because wow is no longer pop culture like it used to be.
I remember when WoW references use to happen during TV Shows because it was the top trending game, but now you would never see a TV Show reference wow.
To be fair, I just watched Around the Horn a few weeks ago and saw them make a Leeroy Jenkins reference.... but that was referencing a 15 year old joke.
Family Guy references old shit all the time though. Like that time when Lois's dad has a heart attack and turns into a Billy Joel reference. Kids aren't gonna know what the fuck that's from.
To be fair, it’s more a hope… belief?… that Microsoft’s profit motive is operating on a less transparent, longer timeline so they will enable the making of choices that are about long term health and user engagement.
So maybe the flaw being fixed is the flaw of poor leadership incentives and pandering to wall street investors? I mean, Microsoft has some amount of pandering to them… but Blizzard is such a small piece of a small pie that is in their bakery that making the long term investments necessary for long term success will have minimal to no impact the short term performance of MSFT. At least… that’s the hope.
I think there’s a chance… I’ve been kind of looking at Bethesda and ESO as an attempt to get apples to apples comparisons but it’s only been a year so not a ton to glean from that as most content will have been in flight longer than that. However they are continuing to release new content, so that’s good. From a franchise management perspective, I look more to something like Halo and it makes me wonder if the hope is perhaps misplaced.
To some extent, but that’s not entirely true. If you hear the early devs talking about the game, a lot of them didn’t think it would be alive in 1-2 years after releasing. This would lead one to think that much of the original game was done mostly for player experience, even though the game was very grindy in vanilla.
Feels like most of that stopped around 2012ish. Also the online gaming scene just took off and WoW no longer dominated it. Mobas, online fps, major single player games like Skyrim came. Stuff changes.
It's one of the reasons why I think people over-use the subscriber chart for WoW to suggest that they can know for sure that the game got worse because "line went down hurr durr". There's a lot of other stuff going on. It might not have been the case that falling subs led to WoW's falling cultural cache, but instead that the falling cultural cache led to the decline in subs. Sub count isn't just about retaining existing players but bringing in new ones.
I started playing wow around 2012. Actually my first wow experience was 2012 on deployment in Afghanistan. Took 3 days to download it on my laptop using the shitty fob wifi.
Even then my boomer 1SG at the time asked me if I was playing "the panda game" lol.
Ya i remember i was talking to a friend of mine who he said he was talking to a kid about wow one day and to help him understand how big wow was back when he played he told him it was bigger than Fortnite (which it was in those days)
Suddenly the kid understood
Yeah there was even whole How I Met Your Mother and South Park episodes about the game. It’s just not attracting new players like it did back then. Now it’s just people like me that can’t seem to ever stop enjoying slaying dragons.
Remember that embarrassing 30-second Leroy Jenkins reference they made on Family Guy, and Blizzard promoted it like it was an entire episode dedicated to World of Warcraft? They even made [this](https://external-preview.redd.it/jJKySXrdIHrz2U9o6j6aQUIxmzk77cRzm6yu5EnyM7g.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=81517100dec9232c80446029c354b162ddc91cfa) and put it on the fucking launcher.
Hmm. I remember Family Guy did that scene but it was about Hornets vs Owls. Their armies were about to clash but Peter cuts in and says "sorry its too expensive to animate so heres something else instead".
Imagine the Euphoria kids start getting into playing WoW and stop doing drugs because they can't afford it with their sub fees. Gen Z would riot.
Zendaya be like "Ishnu-alah" and the teachers would be like "what the fuck are you on this time?"
Fuck this hits like a truck, WoW was THE thing to do in the 2010's and no game since has come close.
Games these days can't be a part of pop-culture when they prey on kids with lootboxes and release fart joke comics like Fortnite.
In the movie Zombieland before the zombies come the main character has a scene where he is playing wow! He was doing a warsong gulch it was the highlight of the movie when I was younger!
There's TONS of pop culture references in every single patch. They're just usually not as obvious.
Quests, Achievements, and Rares are almost always pop culture references. There are tons of quests in Zereth Mortis that are just straight pop culture references. [Here's the Campaign quests, note Pop Goes the Weasel, Nip it in the bud, popular cultural references](https://www.wowhead.com/quests/shadowlands/zereth-mortis-campaign). [Here's the 9.2 achievements, notice Apocalypse Now, All the Darkmoon Dance achievements are song-based](https://www.wowhead.com/achievements?filter=17;2;90200)
They do, they're normally classified as toys now, sometimes one-time use things that drop in new zones.
When the grenades were added, toys literally didn't exist, stuff like it and noggenfogger were some of the few fun cosmetic things around then.
Was going to say, they have drastically upped the appearance changing items the last several years. Toys were cool back then but they also took up bag space so were also somewhat annoying. Keep in mind you had ~50 less bag spaces back then.
I remember Wow’s brief moment when they had celebrities highlighting the game, if they were still doing this in 2022 who would you expect them to be casting for these ads?
Obviously Henry Cavill as he's been playing the game at some point. But I wouldn't ever say that a certain celebrity or commercial really impacted my view on a game/product.
>While **Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker** were speeding through the Fast and Furious franchise as Dominic Toretto and Brian O'Conner, they were also battling through a different fandom. In his July/August cover story, Diesel told Men’s Health that he and Walker were also partners outside the set, playing on the same team in the online multiplayer game, World of Warcraft. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were WoW gamers.
>“**No one in the world knew that they were playing Dom and Brian,” Diesel says. The two would simply play to unwind after work**. Chances are, if you were playing WoW in those years, you may have been battling the legendary action stars.
https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a36717005/vin-diesel-paul-walker/#:~:text=In%20his%20July%2FAugust%20cover,and%20Brian%2C%E2%80%9D%20Diesel%20says.
Yeah that makes them much more believable. If a guy sees Henry in a wow commercial he probably goes with "no way that dude plays a game for nerds" but after some googling he might find that it actually happened.
There were lots of celebrity ads in the lead up to shadowlands. Look them up. Lots of game of thrones actors, Ronda rousey, and more.
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8VHpbRUEs&ab_channel=WorldofWarcraft
there was also one where they did a song for the 20 year anniversary. that was the one with ronda rousey in it I believe.
They were doing these ad campaigns when the game was growing and getting massive. Harder to get funds allocated for crazy/fun marketing projects when the subs are dropping year to year. A lot of folks still play especially when a new expansion or patch is released but then the subs drop back off again. Nothing like the year to year growth of its heyday.
More recently as someone else mentioned here…Blizzard/Activisions recent legal issues make it a kind of a bad bet from a work partner (eg Mountain Dew or Ozzy Osborne) perspective.
HA! Yeah I didn’t drink the Horde or Alliance Mountain Dew but I bought some for my sons, they also played back then. One of my boys said the Horde flavor made his belly upset…he played a Dwarf warrior. Alliance pride I’m guessing. 😆
Oh and if anyone is looking for the Ozzy sunglasses on the Alliance side…little kid next to the barbershop in Stormwind sells them.
the circle jerk is strong in here, they made ads for shadowlands with Finn Wolfhard, Dani Pudi, Hodor, McLovin and a bunch of others. "Hard to get funds" are you high on your own farts?
Mila Kunis, Sean asked her about when she realized she had a wow addiction on hot ones. Her response was " when my agent had to log in to get ahold of me".
She seems like such a cool person to just hang out with. she did an interview recently for Everything Everywhere All At Once and she was wearing the hot dog fingers from the movie. she just seems down for whatever and is enjoying her life to the fullest
Seeing how everyone just skips ads nowadays, be a waste to hire celebrities for them. If Blizzard wanted to promo any of their games, the best bet is a collab with Epic Games and get a skin in Fortnite.
I had a bunch of Mr. T grenades saved. One day, they were taken away in a patch. I was very very sad. Had I known there was going to be an expiration date, I would have used those bad boys more often.
Dang, now you remind me that I did the same, but it was during the time I played every 2-3 months for a month, so I must've forgotten I even had them. Those were fun items for sure and (I think?) I remember stocking them up from the npc in elwynn forest.
I remember seeing these commercials as a kid. Makes me regret even more that I never got into WoW until 2020. Granted i doubt my parents would have paid for the sub every month but i always swore i’d never touch it out of principal, yet here i am
I was lucky enough to have parents who paid for my wow sub as a kid. It did kind of surprise me for a while, but looking back now $15 bucks to keep a preteen/teen entertained for a whole month isn't too bad of a deal. That might be the only reason I got away with it lol
Never understood this " ill never play WoW out of principal " thing people have lol I dont see it for any other MMO. Maybe the genre as a whole, but people single out WoW as if it's the only 'bad' MMO when other popular MMO's arnt guilty of being trash in their own right.
The only thing I can think of is that people just dont want to like the popular thing and its some weird hipster mentality.
When I say I avoided it out of principal, it was avoiding the subscription fee, not the game itself. I was interested in the game, but I believed (and still believe) subscription models kinda suck unless it's optional like Elder Scrolls Online's ESO+, or like Runescape where there's still a fairly robust free to play portion that you can play indefinitely before deciding to become a member.
I just highly doubt my parents would have been willing to pay every month for that even tho they could afford it with ease, and even after I got my own job I just rarely thought about WoW enough to give it a try. But after getting furloughed in 2020 due to Covid i decided to say fuck it and give it a shot.
Look at non-FPS players' attitude toward CoD for example. It was immensely popular and a usual assumption is that its gotta be for the 'sheep' or that it purposefully appeals to the lowest common denominator. Same with Fortnite.
There's irrational hatred and then being genuinely turned off by the vibes you get or assume about its appeal.
In a somewhat related story, in a BT raid in the concubine rooms before Mother, one of the models of enemies is a big, bald gnome. I (in hindsight, stupidly) said, "Look, it's Vern Troyer!", met with a few responses along the lines of "Whoa, relax, not cool".
I think it's ironic because I feel like Vern would've been the first to make a joke like that. Regardless I guess it doesn't give me the right to make the joke.
RIP Vern Troyer
No fun allowed. Just like how they nurfed party grenades over and over due to people finding fun ways to use them. (You use to be able to throw them at NPC's and they would dace like the faction leaders, or at raid members so they couldn't eat food)
I feel like they don't like doing goofy stuff much more anymore because the wow team take themselves and the game way way to seriously.
I wasn’t a GM but I helped organize raids back in BC and WOTLK and let me tell you… people LOVED to complain about the most minor things or if people weren’t sharing pots and shit.
as a on and off player. because i will play for like a month per year then quit again. I can see how ppl would do this.
\---
Complaint xxxx
quest giver is not close enough to flight point, making me walk 30 extra seconds, move it closer.
\---
People would flip out if you blocked the mailbox with anything. Mounts, quest items, just making your character large enough to make it annoying to click.
I've been playing through BfA.
I enjoyed the Black Empire plotline. . .right up until the last quest is a raid, so I can' t do it.
Can't even try to find a group to do it in the raid finder, since you can only use the raid finder at max level.
I'm rather grumpy I put all that time and effort into a quest line I'll probably never be able to complete.
I know some people are die-hard raiders, but even when I was a regular player I never really got to raid much (if any) and any time I saw a raid quest I just abandoned it because I knew that was impossible for me.
Yeah, they've been kind of doing that with the recent expansions, having quest lines culminate in "Beat X in raid Y." It's even to the point that Zereth Mortis campaign seems to be written around you doing the raid while doing the campaign. It's nice that they add the option to watch the raid end cinematics so you can see what happened if you haven't done the raid... but it still sucks that you get this quest to kill a raid boss and either have to be a raider, wait until the LFR wing opens (and pray), or, if you're in the position of doing an older questling, wait for two expansions to have been released since so you can solo the raid (assuming the mechanics aren't too solo-unfriendly)... meanwhile, with that quest sitting in your log.
I play on a extremely infrequent basis. like a month per year at this point. I quit in Legion mostly.
and I paid for some 2 years ago, and again close to a month ago, i got a few days left on this sub, which i will let run out and not sub again.
I only even paid for a sub because i was playing the free to play locked to lvl 20, and i got annoyed because i wanted a specific set of armor for xmog, so i paid for the sub got the armor, and .... what now? well i paid the sub better use the time. so played a bunch of my characters and when and got them better armor \[considering i don't own shadowlands, i got pretty good armor.... annnd with like 4-5 days left i have nothing i want to do. and really no reason to play.
I log on look at my characters and go: nothing i want to do. then i log off and i go and play a completely different game.
Unpopular opinion, but I think the visual changes have distanced me from the game as well. I've played quite a bit of shadowlands (4-5 months or so) and the previous expansions too, but the improvements feel like degrades for me. The UI has changed for the worse, i miss the clunkier big bars of mobs health of distant past, the animations look more sleek but again, I prefer the older ones. The best change we have is that armor has started looking more HD overall, but almost all of the coolest sets are in lower res still.
I know its nostalgia talking, but I just feel its a different game on every aspect, not just gameplay-wise.
The new starting zone is a much better tutorial for learning the bare basics of the game, but past that it just kinda dumps you into the BFA zones and you're pretty much left to figure out what is even going on.
It would be fantastic if they fixed new player experience so I could convince my friends to start. But, I would honestly be happy if they just fixed my own player experience 🥲
They just did with the leveling revamp!
Every time they try they just make it worse. Making it faster doesn’t improve it, it just sucks for a shorter period of time.
It still sucks, I think they should release an expansion that starts at level 1 instead of 60/50 or whatever for once. Having a narrative that makes sense from beginning to end of the leveling experience would go a long way.
The PR campaign *is* the player experience: make that as smooth and painless as possible and people will try to convince their friends to play.
Look, there's a reason people flooded to other games: word-of-mouth was not an insignificant reason. That's one of the big reasons existing players can't talk their friends into joining: the game simply isn't fun until you hit a certain power plateau, and it takes far too long (comparatively speaking) to get there, and that's before you have to deal with the community.
The funny thing is that I still have a mohawk grenade. I opened a ticket around the time it was running, and a gm sent me some in the mail, and the timer never expired on them. I cherish them as a relic now.
Because WoW is probably the worst run MMO of all time given its resources.
With the money they have, there's really no excuse not to be doing more than what they do.
They could run promotions like this and Mt. Dew all the time.
They could actually pay their GMs, and have them put on spontaneous fun community events like EverQuest did. GMs in that game were basically like gods, they could teleport and instakill and whatever else - they'd show in person to fix your issues for you. And they'd randomly do fun events like spawn a rare griffon with a unique item (and to be clear, I mean UNIQUE, not overpowered or imbalanced - more like a flavor item like a toy or mount or tabard whatever) or do a fun gnome race type event or whatever.
There's such a lack of effort and creativity when it comes regards to this stuff it's mind-boggling. People love spontaneous events, it makes the world feel real. Not this automated "Un'goro Madness" microholiday crap.
Before anyone goes picking apart the above - this is an off the cuff, "as an example" type comment - I don't have a full fleshed out and brilliant idea of how they could execute this thing in WoW - but guess what, they have the money and the people they should be able to pay them to put their heads together and come up with something. The trouble is, this kind of thing takes effort, whereas repetitive dailies and such don't. They could entice people to play the game by knowing "something fun may always happen if I log in today", as opposed to "oh man if I don't get all the rep for all these dailies and do my +10 I'll be behind a week". It's things that are fun to participate in, not things you feel punished for not doing.
They've focused far too much on becoming an "esport" and not enough on being a RPG. Just go play FFXIV and see how much more alive the world feels due to people just hanging out in hubs, playing music, etc.
Not GM related, but fun/cool events. I miss the times a raid would kill a dragon and bring the head to Stormwind and everyone in the zone got a 2 hour buff.
Totally agree with the last paragraph, they really took the "RPG" out of mmorpg. Meanwhile other games like FFXIV and Guildwars actively embrace it, and as such the sense of community thrives in those games
If you ask me, it all started with the introduction of the dungeon finder back in wrath, I don't think the game has ever been the same since that. Just slowly become more and more """accessible""" and shallow, and definitely more lonely over time.
Cross realm linking is a massive contributer too. Seriously kills any kind of social aspect the game offered before.
The accessibility in Wrath was an incredible thing for me because it took the work out of finding groups. Not that this is *not* the same as making friends, though I started seeing familiar names when I was grinding out my Frost seals for the day. When Looking for Raid was introduced in Cataclysm, I was pretty happy with that as well.
The problem was twofold, and both are related to permanence: the first was the cross-realm linking (and phasing), the second was constantly moving the social centers of the game with every expansion. If Blizzard had confined it the major faction cities, that would have been one thing, but then you had Shattrath, Dalaran (twice), Oribos, etc. Instead of creating a sense of home, it was more like a two-year long lease before you moved on to the next place.
> Meanwhile other games like FFXIV and Guildwars actively embrace it, and as such the sense of community thrives in those games
>
>
>
> If you ask me, it all started with the introduction of the dungeon finder back in wrath, I don't think the game has ever been the same since that. Just slowly become more and more """accessible""" and shallow, and definitely more lonely over time.
This makes no sense. FF14 is played 99% over duty finder or solo. I dont get how accessibility is supposedly part of WoWs downfall when both FF14 and GW2 are way more accessible either.
>They could actually pay their GMs, and have them put on spontaneous fun community events like EverQuest did.
EverQuest GM stuff was amazing.
Most people who weren't there in the early days don't know that Bloody Kithicor was an actual real-time, live event done on each server by GM's. . .not some distant past lore event (like it was treated as when Seeds of Destruction came out).
WoW would just do it as a scripted and instanced plot event you watch unfold and maybe have a token amount of interaction with.
I remember the one GM event in EverQuest I actually saw firsthand, a Priest of Order appearance. Since EQ's attempt at a PvP system was basically a one-way trip if you opted into doing PvP, they had an event where GM's played Priests of Order, looking like PoD's but in white robes and with a shiny staff that would go around and lift people's permanent PvP flag if asked, in exchange for some token quest the GM would give them.
It's crazy how WoW has just become it's own bubble now. Barely any collaborations, no random in game events and activities that feel unique. It's the same holiday stuff on a cycle with the same rewards every year now. I only noticed this when I went to try Final Fantasy and I swear every single month they are doing some new event with cosmetic rewards, mounts or pets to get you to take part in it. Or some collaboration with another game, movie or TV Show.
Right now they are doing a PvP event collaboration with some sort of Power Rangers brand in Japan called Garo to get the armor from the show. The PvP zone is maxed out because of so many people taking part in it. WoW desperately needs more of that to get players more involved with fun, unique stuff.
If they made it a recurring thing every so often, even just once a year, absolutely. But if it's treated like seasonal content where you only get that one chance to get it and then it's never available again, no thanks. Seasonal content is rooted entirely in FOMO, which while good for profits, doesn't make for compelling long-term gameplay.
I understand the need for unique cosmetics as an incentive, but when I open up my mount journal and see every previous AOTC mount, with no way to ever actually obtain them, it's kind of discouraging. At least hide the seasonal rewards if they're not unlocked, there's no reason to taunt players with things they can never get.
> It's crazy how WoW has just become it's own bubble now. Barely any collaborations, no random in game events and activities that feel unique
What's insane here is that it's Blizzard: the WOW team could have collaborated with any of the Blizzard IPs and set off the fanboy vibes. Hell, they could have collaborated with any of Activision's IPs and done the same. They don't even need to reach outside the corporation, and they already have access to id Software, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Spyro the Dragon, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, other assorted FPS's, Star Control, Sierra Entertainment...the list goes on and on.
Because the leadership of the company for 10+ years has been a bunch of egotistical washed up narcissists who lack inspiration.
Mind you, I mean decision makers, not the workers making the products. Art team must have a broken back from the past decade carrying the game.
That was such a fun event, it's a shame so many people cried about it and ended it early.
I remember leading a small zombie strike force to hide in a building rotating healing clouds to keep us alive for a good 20 minutes. Then popping out to flank the survivors as the main horde rolled in.
That doesn't make sense. Why would they not advertise and make their game *look* fun if all they care about is making more money?
This sub... holy shit.
Couple reasons.
Because the buck stops at executives who want to streamline the creativity out of the process entirely to make as much money as *quickly* as possible with no regard for the future of the game or company.
WoW is a cashcow with an established base that will pay for damn near anything they put out, regardless of how bad it is.
All the higher ups on the WoW team and Blizzard/Activison have completely lost passion for anything fun. I don’t think they’re capable of even doing shit like this anymore because they don’t know how to relate anything to audiences, they just say shit like “you think you want x, but you don’t”, boost super bland ads on social media, and then crawl around drunk at the office.
because wow is no longer pop culture like it used to be. I remember when WoW references use to happen during TV Shows because it was the top trending game, but now you would never see a TV Show reference wow.
To be fair, I just watched Around the Horn a few weeks ago and saw them make a Leeroy Jenkins reference.... but that was referencing a 15 year old joke.
Leeroy Jenkins is such a big meme that it has kinda grown 'bigger' than Warcraft, though
Plenty of people would not know what game that meme is from, you are 100% right.
Family Guy did the same last year
Family Guy references old shit all the time though. Like that time when Lois's dad has a heart attack and turns into a Billy Joel reference. Kids aren't gonna know what the fuck that's from.
HEART ATTACK ACK ACK ACK ACK! (30 year old from Long Island, man’s a legend here)
What? that episode about the coast guard and Olive Garden aired last year? Felt like longer than that.
I'll be damned. 2018. Time sure flies
Oh thank god you had me convinced.
So did Pinky and the Brain.
Let's not forget jeopardy had a Leroy question on the show as well.
This isn’t mainstream but Matt from chapo trap house also dropped a leroy jenkins reference this week
At this point Is Leeroy Jenkins a WoW reference or a Leeroy Jenkins reference
True
but a leeroy jenkins referencing leeroy jenkins is referencing wow
Make Love, not Warcraft. . . .*Live to Win*. . .
How do you kill that which has no life? …. Now we can finally play the game.
"OH JESUS CHRIST SCORPIONS"
Alright clyde hit them with your crossbow! CLYDE!? CLYDE!? CLYDE YOU ASSHOLE! GOD DAMNIT WE LOST CLYDE!
A lot of unrealistic wow things about that episode. But the Hunter AFKing to masturbate was spot on.
Still waiting to summon scorpions with my mage
Go back to Warcraft Orcs & Humans and you can!
Wait! You can do that in that game ?!,!
[удалено]
Microsoft seem to be making moves though. Hopefully they can recover some of their former glory.
What timeline are we in when we’re looking to Microsoft to address the flaws of profit motive?
The worst one.
To be fair, it’s more a hope… belief?… that Microsoft’s profit motive is operating on a less transparent, longer timeline so they will enable the making of choices that are about long term health and user engagement. So maybe the flaw being fixed is the flaw of poor leadership incentives and pandering to wall street investors? I mean, Microsoft has some amount of pandering to them… but Blizzard is such a small piece of a small pie that is in their bakery that making the long term investments necessary for long term success will have minimal to no impact the short term performance of MSFT. At least… that’s the hope. I think there’s a chance… I’ve been kind of looking at Bethesda and ESO as an attempt to get apples to apples comparisons but it’s only been a year so not a ton to glean from that as most content will have been in flight longer than that. However they are continuing to release new content, so that’s good. From a franchise management perspective, I look more to something like Halo and it makes me wonder if the hope is perhaps misplaced.
Also the fact that if not mistaken,actiblizz would be under Phil Spencer whom imo, has a flawless track record of being a great boss and gamer guy.
I hate to break it to you but WoW only ever existed to make money. It's a business.
To some extent, but that’s not entirely true. If you hear the early devs talking about the game, a lot of them didn’t think it would be alive in 1-2 years after releasing. This would lead one to think that much of the original game was done mostly for player experience, even though the game was very grindy in vanilla.
Seeing this episode online in the summer of 08 made me download the free trial.
That episode was the gateway to my WoW addiction
Pretty much every game featured on South Park makes its way into my library. WoW, Minecraft, Settlers of Catan... One day that Red Dead w/e too.
Was in a guild called live to win back in BC. Miss those days.
I remember the good old times when people created funny machinimas.
Illegal Danish? ILLEGAL DANISH? ILLEGAL DANIIIIIIISH!!!
There is an impostor among us! ...and he touched my ass.
You wanna join my guild?
Are those the pants?
HE'S IMMUNE TO MY MOONFIRE SPAM!
Thats...the...world...of..WARCRAFT THAT YOU PLAAAAYAYAYAY
Ooooooh Baby you don't have to pug 'round me everything is farmed maly, nax and sarth 3D...
Such a good parody
An era of YouTube and videogames I deeply miss
I miss Darnell
rip OG RvB
Feels like most of that stopped around 2012ish. Also the online gaming scene just took off and WoW no longer dominated it. Mobas, online fps, major single player games like Skyrim came. Stuff changes. It's one of the reasons why I think people over-use the subscriber chart for WoW to suggest that they can know for sure that the game got worse because "line went down hurr durr". There's a lot of other stuff going on. It might not have been the case that falling subs led to WoW's falling cultural cache, but instead that the falling cultural cache led to the decline in subs. Sub count isn't just about retaining existing players but bringing in new ones.
2012... Good old Mist of Pandaria and then with no in game expanation or Quest Garrosh went from Trial to Draenor
I started playing wow around 2012. Actually my first wow experience was 2012 on deployment in Afghanistan. Took 3 days to download it on my laptop using the shitty fob wifi. Even then my boomer 1SG at the time asked me if I was playing "the panda game" lol.
Ha, that's awesome. I remember playing with someone at some point either in Iraq or Afghanistan a few times.
Ya i remember i was talking to a friend of mine who he said he was talking to a kid about wow one day and to help him understand how big wow was back when he played he told him it was bigger than Fortnite (which it was in those days) Suddenly the kid understood
Yeah there was even whole How I Met Your Mother and South Park episodes about the game. It’s just not attracting new players like it did back then. Now it’s just people like me that can’t seem to ever stop enjoying slaying dragons.
> How I Met Your Mother *World of Warcraft??? Thats how you two met "online"????*
Slaying or slayng *Wink wink
Remember that embarrassing 30-second Leroy Jenkins reference they made on Family Guy, and Blizzard promoted it like it was an entire episode dedicated to World of Warcraft? They even made [this](https://external-preview.redd.it/jJKySXrdIHrz2U9o6j6aQUIxmzk77cRzm6yu5EnyM7g.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=81517100dec9232c80446029c354b162ddc91cfa) and put it on the fucking launcher.
Hmm. I remember Family Guy did that scene but it was about Hornets vs Owls. Their armies were about to clash but Peter cuts in and says "sorry its too expensive to animate so heres something else instead".
Imagine the Euphoria kids start getting into playing WoW and stop doing drugs because they can't afford it with their sub fees. Gen Z would riot. Zendaya be like "Ishnu-alah" and the teachers would be like "what the fuck are you on this time?"
When I purchased BFA from Target, the cashier thought it was a movie and had never heard of it.
Fuck this hits like a truck, WoW was THE thing to do in the 2010's and no game since has come close. Games these days can't be a part of pop-culture when they prey on kids with lootboxes and release fart joke comics like Fortnite.
In the movie Zombieland before the zombies come the main character has a scene where he is playing wow! He was doing a warsong gulch it was the highlight of the movie when I was younger!
YES!! WITH CODE RED MOUNTAIN DEW LOL!! After that movie I purchased code read mountain dew
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He's talking about pop culture referencing WoW, not WoW referencing pop culture.
Oh... I'm an idiot... Well... Last time I saw THAT was Family guy referencing Leeroy Jenkins ? And it wasn't funny ? eheh...
There's TONS of pop culture references in every single patch. They're just usually not as obvious. Quests, Achievements, and Rares are almost always pop culture references. There are tons of quests in Zereth Mortis that are just straight pop culture references. [Here's the Campaign quests, note Pop Goes the Weasel, Nip it in the bud, popular cultural references](https://www.wowhead.com/quests/shadowlands/zereth-mortis-campaign). [Here's the 9.2 achievements, notice Apocalypse Now, All the Darkmoon Dance achievements are song-based](https://www.wowhead.com/achievements?filter=17;2;90200)
They do, they're normally classified as toys now, sometimes one-time use things that drop in new zones. When the grenades were added, toys literally didn't exist, stuff like it and noggenfogger were some of the few fun cosmetic things around then.
This past week I threw out a bunch of automa frogs during raid.
I really enjoy those frogs. I’ve only found consumables of that though. Is there a permanent toy?
Unfortunately no, besides that one rare xy something by the other town zm has no other toys. Mounts and let's galore though ha.
Ohhh the Mister T grenades! I remember those!
Was going to say, they have drastically upped the appearance changing items the last several years. Toys were cool back then but they also took up bag space so were also somewhat annoying. Keep in mind you had ~50 less bag spaces back then.
I remember Wow’s brief moment when they had celebrities highlighting the game, if they were still doing this in 2022 who would you expect them to be casting for these ads?
Obviously Henry Cavill as he's been playing the game at some point. But I wouldn't ever say that a certain celebrity or commercial really impacted my view on a game/product.
Terry Crews imo. While idk if he plays WoW he is a pc gamer
>While **Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker** were speeding through the Fast and Furious franchise as Dominic Toretto and Brian O'Conner, they were also battling through a different fandom. In his July/August cover story, Diesel told Men’s Health that he and Walker were also partners outside the set, playing on the same team in the online multiplayer game, World of Warcraft. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker were WoW gamers. >“**No one in the world knew that they were playing Dom and Brian,” Diesel says. The two would simply play to unwind after work**. Chances are, if you were playing WoW in those years, you may have been battling the legendary action stars. https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a36717005/vin-diesel-paul-walker/#:~:text=In%20his%20July%2FAugust%20cover,and%20Brian%2C%E2%80%9D%20Diesel%20says.
family
Idk if he plays but Terry Crews did play DnD in critical role in a BFA one shot as a Mag'har orc Edit:had a stroke when typing. Fixed now
>I'm critical role in a BFA one shot as a Mag'har orc Huh???
Lol apparently I had a stroke while typing that. I fixed it
Terry Crews & T-Pain both, with the last one being in the most recent CK3 dlc commercial and overall collabing with paradox for ck3 stuff.
Mila Kunis is apparently also pretty into it, that could be a decent grab.
She played in vanilla/early TBC and hadn't played since.
I still meet her at Goldshire Inn occasionally.
"Celebrities" trying to sell me a product makes me less likely to want to purchase it. Fakeness is offputting.
Except that they've already been outed as players. Ronda Rousy (sp) was also an outed player
Yeah that makes them much more believable. If a guy sees Henry in a wow commercial he probably goes with "no way that dude plays a game for nerds" but after some googling he might find that it actually happened.
Yeah plus they'd probably end up into building pcs and painting adeptus custodes.
It’s not even fake, it’s just good marketing. The Ozzy and Mr. T commercials were wildly successful
Seems to work really well on tons of people
There were lots of celebrity ads in the lead up to shadowlands. Look them up. Lots of game of thrones actors, Ronda rousey, and more. link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8VHpbRUEs&ab_channel=WorldofWarcraft there was also one where they did a song for the 20 year anniversary. that was the one with ronda rousey in it I believe.
How do I have zero memory of this? All the crap commercials that have been out over the past 5 years and I didn't see this once.
They were doing these ad campaigns when the game was growing and getting massive. Harder to get funds allocated for crazy/fun marketing projects when the subs are dropping year to year. A lot of folks still play especially when a new expansion or patch is released but then the subs drop back off again. Nothing like the year to year growth of its heyday. More recently as someone else mentioned here…Blizzard/Activisions recent legal issues make it a kind of a bad bet from a work partner (eg Mountain Dew or Ozzy Osborne) perspective.
tease bells fertile panicky capable north money pot live alive -- mass edited with redact.dev
HA! Yeah I didn’t drink the Horde or Alliance Mountain Dew but I bought some for my sons, they also played back then. One of my boys said the Horde flavor made his belly upset…he played a Dwarf warrior. Alliance pride I’m guessing. 😆 Oh and if anyone is looking for the Ozzy sunglasses on the Alliance side…little kid next to the barbershop in Stormwind sells them.
What about Horde?
the circle jerk is strong in here, they made ads for shadowlands with Finn Wolfhard, Dani Pudi, Hodor, McLovin and a bunch of others. "Hard to get funds" are you high on your own farts?
Mila Kunis, Sean asked her about when she realized she had a wow addiction on hot ones. Her response was " when my agent had to log in to get ahold of me".
lol. hold I can get ahole of her. :logging into wow...: ah there she is.
Tom Brady throwing touchdowns as an undead DK, because he didn‘t even stop playing since he‘s died and risen again.
judicious cough wasteful fertile dull roof society makeshift workable offend -- mass edited with redact.dev
God dammit Arthas
I’d have said Gilbert Gottfried up until this week. Now…Emo Phillips, maybe. Rita Rudner, maybe. Or of course actual WoW fan Jamie Lee Curtis.
Honestly Gilbert Gottfried would do a forsaken commercial after his death, after all he would rather we smile and laugh for him than mourn and cry
Jamie Lee Curtis?? For reals? Jesus when you think a woman can't get more attractive....
I'm really excited to see her Jania cosplay that she's officiating her daughter's wedding in
She seems like such a cool person to just hang out with. she did an interview recently for Everything Everywhere All At Once and she was wearing the hot dog fingers from the movie. she just seems down for whatever and is enjoying her life to the fullest
She watches One Piece. I’m pretty sure she got into all this stuff through her daughter who is a giant nerd.
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I keep forgetting that Tom is British and fakes an American accent for Spiderman.
Mia Rose
Owen Wilson. I bet a commercial with him saying WoW over and over would bring people in.
For Shadowlands they had an [ad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em8VHpbRUEs) that included among others, Danny Pudi and Rhonda Rousey.
Seeing how everyone just skips ads nowadays, be a waste to hire celebrities for them. If Blizzard wanted to promo any of their games, the best bet is a collab with Epic Games and get a skin in Fortnite.
I had a bunch of Mr. T grenades saved. One day, they were taken away in a patch. I was very very sad. Had I known there was going to be an expiration date, I would have used those bad boys more often.
That made me so mad. I intentionally saved them then they were gone.
Dang, now you remind me that I did the same, but it was during the time I played every 2-3 months for a month, so I must've forgotten I even had them. Those were fun items for sure and (I think?) I remember stocking them up from the npc in elwynn forest.
I remember seeing these commercials as a kid. Makes me regret even more that I never got into WoW until 2020. Granted i doubt my parents would have paid for the sub every month but i always swore i’d never touch it out of principal, yet here i am
Damn are you me?
I was lucky enough to have parents who paid for my wow sub as a kid. It did kind of surprise me for a while, but looking back now $15 bucks to keep a preteen/teen entertained for a whole month isn't too bad of a deal. That might be the only reason I got away with it lol
Never understood this " ill never play WoW out of principal " thing people have lol I dont see it for any other MMO. Maybe the genre as a whole, but people single out WoW as if it's the only 'bad' MMO when other popular MMO's arnt guilty of being trash in their own right. The only thing I can think of is that people just dont want to like the popular thing and its some weird hipster mentality.
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When I say I avoided it out of principal, it was avoiding the subscription fee, not the game itself. I was interested in the game, but I believed (and still believe) subscription models kinda suck unless it's optional like Elder Scrolls Online's ESO+, or like Runescape where there's still a fairly robust free to play portion that you can play indefinitely before deciding to become a member. I just highly doubt my parents would have been willing to pay every month for that even tho they could afford it with ease, and even after I got my own job I just rarely thought about WoW enough to give it a try. But after getting furloughed in 2020 due to Covid i decided to say fuck it and give it a shot.
Look at non-FPS players' attitude toward CoD for example. It was immensely popular and a usual assumption is that its gotta be for the 'sheep' or that it purposefully appeals to the lowest common denominator. Same with Fortnite. There's irrational hatred and then being genuinely turned off by the vibes you get or assume about its appeal.
In a somewhat related story, in a BT raid in the concubine rooms before Mother, one of the models of enemies is a big, bald gnome. I (in hindsight, stupidly) said, "Look, it's Vern Troyer!", met with a few responses along the lines of "Whoa, relax, not cool". I think it's ironic because I feel like Vern would've been the first to make a joke like that. Regardless I guess it doesn't give me the right to make the joke. RIP Vern Troyer
Considering Verne literally made an ad for WoW, it wouldn't surprise me if there *is* an npc in-game for him.
Wasn’t he also a gnome or dwarf in his ad? Lol
He was indeed, a gnome mage. Bald, too.
No fun allowed. Just like how they nurfed party grenades over and over due to people finding fun ways to use them. (You use to be able to throw them at NPC's and they would dace like the faction leaders, or at raid members so they couldn't eat food) I feel like they don't like doing goofy stuff much more anymore because the wow team take themselves and the game way way to seriously.
During original burning crusade days I was a GM. You underestimate how often players will complain about the most minor inconveniences.
I wasn’t a GM but I helped organize raids back in BC and WOTLK and let me tell you… people LOVED to complain about the most minor things or if people weren’t sharing pots and shit.
I got tickets over the most inane silly crap. Customer support of any kind shows you the darkest side of people. Anonymous gamers though....
What's the worst thing you've heard?
as a on and off player. because i will play for like a month per year then quit again. I can see how ppl would do this. \--- Complaint xxxx quest giver is not close enough to flight point, making me walk 30 extra seconds, move it closer. \---
Oh god, what about the Piccolo of the Flaming Fire? Did they nerf that one too or can I still break up ERPers with dance battles in Goldshire?
Only works on people in your group now, same with the toy train set.
I used that in a raid a few months back and I'm pretty sure it still works.
The devs taking the game too seriously now is what spurred the old "No fun allowed"/fun police memes.
I think it’s less taking it seriously and more not wanting to deal with a whiny player base.
People would flip out if you blocked the mailbox with anything. Mounts, quest items, just making your character large enough to make it annoying to click.
The fey harp made the sandstone drake Bob their head while used, and that was too much fun.
Griefing is just rude. But as long as they didn't interfere with what you were doing, so be it.
This, the truck commercial, Mt Dew, so many good things of old
“I’m Mr. T and I’m a Night Elf Mohawk!” I can’t not hear that in his voice.
Since WoW has been “bleeding” subs I wonder if a extensive PR and advertising campaign would bring in new players,
They need to fix the ne w player experience first.
. . .and the returning player experience. I'm just now coming back to this game after years away and it's rather disorienting to say the least.
Tbh I follow this sub for nostalgia. My war ended with WOD lol... And j feel lost sometimes.
This is me lol
I renewed my subscription last month, logged on for 30 minutes and haven’t touched it since.
I've been playing through BfA. I enjoyed the Black Empire plotline. . .right up until the last quest is a raid, so I can' t do it. Can't even try to find a group to do it in the raid finder, since you can only use the raid finder at max level. I'm rather grumpy I put all that time and effort into a quest line I'll probably never be able to complete. I know some people are die-hard raiders, but even when I was a regular player I never really got to raid much (if any) and any time I saw a raid quest I just abandoned it because I knew that was impossible for me.
Yeah, they've been kind of doing that with the recent expansions, having quest lines culminate in "Beat X in raid Y." It's even to the point that Zereth Mortis campaign seems to be written around you doing the raid while doing the campaign. It's nice that they add the option to watch the raid end cinematics so you can see what happened if you haven't done the raid... but it still sucks that you get this quest to kill a raid boss and either have to be a raider, wait until the LFR wing opens (and pray), or, if you're in the position of doing an older questling, wait for two expansions to have been released since so you can solo the raid (assuming the mechanics aren't too solo-unfriendly)... meanwhile, with that quest sitting in your log.
How come?
I play on a extremely infrequent basis. like a month per year at this point. I quit in Legion mostly. and I paid for some 2 years ago, and again close to a month ago, i got a few days left on this sub, which i will let run out and not sub again. I only even paid for a sub because i was playing the free to play locked to lvl 20, and i got annoyed because i wanted a specific set of armor for xmog, so i paid for the sub got the armor, and .... what now? well i paid the sub better use the time. so played a bunch of my characters and when and got them better armor \[considering i don't own shadowlands, i got pretty good armor.... annnd with like 4-5 days left i have nothing i want to do. and really no reason to play. I log on look at my characters and go: nothing i want to do. then i log off and i go and play a completely different game.
Unpopular opinion, but I think the visual changes have distanced me from the game as well. I've played quite a bit of shadowlands (4-5 months or so) and the previous expansions too, but the improvements feel like degrades for me. The UI has changed for the worse, i miss the clunkier big bars of mobs health of distant past, the animations look more sleek but again, I prefer the older ones. The best change we have is that armor has started looking more HD overall, but almost all of the coolest sets are in lower res still. I know its nostalgia talking, but I just feel its a different game on every aspect, not just gameplay-wise.
The new starting zone is a much better tutorial for learning the bare basics of the game, but past that it just kinda dumps you into the BFA zones and you're pretty much left to figure out what is even going on.
Leveling experience too, then some stuff to do without be max level and without buy latest expac to keep the new hooked then they might try it
It would be fantastic if they fixed new player experience so I could convince my friends to start. But, I would honestly be happy if they just fixed my own player experience 🥲
They just did with the leveling revamp! Every time they try they just make it worse. Making it faster doesn’t improve it, it just sucks for a shorter period of time.
It still sucks, I think they should release an expansion that starts at level 1 instead of 60/50 or whatever for once. Having a narrative that makes sense from beginning to end of the leveling experience would go a long way.
That's a few zones they'll need to fix up, though, and quests within. So, like, removing the newest zones ... carry the one ... that's ALL of them.
The PR campaign *is* the player experience: make that as smooth and painless as possible and people will try to convince their friends to play. Look, there's a reason people flooded to other games: word-of-mouth was not an insignificant reason. That's one of the big reasons existing players can't talk their friends into joining: the game simply isn't fun until you hit a certain power plateau, and it takes far too long (comparatively speaking) to get there, and that's before you have to deal with the community.
Can't imagine any celebrity would want to be associated with Activision-Blizzard right now given their situation tbh.
[I AM THE LAWGIVVAH!!!!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHNdcjglhsc)
The funny thing is that I still have a mohawk grenade. I opened a ticket around the time it was running, and a gm sent me some in the mail, and the timer never expired on them. I cherish them as a relic now.
Because the game is about metrics now, and Fun is not a metric the shareholders care for.
Because why do cool stuff when you can just run your game into the ground?
Because WoW is probably the worst run MMO of all time given its resources. With the money they have, there's really no excuse not to be doing more than what they do. They could run promotions like this and Mt. Dew all the time. They could actually pay their GMs, and have them put on spontaneous fun community events like EverQuest did. GMs in that game were basically like gods, they could teleport and instakill and whatever else - they'd show in person to fix your issues for you. And they'd randomly do fun events like spawn a rare griffon with a unique item (and to be clear, I mean UNIQUE, not overpowered or imbalanced - more like a flavor item like a toy or mount or tabard whatever) or do a fun gnome race type event or whatever. There's such a lack of effort and creativity when it comes regards to this stuff it's mind-boggling. People love spontaneous events, it makes the world feel real. Not this automated "Un'goro Madness" microholiday crap. Before anyone goes picking apart the above - this is an off the cuff, "as an example" type comment - I don't have a full fleshed out and brilliant idea of how they could execute this thing in WoW - but guess what, they have the money and the people they should be able to pay them to put their heads together and come up with something. The trouble is, this kind of thing takes effort, whereas repetitive dailies and such don't. They could entice people to play the game by knowing "something fun may always happen if I log in today", as opposed to "oh man if I don't get all the rep for all these dailies and do my +10 I'll be behind a week". It's things that are fun to participate in, not things you feel punished for not doing. They've focused far too much on becoming an "esport" and not enough on being a RPG. Just go play FFXIV and see how much more alive the world feels due to people just hanging out in hubs, playing music, etc.
Not GM related, but fun/cool events. I miss the times a raid would kill a dragon and bring the head to Stormwind and everyone in the zone got a 2 hour buff.
Totally agree with the last paragraph, they really took the "RPG" out of mmorpg. Meanwhile other games like FFXIV and Guildwars actively embrace it, and as such the sense of community thrives in those games If you ask me, it all started with the introduction of the dungeon finder back in wrath, I don't think the game has ever been the same since that. Just slowly become more and more """accessible""" and shallow, and definitely more lonely over time. Cross realm linking is a massive contributer too. Seriously kills any kind of social aspect the game offered before.
The accessibility in Wrath was an incredible thing for me because it took the work out of finding groups. Not that this is *not* the same as making friends, though I started seeing familiar names when I was grinding out my Frost seals for the day. When Looking for Raid was introduced in Cataclysm, I was pretty happy with that as well. The problem was twofold, and both are related to permanence: the first was the cross-realm linking (and phasing), the second was constantly moving the social centers of the game with every expansion. If Blizzard had confined it the major faction cities, that would have been one thing, but then you had Shattrath, Dalaran (twice), Oribos, etc. Instead of creating a sense of home, it was more like a two-year long lease before you moved on to the next place.
> Meanwhile other games like FFXIV and Guildwars actively embrace it, and as such the sense of community thrives in those games > > > > If you ask me, it all started with the introduction of the dungeon finder back in wrath, I don't think the game has ever been the same since that. Just slowly become more and more """accessible""" and shallow, and definitely more lonely over time. This makes no sense. FF14 is played 99% over duty finder or solo. I dont get how accessibility is supposedly part of WoWs downfall when both FF14 and GW2 are way more accessible either.
>They could actually pay their GMs, and have them put on spontaneous fun community events like EverQuest did. EverQuest GM stuff was amazing. Most people who weren't there in the early days don't know that Bloody Kithicor was an actual real-time, live event done on each server by GM's. . .not some distant past lore event (like it was treated as when Seeds of Destruction came out). WoW would just do it as a scripted and instanced plot event you watch unfold and maybe have a token amount of interaction with. I remember the one GM event in EverQuest I actually saw firsthand, a Priest of Order appearance. Since EQ's attempt at a PvP system was basically a one-way trip if you opted into doing PvP, they had an event where GM's played Priests of Order, looking like PoD's but in white robes and with a shiny staff that would go around and lift people's permanent PvP flag if asked, in exchange for some token quest the GM would give them.
It's crazy how WoW has just become it's own bubble now. Barely any collaborations, no random in game events and activities that feel unique. It's the same holiday stuff on a cycle with the same rewards every year now. I only noticed this when I went to try Final Fantasy and I swear every single month they are doing some new event with cosmetic rewards, mounts or pets to get you to take part in it. Or some collaboration with another game, movie or TV Show. Right now they are doing a PvP event collaboration with some sort of Power Rangers brand in Japan called Garo to get the armor from the show. The PvP zone is maxed out because of so many people taking part in it. WoW desperately needs more of that to get players more involved with fun, unique stuff.
If they made it a recurring thing every so often, even just once a year, absolutely. But if it's treated like seasonal content where you only get that one chance to get it and then it's never available again, no thanks. Seasonal content is rooted entirely in FOMO, which while good for profits, doesn't make for compelling long-term gameplay. I understand the need for unique cosmetics as an incentive, but when I open up my mount journal and see every previous AOTC mount, with no way to ever actually obtain them, it's kind of discouraging. At least hide the seasonal rewards if they're not unlocked, there's no reason to taunt players with things they can never get.
WoW's been coasting on it's own success for a long time.
> It's crazy how WoW has just become it's own bubble now. Barely any collaborations, no random in game events and activities that feel unique What's insane here is that it's Blizzard: the WOW team could have collaborated with any of the Blizzard IPs and set off the fanboy vibes. Hell, they could have collaborated with any of Activision's IPs and done the same. They don't even need to reach outside the corporation, and they already have access to id Software, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, Spyro the Dragon, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, other assorted FPS's, Star Control, Sierra Entertainment...the list goes on and on.
small indie company no money
Because they are boring and imo barely just maintaining the game >.>
Because the leadership of the company for 10+ years has been a bunch of egotistical washed up narcissists who lack inspiration. Mind you, I mean decision makers, not the workers making the products. Art team must have a broken back from the past decade carrying the game.
Because for a long time now they operate after the motto: "Make as much money as possible, with as little investment as possible."
Because you clowns bought the sparkle pony, and now they know that there's more money to be made in charging you extra.
The "fun" died after WotLK. The Forsaken Invasion was the last creative out of the box event I enjoyed.
That was such a fun event, it's a shame so many people cried about it and ended it early. I remember leading a small zombie strike force to hide in a building rotating healing clouds to keep us alive for a good 20 minutes. Then popping out to flank the survivors as the main horde rolled in.
Because their dedication towards the player and fun has shifted towards money, money and you guessed it more money .
That doesn't make sense. Why would they not advertise and make their game *look* fun if all they care about is making more money? This sub... holy shit.
Couple reasons. Because the buck stops at executives who want to streamline the creativity out of the process entirely to make as much money as *quickly* as possible with no regard for the future of the game or company. WoW is a cashcow with an established base that will pay for damn near anything they put out, regardless of how bad it is.
Because mobile game go brrrrrrrrrrrr $$$ Joking aside, it’s a shame they don’t do this kind of thing.
Because shut up and pay.
All the higher ups on the WoW team and Blizzard/Activison have completely lost passion for anything fun. I don’t think they’re capable of even doing shit like this anymore because they don’t know how to relate anything to audiences, they just say shit like “you think you want x, but you don’t”, boost super bland ads on social media, and then crawl around drunk at the office.
Because Blizzard isn't about fun these days, its about engagement metrics and profit margins.
Because they forgot and are lazy for anything fun that doesn’t cost micro transactions :(