
Part of why I have stopped playing WoW (at least for now) is the constant chase for the ever shifting meta I was expected to keep up with. Not only did it drive me generally bonkers to have to change my gear, power bonus choices, rotations, etc. every other week; the constant push being put on me to eek out that last little 0.01% more DPS/HPS started wearing on my emotional health. Also, I SUPER hate that in WoW it can easily happen that higher level gear can end up being significantly worse. This is a reason I came to loathe gear sets. I remember at the end of Legion there were specs that did significantly better wearing their ilvl 880 gear set than then ilvl 930 set.
The mountain of grindy systems that don't compliment the main gameplay loop and end up being redundant at the end of an expansion is one of the main reasons why I switched to classic. If your game starts feeling like a second full time job, then you know you have a big problem. Its even worse when they add FOMO tactics to the systems so they can give players negative reinforcement to log in and push through the slog every day.
this video is EXACTLY why wow subs have kept dropping year after year. the game gets more complex instead of more streamlined. 1) bring back the old raid system. keep LFR; get rid of heroic + mythic. just do one raid difficulty like in vanilla/BC. 2) go back to the old raid system of vanilla. you didn't need 40 GOOD players to kill the bosses. you only needed about 25-28, and once they started getting some raid gear, it was more like 18-25 players to kill bosses. the rest could do their best and help some, but if they died, the boss usually still went down anyway. this system LET CASUALS SEE RAIDS WITHOUT KILLING EVERYONE AND FEELING STRESSED AND EMBARRASSED, BECAUSE THEY AREN'T THE ONLY ONES DYING--AND THE BOSS GOES DOWN ANYWAY. 3) make ALL class specs roughly equal, like in ff14. there's no one super amazing tank, healer, or dps class. make them about equal, so people can choose a race, class, and spec based on what feels good to them and looks cool to them. get rid of this meta bullshit. 4) ff14 continues growing because it doesn't lock people out--they want you IN, they want you included, they want you having fun, they want you to have CHOICES that don't really impact your team's success or failure in any meaningful way. scholar can heal, astrologian can heal, sage can heal...they're ALL useful. all tanks and all dps are useful. play what YOU like! this is why ff14 outpaces the shit outta wow now--because ff14 gives you aesthetic choice without sacrificing gameplay, so players don't feel pressured to play a stupid ass "meta".
Was a hardcore wow raider during wrath, came back for legion, haven't touched the game since. Looked like the systems just kept getting worse and worse, as we get older it just becomes impossible to play for fun anymore. Glad you made this video and I hope blizzard realizes who their real audience is and throws us some stuff.
This is why I went to private servers or playing other games entirely. With private servers at least you can bypass a lot of the time consuming things if the server is built around letting players see content rather than being so locked into the raid mechanics that blizzard tries to push these days. I’m still curious to see how the game and story unfolds but simply don’t want to pay blizzard to play a ham strong experience takes me way too many hours .
Since classic I hated the sistem and the fact that at the end you had to play with a certain build in order to do raids etc, I prefer to do small dungeons, and now I have much more fun, also I like to explore and leveling, and now I like to collect pets ☺️ I don't have the patience and the dedication to have another job yes, it feels like work to raid and perform to meet their expectations.
Well done man. I normally don’t leave comments on RU-vid but you make some fire content. I look forward to seeing your channel grow! Keep up the quality vids 👍🏻
Yes. - I love addons. I love reading and researching as much as I do playing. I am a junkie for xp, rep, or even killing 10 boars. I pretty Insane. I played 40 hours a week when I was progression raiding (Now, that left me with plenty of time for work, sleep, and family -- so maybe I wasn't that hardcore...?). I loved most of it. - Then my life changed and I have around 16 hours, and unfortunately, there is no way this can give me a satisfying experience...so, I find myself playing other games that do. So. Yes.
While I agree.. even in vanilla, there wasn't 'casual' players when it came to raiding, "omen" "KTM threat meters" and "DBM" was created almost right after Onyxia was killed, guides were already being pumped out by the beta testers and people that figured out the best specs and gear after hitting 60. But you are right, it has been getting worst and worst and I hope Blizzard tackles this problem, or our game will slowly die from the lack of new people picking up the game. And the people that are veterans, who do play non casually, are just fed up with the meaningless grind and quit themselves. Which we have seen more and more.
I’ve been playing wow since vanilla. I am a casual player but not a idk player. I like to get on and do the story, do quests, collect things like toys and mounts, Level my professions, ect.. basically anything but raiding and mythic dungeons. And I don’t do those because they are time consuming and require too much preparation. I will use LFG to play normal stuff for the quests. I only have 4 hours max on week days, maybe 20 hours on the weekends. Currently, even I don’t have the time to do all that. I eventually fall behind. The game shouldn’t be centered around people who have the time to sit at their computer 12 hours a day. That’s just dumb. 99% of people just don’t have that amount of time to play this game. Make the subscription to where you lose your account if it’s not active for more than 6 months or something and give us our time back.
Video is spot on. Rejoined wow in 9.2.. What you have to go through in order to play any form of pvp (besides git gud) without getting recked in 0.00113 sec. by a one-shot (insert ability here). Imagine if there were something else besides ilvl that mattered.. Wonder if other games could be of inspiration?? We all love the universe, which is why we come back.. would be great if it was easier to have a blast in the game. More systems is not the way, more grind is not the way, more e-sports fairness is (definitely) not the way. I would love a game, where all that was needed to enjoy the game (in wow that would be gear mostly) was obtainable by everyone relatively simple. Like in GW2 fx. Then all the achievements, mounts, leaderboards, cooler mogs, whatever floats your boat; let's fight for that..
