Content creators like Preach being crucial for the game is not the same as Preach being crucial to the game.
I like Preach, he usually has a stick up his butt, but he also tends to be somewhat insightful. But the growth of the game wasn’t exactly relying solely on his input. The game would look very different if it were. Despite the recent turn of events there is still no shortage of people making content for WoW and someone will fill the void he leaves.
I don’t blame him for leaving since I think his reasons were fair, nor do I think the community won’t feel his loss. But I don’t think he’s irreplaceable.
I humbly disagree,
Streamers by definition do not represent the average player. Most typically play or research WoW eight or more hours a day. Of course they would, know and being an expert at WoW is their job. It is their job to know the elaborate systems, and intricacies of the game. They frequently play at very high levels of the game.
But Just because a streamer has 10,000 followers, it does not mean he speaks for 10,000 players. This is where Blizzard failed. By listening to streamers, they over estimate the interest and engagement of the players. Any opinion the streamer should only count as the voice a single, non-representative player.
What is worse is that Blizzard uses streamers as mouth pieces and as a training department. They concoct a complex system and expect the streamers and wowhead to do the end-user training and communication. Users who do not choose to follow wowhead or streamers (and there are many) are left to try and figure out these very complex and disjointed system on their own.
Because streamers exist, Blizzard feels they only need to communicate with streamers and feel little need to communicate to the players directly. They hide behind them, which is bad.
TLDR;
Blizzard treats streamers as proxies for the players - The opinion of the stream is magnified by the follower count. But greatly distorts the true opinions of the players. So yeah, Streamers have caused more harm than good.
As I mentioned, the developers outright ignores the feedback of streamers and youtubers.
The streamers nor youtubers are not to blame for the mess that WoW is, if anything, had the developers actually listened to the streamers and youtubers, WoW might actually still have been good.
But I assume you do not watch enough of the streams or youtube videos to actually know what you talk about in this regard.
It is quite obvious that WoW’s developers are doing the direct opposite of what streamers and youtubers said.
People who are disagreeing with this are absolutely crazy. You guys need to open your eyes. I cannot believe the amount of comments that are “All content creators do is complain!” or “Content creators are for the sweats and elitest jerks!” or the infamous “Wow did fine before content creators!” You people have no idea how the world works today. Content creators are the only people who show up on Blizzard’s radar when there are problems. And even then Blizzard doesn’t listen.
Content creators that complain are not doing to because it feels good or because they want to stir up some kind of controversy. They do it because they love the game and want the game to become better. There’s a reason why most of the content creators have the same opinions about the game when there is an obvious problem (Apex cystals, Azerite, Essense, Corruption, Store Mounts, Pay to Win Mechanics, Bugs, PvP in general, advertising in trade/group finder, ect ect. the list can go on and on.) They point out fundamental problems with the game that they have made a career playing and have spent thousands of hours on. If you think that all content creators do is complain because they’re “unhappy with their own lives” or “just for the heck of it” then you need to open yours eyes and get the chip off of your shoulder.
I don’t want to even touch on the “content creators are for the elitest jerks” because its just not true and I think you have either the wrong mindset or a weird personal grudge against content creators for some reason so I’ll just let you figure it out.
“Wow was fine before content creators.” Yes you’re right. It was. Back in 2008. Welcome to 2021. The amount of time average people spend online, consuming social media is astounding. We spend probably half of hour day on our phones or a computer. And with younger generations it’s probably even higher than that. The internet has not only become a tool to help with getting news into the world it has become a necessity for companys. Look at the amount of people streaming and watching on twitch. Now go look at the amount of video and viewers on youtube. Now go look at social media and how many people pay attention to those posts. There is a reason that games like Fortnite, League of Legends and Apex skyrocket in player base. It’s because they’re all over social media. A strong social media and strong content creators are the foundation for video games these days. In the case of Final Fantasy 14, the game was very healthy without big content creators for sure. And now the game has become a titan because of them. It also helps that the devs of final fantasy LISTEN to their players. They create a positive look for themselves which is something that Acti-Blizz has not done since Cata. Legion was pretty good tho.
Overall the amount of people saying that content creators have little to no effect on this game are blind. You’re in denial that the game is suffering and in a unhealthy state. There are so many problems plaguing this game and Blizzard refuses to listen which is why content creators SPEAK FOR US. Because devs won’t listen to 1 guy on the forums. But they will listen to someone with millions of views. We need the people who are passionate about this game and want it to do better. You need to welcome content creators and you need to realize that this game is unhealthy and falling. WoW isn’t the titan it use to be but it could be.
It was already proven how influential streamers are to a game. The last example was when Asmongold streamed FF14. FF14 beat WoW in Google Trends when that happened and then Square Enix ran out of digital copies of FF14.
WoW always had content creators that helped get people excited for the game, even back in vanilla and the early YouTube days.
Back in the day those days we had PvP montoge videos, Nyhm and the other’s making machinima, frost mages AOE grinding ECT. Back in vanilla I had to quit WoW because my family was too poor, what got me interested again was watching all of the awesome machinima video’s back during BC on my schools internet. Watching a random video PvP video during cata is what brought me back into the game. The guides people make for raids, dungeons, mount/transmog farming and about my class helped me get better at the game and in turn enjoy it more than I did before.
You might not care about content creators but you are extremely ignorant if you think they don’t matter for games in this day and age. While WoW has a big, and old player base thanks to it’s success in the past they rarely bring in new players, and are bleeding players right now. Most of the few new players that I do see are brought in by the streamers. How do you think people find out about games these days, WoW is not on steam or other platforms were people buy games and there are no advertisements outside of streamers and content creators, the only other way they can even find out about the game is word of mouth.
I honestly liked titanforging, when an item drops and it had +20 ilvls it felt great, now items rarely drops because these streamers didn’t stop complaining about it.
I can’t see how is bad think they stop listening to these people
I don’t agree with the premise of the title at all. I’ve been playing MMOs and RPGs long before streaming was ever a thing and to this day have yet to watch a single streamer. I don’t even have a Twitch account.
While I am certain that there are some players that genuinely care about streaming and perhaps even started playing the game because they saw someone streaming it I think for a game like WoW with a long established history this is largely irrelevant.
That said, the game has been in a terrible state since Legion and has gotten from bad to worse with SL being the crowning achievement of the failure and lack of vision demonstrated by the current leadership at Blizzard. So it’s hardly surprising that content creators are jumping ship. So are the players and the recent allegations, as horrifying as they are (not to mention completely believable and utterly unsurprising beyond their sheer scope), were frankly just the straw that broke the camel’s back rather than some watershed moment.
This is just made up BS. Can you point out a single time Blizzard has listened to a streamers opinion and made changes to the game? No? That’s because it did not happen. Streamers tend to also have large numbers of people who agree with them and only really push things the community at large want added into the game anyway. If their opinions are bad they are usually called out by their own viewers.
I think you are confusing streamers/content creators with esports stuff. While they often share the same viewership, few if any of them wanted WoW to go down the Esports route, the opposite really. Asmongold and the few others I watched in the past or seen clips of have all been very anti Esports and the like.
Again, wrong. Every major WoW content creator is very opposed to these systems and pointed out in the closed beta how bad they are for the game.
Blizzard adds them anyways for the casual players to waste their time on them. You don’t need to look up a guide to find out how to use any of them unless a few screws are lose, they are all very simple. The most you would need to do is look up what does the most damage. That has been what people have done even in vanilla with talents.
Are you really comparing people who make videos talking about/playing games other people make as comparable to the invention of a new mode of transportation?