World of Warcraft Is About To Change 

Man, it sure would've been nice if they learned things before irreversibly ruining several major characters and all of the titan lore

G'raha Tia eats a burger? Time to play Endwalker. No more waiting.

The jailers final words haunt any hope that it will be more grounded

Obviously they played FFXIV to learn from it! They could have never ripped off the ending to 3.3 to wrap up Anduin's arc in Shadowlands otherwise. And copied the Azem crystal... And make a race of ancients with the power of creation who speak in musical tones...

At the end of the day, every individual Dragonflight zone story could be a 10/10, but I don't think that would actually fix WoW's core problem: Follow-Through. WoW knows how to tell good stories, usually in zones but occasionally even in the main expansion story, their problem is that every time a new expansion comes out 99% of the game gets thrown in the trash and forgotten. The most obvious ways have been via borrowed-power, but it happens narratively too. Think about how many times you've gotten Exalted with a faction in a previous expansion only for them to show up later with a slightly different name and go "who the hell are you, Adventurer?" Until Blizzard can prove that they not only care about telling a good story, but care about CONTINUING that story, it will never have the same emotional resonance as a game like FFXIV

"Losing to XIV has changed WoW forever" Good. They need to keep losing. They need to have their smug prick noses ground into the abject failure of Shadowlands and rousing success of Endwalker. I'm probably going to go through DF in the first few weeks, might even do the first raid with my guild, but I'm not going in with any rose tinted goggles or the intent to sub for more than a couple months because I just don't have faith that it can hold my attention with worthwhile shit to do and a reason to give a damn about the characters. Dragonflight will not be a rousing success. I don't even think it's going to be a modest success. At best, it's going to be a mediocre MMO expansion, but that's all it needs to be. Blizzard needs to be shown they're not the kings anymore, and in fact they have a long way to go before people will even consider going back to them, especially aver they just repeatedly shat on the lore and player expectations in SL (Sylvanas's entire "arc," Arthas's second "death," turning one of the most iconic helms in gaming history into a quest green, ripping the Anduin ending from HW 3.3 note for note, utterly trivializing the concept of the afterlife in-universe...) Don't get me wrong, I want WoW to be good again. I want to have two stellar MMOs to play wherein some days I have to make the hard choice of "Man, do I wanna play WoW today, or XIV today?" But the WoW dev team and Blizzard as a whole, as I said, need to be taught a lesson for the years of prior transgressions against their playerbase.

WoW doesn't respect what it built. That's their biggest story problem, to me. They create interesting races, and interesting world lore, and then completely flush it down the toilet for the next expac, the new race, and new lore. They don't keep the whole of Azeroth relevant, and because they create new races and lore with every expansion, it all feels really disconnected. An example of how FFXIV succeeds where WoW fails is, the races they introduced in ARR are still relevant to what's happening later. Without spoiling anything, they never stop being relevant. It's not like in WoW where they created the Taunka, and then you never heard about them again. The FFXIV Beast Tribes still make appearances in meaningful moments even as far out as Endwalker, ten years after they made their debut in FFXIV. WoW has to figure out how to integrate what it built with what they're trying to build. If they don't, then it's just another disjointed story with some high points, but ultimately unsatisfying because it'll just get shoved to the side when the NEXT expansion comes along.

The A plot being bad is the big warning flare, because the A plot is what management has the most influence on and shows the direction where the company wants to go. So if the A plot is bad then Blizzard has learned nothing, and it will have to flop another expansion until management takes their hands off the reigns and let the people that are making side quests actually work on the main plot

Wow, it feels fresh to see Matt on the screen instead of Bellular, but it also feels natural. Matt is the perfect partner to Bellular

Good thing that they are getting better and learning. But feels a little too late. I'm not going to play dragonflight but I don't want MMO genre to suffer, so I wish all the luck to everyone who is.

This has the feeling of the sidequests/factions being done by one team, and the main plot being written by another. And that's how a game HAS to be written, when there's that much story to put in it! But it speaks of an already-discussed sort of... rot at the head of the WoW stories as of late. The B team has the humility/knowledge/creative verve to take lessons from elsewhere, but the A team is still convinced that they know what they're doing.

Remember that in wow the quest designers usually write a lot of the backstory details instead of the writers. The writers do the overarching narrative and the general themes of the factions etc. Side quests in wow usually feel pretty nice because they are the product where the individual designer has a lot of freedom.

If they learned from final fantasy xiv thats great, final fantasy xiv learned from them when the game was... you know... actually good

They definitely do need more scripted difficult encounters for capstone enemies at the end of quest lines etc. They have this fear that some percentage of the player base won't be able to complete them, but that will just lead to people asking for help and more community building. Being able to pop your cooldowns and delete the "big bad" in 4 seconds is a joke and always feels bad.

Tragically the actual 'world' of WoW was it's main attraction to me. Trying to improve it means nothing since I already loved it. It was all the things around it that were and are STILL ruining it that drove me away. I know all the work into introducing and getting to know these characters means literally nothing, because they'll never be referenced again outside of maybe showing up as a quest giver next expansion or dying for cheap pathos. The game will focus on 'the pillars' of raids, m+, and pvp and vomit out plot points I can no longer care about.

I think it's WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too early to be talking about story right now. People felt the exact same thing with BfA, and we all saw how that story turned out. There's still way too many unknowns.

Context for the player's existence in the world is so much more important than you'd think. Being just a little bit of entity within the world gives the other characters someone to bounce off of, making them feel more alive. Instead of thinking in terms of "I like this character because they did X" you're given the opportunity to think "I like this character because of who they are to me, personally." The latter is SO much stronger - not just from a narrative standpoint, but from a marketing and player retention standpoint as well. This is why there's at least one FFXIV character trending on twitter every single day of the week.

Hey, I guess any good changes are a win. I am most curious about how their post launch patches release schedule and content diversity will look like. What will they bring with each patch - anything everlasting to the game or something exclusively addon-wide.

It's not enough to stop sucking. it's not even enough to be good. It has to actually be better than the competition to convince players to return. The die hards will relapse and that will buy them time but in the long term it needs to run, not walk, up that hill.

+1 honestly love the more longform videos :D

This reminds me of the Sonic cycle. It's this time. It's this expansion that will be good. I very much doubt that. The group loot being forced is just them showing that again.

The game has made me too cynical, because the expansion intro quests and leveling experience are almost always great (admittedly, the SL intro was bad and gave me my first doubts about the expansion itself) but it all falls apart once you hit max level. So I just take the positivity in this video to mean the same trick is gonna be played on us again.

Fun thought I had. I liked your delivery. It felt unscripted and engaging. Compared to Bellulars reading off a teleprompter style, it had a warmth and heartfelt desire to tell us your story of your experience. I’ll admit I’m a hopium addict, but I appreciate your take on the story. I think bellular could do taking up your style as much as wow could use learning from ff style of doing stories.

Agreed about the intro stuff where you speak to all of the different NPCs to begin the adventure to DF. Was a lot more fun than I expected it to be for how simple it was.

fresh cut, looking good

From what I've been reading and hearing (thanks in part to these channels) is that Dragonflight seems to be a step in the right direction. These first steps might be shaky at first because of lack of confidence but I hope that Blizzard eventually finds their stride and improves moving forward.

I feel like atmosphere is the most important thing for wow or it’s what they do best. I can still remember that really distinct magical feeling of loading into azeroth for the first time on each race and just being spellbound whether you're human or elf or orc

If WoW still did quests like the Crusader Bridenbrad and Runas the Shamed ones it would be good first step. But they should do *a lot* more than that.

I watched this to it's end and his plead to blizzard to fix the main is actually crazy how it resonates with all of us. We all hope they make a good or great xpac...but he shows the emotion we all feel.

I've always felt the minor stories in WoW quests have been spectacular and the falloff is always in the major plot of a particular expansion.

Nice haircut bro it looks much better 👍🏽

Something important I think you forgot: I wonder if the story of Dragonflight will "be over" on launch. Similar to FF MSQ, the initial story was resolved on launch and the subsequent patches resolve some things and pave a road to something new. Shadowlands taking an entire expansion to resolve is absolutely something that shouldn't happen ever again. Shadowlands was clowned on not only because the story was bad, but also because it was drip-fed in an extremely unsatisfying way.

just noticed the action bar set up 1 shift 1 ctrl 1 all stacked upon really how I do it. screw blank spots of modded keys you don’t wanna press

I always find it interesting when ff14 had combat tension it's NEVER about the WoL. In ShB your agency was about controlling the abundance of light before it consumed you. If there was any pivotal moment of of combat where a significant loss happened. You. Weren't. There. Or were on the way. In ARR you were pulled by the nose to other places to find bread crumbs because if you were present. It would be different.

Nice haircut, Matt. 👍

I honestly know nobody who play WoW for its story, at least not any more. They just want to get throught the leveling process as quick as possible and focus their energy on m+ and raiding. I'm glad I left that behind a year ago. Now I'm a casual in FF XIV and I enjoy playing an MMORPG or RPGMMO again;)

They should learn from Shadowbringers especially. The Expansion that solidified FF14.

I find it sad that the last time I felt absolutely enthralled and captivated by a zone was Drustvar.

Favorite video you guys have posted in a bit. No big spoilers, good takes, measured. Not doomer, not copium. Really excited for a slower pacing and some character coming back to the world.

As a massive lore fan, atp i dont even care if the main plot is bad. I just want the game itself to be fun to play. Its sad my expectations and wants have been lowered that bad but I just want this game to be fun again.

Obviously they're a villain because Tempest Keep was merely a setback. It all boils down to that. ...I'll see myself out. 🤣

Buy a $4 extension cord for that lamp behind your head. And then snake that cord up a bookshelf leg and secure with some velcro cable ties. Such an eyesore. 🤣

Its so funny that side content in WoW is more fun than their actuall big deal... I had tons of fun leveling and question in Drustvar and I was super disappointed that there was zero continuation. Its not helping at all that we are used to nothing else from Blizz: they start strong and then they drop the ball.

WoW's problem at this point is so much bigger than improving their storytelling. Don't get me wrong it needs huge improvements there and huge improvements will help but whereas 14 built a solid foundation and then continued building up, WoW mined out it's foundation... and kept blasting. The world is irrevocably warped, and no matter how well they display what they've come up with, the mess behind it all is... It's like trying to host a primo comedy show... at Auschwitz. Absolutely nothing is going to take my attention away from what came before. And I'm pretty sure nothing should.

I enjoy that there is a dragon cheesemonger.

I’ve been playing beta myself these past couple of days. Playing Evoker, dragon riding, doing leather working and skinning, ignoring the campaign, and honestly thoroughly enjoyed it! Can’t wait for it to go live.

Matt looking good with that new haircut. Glad to see you're enjoying some bits of WoW DF. I've tried to come back and just can't seem to muster the desire to continue. Couldn't put my finger on why exactly. Maybe when DF is out.

The quest and dialogue box is so 2004 though.

You're talk about the state of the villains reminded me of the first time I went through Bastion in Shadowlands. Learning about the Forsworn and their not wanting to give up their memories, their very being, and the Kyrian seeing that as a bad thing. I honestly connected more with the Forsworn at that point and they could have easily made them into a very sympathetic group of villains with a lot of great narratives to explore concerning the nature of self vs blind duty. But it never happened and they too were just relagated to stock baddy roles there just for us to kill en masse. It was such a major disapointment.

Say what you will about WoD, but the Garrison system was so fantastic for a lot of what you early points in the video are about. It really gave a good sense of "these are real characters" instead of "click polygonal humanoid, get quest, never think about them again." Even still, FFXIV does this so flawlessly, so I hope to get at least a little more of it in wow. And if people want to zoom and ignore it, that's fine too, but as an RPG fan, I love this stuff.

I just started to play the Beta, I hope they change alot of things before release.

Looks neat so far. Now if only they would add controller support for increased accessibility...

Azeroth auto pilot was my favorite leveling add on for a reason

Has WoW changed? Do quest givers still walk away while you're trying to read the quest closing the quest window?

You really like that G'raha eating a burger scene, huh 😆

I really appreciate how we are expecting more out of Blizzard now. The bar has been set higher, so let's give good constructive criticism like this so they can achieve those heights we know they can. At the end of the day, we are all humans and capable of tremendous things.

I dont want wow story to be any similiar to ff14 and especially that heavy.

Nice this feels like the first video I have seen with matt like this. I like it. Love the content everyone at the team keep up the great work

Everything I've seen so far has done nothing to alleviate my apprehension with regard to DF's story. It's just another case of the big name characters having a story, and we do all the chores and running around. Alexstrasza is going to be having an adventure. Wrathion is going to be having an adventure. We're just riding along while they decide what happens and what *we* do.

The perfect game would be the combat engine from WoW but everything else from FF14.

Great haircut Matt. Looks really nice.

Regarding “tonal shifts,” keep in mind sometimes that is done intentionally in order to make the reader think “that didn’t make any sense.” It’s not always just “bad storytelling.”

They haven't learned enough. I'm unable to play through as a new or returning player to catch up on the story. Instead you're just rammed into the latest xpac of content

I love this dude. Always spot on with the content

I like that something he says is the same idea as something from Jade Forest in MoP is also something he says they learned from FF. As if they couldn't have said "we need to look at the stuff from our past that people still say worked" and learned from that. Nope, gotta be they're just aping squenix

omg matt has a channel!! i never knew! SUBBED BROTHERRRRRRRRRRRR

I genuinely love Matt videos, he has such a good manner of speaking its such a good listen.

Nah, they're gonna find a way to fuck up Dragonflight.

I'll save my judgment after the release. Still very skeptical but hopeful. Would love to have a reason to try WoW again.

this actually made me sad. That it took this many years... As someone who has loved warcraft since my childhood.. all ive wanted... is this... but on a wider scale. A reason to continue to care. I dont care about "Activities" i care about being given a reason to love the world.

It's almost inspiring to see how people still have faith in Blizz. I hope it all works out. I don't believe it will, but I hope it does.

Ultimately any story improvement they could make is immediately nulled and void the nanosecond you think about the Shadowlands existing. There are no real consequences anymore.

Strange (but welcome) seeing Matt talking to us from the couch.

If Blizzard wants to have people invested in the story arcs, they need to wiping the slate clean every expansion. There are only so many times you can go from "who's that guy" to "well met, champion, time to safe the world" only to go back to square one for each new expansion. I know why they do it, so that new players don't feel forced to read up on 15 years of lore, but they are sacrificing emotional impact and long term investment a player could have in the story arcs and their own characters. FF14 achieves that by keeping around a consistent cast comrades. WoW does not need to mimic FF14 and frankly, I am content with each being their own thing, but having a rotating set of NPC that your characters meets and interacts(!) with regulary could go a long way. And not the big wigs, like Jaina or Thrall. The SI:7 squad from MoP was great, I would have loved to have them at my side during BfA along with newly introduced friends like Fairwind.

You guys keep saying Blizzard is learning but every business choice is terrible and they still suffer from many design philosophy flaws that haven't changed at all

Great video Evan. Thank you

Thing is I know a lot of people, who think everything you're saying is shit. They want nothing to do with it. Quote: "Keep that shit out of WoW" and "No one cares about the story/lore/character" The more intelligent among them will simply state that they don't care and just grind out levels to max and get ready for endgame, though they will complain about any story/lore that gets in the way of bis. The least intelligent however complain, loudly, in forum's that it's taking away development time from dungeons/pvp/raids/etc.

Man you look so good in this video

I'm just glad that I didn't preorder it or continue my sub... I knew they'd find a way to steal defeat from the jaws of victory.

Loving your new haircut bro!

Yo Matt, haircut looks great on you :)

Pre-judging the story already when most cutscenes and cinematics are not even out yet. As well as the voice acting stuff.

Not going to lie, I was with the usual "uh huh okay", then I saw they brought back good ol' Thaelin Darkanvil. If WoW ever got to the point to just have a static party that the player character interacts with, I'd hope he would be part of the Alliance side of it.

"The tiktok generation" not all of us in this age group like tiktok lol. Most of those poor sods were taught not to think twice about corperate bs by their parents anyway.

Matt on the couch, yeah boi!

I'm glad they're willing to try things to improve the gameplay but I have to ask, is the wow community ready for this? In 14 the reason story works is because we as the player base are willing to go through the story, Actually what I should say is we WANT to hear the story and experience it. If the tried and true method of wow is to grab a handful of quests skip dialog and just burn through them all, will they be patient enough to let the story immerse them into the world they're trying to live in?

WHER IS THE GW2 UPDATE!!! it's been 4 months

One thing I don't agree with on matt but also sort've don't like about FF14 is that the FF14 characters rather sit on their hands a vast majority of the time UNTIL you show up and then they do it on screen with you. So they largely don't do anything on their own unless it's to learn something and tell you about an issue they need you to do. The world and the story often come to a HALT until the warrior of light helps them and I'm not particularly fond of that writing. WoW has done that a lot lately too but not as bad to me. I would definitely prefer that we maybe get visions or quests where we become illidan /khagar etc to see the events of the story like those scenarios rather than our character just there pushing the story along. Also, I agree with the character getting a voice. I rather enjoy that. GW2 has that and I enjoy that sort've storytelling even if I don't like the game's story that much. Atmosphere and immersion are my favorite key ingredients in storytelling for me. Without them, I don't care as much. I'll forget the names of who i have to do things with and events. I do that often with FF14. All we do is focus the main cast with bits of the others. I just can't get that invested since I don't get immersed in the world. I'm only left to care about the main "team" that goes with me.

In my experience, it feels worse if you make a big show of caring about things then don't deliver, than if you say up front you don't care... cause of expectations

My man looking sharp, GG

I can't WAIT to see what glorious heroic NPC will replace Sylvanas Windrunners Protagonist role. Ugh

2:34 AD Over

I never minded WoW's plot - I've just always hated RNG in the loot system and class/spec/account restrictions (like covenants at the beginning of Shadowlands)

this is just part one there will prob be .2,.3,.4.5..so they are just introduces us to this new land. season 1,season 2 season 3.. they will be in future patches ..to continue the story.. there doing it in bits and pieces

There seems to be some confusion 1. If Blizz starts making the next expansion at the lunch of the current one.. they would be working on DF at the start of SL. 2. If there is a mass Exodus DURING SL, they would already have been working on DF. If those two points are correct. To "learn from an expansion", wouldn't it have had to be "learned" in BFA, since they were making SL during BFA, and they were making DF in SL. So the lessons learned from SL would be in the 11.0 expansion (in theory)

Sounds like they really have gone back (good) to early WoW; quests sound much better - slower pace, excellent! You "talked" me into FF14 Matt, I like it and agree with your comparison. The story telling is just so much better in FF14, WoW needs to catch up. I think I will play WoW again. Thank you for your critique.

Imagine if matt had like just went "no, they learned nothing" and just screamed for 9 minutes.

Well, as long as its better even a little then its good, though i'm very sure those who still play the game will ignore it or even aknowledge it at all, couse its just in the way in getting to endgame. besides, its WAY to late in my opinion for them to suddenly get good at it, they should have done this 4 years ago if only to avoid Shadowlands entirely.

Uh?! Your hair...it's perfect!!!

WoW might trying but after kicking out half the talent, with the other half running away means they can try all they want but will never be anywhere near as good And they’re going up against a guy who has gotten this right from day one. He managed to turn the most annoying a little shit in the world then I just wanted to murder during the bloody banquet to a genuine leader that I went to the end of the universe with, literally. Wow can put up all the pretty colors it wants to but it will never be final fantasy 14