This wasn't handled well

[Charax-emerald-dream (Charax)]

Good post, other than whining about the release date.

[Amangina-hyjal]

They aren’t.

Of course, some people will use the argument that watching streams of video games is no different than watching sports. And they are absolutely right. If you’re watching e-sports, or professional football.

This is the e-sport equivalent of skipping your own beer league softball game to watch two teams from a different beer league play when you have no connection to anyone on either team.

The streamers getting beta invites are there because it’s free publicity, because even if an NDA is in effect that prevents them from showing gameplay, it won’t stop them from talking about how great classic is (even if it’s terrible) because people are going to come to their channel, and watch their stream, just so they can try to glean some info about the beta.

Streamers are free advertising. They are unpaid shills. It’s unholy marriage of attention seekers chasing ad dollars and a company that will cut CS, advertising, and development before executive bonuses.

If they wanted to give beta invites to “content creators” they should be giving them to the people who will actually be creating content. Give it to the people who are going to be working on writing, testing, and converting mods built for private servers and retail servers for classic.

[Ponchy-zangarmarsh]

So whining about only things you agree with is good whining? Things you disagree with is bad whining?

I like your logic.

[Solanaria-sisters-of-elune (Solanaria)]

I don’t think you know what entitlement means.

[Ponchy-zangarmarsh]

That would be true if people only watched professional game players compete. That is like less than 1% of all the videos of people playing video games.

[Volitar-burning-blade (Volitar)]

Before that content creators used to hang out on the forums, then youtube and now twitch. They always existed, but the medium on wich they delivered the content has changed.

Content creators use to create content not watch other peoples youtube videos all day and ‘react’.

[Charax-emerald-dream (Charax)]

So whining about only things you agree with is good whining? Things you disagree with is bad whining?

I like your logic.

Things I agree with are valid concerns (not good whining). Things I disagree with may not necessarily be whining, but in this case, it is.

Oh, and thank you!

[Shimy-khadgar]

Well put and well thought out post, you basically summarized all of my thoughts and complaints about how blizzard has handled this whole thing in a much more clear and non hostile way than I could ever. Thank you. I truly hope someone at blizzard reads this post and acts upon it.

[Nehala-dalaran]

It was done on twitch first, that’s the problem.

No it wasn’t.

[Crooge-medivh]

I’m fine with Streamers getting dibs. Everyone else who can’t get an invite for beta can at least WATCH it playing out on Twitch.

Most of us are stuck working real jobs anyway.

(That was a joke. Calm down, streamers.)

[Shibah-spirestone]

I think you put that well, OP. I’m with you on all the points other than college students. We don’t know how many of them are playing or want to play, so citing the amount of them in the US isn’t really making any point.

I do however agree that if they are pushing back the release because of 8.2 and/or so there can be streamer hype, that’s a horrible decision.

I believe I read somewhere that sales and marketing people are taking more and more of a lead in determining the direction at Blizzard.

I’d just like to add that Steve Jobs (pretty decent at business) said that was exactly why those companies failed.

[Renim-aegwynn (Renim)]

This is going to be a bit verbose.

My opinion is that the Classic release/beta announcement has been handled in a poor manner. I’ll get right to the major issues:

1. The Streamer Involvement

I’m not sure if your social media/marketing people are aware, but there’s a non-nominal portion of the Classic Wow community that absolutely loathes streamers. For some people it’s likely a generational thing (they didn’t grow up with Twitch); for other people it’s personal. There are certain Twitch personalities that have publicly expressed negativity toward the revitalization of vanilla WoW and/or elements of the vanilla community. There are others that have either shared false Classic information or just come across as being untrustworthy opportunists. There’s yet a third group that has openly derided vanilla-WoW design philosophies because those principles don’t lend themselves to e-sports. These are some of the people we were receiving information from yesterday; these are the people that have (or likely will have) access to the beta.

To make things worse, on Monday and Tuesday a couple of these influencers thought it would be a good idea to hop on Twitter and Reddit to mock members of the Classic community (or react to people that were mocking them). Players and streamers were getting into petty spats, with the former expressing their dislike for the latter, and the latter flaunting their beta access to intentionally goad the former. Not exactly a positive environment surrounding the release announcement of your game. The fact that you made these Twitch personalities the custodians of the biggest Classic-related news yet – I just think the person that made this decision is incredibly out of touch. This information should have been released through official channels and not left to some Twitch streamers that the community is already hostile toward.

This game is (was?) guaranteed to have a tremendous Twitch presence anyway, and anyone paying attention knew that months ago. Some of the biggest names on that site have expressed interest in streaming Classic, as well as various Instagram personalities and even people who have done television/film. The idea that you need to “create” a Twitch presence for Classic by using B/C tier streamers that are going to get absolutely buried during release, I just don’t see the purpose. It’s like your social media team is trying to create work for themselves that doesn’t actually need to be done, and in the process they do more harm than good. I don’t believe retail expansion announcements are handled in the manner that we saw this week, so why do this with Classic Wow? Is this the way we are going to get Classic, TBC, and Wrath server information in the future? If yes, why?

2. The Layering Information Dissemination

This ties heavily into issue number 1. Why are we first receiving this information from people who aren’t game designers or network engineers? Skilled professionals are going to be the most adept at explaining a game system such as this, not some dude whose only tech bonafides are building a gaming PC and a Twitch channel. The whole sharding/phasing/layering topic has been one of the most contentious issues here for months, so you’d have to be a total dullard (or just not paying attention) to not see that the layering announcement is something that needed to be handled with finesse. Instead of controlling the narrative on this issue and providing information via official channels, you left it up to a group of people who don’t even fully understand how it works.

Why isn’t Ion Hazzikostas the face of Classic WoW? He has more verifiable vanilla WoW experience than 99.99% of the people here, and he should have been anointed as the (public) head authority on this project a long time ago. I understand he’s very busy, but he really should be the dominant voice here. I was the guild leader of Elitist Jerks; I’m a Scarab Lord; I did the math on unbeatable C’Thun; I’m the authority. Assert yourself and just straight up tell people that you understand the vanilla WoW experience as well as anyone else does, and you fully understand their concerns about the impact of new tech in Classic WoW. I see that Ion and Calia are now being wheeled out to attempt damage control on the layering thing; they should have been handling this information the entire time.

3. The Release Date

Yeah…this screwed a bunch of us hard, and it stings. I won’t directly address the bozos who can’t be bothered to look up easily verifiable facts regarding who is in school and who is not, but I will say that in the United States alone there are ~8-9 million college students age 25+, depending on the year (roughly 40-45% of all college students in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics). For students of any age, and educators, late August/ early September is obviously going to be a bad time to get lost in Azeroth again. That time of the year can also be busy for parents, with kids going back to school and the drama/schedule changes involved in that process. The retail sector is one of the biggest employers in America, and early September is when they and other companies start focusing on gearing up operations for the holiday months. Simply put, early September (+/- a week) starts to get really busy for millions upon millions of people.

Is one of the goals of Classic WoW to get people back who may have been out of your ecosystem for an extended period of time? Is releasing a time-demanding game when many people don’t have time to spare a good way to achieve that? Everyone knows that Classic requires a time commitment that many modern MMOs do not, and the people looking to get back into it are probably very aware of just how many hours it can chew up. Making a serious attempt to get back into vanilla WoW at the busiest point in the year is likely going to yield poor results (either in game progress, or in aspects of your real life, or both). There are only so many hours in the day, and if I have extremely limited free time, I’m much more likely to hop on Path of Exile or Borderlands 3, or whatever. There are thousands of games out there where I can accomplish tasks if I only have 30 minutes to play; Classic WoW is not one of them.

I understand that Classic needs some more time in the proverbial oven, but I can’t help but feel like the Classic release date is scheduled around patch 8.2. Retail patch 8.2 is releasing at some point near the beginning of the summer, and it’s my belief that Activision-Blizzard doesn’t wan’t 8.2 and Classic to compete with each other. That’s fine, and completely understandable, but you’re making a conscious decision to negatively impact (many) Classic players so that you can separate 8.2 and Classic. I hope 8.2 brings as many players back for you as Classic likely will. I understand that retail is more profitable, but when your monthly active users are vanishing like smoke, I would have thought that getting as many users back as possible would be a priority. I guess that’s why I don’t make the big bucks.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, you’re a trooper, and I wish you all joy in your less than one third of a Classic summer.

So, in summary… “Wahhh I can’t play because of school!”

Wait until you become an adult and have to adjust your game time around family, work, and other obligations.

Blizzard does not care about your school schedule, they are likely releasing it to pacify the people playing BFA to have something to do after 8.2 is released.

[Tocahontas-arygos]

I was agreeing with everything you said, especially about streamers. Why should the same people who bashed Classic and its audience be allowed to test it first? Definitely feels like a slap in the face.

Then you brought up Ion. God, why did you have to do that? A remnant from a guild that was among the best in the game - and also one that is responsible for so many toxic acts. Guilds like Elitist Jerks were such cancer to anyone who wasn’t epicly hardcore. That aside, he’s played a key role in widdling WoW down into the casual-fest that it is today. He deserves no love except from elitist raiders who share his fascist motives.

[Xianmisuto-thrall (Xianmisuto)]

I have one word of advice

Get over it.

[Shibah-spirestone]

I think this is the wrong attitude to have towards a beta test.

If there’s anything positive from letting streamers in, it’s that many people will watch them and may notice bugs or issues the streamer doesn’t. The streamer can ideally report on their behalf.

This should be all about finding issues so we should have as smooth of a release as possible, not entertainment.

[Gìn-lightbringer]

Most of us are stuck working real jobs anyway.

(That was a joke. Calm down, streamers.)

I mean, you’re not wrong.

[Ponchy-zangarmarsh]

I have one word of advice

Get over it.

I have a one word reply to your advice-

That was three words.

[Xianmisuto-thrall (Xianmisuto)]

Touche…

[Alvalek-illidan]

He quit at the beginning of wrath.

He didn’t start until wotlk.

You must be an Alexensual fan

[Cyberteamsix-azgalor]

You must be an Alexensual fan

Nahh, i just have my facts correct.