Wow Wow holy shit
31,000 up boys holy shit that's a lot
dear
Blizzard Entertainment gameplay first
those are your words your founding words
and you have abandoned them I am a
grumpy 41 year old male I'm cynical and
skeptical I work in marketing and I hate
that business
it's full of bollocks and bullshit at
the core of that is the ridiculous idea
that customers want to engage with
companies and have conversations and
relationships and others such nonsense
I don't care I think for the companies
whose products I buy I don't want a
relationship with coke I don't want to
visit fan forums for tide and I will
never pay any amount of money to watch
or attend to Levis convention I just
want good products at reasonable prices
true very fucking true nobody gets the
fuck all these companies that are like
they think that making clever fucking
remarks on social media is gonna get
them to get people to like buy their
stuff because the fuck I'm not a fan of
corporations the way that I'm a fan of
the Denver Broncos
I don't yell at the TV whenever I see a
stupid McDonald's commercial like I do
whenever case Newman throws another
interception I'm not emotionally
invested in Nike or Google
I don't want whoever runs those
companies to be fired when things go
poorly the same way I think Vance Joseph
should be fired from the Broncos we've
got an agenda Andy here okay I have a
pretty good feeling this guy's not happy
with the current state of the Denver
Broncos not happy at all why is that
because I'm emotionally attached the
Broncos I love that team I cried
wherever they won Super Bowl 50 it's
irrational I know the
when lost record of a sports team has no
effect in my personal life and yet I
cheer and jeer thankfully I don't invest
myself into commodity corporations the
same way except did I do for more than
20 years Blizzard you have made games
that I love to play even the games I was
terrible at I still played I know that
feeling I'm terrible at all of them
I knew that they'd be the best that the
genre had to offer I wasn't any good at
the Starcraft games but I played them
anyway
I can only just scrape through the story
campaigns in the Warcraft series but I
played it anyway I love Diablo but I
never played in hardcore mode or pushed
I to your rifts why did I play those
games
because they were fun I also made some
good friends along the way friends that
I still play Blizzard games with but I
didn't truly love Blizzard until 2004
when I stepped foot in the dunmore oh
I'll never forget traps trap trap easing
through the snow and climbing the hill
to see iron-forged for the first time I
loved World of Warcraft and new Blizzard
ever since a canvas poster of the
original World of Warcraft box hangs on
my wall a little figure of Arthas guards
my desk in my closet Blizzard branded
t-shirts hang next to my Broncos gear
I'm not just a guy who buys boys words
products like I buy other stuff I'm a
blizzard fan I pay him watch boys con I
root for the company to succeed like I
do with the Broncos but now when I see
that poster or where one of my boys are
shirts I feel a bit like I do whenever I
watch a Broncos game I'm cheering for a
team that used to be great but just
isn't anymore I keep watching though
because that's what loyal fans do and I
keep hoping for better days
in the boyhood retrospective documentary
published in 2011 wah Mark Davidson said
it wasn't hard to let boys er do its
thing as long as it was working Blizzard
the things you were doing now are not
working maybe you know this maybe it's
causing internal power struggles at the
office and maybe you are too deep in to
see that you are no longer the company
that presided itself on gameplay first
the only reason boys are gamers exist at
all is because of great gameplay but
great gameplay is hard it takes years of
testing and iteration to get it right
it's expensive
you were always known for taking your
sweet development time soon
we were told it'll be done soon and we
knew that you were creating something
beautiful and amazing that was despite
any flaws that may exist going to be fun
soon was almost always worth the wait
but you don't make those kinds of games
anymore and I wonder if you ever will
again do you know why I logged into
world of warcraft day after day for
those first few years it wasn't because
of the 15 minute corpse runs that were
fun it wasn't so I could wait for the
warlock to farm soul shards or the
hunter to travel all the way back to the
village to buy arrows before we could
finally spend the next five hours being
lost in dire Maul it wasn't to craft
copper bars or gather rune quartz so I
could buy a cross-racial mount though I
did all of those things and many many
more it wasn't logging on to earn or buy
loot boxes
I didn't finish a dungeon and hope that
whatever the final boss dropped would
not only be the thing I wanted but also
a Titan for it into a super-powered
version of the thing that I wanted I
didn't log on so I could fill a bar
although there are plenty of bars to
fill I didn't play
so I could gather some random source of
power that would inevitably fade into
irrelevance as soon as some goblin miner
discovered a new random source of power
I didn't show up to race through done
to replace pieces of gear every other
day with gear that was marginally better
or worse than what I was wearing in fact
I think I wore the same robe for two
years during classic well I only
replaced it after Burning Crusade
released my mom did the same thing it
was called the feather moon headdress I
remember it when she does - I didn't log
on so I could tab out to third-party
websites because they were the only way
I could find out that I had the right
talents right gear and simulating
numbers at the right gear that I did
have I didn't pay $15 a month to earn a
score from a third-party website so I
could participate in the game with other
people who valued my random score over
my experience playing the game then this
is a little bit of a weak point because
the random score is derived from your
experience playing the game but okay I
played World of Warcraft because just
being in Azeroth with a few friends
who's good to know I wasn't worried
about leveling up quickly so I could
play the real game like people are today
if I set out to do some quests but got
distracted by PvP or a dungeon corpse
runs and corpse runs or exploring a zone
that was full of monsters just a bit too
powerful for my level more corpse runs
that was all right because exploring as
Ron an enormous world full of amazing
creatures and hidden things was a lot of
fun you're deluding yourself if you
think that classic World of Warcraft
will bring that all back it won't it
can't that experience can't be
replicated any more than returning to
Disneyland as an adult can recreate the
first time I visited whenever I was 10
years old those days and those games are
gone the game that we play today is not
a game at all instead world of warcraft
is a data gathering index of daily user
actions and patterns
it's a research tool to help scummy
marketing people decide what to put on
sale go big how much to charge for a fox
mount or which adverts to fill the game
launcher with you no longer see me as a
player but instead as a payer this is
this is a lot new features and Wow are
gated behind reputation bars time or
just not in the game at all yet the
Zandalari trolls were among the first
features a battle for Azeroth that were
introduced to us zandalari trolls aren't
even in the game but they will be soon
they tried to hide that exclusion behind
storytelling but it's a thin mask patch
8.1 launched on December 11th the battle
for d'asaro wore a cumbersome name won't
launch until January 22nd conveniently
just a little more than 30 days after
someone who might have read up for 8.1
started paying for your game again
arguably there's more stuff to do in WoW
than ever before and yet I don't log on
as often as I used to and worse yet I
don't look forward to playing like I
used to
mostly I log on to see if any of my
friends are playing and if maybe just
maybe we can get a few of us together to
go earn a loot box or race through a
dungeon and pretend that we're having
fun again you stop making an MMORPG
years ago instead you turned Wow into an
elaborate fantasy seem casino replicator
it's a third-person looter shooter
designed to string players out like drug
addicts looking for a fix your other
titles are just animated shopping carts
that feature minigames people can play
between opening loot boxes and that's
really sad because all blizzards games
were beautiful your artists are still
the best in the industry it's a shame
that their work is being ruined by Shady
business practices and shoddy gameplay
design why is Ian as a Costa still the
World of Warcraft game director he
bumbles through QA saying words but
nothing else under his and Jo and Brax
direction the game has become
progressively worse
Ian's sidekick Josh lore Alan the man
you hired to be the public face of World
of Warcraft called us dickbags and is
far more interested in building his
personal brand than he is with doing the
job that you pay him to do I don't want
to personally comment on them I feel
like that would be a just reading what
he's saying I can't tell if these men
are being held hostage by a company that
has broken their spirits where if they
are burned out or if they have the true
contempt for both Lao and its players
are the creative passionate people that
you so that you are so well known for
allowed to work on the design direction
of World of Warcraft or is the game
being designed by algorithms and
data-driven stat padding horseshit
people can't tell if something is fun
computers can't
we are not your enemy Blizzard we are
your loyal supporters the lukewarm
Fairweather fans are gone and they are
not coming back we are all you have left
and frankly whenever it comes to MMORPGs
you are all that we have
please stop ruining World of Warcraft
please stop designing at abound kpi's ma
use another marketing bullshit i'll play
the game if it's fun and right now it's
not fun people designing and developing
a game look tired maybe it's time for
them to move to either unannounced
products or maybe it's just time to let
them remember what gameplay first means
I don't know what's happening at
Blizzard I don't know if Activision is
flexing its management muscles I don't
know why Mike Morhaime left and I don't
know why company morale is so low I
don't know why you think it's a good
idea to put talented developers to work
on mobile products games that your
audience doesn't bother playing because
we're a middle-aged adults you just like
your founders were raised on PC games I
don't know anything about the inner
workings of this company that I have
supported for almost half my life but I
do know Blizzard games and I know that
whatever it is that you're producing
recently are not boys or games I hope
that whatever it is that's wrong with
you Blizzard can be fixed soon and fixed
soon / Ezra Whitecap the patient from
Illidan us this post here makes the most
sense that I've seen in a long long time
this is what we've been waiting for it
he still plays the game wouldn't you
point the game for 15 years you're not
just gonna quit your Opie this sums up
what's happening to Blizzard what is
this like with John's
yeah there it is I remember we watched
that before it's true it's so obvious
now that blizzard devs sit down and say
out loud at meetings
what can we invent that will make sure
people keep logging in I think that's it
play it all right I'll play it
Scully John came from PepsiCo and they
they at most would change their product
you know once every 10 years I mean to
them a new product was like a new size
bottle right so if you were then they
introduced Pepsi Zero and it tasted like
shit they introduced Pepsi Max nobody
give a fuck they introduced vanilla
Pepsi just make Pepsi like I I mean you
know what I mean drink a soda it's fine
doesn't matter listen to this guy okay
Steve Jobs for being a colossal dick bag
that he was huge asshole etc he's a
smart fucking guy he's really fucking
smart guy so I mean I'm not gonna say
anything just listen to this fucking
clip like luckily John came from PepsiCo
and they they at most would change their
product you know once every 10 years I
mean to them a new product was like a
new size bottle right so if you were a
product person you couldn't change the
course of that company very much so who
influenced the success of PepsiCo the
sales and marketing people therefore
they were the ones that got promoted and
therefore they were the ones that ran
the company well for PepsiCo that might
have been okay but it turns out the same
thing can happen in technology companies
that get it get monopolies like Oh
IBM and Xerox if you are a product
person at IBM or Xerox so you make a
better copy or a better computer so what
when you have a monopoly market share
the company's not anymore
so the people that can make the company
more successful our sales and marketing
people and they end up running the
companies and the product people get
driven out of the decision making forums
and the companies forget what it means
to make great products it's sort of the
product sensibility and the product
genius that brought them to those to
that monopolistic position gets rotted
out by people running these companies
who have no conception of a good product
versus a bad product they have no
conception of the craftsmanship that's
required to take a good idea and turn it
into a good product and they really have
no feeling in their hearts usually about
wanting to really help the customers so
that's what happened at Xerox that the
people in Xerox PARC used to call the
people that ran Xerox toner heads jeff
kaplan got hired by blizzard because he
hated ever quest he hated EverQuest so
much he made posts on the EverQuest
forums telling the developers that they
were fucking stupid there were idiots
they had no idea what they were doing
Blizzard saw that and they hired him
his name was TIG ol bitties
nobody would have hired him this day
they would have called him a sexist and
blocked him from the forums and banned
him Jeff Kaplan went on to developing
World of Warcraft he eventually left a
while and at this point I believe he's
the game director for overwatch
overwatch for all its faults and
failures is probably by far the most
successful game in its genre a lot of
people play overwatch overwatch overall
I would say is a good game I know it's
very popular to dislike overwatch
because of what they did with xqc I get
that that was a mistake I agree it's
still a great game and it's it's
literally a dead game it's not a dead
game dude like that the thousands make
millions who'll play overwatch like I
understand I ever want to pretend like
it's bad but like it's actually a good
game like well boys art here's what
happened is boys uhrin took their
contemporary new ideals and they
employed them in an industry that was
pre-existing the MOBA industry for one I
think that making a game a MOBA at that
point was a mistake for Blizzard I think
they shouldn't have done that but on top
of that they didn't create heroes to be
the good types of games that wow was and
the Diablo was for example Diablo came
out that was the a RPG period everybody
played Diablo if you wanted to play in a
RPG you played Diablo you didn't play
anything else besides that that's what
you fucking did Diablo 3 came out you
played it but you know like I got
fucking damn it I got hit by an
invisible fucking wasp again through the
wall he didn't do he fucking
beta-testing through the other axe
except for act 1 and everything was
fucking broken and then I get to inferno
and I get killed in three hits yeah
and path of exile came out everybody
moved over to that they made Wow people
don't play MMORPGs anymore people play
well that's it
who the fuck plays Team Fortress 2 no
one everybody plays overwatch
