The WoW streamer Asmongold is hard on Blizzard. But this time he has some pretty good arguments.
Asmongold is one of the biggest streamers in the field of World of Warcraft and is often seen as controversial. While some of his viewers like his style and enjoy following him, many others find nothing appealing in his streams and statements.
However, in a video, he has spoken quite calmly and factually about a problem in WoW that he has been observing for years. He is receiving a lot of support from the community and wishes for Shadowlands that Blizzard finally takes a different approach.
What is Asmongold talking about? In the video, Asmongold addresses some issues with World of Warcraft that have repeatedly occurred in the past. He talks about the recently introduced system of a Corruption vendor. This is a mechanic that players wished for during the testing of Patch 8.3.
Such (obvious to him) improvements should be in the game from the start and not just after many months when the community has already had to endure an unfinished or unfair feature for a long time.
What examples does he mention? Asmongold has found “more than a dozen” such cases in which Blizzard retroactively adjusts and changes systems until players have new incentives to use them. The systems are deliberately tuned to have a large factor of randomness at the beginning, and only later do they become fairer and more interesting. Here are a few of his examples:
- Doubloons for island expeditions: Rewards for expeditions could not be bought specifically back then, but one had to rely on a lot of luck. Doubloons served basically no real purpose.
- Account-wide essences: Players would have to repeat countless content for Twinks to get strong essences. Only very late did Blizzard fulfill the request to make it easier to get essences for second characters.
- Paragon system in BfA: Legion already had this feature and it was well received. There was no reason not to have the Paragon system at the start of BfA – this is something we also criticized on MeinMMO.
- The Legendary system in Legion: With the large factor of randomness, the system caused a lot of frustration and made players grind for a long time to finally get their desired legendary. Later, these items could be bought specifically.
All these things would be improvements that the community had already wished for when the systems were introduced:
“The idea that players don’t know what they want is simply not true. The problem is that Blizzard gives players what Blizzard wants players to want, and not what players truly want. And I believe the decisions here are made based on participation [in the systems] and not based on the enjoyment [of the players].”
Asmongold accuses Blizzard: The streamer believes that Blizzard deliberately withholds systems that would make WoW a better game. His suspicion is that Blizzard is only evaluating pure numbers and player participation in the respective systems.
As soon as they would see, for example, that not enough players are completing the daily quests in Uldum and the Valley of Eternal Blossoms, Blizzard intervenes. This was first the case with the increase in the amount of Manifested Visions received, then with the introduction of Echos of Ny’alotha for Twinks, and now for the Corruption vendor.
As a loyal player who plays the systems in their original state, he feels mocked by Blizzard. When he knows that these flawed systems will eventually be made usable after a while if only enough players lose interest in them, it’s not fun.
He feels like a beta tester for systems whose feedback from the actual beta test has apparently been ignored.
What the community says: Asmongold is considered somewhat controversial in the WoW community, but he is receiving a lot of support on this point. In the subreddit, people write:
“I strongly agree with [Asmongold]. Blizzard has been doing this for a long time now and it’s pretty obvious why. I hope they finally think long-term for Shadowlands and don’t deliberately release unfinished content.”
Hughch on Reddit
“Too long, didn’t see: Blizzard has continued its long-established practice of balancing things based on tables and numbers instead of creating a system that feels good.”
Maezriel_ on Reddit
“I want to be honest with you – I feel like an idiot for playing WoW. Like a donkey, a hamster in a wheel, like an NPC.
I’m just so drained from it. They make me do all these tasks that I don’t enjoy at all so I can occasionally have a little fun. I pay 15 euros to have a second job.”
AlpacaWoolHat on Reddit
But what do you think about this topic? Do you agree with Asmongold on this matter? Or do you think he is wrong?
