I mean, i’m not agains’t Hardcore existing but saying it brought WoW into the spotlight is a stretch. If you look at the actual Hardcore player numbers sure seem like a lot of people care more to follow the streamer dramas tied to it than actually playing it.
Its basically Jersey Shore for nerds.
Once again, doesn’t matter. Blizzard doesn’t give AF if hardcore has 10 people on it.
“Erm, they just follow the le streamers!!”
Nobody cares if you think it’s cringe, and nobody cares what you think about “le streamers” because it makes the game popular, and brings in more money
I don’t know for me that Warrior wouldn’t feel like a waste, especially if its Era where you know that server isn’t going anywhere. You can always go back if the mood strikes you and pick up where you left off. It’s not going to be moving forward.
Even on SoD I had several characters, raided for a bit and then quit. Nothing about it felt like a waste of time, it was just the end of that journey. Same thing currently for Anniversary servers. If my guild that is waiting on TBC doesn’t come back I’ve had fun bopping around on Vanilla and will probably do that same with TBC.
After 20+ years with WoW I’ve long gotten over needing to do everything, in fact I actively skip things I dislike now even if may hurt the character long term. I know there are certain things I don’t enjoy doing and I’m just not going to do them.
Granted it may help that my first MMO was SWG. Leaving that one hurt, I actually had made a name for myself on that server, people I didn’t even know would come up to me and start conversations just because they had heard of me. Part of it was ego, part of it was just the social nature of the thing. I’ve made some great friends on WoW, but I’ve never had anywhere to the character identity that I had in SWG so individual characters were never hard to shed on WoW.
Same, after 20 years of items and achievements being left in the dust with the next content update I guess we get used to it and stop expecting some payoff or feeling of completion for all our game time.
This is why I do wish that they would ‘era’ all expansions. The thing that most sucks is having to take a break for RL, but knowing that when you come back, you won’t even be coming back to the same game. Its kinda like reading a book and putting it down for a while, only that when you pick it back up the story is different. Its not that I feel like my time was wasted, I am just irritated that I cannot pick back up where I left off.
Some of my retail characters are so old, that now the game forces me to auto-upgrade their gear, but that gear was meaningful to me. Sure I get to keep it but what is the point? I understand that it is just the nature of the beast for an MMORPG, but simply ‘era’ing’ each expansion would ensure that I could revisit the same game. Like firing up the Nintendo and playing the same Zelda that I played in 1986.
stream hits don’t always equal money. I used to make fun of people who watch game streamers and not play the game. Who watches people games and not play them?
Now I am among them. watch them play a bit and that is how I decide.
Yes, I will buy this game now.
I will table this game till steam sale since I’ve enough on the gaming plate. Or I don’t seem this a $70 game. At most its a $35 one.
Or…I will not buy this game.
Rarely do I take option 1. Expedition33 is the rare exception there of late.
In the case of the last 2 options, the only person paid in full is the streamer lol. In case 3, that game gets no money actually.
What changed my view here? lots of crap games put out in recent years. the first 5 hours can be good. I watch streamers for the 10+ and 20+ hour plays
That is when the honeymoon is over.