Read more about Shadowlands ➜ https://worldofwarcraft.mgn.tv
World of Warcraft Shadowland is about to launch but we just had a WoW Shadowlands Developer leave Blizzard after 13 years at the company. What he had to say about World of Warcraft and the State of Shadowlands was quite interesting.
Contact and Support Me:
https://streamerlinks.com/Accolonn
Sources:
Why I left Blizzard: https://youtu.be/iznL9e12iYI
Time Stamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:14 – Prelude
3:40 – Chris’s realisation why he had to leave
6:50 – The vision of WoW
13:12 – The Player IS the story
15:35 – Extrinsic vs Intrinsic
18:45 – Conclusion
21:54 – Outro
Music:
Harris Heller – Mood Swings
Harris Heller – Timeless
Harris Heller – Aurora Sonata
Harris Heller – One More
Harris Heller – Glorifier
Source
Love your videos. Couldn't of clicked on it faster.
Take 2😂 I love the effort you put in
Great video. The music need to be tuned down a little bit though
Are you underground in a cave? Lol this is so dim 😂
What i love the most about this video is that accolon made it like one of his in game lore deep dives
9:13 in other words, wow became a druid
WoW developers want to turn it into p2w
Just shows how the merger with activision has slowly corrupted the company.
I constantly have a hard time finding people to enjoy the game with. The interaction is part of what makes it fun for me, it makes me sad its been missing for so long.
Blizzard is going woke. This is all about social justice. I suspect the word is out, if you are a white male, the opportunity for advancement is gone.
He is an unimportant person who mourned the boring Classic and wants to force players to play how he wants and not how they want it. In my eyes, it's good that he's gone.
Ashes of Creation is probably the next big thing
I would not be surprised if he tries to join that team
I think it's funny when people complain about borrowed power, when a core system within Classic raiding is borrowed power, called world buffs. Players spend hours collecting borrowed power for the scheduled raids.
Times change. I like WoW as it is now .. I can do stuff alone and only for just a small part I need the help of others.
Yes, I hate that I'm the Hero.
I would have been more interested in what he had to say, if not for how after a few minutes it really just sounds like he's blaming the players. He didn't want to disparage Blizzard, but he definitely disparaged the group of players that want things contrary to his vision.
It's fine if he wants to discuss that, but I think he's lumping the blame a bit too much in one direction. There's a balance between what the playerbase wants and what Blizzard wants. And let me tell you, the recent failings of WoW for the last few expansions have been a lack of what players want, and an exorbitant amount of what Blizzard wants.
The sad thing is there could be a really good discussion on how to find the balance between the people who want a single player RPG and the people who want an MMO, but I don't think he really grasps that they aren't conflicting ideologies. At least not always. There are a lot of MMOs that are much closer to that balance than WoW is, and I don't think we should necessarily dismiss them because they're competition.
he is choosing his words very wisely, however the video speaks for itself about current Activision
Well said Acco. I remember leroy jenkins
Our stories within the game! Sometimes they felt so epic! That essence has been changed a lot.
I have been saying this for a while. The game seems to have lost cohesion. Instead of being a fully realised world it is more like a jigsaw puzzle where parts from different jigsaws are fitted together. This feels like different departments doing their own thing but not communicating fully. The impact on immersion is real. Characters no longer seems so "real". Investment of effort is only rewarded in the short term, and healthy player interaction is a rare and wonderful thing.
P.S. Go Morheims!
I feel like going to cross-realm and realm-merging, while it solves real world technical and business challenges, ruined the community aspect of and within the game.
I remember seeing the same toon names in trade / general chat looking for groups to run dungeons or looking to buy/sell crafting goods. You had to build a reputation, to a degree. If you were a shit tank or caused problems, your realm learned to not let you come along on groups.
LFR/LFR, cross-realms, realm-merging introduced far too much anonymity. There is almost no community anymore, it's devolved into just generic internet forums complete with trolls. Sure, those things make questing and dungeon running much quicker, but there's a definite trade off from lost community.
Nowadays, I don't even need a guild or trade/general chat. Click the little eye icon, join a group, kill the mob, drop group and move on without any interaction.
On a personal note, I miss being in far flung zones and having no one around; having to go back to my guild or trade chat to get assistance.
BFA was bloody awful, so much so I quit part way through and didn't return.
Looking at shadowlands, one can see it being a repeat of that.
There's just so many issues with shadowlands which it's being released with which they said they will fix on the fly … Yeah right, the said that in BFA and every patch claiming to fix issues but was just as bad!!
Shadowlands will be the same, and with 844k subs from 12m, it's showing how bad a place it's in.
Lack of passion, creativity and ideas, it's another xpac I'm passing on, can't see it being anything but another lacklustre mundane shit show like BFA.
The many streamers explaining the new things in the game shows they are lacking the creativity and hyping up the game again, it will sell well for that reason alone, the lies hype and broken promises sell it because its wow.
Activision has pretty much degraded and corrupted wow and it shows, minimal effort for maximum profit!!
Shadowlands is still unfinished and needs much more time but it's being released regardless.
As someone who played wow since vanilla the direction is not one that will get me to bother since BFA.
It's a shame, it used to be fun exciting and looked forward to jumping on, but now there's zero incentive to return.
anyone miss "Sup fuckers, Accolonn here, and welcome back!"
The players have changed. Grown older, had families and jobs. The classic or TBC like progression systems will result in the death of WOW. The majority of the player base cannot spend 8 hours a day on the game. Keep in mind the older playerbase make up the majority of those paying for the game. It's not just a game it's a business.
Legion for example was good. Even with the borrowed powers. BFA was useless. It was less complete basically another WOD. The difference is cranking something out (lacking depth and detail) vs doing something detailed and deep. They get lazy. Lack a strong story line. The quality of Legion was 3x that of WOD/BFA. It's really easy to see this if you fly around the zones and think about it a bit.
BfA and WOD had exactly the same problems. Isolating the players from each other. In WOD the Garrisons did this. In BFA visions/islands, HOA did this. The main expansion city was pretty empty. Where in Legion we were all out there doing things on the Broken Isles or Argus and Daleran was full. The world teemed with players.
The sub systems such as garrison tables weren't directly the problem. They worked in Legion after all. It was the lack of focus on interesting open world things to do everyday. Things that showed you the world is populated. If you think back to classic, TBC or WoTLK the world felt populated. When you got back from a Dungeon run or Raid the world was populated. The main city for the expansion was full. WoD/BFA broke this which is why they were bad. You felt more alone…
Company pockets are fat and time played metrics to appease shareholders are the norm or things get released unfinished with fixes and updates made into content patches and expansions.
We can clearly see the revenue go up and player engagement due to pre orders for Shadowlands and what not so I don't think anything will change because the dollars don't really show a need for change.
Someone leaves a company after such a long time and without having a follow up job and then makes a video and wants statements that he left the company because of the status and the nature of the game he was part of for so long, because of changes that supposedly didn't suit him.
And that's why he leaves the company after all these years. In America. 🙂 sorry i just can't believe that this is the only reason. Either he made a lot of money or there were a lot more reasons.
That might make things look in a different light. When you lock something up for yourself, you should leave it alone, but don't make a video for the public, at least not so soon after.
In every industry the pressure has increased over the last decades. i think here is rather a reason to look for a reason with many employees who were used to other times at Blizzard.
I dont agree that the player is necessarily the story. WoW has a HUGE plot and they can make it ( if they will ) so that we are like some random characters in a dream. I like not knowing and off screen stories. It adds that mysterious feeling, almost lovecraftian ( cuz you feel powerless and what you do doesnt matter, since A LOT happens offscreen ). Not everyone feels the same.
We dont care how bad it is, we are still gonna pay them to play wow. Face the facts, humans reaaaally dont care about others suffering, we say we do when it makes us sound heroic, but in reality if we dont see it we dont give a shit. If that was the case, hunger in first world countrys would be gone.
Shadowlands is actually doing something that I thought would be done a different way. resetting the level cap back to 60 is like resetting the clock and making that new players can come in and not have a massive amount to stuff to make up. They can get right into the thick of things within a few hours. I had thought we were to the point where they would have to instead of expanding, make a new game called world of warcraft 2 and start from scratch. I'm on board man, I think they found a way to prolong it and make it last
I like the bar on the bottom.
ff8 mm0 inc
Hi buddy this video is one of your best it’s outstanding. Also I completely agree with everything
Thank you for this. I still play Skyrim and Fallout 4. Both single players, but truly RPGs because you can make decisions that change the game play. The only thing close to that was choosing Saurfang or Sylvanas for the Horde. Nothing like that for Alliance. I'm not sad to see Azurite armor going away. I agree that they have lost direction.
I agree the last time I really truly had fun in wow was in wrath…. had a good guild and good people in legion but nothing like wrath
I like how you were talking about "they've forgotten who should be the focus", as I'm staring intently at the purple bar lengthening at the bottom of the screen, and suddenly realized it.
Progression systems are, for right or wrong, a necessary evil. A playerbase needs hamster wheels, to keep them occupied, to fill time in-between content drops.
Next guy to go to dream haven with morheim and crew
Next guy to go to dream haven with morheim and crew
Love your content man. Discovered your channel a few months ago and I'm more excited to listen to your videos than actually play the game.
A few points to put WoW dev into perspective (any development really). Timelines and deadlines and primordial when you lead large projects. You can ask people around you "Build a ship", and eventually you will get a ship. However the real request is Build a ship by next spring… and there lies the "artificial pressure" put on the system. It took 5 years to build WOW, imagine if it took 5 years for each expac. We would be at WotLK at this point. Also, every developer wants to do more than they do. Every productive, intelligent and creative dev will have the same ask. Now, that said, I don't want to diminish the "confused" state WoW is in. I agree that the player has no influence on the story… you basically play it out and you either like it or not. I have always thought that WoW is a massive time sink. I sink a lot of time in but sometimes I get a "Feel Good" pellet for my effort, most times, I don't. And that pellet will be a cutscene … served cold on a silver platter to explain why the hell I just spent 12 months grinding crap to get there…
Great video, don't cover half your face with the mic 🙂
If you recall the Old school blizz team is just down the block from Blizz we may hear he part of the new company mad by the old Crew!
hey Accolonn! I did watch it while Asmon was reacting to it. after the speech he gave he just looked so beaten. like he tried and nothing was working so he left feeling defeated. Which made me wonder how many other devs might feel like something is wrong too after playing classic when it re-launched and thought wow was such a fun experience back then… what happened? I think the happiest I was playing wow was in WOTLK because it was a bit more simple. I don't think we had any borrowed power. it was the trees, gem slots for your armor, tier set bonuses and that was about it. I understood it and knew what was good for my class. Blizz needs to chill out with all these systems and go back to the ways things were. I wish this guy the best. I think maybe he should look at Intrepid who are working with AoC. or Dreamhaven since he might know Mike, he had been working at blizz for 13 yrs.
I think it's cuz they wanna be broadly appealing and marketable to everyone but that makes everything bland
FOr me i have fun when i play, i dont care about all the other things, i'm not a developer to tell them how to make a game, i like to take a think and test, i dont like to be a part of the conceptor of the game
I love how thoughtfully u are
Simple Remove Borrowed Power… please remove borrowed power.