World of Warcraft - Pandora's Box

uh does the international addiction to an internet game represent a danger maybe but there is also no indication that anything can slow the explosive growth of the intoxicating game called world of warcraft [Music] what the [ __ ] was that [ __ ] [Music] and by the way you don't want that to do that either you think you do but you don't [Music] you guys take care of this man yeah [Music] incredible 16 hours a day his mother says his personality has changed and that he's become moody and violent and his addiction is tearing the family apart but our actions are gonna matter more than any of these [Music] the power level where i basically get all the good loot and they get all the great experience [Music] [Applause] [Music] in the world of mmorpgs you'll scarcely find anyone who hasn't heard of if not played the world of warcraft released in 2004 and you would quickly begin to make a name for itself garnering worldwide praise for its innovation accessibility and the closeness to the community by its developer blizzard entertainment both celebrated and condemned for its addictiveness in the span of a few short months it would not only become the most popular of the mmorpg genre but also set the standard for all of those that would follow in its footsteps many would try and over the course of 15 years few would gain even a fraction of the player base of the seemingly unstoppable giant today though a much different picture is painted what was initially considered inspirational in the world of game development now leaves behind a controversial history marred with what many describe as betrayal deception and squandered potential leaving many asking the question how a snapshot of history of a world created within a world a microcosm of mayhem a virtual playground for humanity to show each other their best and their worst this is the story of blizzard entertainment and their iconic mmorpg the world of warcraft at the dawn of the new millennium the online world was growing rapidly the intellect of man and the advancements of technology combined bestowed upon the world the creation of the internet by al gore news of a new star wars movie was spreading the storyboard for the lord of the rings the fellowship of the ring had been completed nerd culture was about to reach critical mass and bill clinton did not have sexual relations with that woman and so entered the massively multiplayer online role playing game or mmorpg for short the creation of the first mmo can be traced all the way back to the 70s depending on your definition and standards as they would be text based though they had existed for decades it was only near the new millennia that they would attract a sizable player base although varying in implementation they all shared the central idea of an online persistent world to be shared with players from all over the globe a genre unique in the sense that there is no planned end no credits rolled nor thanks for playing game content would be added as long as there are players playing and the journey would only end when the player decided that it was over a concept that was remarkably foreign to many at the time in these early years many would try their hand in breaking through the genre and overall it would contain a niche audience some were beginning to make a name for themselves though such as origin system sleep into the online persistent world with ultima online an isometric fantasy game memorable for its pvp combat in particular mythic entertainment who would later develop warhammer online took their shot with the dark age of camelot a third person take on arthurian lore mixed with norse mythology and high fantasy star wars would make their debut into the world of mmos with the 2003 release the star wars galaxies an mmo with a more heavy focus on community and sandbox gameplay and most prolific at the time was everquest in 1999 by varant interactive and 99 studios decrowning the previously reigning champion ultima online just 24 hours after launch it would quickly become the most subscribed mmorpg and uh 10 000 subscribers yeah really 10 000 was the most subscribed mmo rpg at the time it would eventually peak at over 500 000 years after its launch but as history has shown this would yet be a fraction of the potential that was hidden within the genre a potential that had yet to be realized the mmo was on the rise and the time to strike was nigh and in the background a beast was stirring silently observing the strengths the weaknesses the successes and the failures of the then relatively unexplored genre blizzard at this point already had established themselves as innovators with their diablo starcraft and warcraft series the latter being a real-time strategy game set in a fantasy world of orcs elves magic and adventure and having seen the success of other fantasy based games such as everquest the table was set after halting development on an abandoned project a small team of developers were left in limbo and were searching for inspiration on their next game they had the ip they had the funding and most importantly the timing september 2nd 2001 long before blizzard was big enough to hold their own convention they held a panel at london's european computer trade show and it was then that the public for the first time saw the world of warcraft [Music] they made it clear this was not the sequel to the popular rts series at the time but rather something completely different players would transition from controlling pre-made heroes and progressing through a campaign to creating their own heroes and making their own stories the game would be multiplayer on a massive scale bringing together fans of not only the warcraft series but of mmos as a whole the reaction however was mixed some waited with eager anticipation trying to imagine their beloved series making its sleep into the massively multiplayer setting and many were upset at the abrupt change of focus preferring blizzard to concentrate on what was proven to work instead of taking a gamble into unfettered territory the idea of paying a monthly fee to continue playing was a hard pill to swallow at the time especially by blizzard fans who had grown accustomed to the one-time purchase models set standard by the company work would continue on the project however and the very first interview would be claimed by the computer gaming world magazine by this time everquest was the clear reigning champion but the genre as a whole had one fatal flaw that's the learning curve xp loss gear loss and even permanent character death were commonplace in nearly every game of the genre and combined with the large time investment in playing it cultivated a very niche and hardcore community and the everyday casual player would quickly succumb to the intense difficulty and seek entertainment from other more forgiving games it was a genre with a focus on character progression with death penalties centering around character regression and a steep learning curve to go along with it however this transitionary period would prove to be a key moment where players for the first time would leave single player games that looked like this into this online sprawling world they were incomparable to each other and although it's funny to think now it was an intimidating thing the time investment was and still is incredibly high you had to have a computer you had to have a good enough graphics card to run it you had to have internet and you had to pay a subscription the amount of hurdles standing between the average person and the game were already high and combined with the unforgiving gameplay of the landmark titles representing the genre it was just too much for the average person but it was this person this untapped market of new and casual players that blizzard would set their sights on world of warcraft took a completely different style of approach during a time when xp loss was the bare minimum penalty for dying world of warcraft made you simply run back to your corpse one of the great things here is that when you die and death is an inevitability in all these games it's really not that big of a deal all other online rpgs make death a really bad thing because dying should be bad right well in world of warcraft pretty much all that happens is you sit out for a bit you respawn back at a graveyard and you run and get your corpse and you respawn you don't lose experience points you don't lose your items or any of that stuff when hitting the max level took years and other games world of warcraft it took months for most players and when systems were complicated and confusing requiring external literature to understand world of warcraft systems were relatively straightforward and when character stat and template choices were often permanent world of warcraft featured costly but reversible methods of character progression and customization in other games he had areas designed for large groups of high-level players referred to as raids but they were commonly out in the open world which resulted in having to compete against one another for kill credit due to this and there was a greater sense of urgency to complete the raid in its entirety in one sitting before any other guild had the chance to catch up and bring unwanted competition marathon sessions of guild setting up 24-hour shifts was a common strategy to maintain dominion of these raids in many cases to the detriment of the health of the players this final fantasy 11 boss was engaged for 18 hours until players were forced to quit after they began to faint and vomit though this bus in particular was nerfed shortly after the incident this was the state of the end game for most mmos in these early stages however world of warcraft had been one of the first mmos to standardize instance trades where players and guilds could create their own unique raid instances resetting on a weekly basis and as for the raid bosses themselves although today seen as archaic and simplistic at the time they're quite advanced in a genre where raid bosses boil down to having a unique name with a higher health pool and increased damage world of warcraft would add unique and often at the time complex mechanics that required teamwork and thought to overcome which in turn would become one of the game's major selling points the worlds had npcs but were commonly static whereas the world of azeroth felt more alive with dynamic npcs going about their daily lives simply put what it didn't invent it improved mmos were in a constant state of almost theirs and world of warcraft was the first one to bridge that gap and bring it into a more mainstream audience and it reaped the rewards because of that the game would continue development throughout the years with teasers being released in the form of magazine interviews and trailers keeping the curious onlooker abreast on its direction and after a long alpha and beta testing period the moment of truth came on november 23rd 2004. [Music] its strategy of appealing to the casual gamer worked well a little too well blizzard in no way was prepared for the frenzy of players eager to get into the world disconnects lag and rollbacks would persist heavily for the opening months and still consistently through the next couple of years forms daily would be filled with outrage demands for a refund and even threats of lawsuits the miraculous thing about it though is that it didn't even seem to slow its growth the launch today is looked at as disastrous and yet still people came back again and again how can a game that's playable maybe 50 percent of the time hold such a demand well it's because it was that good years of development had paid off as world of warcraft quickly became ahead almost immediately dwarfing all competition at the time and robbing them of their player bases it was the vampire of the mmo industry at its release and it would suck the life force out of every single previously mentioned staple of the genre but it was one unfortunate thing the unfortunate thing was it launched right when wow launched yeah so wow brought the whole industry down not just us every online game out there went down as soon as wyo went out wow was like a huge succubus of players went over there and drove into wow and it drove all our numbers down 60 levels of progression and a world of challenges awaited the eager player base and there would be many landmark moments just waiting to be claimed players rushed to the max level and the title of the world first level 60 went to a player named zenith a troll rogue on the stormreaver server on december 3rd 2004 a little less than two weeks after release by today's standards incredibly slow but back then a no-life nerd as onlookers weren't shy of expressing on january 30th 2005 the game would see its first raid cleared with the death of onyxia taken down by the guild ruined on the proudmoore server and many players for the first time got to see the famed epic quality items that she hoarded [Applause] [Music] blizzard would spend the following years perfecting their craft as their subscriber base increased so too did their budget and more servers would quickly be added to support the booming player base new patches would not only release new raid tiers but also systems items and much more and in may of the same year the subscriber base would see its biggest surge for the next decade [Music] okay guys these eggs have given us a lot of trouble in the past uh does anybody need anything off this guy one of the earliest videos to go viral in the world of warcraft was created by the guild of pals for life the guild was strategizing on how to clear out a particularly tricky room in the upper blackrock spire raid i think it's a pretty good plan we should be able to pull it off this time uh what do you think abdul can you give me a number crunch real quick uh yeah give me a sec i'm coming up with 32.33 uh repeating of course percentage of survival well it's a lot better than we usually do uh all right ready guys oh my god he just ran in save him oh gee stick it clean oh geez let's go let's go and in the midst of the conversation a group member leroy charges in prematurely with reckless abandon causing the death of the entire [Music] i don't think you can cast with that oh my god [Music] the video was later revealed to be staged but nonetheless it cut on like wildfire and it was shared across multiple websites and forums making it one of the first videos for world of warcraft to gain viral popularity onlookers were intrigued word of mouth proved to be a prolific advertising vehicle for the game it's hard to say today just how many people watched the video as some of the uploads have been lost the original upload on warcraft movies today sits at nearly 90 million views and the original youtube mirror reached at least 46 million before it was taken down and surviving mirrors today said at a total combined count of around 24 million regardless it's by far the most viewed warcraft related video even to this day over 15 years later it was so popular in fact that it was later featured as a question in the trivia show jeopardy just a few months later in november this role-playing game out in 2004 returns to the world of azeroth where heroes like leroy jenkins do battle and that would be the world of warcraft pathetic [Music] the leroy craze wasn't the only phenomenon to spawn from the game though september of 2005 saw the release of the zul'garub raid the final encounter of which was a boss named hakkar he had an ability called corrupted blood which dealt some damage to a player and if they were to stand too close to another it would spread to that person in a contained environment it's just another raid mechanic that is until one player intentionally or otherwise managed to create a virtual pandemic that spread across every single server the mechanic had one fatal flaw by getting a pet companion afflicted with the disease and then dismissing it it would persist when the pet is summoned once more this person did just that but in a crowded area and spread the affliction to every nearby player and npc and as long as there were living hosts there was no escape entire cities became infected by the plague word quickly spread and other players intentionally started spreading the disease ironforge stormwind orgrimmar every major capital city was a death hub and was uninhabitable by lower level players the spread would continue to go on for days until blizzard eventually hotfixed the disease but the resulting chaos remains to this day to be one of the most memorable moments in the game's history and has even been used in real world research of the spread and reaction of contagious diseases though there are many memorable landmark moments in the game's history some are more controversial than others in 2006 on the illidan server a player by the name of fagin passed away suddenly from a stroke and in memoriam of one of her favorite activities fishing her guild had decided to host an in-game funeral service to pay one final tribute to her there were two problems though it was publicly advertised on the realm forums and illidan was a pvp server where players of the opposite faction could freely attack one another a guild stranded he now saw the thread they felt that they would join in to pay tribute but in a very different way having snuck through a nearby tunnel leading into the zone an entire raid team prepared to crash the funeral as players lined up to pay tribute to their friend the raid quickly closed in on the location and to make matters worse in an effort to role play many of the attendees had unequipped their armor and weapons leaving them defenseless against the surprise onslaught the funeral was quickly and easily dispatched serenity now would become infamous under server and the crash still stands today as one of the most controversial in-game events in its entire history all of these moments serve a crucial role in the telling of the history of the game and it would serve as a reminder of the reasons why it became such a success it's due not only to its own merits but perhaps even more drastically by the community that the world of azeroth was comprised of this world however was about to change how many of you have played world of warcraft due to the success of world of warcraft blizzard for the first time held their own event a convention centered solely around a blizzard games named blizzcon this was and remains to be a unique aspect of the developer to hold a personalized convention tailored to their products a form of celebration of not only the games that they're creating but also the already massive community that they've built the strong focus on the community would be something that blizzard would become known for and it created a loyalty of sorts from the players it felt like it was more than a game it was a community of people sharing their combined love and passion for the worlds that they us man you created really take care of us diablo starcraft warcraft fans from around the world would plan vacations around it long time friends and guild mates would meet each other in person for the first time and blizzcon as a whole would become a very crucial part of blizzard's identity from this point forward and in the very first convention held in october of 2005 a bombshell announcement was unveiled the world of warcraft is about to get bigger with the release of his first expansion the burning crusade [Music] the expansion boasted what players had come to expect from the world of warcraft and more they would step in to the world of the outland and progress through 10 more character levels new zones talents dungeons spells raids races a profession a new pvp system and much more it would add on to and improve in just about every aspect of the game but it's still 2005 and there's a lot of game left to conquer before players began worrying about their foray into the outland there were dragons to kill and dkp to acquire odd groups got left even groups got right that means one three five seven left two four six eight right and again he had casual hardcore and everything in between and there were some who took it even further beyond no reason to lose many tank and i am blaming you because i blame my i don't i can [ __ ] do it everyone can do it do it right this is [ __ ] videos of a more serious or angry nature would start to spring up at this point those of raid leaders chewing out members for failing and properly performing the mechanics of a boss fight well christian was feared interested [ __ ] was that crush him what the [ __ ] left side even side many wells now handle it [Music] the most prolific of which being dives the raid leader of the guild wipe club enyxia at this point had been slain by numerous guilds and after some unsuccessful attempts one of the members decided to record what would later become one of the biggest meltdowns in history the enyxia white animation what the [ __ ] was that [ __ ] much like leroy and the animation would quickly become popular and it highlighted the frustrating side of coordinating 40 people and clearing the challenging raids don't play like you're just [ __ ] going through the motions you'll get your goddamn loot eventually shut the [ __ ] up you stupid [ __ ] stop these videos would paint players in a much less flattering light as many people would become so obsessed that they would shirk real life responsibilities and fall out of contact with friends quit work or school and in the most extreme cases cause harm to themselves or others in korea of june of 2005 the four-month-old child of a couple would suffocate when left unsupervised for several hours as the parents were playing world of warcraft in an internet cafe the phrase world of war crack was coined shedding light on the dark side of video game addiction particularly that of mmos and the consequences of obsession something that the media was not shy of reporting as world of warcraft due to its popularity would find itself at the center of this war against video game addiction computer games he's playing them an incredible 16 hours a day his mother says his personality has changed and that he's become moody and violent and his addiction is tearing the family apart to many it was more than a game it was a virtual life with the graphical interface it attracted people from all walks of life and blended them together in the chaos of this online world news of the burning crusade remained to be scarce as it was still under nda in the friends and family alpha a blog post teasing new features would be shared scarcely but otherwise it was still largely a mystery outside of what was shared at the 2005 blizzcon the excitement was palpable and players from all over the world couldn't wait to get into the outland the beta test for the expansion started not too long after as players got to discover and explore its features and shortly after world of warcraft would become the focus of the cartoon series south park with their make love not warcraft episode the episode detailed the boys fight against the hacker antagonist and their struggle with video game addiction oh that's a big boy though on release it was an instant success many years later series co-creator trey parker detailed his worries with the episode revealing that he even tried to get it pulled as he feared that it simply wasn't funny but as history has shown the episode would become an instant success and despite the fact that the series at this point now has over 300 episodes it remains to be one of their most popular to this day [Music] [Applause] january 16th finally came and it marked the beginning of a new era the official end of vanilla world of warcraft people lined up outside of stores and tents in the freezing cold launch parties were held and the community was stronger than ever and pulled together with their one shared trade their fear of women or i mean their collective love for the game at this point it had amassed roughly 8 million subscribers by the expansion's release never once reporting a loss and holding on to the lion's share of the market in the background stirred some serious competition however mythic entertainment who developed the dark age of camelot sought to compete against blizzard with an mmorpg adaption of the renowned warhammer series due to its similar fantasy setting holding orcs magic elves and wizards many thought it to be the direct competitor to world of warcraft and deemed it to be one of the first of many would-be wow killers during the time another such game was the age of conan the hyborian adventures developed by funkom who was mostly known in the mmo community for anarchy online in 2001 its selling points would be impeccable graphics at the time and the new and fresh combat system in a dark and visceral world featuring the fatality mechanic where players could execute each other in brutal fashion often described as the mortal combat of mmorpgs and the lord of the rings online by turbine was also in development an mmo of one of the most celebrated franchises in nerd culture history certainly posed as a serious threat to blizzard at the time though these contenders would be far off from release the competition was beginning to get fierce and to stave them off the burning crusade had to be as exceptional as its predecessor months and months of doomsaying was put to the test did the burning crusade kill the world of warcraft of course the answer is no the expansion was a major success and the subscription base rose even more rapidly as players explored the dangerous reaches of the outland the classes evolved and the gap between them was lessened while still retaining the features that made them special the raids were more challenging the bosses more complex and offering more to conquer to the ever-growing subscriber base and the rating scene itself proved to be even more difficult for players than what they had encountered in the base game with many lists today naming a plethora of burning crusade bosses as the hardest in the game's history even over 14 years later with some of them going unkilled by 99 of the player base until blizzard intervened themselves to make them easier the expansion today is remembered for having an extensive process for gaining entry to the raids called attunement a large series of story-based quests served as an alternate form of character progression and players would rarely find themselves with nothing to do the pvp system had evolved to be more competitive with the new arena mode where players create custom teams and battle and small skill matches to the death setting the stage for future competitive events in blizzard's attempt to gain a foothold into the growing esports scene the alliance for the first time got to experience a new class to them the shaman and for the horde the paladin both with two new races added to the game the draenei and the blood elf five-man dungeons rose back to the forefront with the advent of the more challenging heroic difficulty the expansion was packed with features and upgrades in its design and stands as one of blizzard's most critically acclaimed releases even to this day the lord of the rings also sat release in 2007 to serve his competition for world of warcraft and although receiving favorable reviews at the time it couldn't compare to the size and scope of wow selling under 200 000 copies in the first months of release and dwindling shortly thereafter the game does still run today supported by a niche community and is hovering around 40 000 active players at the time of this video so the burning crusade pressed on undaunted and in the following blizzcon in august the next expansion the wrath of the lich king was announced [Applause] players were teased of the land of northrend where they had once visited in the events of warcraft 3. it's here where they would face off against arthas menethil as the lich king 10 more levels a new class the death knight new zones and siege vehicle combat were just a few of the many new features teased at the convention and due to the success of the burning crusade there was little question if it would be just as good 2008 came and on the one year anniversary of the release of the burning crusade world of warcraft hit a landmark 10 million subscribers absolutely dwarfing any and all competition the up-and-coming contender the age of conan saw its release in may of 2008 and received generally positive reviews by the media and had sold over 1 million copies by the end of its release month though ultimately the game had failed to retain this impressive surge of subscribers although reviewers worldwide had praised the game the player base condemned it as being unfinished and rushed as subscriptions quickly declined and just one year later funko would perform a fatality on 31 out of its 42 servers much like the lord of the rings online the game still holds a dedicated yet niche following by and large falling short of being the wild killer that many predicted that it would be in july in a bombshell announcement at the height of the game's popularity the power of the dark side could be resisted no longer as blizzard's parent company vivendi announced a merger with activision already having gained a reputation for excessive monetization and driving franchises and developers to an early grave many were dismayed at the news fearing that the same would become true for their beloved franchises including the world of warcraft along with ea they would gain the reputation of exploiting the player base to the fullest extent and spearheads today one of the largest focus on cash shops and pay-to-win game design and just one year later in september of 2009 activision blizzard would release the paid faction chain service and one month after that the paid race change service along with in-game collectible pets these services were seen by many as an affront on the integrity of the game and although not terribly impactful by themselves it was believed that they would serve as a gateway for more damaging paid services to be introduced later in september of 2008 the release date for the wrath of the lich king expansion became set in stone for november of the same year just as it was back in 2006 the clock began ticking for players to finish their activities in the burning crusade before the content was made to be irrelevant and due to the difficulty of the raiding scene in general they had their hands full there was quite a long draw between the final patch of the burning crusade and the launch of wrath nearly eight months but players didn't seem to mind due to the success and lingering challenge that the expansion had to offer those who thought otherwise though sought to fill in this void with the release of the highly anticipated warhammer online which such release in september but wasn't enough to succeed where the lord of the rings online and age of conan failed [Music] the game saw similar numbers to the age of conan selling 1.2 million copies at launch and starting off with a solid subscriber base of 800 000 players but similar to funcom's debacle it simply wasn't ready performance issues overshadowed and what could have been a great experience and players that have grown accustomed to world of warcraft's finely tuned and polished combat system immediately noticed a lack of fluidity with its gameplay additionally the game would suffer from major scandals such as erroneously charging subscribers for years of game time in a single day with some racking up charges and overdraft fees into the thousands similar to the age of conan warhammer failed to retain this early surge of players and servers were shut down and the subscriber base dropped even lower than that of their 2001 mmo the dark age of camelot the game officially shut down in 2013 but many deemed it to be truly dead just one year after its release [Music] shortly after the wrath of the lich king expansion saw its release and blizzard would once more break sales records plurals charged into northrend with new zones to explore dungeons and raids to conquer and a new class to discover the death knight was what everyone expected and more a lot more way too much in fact as many saw them to be far too powerful on release they would later be tuned down in upcoming patches replayability was amplified as the achievement system was implemented and players could collect points titles mounts and more through this new feature aimed towards completionists it would receive positive reviews of its many new features and improvements and the subscriptions continued their upward trend eventually peaking at 12 million just as with the burning crusade it seemed to be unstoppable though it would be where the first sign of weakness showed through the numbers that have been made public there wasn't a single moment where wrath had lost subscriptions between reports but it was also the first expansion where they had stopped gaining subscribers as they hovered around 11 to 12 million throughout the course of the expansion and as shown it wasn't due to any of these would-be wow killers in august of the same year the rating scene expanded in a big way as the third grade tier four the expansion the trial of the crusader would release with the heroic difficulty setting previously if players saw an extra challenge with the encounters they could impose boss specific hurdles or restrictions upon themselves for bonus loot achievements and bragging rights players would now instead toggle this optional difficulty setting before entering the raid and every boss within would deal more damage take more damage and gain extra mechanics in exchange for better quality loot this along with the mythic grading mode to be introduced later would become a landmark change in the core design of the game aimed to increase accessibility by greatly lowering the base normal difficulty and funneling those seeking a greater challenge into this optional difficulty setting this change in design would later be accelerated in the next expansion of the cataclysm which would be unveiled in blizzcon 2009 [Applause] the world of azeroth was about to change for good as the entire old world was deemed to be outdated by 2009 standards this expansion's villain deathwing would ravage the eastern kingdoms in kalimdor reshaping them visually and mechanically by reworking each quest players would be able to explore all of these changes from the comfort of their flying mounts which were now enabled in the old world two new races the worgen for the alliance and the goblin for the horde would also make their debut as well as a reworked talent system the game was to go over its biggest makeover today and whether it was for the better or worse was yet to be seen december marked the month of another hallmark feature being added to the game the dungeon finder no longer did players have to travel the world to run to their favorite dungeons as this tool match makes them together and teleported the party directly to the entrance at the time this feature was received with overwhelmingly positive feedback and a welcome quality of life improvement though restricted to players only on their server at the time of its launch it would later be opened up to other servers which had the unintended side effect of alienating the community from each other previously having to manually form groups had served as a critical and natural way for players to meet one another and make friends and they would soon learn the downsides of automating the process by handling the formation of the group automatically social interaction was replaced with convenience and the social aspect critical to mmo gameplay suffered as a result by itself this negative impact of the system would remain relatively minor but in the coming years players would notice a trend of eliminating these critical social structures in the name of convenience and at the cost of the game's sense of community which many claim to be one of the biggest features to which it owed its success the community would also see changes outside of the game in july of 2010 blizzard unveiled their new real id system where they're supporting forums for all of their games not just world of warcraft would no longer display character names when posting but rather real names tied to the account players and onlookers alike reacted with concern of blizzard's disregard of basic privacy rights deeming that their actions would essentially box the entire forum community doxing is the act of unearthing someone's personal information such as their name or address with the ultimate goal of real-life harassment today the advent of swatting shows the repercussions of those whose personal information was leaked for a company to do the work for them was seen as extremely dangerous flame wars and online disputes past present and future would serve as vessels for real-life harassment they argued they stated that the reason for the change was to cut down on forum trolling their logic being that if someone's real name was tied to their post they'd think more carefully about how they treat others and that quote removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment and connect the blizzard community in ways that they haven't been connected before another community manager put it to the test and in an effort to quell the player's fear he posted his real life name within one day players found and published his address phone number age and took to placing false pizza orders in his name and even placed death threats connecting him with the community in ways that he's never been connected before shortly after the co-founder of blizzard mike morheim stepped in and announced that they had rescinded their plans of publishing the player's real names in october blizzard pinned down the release date for the cataclysm expansion december 7th of the same year and despite the controversy the game in october would reach its peak subscriber count of 12 million the holidays came and the day of reckoning was at hand and the world of warcraft would suffer cataclysm in more ways than one in addition to the retuned old world the talent system would also see an overhaul altering the traditional freeform three tree talent system into specializations players would be forced to pick just one and lose access to many spells iconic to the other two the trees as a whole would also be simplified and the amount of points to invest reduced class and item balance in general would also be at the forefront of changes in the expansion mostly through the form of removal spell drinks were removed and all abilities now just had one rank that skilled with your level and were trained automatically and much more the cataclysm expansion is seen by many to mark the point when the rpg and mmo rpg was made to be lower case as it transformed into a much simpler version of an already straightforward game as world of warcraft straight further and further away from its social and rpg roots a community of private server players would grow larger and larger with each expansion independent groups took to hosting past versions of the game the most prolific of which being of its original state referred to as vanilla though its beginnings were humble this private server community would eventually grow large enough to become a problem for blizzard they would find themselves embroiled in legal battles to protect their ip from infringement and would eventually influence a major developed project many years later regardless they showed once more that they had no difficulty in selling expansions as once again they broke their own sales record with cataclysm selling a staggering 3.3 million copies on release day but unlike the previous expansions they had not seen an overall increase in subscribers post release instead remaining steady at the 12 million mark it had been stuck at since the beginning of 2009 and for the first time since its inception in 2004 the world of warcraft would see a loss in reported subscribers in fact cataclysm would fail to gain subscribers in a single reported quarter in its near two-year run discounting the release of the next expansion the mists of pandaria which would be announced in october [Music] the initial reaction would be very mixed the theme of the expansion was so unexpected that many thought it to be an out-of-season april fool's joke players would explore the mysterious world of pandaria with a new race the pandaren and a new class the monk dungeons were getting a special challenge mode to bring relevancy once more to five-man content and scenarios would be queueable micro dungeons designed for three players and the pet battle system was also implemented a minigame reminiscent of the popular pokemon franchise as for the talent system it would be simplified even further into the tier system offering more impactful choices but at a reduced quantity of just six points to invest and most controversially crossroads zones would eventually be implemented where players of differing realms would be able to see and interact with one another due to the falling subscriber base brought on by the cataclysm there were far too many servers running for the dwindling player base and as a result the worlds were starting to become barren by grouping servers together blizzard aimed once more to breathe life into the world of azeroth while many looked at the expansion as something new and fresh many more would be immediately turned off by its aesthetics and due to the downward trend in subscriptions skepticism if it would be a success was at an all-time high this was still far into the future though and the current focus remained to be cataclysm which at this point was still steadily losing subscribers in november along with the final raid dragon soul the lfr system would see its release similar to the dungeon finder released in the wrath of the ledger king expansion this would allow players to match make with others in a queue-based raiding mode doubling down on their design of trading away critical social and rpg functions for the sake of convenience and accessibility to accommodate for the increased disorganization that came with queue-based matchmaking the difficulty would be lowered even further than that of the base normal difficulty it was from this point forward that players no longer needed to even join a guild to experience the endgame content they didn't need to read strategies and they didn't even need to speak a single word in fact as blizzard deemed it an issue that 100 of the player base were not completing these raids in their entirety the accomplishment of clearing a raid would be more accessible than ever before but as a result the accomplishment would mean nothing from this point forward during this time another would-be wow killer was beginning to generate interest star wars galaxies at this point had been shut down in order to bolster the subscriber base of star wars the old republic developed by bioware and published by uh uh-oh it would be attempt number two for star wars on the massively multiplayer scale this installment promised a unique and fully voice acted campaign for each of their classes a space shooter component with a customizable ship a thriving end game for pve and pvp and perhaps most importantly it was during the first time where the reigning champion showed weakness while ultimately the previous contenders failed on their own merits it can be argued that the tremendous success of the world of warcraft during their debut certainly made them look worse in comparison now that this weakness was showing though the timing was ideal would the old republic succeed where its predecessors failed ex-subscribers disillusioned with the direction that the game had taken throughout the cataclysm looked at the old republic as the true successor this time players have been doomed saying the imminent demise of world of warcraft ever since its launch in 2004 only this time the game's downward trend would support their claims so the moment of truth came the launch arrived and like many other mmos before it the old republic launched too early in an attempt to release it during the holiday season it was rushed out and would suffer from technical issues game breaking bugs and questionable design decisions most notable of which is their use of the hero engine which proved to be poor in an mmo environment there would be a short delay between the player casting a spell and that spell actually landing [Music] [Music] an issue they attempted to rectify by tying an animation for each ability to make it seem more natural as a result though the combat felt very sluggish and awkward and those used to the crisp and smooth nature of the world of warcraft's combat system noticed the huge and immediate downgrade in quality this combined with other disappointing features such as their spaceship component being entirely on rails hindered its success in its crucial launch period the game had sold over 2 million copies and held 1.7 million subscribers which was around the sixth of the world of warcraft subscriptions at the time the closest that any recent mmo came to rivaling wow's popularity since its launch in 2004 but much like the lord of the rings online the age of conan and warhammer online the star wars the old republic suffered a similar fate and the subscriptions quickly plummeted not even eight months later it would convert to the free-to-play model often seen as the death sentence of mmos today the game holds a total of five servers once again coming nowhere near being the wow killer it was predicted to be you were the chosen one it was said that you were destroyed world of warcraft [Music] time marched on and the mists of pandari expansion would release in the month of september and for the first time since the release of the wrath of the lich king expansion they saw an increase in subscriptions though the eagerness of the player base was notably diminished as this would be the first expansion to fail and breaking sales records for blizzard upon release falling 30 below than that of cataclysm barring this initial surge they would be unable to halt the downward trend that had begun since the launch of cataclysm as subscribers would quickly drop from 10 million at launch to 9 million then aid and around 6.8 at its lowest point a drop of over 30 percent and the players were starting to feel the effect of a world that grew less active with each passing day cross realm officially saw its release which would make the world seem sprawling once more but once again at the expense of the server's community which would be present only a name from this point forward seeing the same players and guilds on your server consistently turned out to be an integral part of establishing a community that was only realized once it was taken away the world once more had players in it but due to the large amount of servers that would be grouped together players scarcely saw or recognized other players from previous adventures the basis to form a community which had been a key reason for its success was now a distant memory the world was in a predicament and blizzard had a difficult problem to solve a nearly empty world with little community or a full world ironically enough with no community though innocent enough on launch crossroad was seen today as a necessary evil for a problem which true solution lies in recapturing subscribers now lost an issue that blizzard would struggle with for years to come as the once iconic mmorpg now barely resembled an mmo due to its destroyed social structures and barely an rpg due to its abandoned rpg elements which would be taken a step further in march of 2013 as the game saw another major change with its first instance of forged loo released with the throne of thunder raid loot had the potential to have an increased quality regardless of the difficulty at which the players defeated the bosses having previously lost longevity in the raiding scene through the reduced base difficulty they had hoped to regain it via randomized loot and although it was relatively tame at the time of its release this forging system would later be seen by many to get out of hand and help diminish and confuse the reward structure that had been standard for the game for eight years at that point time passed patches released new raids and systems debuted and much changed with the expansion in the year of 2013. something that didn't though was this ongoing downward trend of subscribers in blizzcon 2013 blizzard would announce its next expansion the warlords of draenor the player base would journey back to the world of draenor an alternate reality before it was corrupted into what they knew as the outland in the burning crusade expansion it's here where they would establish forward bases known as garrisons and elantra campaign against garrosh hellscream the leader of the united orc army known as the iron horde who were set to invade the land of azeroth at this point the private server community had gained considerable traction as players yearned for the game that had originally captivated them and were becoming more and more unruly as the retail version strayed further and further away from its roots and they began campaigning blizzard to officially develop and support this past version of the game in a q a panel during the convention one such player asked for an official answer on the possibility of a legacy server the question was fielded by j alan brack at the time a production director for world of warcraft and he delivered this now infamous answer have you ever thought about adding servers for previous expansions as they were then no [Music] and and by the way you don't want to that to do that either you think you do but you don't remember when you had to like spam cities and say need a tank need a tank need a tank during the burning crusade days you don't remember that because now you just push a button that says go to the dungeon you don't want to do that though the quote would draw immediate ire of the legacy community it would prove to be an integral moment in its development serving as a rallying cry of sorts and bringing more and more attention on the possibilities of developing such a version of the game the answer was seen as dismissive and out of touch especially considering the fact that private servers at this point had grown to new levels of popularity and with this dismissive answer the questions started turning into demands and discussion of its viability or not and serve to fend the flames of a community becoming increasingly disillusioned of the world of warcraft and blizzard in their current state [Music] as the players were leaving blizzard had sought to recover financially through an increased focus and impact of their cash shop and against all assurances previously made shortly after their merger with activision they would finally turn the corner in december of 2013 and officially implemented the cash shop in-game and along with it came the most impactful service today the level boost leveling was now skippable as players could pay 60 dollars to immediately be fast tracked to the maximum level and jump right into the end game by and large the most impactful paid service at that point what was at one point seen as a cornerstone of mmo design was now skippable through an officially endorsed service the consequence and investment of picking a class investing time into it leveling it and learning it were thrown away sacrificed like many other features for convenience accessibility and short-term financial gain further damaging its already crippled rpg design the backlash was immediate but little did players know it was just the beginning and the standards of paid advantage in the game would sink lower and lower in the coming years time passed and two things remained constant a decrease in subscriber count and stagnation the final major patch of the expansion i had released in september of the previous year 2013 and other than the addition of the level boost the game saw no updates until the warlords of draenor pre-patch in october of 2014 an astounding gap of 13 months in the game's development this had marked the longest drought yet and subscribers fled the game in record numbers as the mists of pandaria failed to retain the migrating player base november came and with it the launch of the warlords of draenor expansion despite the game's troubles a combination of marketing and hype led to a rather successful expansion launch sales-wise over 3.3 million players had expansions in hand ready to step through the dark portal for a second time and subscription skyrocketed to 10.5 million the highest it had been since the launch of the mists of pandaria and it holds the record of the largest surge in subscribers for expansion launches though unfortunately for blizzard history would repeat itself in more ways than one as once again they had failed to retain the spoon as problems soon arose after launch oh that's nice every [ __ ] server that i even play on is offline oh yeah it looks like mine aren't the only ones they had come under a ddos attack as their servers were flooded with artificial traffic until they shut down from the strain this would go on for several days as law enforcement investigated into the matter meanwhile though players would become increasingly frustrated as the game remained to be mostly unplayable the culprits were eventually stopped but the damage had been done and the game experienced its worst launch since its initial release in 2004. what's more once the issue subsided players were met with what is now widely considered to be one of the worst expansions in the game's history the main feature of the expansion the garrison system isolated players in their own instance where they could recruit followers start an herb garden mine and craft and even use the auction house with the correct buildings although convenient it served as yet another future to alienate an already fractured community from each other and the game at times seemed as if it was single player a problem made worse by the massive hemorrhage of subscribers that was yet to come just as how the expansion broke subscription records on launch it also broke records for lost subscriptions shortly after as players saw a little enjoyment from what was eventually ousted as an unfinished expansion as many of the features previously teased would be left on the cutting room floor including new systems two major cities battlegrounds another zone and even an entire raid tier to name just a few time between patches would grow even larger and the patches themselves delivered less content the expansion held a total of just three major raids throughout its entirety with every expansion proceeding having at least four the combined effect of instanced garrisons and players flocking away made the new world seem dead and so more and more servers would be connected to each other in an attempt to bring life back into the dying world as subscriptions plummeted to an all-time low since its initial rise in vanilla at 5.5 million it was announced shortly after that they would no longer report subscription numbers stating that there are better indicators of business performance the message was clear where they had lost revenue and subscriptions they gained several times over via the paid level boost success was no longer tied to a healthy player base but rather revenue and although looked at today has an embarrassing period in the game's history financially it lifted the developer to new heights combined with other cash shop services the level boost and the warlords of draenor have played a large role in activision blizzard's best financial quarter to date the influence of the cash shop now fully realized it would be taken a step further in march of 2015 with the addition of the wow token where players could exchange real money for in-game gold or on the other hand use gold to purchase a token to pay for the subscription fee or convert it into a balance only spendable on blizzard products regardless of the method it would prove to be a massive commercial success for activision blizzard earning them record profits during record low subscriptions a long time had passed since the cash shop's initial rise in 2008 those who warned of the dangerous path that world of warcraft was set on as other predictions unfold slowly over the course of several years at this point in the game's history it was possible to buy levels it was possible to buy currency and with this currency you could buy items and even services from other players such as raid or arena carries and a list of things that you couldn't buy was now far shorter than the list of things that you could buy it was at this point that the game was deemed by many to be paid a win as real-life purchases now had a clear and heavy impact on the power levels between different players behavior that previously warranted suspensions was now officially endorsed and advertised and any semblance of integrity the game had left was abandoned though at this point subscriptions were no longer being reported morale of the game's future continued to decline [Music] in august of the same year at the gamescom convention the next expansion legion would be announced the long-lost broken isles were discovered and the orc warlock gulban unleashed a second burning crusade upon azeroth it would feature a new class the demon hunter among many supporting systems such as powerful and unique artifact weapons that players could obtain and level up as an additional form of character progression each class would have a story driven order hall campaign quest line a new legendary system would be added where for most activities in the game players had a small chance to obtain powerful legendary items to further enhance their characters daily quest hubs would be replaced with world quests offering a greater variety in daily activities which had become standard for several years and the mythic plus system an infinitely scaling timed challenge mode to bring dungeons back once more as a focus of end game content after the warlords of draenor the confidence of the players was at an all-time low and many would hope that legion would be the expansion to redeem it although subscription numbers were no longer being reported it had tied the release day sales records set by cataclysm several years prior selling a total of 3.3 million copies on release quarterly investor reports would also provide promising data on the overall reception of the legion expansion suggesting higher play time per player mostly due to the success of its major features the expansion as a whole proved to be a much needed recovery the order halls being public locations that players shared served as a base of operations and unlike the previous garrison system didn't harm its own social aspect world quests compared to the old daily hubs offered much needed variety in players daily activities and mythic plus high activity as players enjoyed the timed ever increasing challenge that they provided most of its features were received well and with a solid rating scene to support it it's generally looked back at favorably by even the most embittered fans with its criticisms primarily being drawn from its reward structure the legendaries due to their low drop chance and high impact on gameplay would be a source of frustration so much so that they would receive a re-haul late into the expansion where players could purchase specific pieces with a new currency and similarly the forging system also contributed to this atmosphere of luck by holding too much power and character progression at this point it was called titan forging which had a much larger eye level range compared to the more tame thunder forging first introduced in pandaria items could roll up to 60 eye levels higher than that of their base which made it possible to obtain mythic rating quality gear from even the most mundane activities world of warcraft and mmos in general already have a high amount of luck tied to progression but this added layer of needing the right piece to drop and for that piece to tighten forge shifted the reward structure further from time investment to blind lock and combined with the legendary system many players would liken the expansion to a slot machine though overall legion would be received quite well it was meant with troubling news from within senior vice president of story and franchise development chris metzen who had been with the company for 23 years at that point had announced his retirement exciting burnout panic attacks and the desire to spend more time with his family as the primary reasons for the decision what a casual having been one of the most public-facing figures and the primary visionary for the world of warcraft and the characters who inhabited it it was seen as a tremendous loss with fans and co-workers alike commenting on his influence on the franchise along with this newfound growth of legion the private server community had also been thriving and in 2016 it was larger than it had ever been at that point with most congregating to a server named nest eldrius so many goddamn people this is literally the surface been up for about ten minutes and people are just entering and this is the scene the server had been hosting over 130 000 active players worldwide an impressive feat for a game that users had to seek out on their own their success proved to be their downfall however as in april of 2016 and blizzard had sent cease and desist letters for those responsible for running the server threatening legal action if they refuse to shut it down i personally had a private investigator hired to track me down by a legal firm that represents blizzard he called numerous people in my life including my employer my owner of my company to confirm information about me so he could serve me papers at 10 pm on a wednesday night slamming and knocking on the door freaking the crap out of my wife and waking up my baby daughter in the next room they would comply shortly after as tens of thousands of players logged in one last time to say farewell to the community that they had built the shutdown although completely within blizzard's rights legally naturally sparked outrage among the private server community a petition was created for an officially developed blizzard legacy server and it would reach nearly 300 000 signatures in the span of two weeks and although it didn't provide immediate results much like the infamous you think you do but you don't quote it would prove to be a critical moment in classics history [Music] the next expansion would be revealed at blizzcon 2017 and players learned of the battle for azeroth having thwarted the second burning crusade the horde and alliance now turned their attention on each other and would stage an all-out war over a new resource called azerite this resource would serve as a way to empower a new amulet the level of which would unlock traits in accompanying armor pieces the system had been set up similarly to the previously successful artifact system and advertised increased customization and player agency allowing them to tailor their characters to suit their gameplay style you might find a power that makes you think twice about using a talent that you'd previously written off and you will certainly find combinations that reinforce your favorite way to play your character one of the main methods of obtaining this resource were through island expeditions where a team of three players could fight against another team of players or ai for azerite found randomly throughout the island with random enemy selection placement and quests serving as the primary means of attempting to add replayability and longevity to them it's something that we're calling dynamic replayability every time you come to this space the puzzle is different the creatures are in different locations there are additional gameplay elements scattered throughout the world and it's always a little bit different warfronts were a new feature which were reminiscent of the original strategy games that the mmo was based off of in here you would battle for resources and construct and upgrade buildings and fend off troops with the ultimate goal of defeating the enemy commander these wouldn't be the only announcements the world of warcraft team had though and i want to talk about ice cream ice cream is great ice cream is one of my favorite desserts personally i love chocolate and i love cookies and cream cookies and cream is actually my all-time favorite dessert [Applause] but i stan i understand that for some of you [Applause] your favorite flavor is vanilla [Applause] though for years they had claimed a re-release of previous versions of the game was impossible world of warcraft classic would be unveiled combining the updated legion client with old data discovered on a backup of a backup held onto by an ex-employee a small team dedicated their efforts in providing a home for the ever-growing population of vanilla fans in place of the one that they had not so long ago taken away details of development would follow shortly after with a philosophy of changing as little of the game as possible in an effort to most accurately recreate the experience as it was from 2004 to 2007 including a phasing schedule to match roughly the original release schedule and as requested by the playerbase the absence of many features such as the dungeon finder looking for raid mode and the end game cash shop to name just a few combined with legion's recent success the outlook of the game was looking more promising than ever before the battle for azeroth soon saw its release in august of 2018 selling 3.4 million copies on its first day breaking the record initially said by cataclysm in 2010 however when the honeymoon phase ended the faults of the expansion started to become clear the azerite armor system which was said to hold major traits that altered how classes played instead were a series of incidental procs that rarely did anything other than increased damage done healing throughput and damage mitigation with some being just base stat increases you might find a power that makes you think twice about using a talent that you'd previously written off and you will certainly find combinations that reinforce your favorite way to play your character not at all as gameplay altering as advertised and despite bfa being centered around a faction war warfronts were exclusively a pve game mode that were also nearly impossible to lose with the only recorded losses resulting from the entire team waiting within the base until they were overwhelmed wow i'm screenshotting this due to this extreme lack of challenge there were seemed to be more of a chore than anything else and as for island expeditions players saw little replayability in the randomized selection of enemies and behind the bells and whistles was a simple and repetitive truth rush to get the required amount of azerite before the enemy team does and as a result the game mode would become very repetitive very quickly the story would also come under heavy criticism the whole expansion would have a heavy focus on sylvanas windrunner the leader of the forsaken of the horde and throughout bfa's two-year run she would face many major lore characters and even entire armies outwitting them at every turn or dispatching them with ease and combat the decision she made often came with no reasonable explanation or logic leaving the player based in the dark for the entirety of the expansion and many would liken her to a mary sue a fiction archetype who is inexplicably free of any and all weakness such traits are also common through self-inserts which there was also evidence of as a writer for blizzard would roleplay as a major character nathanos blightcaller on twitter the narrative structure remained ambiguous throughout the entirety of the expansion with most criticism being made towards the ending as was custom with the final boss of an expansion since the wrath of the lich king players were treated with the finale cut scene they would typically run a few minutes and were fully voice acted animation presentations is it over at long last no king rules forever my son though for the battle for azeroth the old god nazath would be the finale with years of anticipation building up as his existence was referenced several times up to the final patch of the expansion and where players expected a similar voice acted dialogue between the major lore characters and their thoughts on defeating a god they were instead met with the same footage i just droned over in a monotone manner the feedback was immediate and clear and shortly after its premiere the video would be unlisted as blizzard tried to hide the blundered finish to a blunder of an expansion come on guys let's go play video games the initial wave of excitement quickly soured as all three major systems of the expansion fell short of their goals they would later be addressed in major patches though players would have to wait nearly a year following their initial release in response monthly active users would start taking a dive and in an attempt to bolster engagement metrics the expansion would aim to rely on what many described to be an excessive amount of activities designed around daily and weekly timers by the end of the expansion's lifespan this would be the full list many would comment that the entire game at this point had devolved into a list of chores that she had a limited amount of time to complete aimed to keep players in a gerbil-like routine of going down a checklist for their daily session instead of feeling rewarded for their playtime and dedication many would feel punished for missing sessions and questioned their reasons for playing to begin with and just two months after release blizzard would suffer another devastating departure as co-founder mike morheim announced that he was stepping down as company president promoting then-executive producer jaylen brack to take his place more troubling still these people weren't quitting game development they were quitting blizzard later in 2020 morheim would announce a new company dreamhaven and under its umbrella were two studios moonshot games and secret door of which many former members of blizzard would be employed in its announcement they would stress that the goal of the company would be to prioritize product quality and player experience over short-term financial pressures a development mindset that many fans say activision blizzard had abandoned long ago chris metzen would later found warchief gaming which is dedicated to developing worlds and tabletop experiences and outside of world of warcraft the former hearthstone director ben brode would launch the game studio's second dinner ex-starcraft 2 developers would join frost giant and work towards developing a new rts and lightforged game was opened by former blizzard engineer matt shimbari and would later partner with dreamhaven morheim would be just one of many long time talent leaving the company in recent years and his departure would be instrumental in what would later be known as brain train afflicting the developer slowly but surely the people who made blizzard what they were were departing this rash of departures would be downplayed as ordinary for the world of game development and that the games were more about the team rather than individual members but internally employees shared a different story rather that these people were irreplaceable mentors and that they drew inspiration from each other and that each departure would be accompanied by a negative cascading effect to those left behind and just months later another co-founder frank pierce would be the next to announce his departure leaving just alan adam as the last co-founder standing development with classic was progressing steadily and a release date for the summer of 2019 was announced a new game within the warcraft franchise was also revealed warcraft 3 reforged would advertise fully remodeled characters and animations as well as retuned maps and campaigns in this modern day remaster with the set release year of 2019 this would later be delayed to january 2020 in an official post exciting delays in development and the desire to retain a high quality standard that the player base held them to though not pertaining to the world of warcraft directly but would transpire with the development of warcraft 3 and other titles revealed the priorities and development practices of blizzard as a whole and set the standard of how they would treat their community across all franchises world of warcraft included this was also the blizzcon where they announced a mobile diablo game which was met with [Music] a less than desirable reception [Music] did you guys not have phones yeah you guys all have identified well that's a story for another time to make matters worse the following years although financially successful would prove to be the most damaging to their reputation though reaching historic revenue earnings treatment of their employees would become the focus of negative press in february of 2019 800 employees would be fired many without warning and were left crying in the parking lot this is a trend that would continue through the following years of record-breaking profits with massive layoffs and multi-million dollar ceo bonuses following shortly after in one instance employees would be given gift cards to the games that they just got fired from working on on their way out hey here's some overwatch skins you're fired by the way and in other cases the amount of people fired would be underreported combined with the poor reception of the battle for azeroth the reputation had quickly started to sour from that of a community first industry innovator to one operated on greed predatory business practices and the cold treatment of their employees and even their player base little did everyone know though the worst was yet to come since 2008 they had hosted an esports event called the arena world championship or awc where high-end competitive players would face off in a style competition of the game's arena mode for cash prizes ranging from 120 thousand dollars since its inception in 2008 to 280 000 in 2018 for 2019 however they had announced a special campaign where players would be able to contribute to the ever-growing prize pool two new toys the transmorpher beacon and some faction-themed fireworks were made to be available in the in-game cash shop and to encourage sales 25 of the proceeds would contribute towards the prize pool of both the arena world championship and also the mythic dungeon international stating that the support of the players would help take the wow esports scene to the next level they also assured that a minimum price pool of 500 000 would be offered split up evenly between the two events considering that all announcements used verbage such as help or contribute the player base had assumed that this 500 000 prize pool would be funded by blizzard as they had done for a decade prior and that the proceeds of the toy sales would well contribute to the total as stated after the campaign had concluded though fans were dismayed to learn that they didn't help nor contribute as blizzard pocketed what they would usually put up and put the responsibility on funding the entirety of the prize pool on the player base as confirmed by an awc participant snucks so so let's rephrase this so people gave blizzard so much money boyzer decided to give themselves even more right so they collected around 2.6 million dollars give or take and um instead of adding prize money for themselves they just pocketed 2 million and decided to just use the money that the community gave us and pay for their tournament both competitors and viewers expressed their anger stating that they had felt deceived and that the good nature of those wishing to support the esports community of blizzard were taken advantage of blizzard would never acknowledge the controversy and the prize pools were funded solely by the crowdfunding campaign and despite the self-proclaimed success in raising the funds crowdfunding such as this would not be repeated for future tournaments presumably due to the intense backlash that they received [Applause] [Music] world of warcraft wasn't their only franchise that would be at the center of controversy as soon after their hearthstone division would attract the attention of national media here's a story which just won't go away activision blizzard it has suspended a gamer and taken his prize money away because he made comments supporting hong kong protesters the protests in hong kong were at their climax at this point having been a british colony until 1997 when sovereignty of the territory was returned to china hong kong would retain a separate legal and economic system with basic human rights safeguarded in contrast to other cities in china which are heavily governed by the authoritarian central government though in march of 2019 a bill would be proposed that would allow extraditions of fugitives to mainland china which infringed on these rare freedoms and due to china's opaque legal system would allow the prosecution of citizens for political purposes citizens held marches in protest which quickly turned violent after they were fired upon with tear gas rubber bullets pepper spray and even live rounds as the situation spiraled out of control in october of the same year a tournament competitor jung naiwan or blitzchang after a victory took out a face mask similar to those being worn by the hong kong protesters and voiced his support to them quoted liberate hong kong the revolution of our times the feed was quickly cut and the following day blizzard announced that blitz chung had been banned from competing further in the tournament in addition to revoking the prize money that he had won up until that point totaling ten thousand dollars additionally he would be banned from competing for a full year and the two casters interviewing blitzchang at the time would also be fired as a result activision blizzard would swiftly come under heavy criticism as many saw morality cast aside for vested financial interests players of another team american university would add their voices to the protest which was also quickly censored and condemned by blizzard spirits and that is game wpi with the win the winners similar to blitzchang they would also be banned from competing in future tournaments this time for six months shortly after then president j allen brack released a statement saying that the penalties were not appropriate and that blitz chung's winnings would be reinstated to him and that his ban would be reduced to six months down from 12 and also state that their business dealings with china had no influence on the initial penalties brac would open up the following blizzcon with an apology to the mishandling of the situation stating that their actions would speak louder than words but our actions are going to matter more than any of these words a phrase that the blizzard community would quickly become very familiar with in the same blizzcon the new expansion for world of warcraft would also be revealed players would enter the shadowlands and join factions called covenants similar to the order halls in legion these would serve as a base of operations for players to conduct their campaign and also gain unique abilities and perks they would also explore the tower of tour guest a randomized 1-3 player dungeon crawl with powerful affixes to power up their characters and upon completion and gain the ability to craft legendary armor pieces similar in function to those of the legion expansion though following the poor reception of the battle for azeroth many more would look at the reveal through a more critical lens though their current projects were met with mixed reactions world warcraft classic had seen its release in august of 2019 to surprising success initially holding only a handful of servers it was quickly overwhelmed and new servers were created to hold the surprising amount of people that had longed for the azeroth of years-long past upon launch interest was so underestimated that queue times would balloon up to several hours and even months following the release for some of the highest population servers some aspects of the game would age well such as a renewed sense of community and a heavy focus on traditional rpg elements and other aspects such as assault and archaic raiding scene and an eventual stagnation of content would remain to be problem areas within the game as well as botting as the game grew in popularity so too did third-party websites offering in-game items or services in exchange for real money a practice that's against the game's terms of service these sites oftentimes use automated programs to obtain this currency and blizzard would be ineffective in controlling them throughout the duration of classic even though they were relatively easy to spot by the players as displayed many times by content creators within the community i found a warrior mob grinding in tonaris having a bit of trouble getting to his target cheating had always been and continues to be an area where blizzard would perform poorly even in the current version of the game but due to the more fragile nature of the economy in world of warcraft classic and its community it would have greater negative consequences though cheating was to remain a problem area due to its traditional design and the absence of what many now deemed to be an overly intrusive cash shop it proved to hold the attention of a wide player base consistently through its year and a half run though not every re-release was to be met with the same success warcraft 3 reforged side's release in the following january though delayed as they ensured to maintain a high quality standard it was universally met with negative reviews as players saw a little polish with the remaster citing a poor ui copious bugs a low frame rate missing features from the original and consistent crashes the latter of these issues would take the spotlight and the competitive scene shortly after in their very first major tournament in a quarterfinal match between two top players moon and thorsing a crash occurred at a key moment the score was 1-1 and thor zane seemed to be on track to take the win but suffered a disconnect mid-match tall zane smells blood in the water he's going in for the kill here we have banners ready mountain king was a little hurt this is all buying time for the towers we have no breath of fire by the way it is drunken haze so big miss chance on these dragon hogs and a disconnect that fight was the most important one in this game yet the match would then be restarted despite thor saint's advantage and he would once again retake control of the rematch and once again suffered a disconnect thank you already has enough mana i don't i don't need a blood mage i don't need you you're benched once this and looks like another drop just happens oh wow that's thousand i think yeah i kind of like his position here in this game again yeah this is so frustrating the match would be replayed for a third time and moon having adapted to thor's name strategy at this point was the one to take the lead and eliminated thor zane resulting in the forfeiture of the large prize pool he surely would have won twice though they are the most impactful as they happened during a quarter-final match these would not be the only disconnects to occur in the tournament as competitors in lower level brackets would also become victim to random drops at key moments years later an internal investigation would reveal that they knowingly released the game in an unfinished stage unwilling to delay it for a second time in fear of losing the pre-orders they had already amassed it was also noted that the entire project was hamstrung by a low budget due to its low potential for being a big earner for the company internal sources would also share their struggles with exhaustion anxiety and depression for more than a year and at their warnings of the game's unfinished state being largely ignored in order to make the tight release schedule negative reviews continued at a steady pace and as did refunds as players were less than impressed at the level of polish that they received compared to what was promised the classic game teams would be shut down a new team now in their place and in a bit of irony in a bloomberg interview a blizzard spokesperson repeated the same failed promise made by brac a few months prior that their work in actions would speak louder than words a delay was also announced with shadowlands this time from october to december once more sighting that extra polish is needed before a release would be made and despite the struggles with the battle for azeroth blizzard proved as they have many times that selling copies wasn't the problem as shadowland sold an impressive 3.7 million copies on launch day alone much like its predecessor though not long after the initial launch the expansion's major features would be the focus of criticism the tower of tour gas or chore gas this player soon likened it to suffered the same fate as island expeditions from the battle for azeroth and quickly became repetitive as with most systems that reset on a weekly timer as for the expansion's high levels on the ma due to the player's inability to mount it was seen to be unnecessarily frustrating to navigate and formulaic to other such zones released in the past by now players were noticing a pattern of high-level zones with new reputations and excessive daily timers such as quests regulate enemies and treasure chests as for covenants and they received a mixed reaction with some praising the unique abilities and aesthetics obtained from choosing a specific faction and others condemning them for being unbalanced thus burdening them with regret if they had made a poor choice some people's classes 40 of their damage is just their covenant ability they're all over the place they're a mess some would also take issue with being locked out of a large amount of content offered from the other covenants as choosing one meant excluding three others though a time-gated quest was available should they feel the need to switch for better or for worse blizzard would stand their ground at launch but also stated that they had the ability to pull the rip cord to give players more freedom with covenants should the systems be received poorly this comment would start a movement called pull the rip cord which they would comply to nearly a year later in patch 9.1.5 as for the story many would see it as even worse than that of the battle for azeroth expansion the plot somehow became even more confusing and contradictory requiring external literature to follow along as even youtube channels dedicated to the lore of the game and difficulty piecing together the disorienting storylines they would not be shy in expressing their frustration how many books are you gonna [ __ ] get out of me how much money am i gonna pay before i can finally explain the lore to the people that want to know about it to the degree that it's actually comprehensible i will never serve major cutscenes would continue to be unlisted on their youtube channel in response to the negative reception only time will tell of the fate of the shadowlands if it'll go down as a good or a bad expansion but players are quick to note the similarities between it and the battle for azeroth where the major systems are released in a poorly implemented state only to be addressed in patches several months later and many at this point would take notice to a rising contender within the mmo genre over the years final fantasy xiv would slowly but surely gain a sizable subscriber base following a failed initial launch in 2010 after listening to player feedback the mmo was remade in many ways and relaunched in 2013 it would see steady growth due to these improvements and also the shortcomings of the world of warcraft and as players became increasingly embittered with shadowlands they started migrating over including major streamers and youtube channels creating more tension within the already tribalistic mmo community as players content creators and even employees would take shots at each other over social media though subscriptions remain to be hidden third-party analytics began favoring final fantasy xiv to be the most active mmo with blizzard even sending out surveys attempting to gauge interest in it for the first time in many years it was becoming clear to many that the world of warcraft was losing its hold on the genre [Music] it's treason then at blizzcon 2020 the next step for classic was announced and as many expected players would begin their second journey into the outland in the burning crusade classic much like the base game the first expansion would be recreated closely to its original run in 2007 but with one exception the addition of a major cash shop element the character boost we are going to offer a level 58 boost for purchase but it does come with some restrictions so it's going to be one per account um it's not going to be usable on blood elf or draenei it'll have some done for many players the feeling of anticipation was quickly replaced by that of betrayal as character boosts among other paid services such as the wow token were specifically stated not to be released in the classic version of the game as they didn't exist back then ultimately the character boost would be a one-use service bringing any character to level 58 and was offered in a bundled package that also included other digital rewards including a mount a pet and a toy ignoring the fact that they had lied blizzard would pitch then it was intended for new players who didn't have the time to level um there's a lot of my friends for example who who maybe um didn't really play classic when it first came out right and so now they're behind and they're interested in playing the burning crusade we want to make sure that those people are served too and one of the ways we could do that is provide a boost to people who are interested in coming back though this was contradicted in the fact that the service was purchasable by everyone even by those who already had high level characters in addition to the boost blizzard had also announced classic era servers for those who preferred the vanilla state of the game but this too would be met with controversy as there would be a 35 charge in transferring characters to both states of the games as characters that players spent the past year and a half leveling and gearing would be dangled in front of their faces in the login screen behind the paywall the outrage was a media and blizzard would respond by lowering the charge to 15 down from 35 as for the boost the community was quick to point out the dangers of releasing such a service such as the abandonment of the old world and albats which had already been a major problem in classic would become empowered with the ability to skip towards the end game making them capable of farming higher level materials almost immediately thus having a greater negative effect than they previously had many also warned that accepting a service as major as this would leave classic down the same familiar road and that it would suffer the same fate of the game that spawned its existence to begin with in addition to creating an unfair paid element that let players pay to skip what other players had already worked for though these worries would ultimately be ignored and a level boost was released despite the backlash footage of boosted characters botting started to appear immediately literally every single bot without fail was a level 58 boosted character the limitation of one per account for bots is completely irrelevant as expected for them it's just a huge time save from actually having to level and mini-san old world now abandoned as the boost now loaded the majority of the player base directly into the outland one of the core design philosophies of classic had been betrayed a large portion of the player base at this point were refugees from current world of warcraft due to a large part of the overzealous cash shop which was promised to be absent in the recreation shortly after a wow token with the green burning crusade background was data mined and players took to the forums creating numerous threads asking for confirmation whether this was planned to be released in classic and once more were simply ignored still to this day several months later there's no confirmation yes or no of their plans to implement it into the game this betrayal proved to be the final straw for many of the player base including the highly intelligent not monotone and physically attractive youtube user mad season show whom after 16 years playing and seven years on youtube had announced his retirement the heart and soul now ripped away once more classic's population began to wane drastically and the remaining players would comment on the second foray into the outland becoming more and more empty with each passing day some of those who remained chose to rebel by targeting other players who had purchased the level boost bundle by performing an in-game mode slash spin on anyone seen riding the deluxe edition mount in response blizzard disabled the emone when targeting another player all right let's see if we can spit on someone wow forum threads expressing concern with classic's future were ultimately ignored but to a community that acted against their interests blizzard's response would be immediate and clear it was revealed later that omar gonzalez who was one of the few responsible for taking action and making the classic recreation a reality had silently taken lead from blizzard to join secret door under dreamhaven contributing to the ever-growing list of people who didn't quit developing games but rather quit developing games for blizzard entertainment not long after jeff kaplan a 20-year veteran of blizzard and director of overwatch announced his departure this news would come as a surprise to the community as the sequel to overwatch overwatch 2 was still in development kaplan himself had gained the reputation as a leader and wholly passionate about his craft so to leave a project before even seeing its release came off as abnormal and many feared that something was deeply wrong with blizzard behind closed doors and prior to this another industry veterans since its release in 2004 alex of frasier would also quietly drop from the company in june of 2020 the manner of which he moved on however was also abnormal as had been customary with the more recognized veterans of the company taking their leave there was no farewell post nor even an acknowledgement by blizzard though the true reason for his departure would soon become clear [Music] so-called cube crawls in which male employees apparently drink a lot of alcohol as they crawl through their way through the cubicles often engaging in inappropriate behavior toward female employees the agency saying it seeks among other remedies pay adjustments on july 23 2021 activision blizzard once again became the center of national news as the world would learn the details of a two-year investigation and lawsuit by the state of california of continuous sexual misconduct and discrimination of their employees the investigation alleges that female employees in particular were underpaid and subjected to regular sexual harassment by co-workers and superiors in the report it was revealed that one employee ultimately committed suicide during a company vacation this would occur after pictures of her vagina had allegedly been passed around a company party the investigation also described cube crawls where employees would become intoxicated and prowl to the workplace subjecting co-workers to unwanted sexual advances lewd behavior and make inappropriate comments about rape and other intrusive or demeaning behavior the news shocked the blizzard community and served as the final straw for many its players and content creators began to migrate away favoring other mmos such as final fantasy xiv activision blizzard's response would be swift and attempted to mitigate the allegations stating that the dfeh the plaintiff in the lawsuit had distorted their claims and had rushed to file an inaccurate complaint and that they were sickened and found the manner of which they investigated and reported to be reprehensible referring specifically that the employee's suicide had no bearing on the case the response was quickly deemed tone deaf by onlookers and employees alike who staged a walkout in protest of the allegations and the cold response by their employer shortly after activision ceo bobby kotick also denounced the response stating that it was tone deaf and that fair and respectful treatment in the workplace was of the utmost importance not long after he would hire a firm made famous for union busting for amazon to investigate their hr practices months later it was revealed that it was he who had originally drafted the initial response and having another executive sign it in her name that is the very same one that he denounced it was also revealed that he had prior knowledge of several sexual assault cases in the workplace and settling them out of court and failing to make them public in one instance he threatened the life of one of his assistants in response of this news being made public he would reiterate his commitment to the safety and equality of his employees [Music] anyone who doubts my conviction to be the most welcoming and inclusive workplace doesn't really appreciate how important this is to me in august the dfeh accused activision blizzard of destroying documents relevant to the investigation in violation of their legal obligation to not tamper with evidence of an ongoing lawsuit though this claim would be quickly denied by an activision blizzard spokesperson pictures and conversations relating to the cosby suite were also leaked the nickname for a frasiabee's hotel room from blizzcon 2013 after the former comedian bill cosby who had at that point faced multiple accusations of date rape in an internal email president jalen brax stated his respect and care for equal treatment and that gloria steinem a well-known activist for women's rights was a revered name in his household having failed to grind the reputation to reach exalted despite being human and having the diplomacy racial what a casual the response wasn't received very well for some reason and shortly after he would step down as president ending his near three-year tenure and was replaced with a two-person team jen o'neal and mike yabara the former of whom would announce her departure just three months later stating in an email to activision's legal team of her lack of faith of their ability to change and that she herself faced sexual harassment earlier in her career at activision she also revealed that she was being paid less than her co-leader and then although equal pay was negotiated by both she and mike yabara it was only offered to her after she announced her resignation she also described attending a 2007 party with bobby coddick where scantily-clad women danced on stripper pulse yeah well i'm gonna go build my own game dev studio with blackjack and hookers as for my kibara he would quickly come under controversy not long after his new position for a tweet advertising selling raid carries for gold while this isn't against the game's terms of service it remains to be a controversial point within the world of warcraft community as it edges the line of pay to win due to the players ability to purchase gold with real money as details of the investigation unfolded many employees would quit or be fired including senior game designer jonathan lacraft the lead level designer of diablo 4 a level designer of world of warcraft as well as the inspiration for the overwatch character jessie mccree and diablo 4's game director luis boriga was also revealed to no longer be a part of blizzard leaving the upcoming action rpg without two critical leaders in the middle of its development in response to mccree's involvement in the scandal it was announced that the character mccree would be renamed and that once again actions would speak louder than words blizzard at this point would also begin a series of in-game changes such as removing items and references they deem to be inappropriate given the circumstances such as changing pictures of women into fruit in-game joke emotes that were deemed to be highly controversial would also be removed if there are any children in the room right now i advise you at this point to cover their ears i'd like to fart in the tub amidst the lawsuit as tensions were at an all-time high a senior systems designer of world of warcraft revealed that almost no work is being done as the lawsuit was unfolding this sparked outrage among the player base as they learned that they were paying for content that was no longer being developed in an expansion which had already seen updates at a sluggish pace in response to the backlash a senior game producer labeled those complaining as part of the problem as employees continued lashing out and placing blame on their players and community figures blizzard would see a major restructuring of their teams during this time as these employees either quit or were fired many of which holding important positions in games that were in mid-development causing major delays in production in november of 2021 he was revealed by blizzard chief financial officer armin serza that the company isn't planning to include both overwatch 2 and diablo 4 in their 2022 financial outlook report indicating that neither release will see their debut in all of 2022 due to delays in development as a result financially they would suffer their worst loss in 13 years as stock prices fell by more than 14 percent in a single day bringing its year-to-date losses to 25 in december employees revealed suspicions that their breast milk was being stolen nursing mothers would label and store packages of breast milk in the break room refrigerator and when retrieving it later would find that some or all of the milk would be missing while other items in the refrigerator would remain undisturbed though as of this video no evidence exists of the alleged protein rich caper when reached out for comment an activision blizzard spokesperson replied stating that there's no use crying over spilt milk speaking of milking blizzard would also increase focus on micro transaction offers including mounts pets and cosmetic outfits often seem to be vastly superior to those acquirable in-game their prices would also be criticized as their highest package would demand a price tag of 55 nearly matching that of a full aaa release as onlookers reacted with ah at the lack of awareness or care that blizzard showed to its community and image as of this video the results of the lawsuit are pending but regardless of the outcome it'll surely stand out as one of the darkest moments in the company's history one that's becoming increasingly difficult to break out of as scrutiny remains to be at an all-time high due to the destroyed trust between they and their community as a result a situation has been created where any flinch positive or negative is met with a dominating pessimism employees daily suffer abuse not only from the outside but is recently discovered also from the inside today they stare down the seemingly insurmountable task of repairing the damage caused to their relationship with their community with each passing day their environment representing a battlefield more so than that of a game development studio while this itself is an unfair situation many deem it a consequence of casting aside the goodwill of their player base consistently over the course of three tumultuous years in the midst of the scandal it was announced that blizzcon was cancelled for the year of 2022 and that it would see a major restructuring if and when it returns initially a heavily community focused innovator with franchises that redefined genres now leaves behind a sullied and controversial legacy in one of the most jarring and unforeseen falls in game development history quarterly reports show a consistent downward trend of active users but at the same time record-breaking revenue as patience and goodwill are continuously traded away for short-term financial profit just as how it breathed life into the genre with its birth in 2004 so too does it with its decline in the modern year its fall giving rise to a new generation of mmos eager to claim the crown it once wore with pride and ambition as players community figures and employees depart in record numbers a particularly iconic phrase of theirs is seen to be more and more prophetic with each passing day no king rules forever we are going to offer a level 58 boost for purchase but it does come with some restrictions so it's going to be one per account um it's not going to be usable on blood what the [ __ ] [Music] we got a lot of people waiting to be young sentenced to their eternal afterlife man [Music] send them in the state of california is suing video game company activision blizzard for sexual harassment and discrimination city basically suspended and took away ten thousand dollars in his [Music] i don't want to live what you're seeing [Music] who feel alone and are now feeling weird because they're stuck between a weird spot of supporting the company that makes the game and not wanting to support these weird [ __ ] ass grabbers interestingly the board of directors of activision rallying to mr kodak's side almost immediately [Music] i see only darkness before [Music] um [Music] i am truly grateful [Music] [Music] you

Channel: MadSeasonShow

Views: 2,349,432

Keywords: wow, world of warcraft, madseasonshow, World of Warcraft, bfa, World Of Warcraft (Video Game), wow classic, wow vanilla, shadowlands, wow shadowlands, wow bc, wow tbc classic, world of warcraft history, fall of world of warcraft, rise and fall world of warcraft, pandora's box wow, madseasonshow pandora's box, world of warcraft scandal, bobby kotick, world of warcraft addiction, world of warcraft dying, blizzard controversy, world of warcraft documentary, asmr

Id: BazitK-ZgDk

Length: 120min 39sec (7239 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MaraJadeSharpie]

I honestly enjoy the monotone. The constant elevated, fake excited voice of so many YouTubers gets overwhelming.

[u/Kievarra]

If there's one thing that has been consistent throughout all these years, it's that the forums always has been and always will be a cesspool.

[u/_TheLuckyOne_]

Sat down and watched all of it, 2 things become clear:

Many commenters here did not.

The last 2 years had more controversy than the 2 decades before that combined for Blizz, it's hard to stay objective and not fall into pessimism or get out right cynical with that in mind.

[u/xiadz_]

Lot of people in this thread have a lot of opinions about this video that they 100% clearly absolutely did not watch lol.

Anyways, it's a very good history of the game. Also the intro/outro were very cozy.

[u/Dregaren]

Damn, y'all really do be trashing on this man like he set your dog on fire. The remnants of /r/wow.

[u/BirdMetal666]

I like MadSeason but he has a clear bias for older WoW (my favorite xpac is WOTLK), and it makes it hard for him to see the problems with some of the older expansions.

MadSeason shares this problem with a lot of older players, they tend to view those old days through rose tinted glasses.

[u/moiser123]

The way this sub still defends wow is absolutely pathetic

[u/just_a_little_rat]

2 hours

bruh

[u/xpuc70]

I love mad,but im not agreeing whit everything he is saying