World of Warcraft Will Never End. Here's Why.
AI Summary
World of Warcraft has been declared 'dead' for years, yet it remains one of the most enduring games ever. This video explores how WoW survived for two decades, from its origins inspired by EverQuest to its evolution through expansions, player backlash, and the rise of classic servers. The key takeaway is that WoW's longevity hinges on its community and core MMO experience, not just monetization or gimmicks.
Blizzard was inspired by EverQuest but aimed to fix its punishing mechanics, such as item loss on death and harsh XP penalties, to make the game more accessible.
Blizzard simplified existing MMO concepts, splitting players into two factions (Alliance and Horde) and adding accessible features like quests from iconic characters and ghost form on death.
WoW required constant maintenance and support, initially handled by a team of only 40 people, leading to immense pressure and eventual hiring of more developers.
The first expansion brought back popular Warcraft III character Illidan, added flying mounts, and sold 2.4 million copies on day one, peaking at 10 million subscribers.
This expansion featured Arthas, the Lich King, and introduced the Death Knight class, dual specialization, and phasing technology, selling 2.8 million copies in 24 hours and reaching 12 million subscribers.
After Activision merged with Blizzard in 2008, the focus shifted to monetization, exemplified by a $15 mount (Sparkle Pony) outselling Starcraft II, signaling a move toward microtransactions.
The expansion introduced pandas, a pet battle system, and Chinese cultural themes to attract a broader audience, selling 2.7 million copies in a week but alienating core fans.
This expansion used time travel, added garrisons, and introduced the WoW Token for buying gold, but lack of content caused subscriptions to plummet, leading Blizzard to stop reporting numbers.
Legion brought back Illidan, added Demon Hunters, artifact weapons, and invasions, selling 3.3 million copies in a day and revitalizing the game, though bloat and microtransactions persisted.
In 2019, Blizzard launched Classic WoW, exactly as it was in 2004, after years of telling players they didn't want it. This move acknowledged the community's desire for the original experience.
World of Warcraft's survival ultimately comes down to its community. Despite missteps in monetization and story, the game thrives when it focuses on core MMO gameplay and the social connections it fosters. As long as players find a home in Azeroth, WoW will endure.
Full Transcript
Download .txt[00:02] dead yeah the World of Warcraft is dead World of Warcraft is dead wow is dead no on to it wow it's just actively getting worse World of Warcraft is one of the longest lasting and most popular games in the world that people couldn't get
[00:16] enough of World of Warcraft I need to play it's since it released it's been predicted to fail year after year after year make wow great G but how can a game that got 10 expansions in 20 years over 12 million people's credit cards to play
[00:32] biggest Hollywood stars completely addicted be dying and the topic of Your point did you realize that you were in too deep and needed to quit Co turkey
[00:44] when my agent would sign on to talk to me according to the sales World of Warcraft was far from dead so I wanted to learn how it was somehow able to survive decades while newer quadruple games could barely make it a week I mean
[00:58] this one didn't even make it a day hey the crew is gathering would you like to join us for a game night but to find Blizzard's real secret we'd have to go Blizzard's real secret we'd have to go back to the
[01:15] that's probably a little too far back isn't it yes one second there we go but obviously this isn't World of Warcraft and that's because to truly understand wow we need to talk about EverQuest a massively multiplayer online Fantasy
[01:29] couldn't get enough of see for most of us in the 9s multiplayer meant split screen on Golden n no odd jobs allowed but every Quest didn't feel like but every Quest didn't feel like multiplayer it felt like a home which
[01:42] gives the guys at blizzard an idea you see there were such huge fans of EverQuest that they could see all the problems the game had for example if a way back to their body without any of their gear to protect them or if they
[01:56] were killed by another player that player could take one of their hard earned items to keep forever and regardless of how the player died their experience would drop for every death meaning if you put yourself in a tricky
[02:08] situation you could lose hours if not days of experience so while developing Warcraft 3 blizzard decides it's time they craft their own MMO it'd be a new world filled with Wars that they could call their own sure some folks called it
[02:23] strategic inspiration but most folks called it released three of the world's greatest games within half the time Grand Theft
[02:37] don't know what was in the water at blizzard but it was clearly working because when you saw a game with this logo on it it basically guaranteed you were getting a Ratatouille moment and World of Warcraft was no different
[02:51] because everyone was playing it we're we're we're fans we are I am an orc um Shaman and and Tom is an orc Warrior you see Blizzard's really good at one thing
[03:03] most game developers seem to ignore where everyone else seeks to overdesign New Concepts or ideas blizzard does the exact opposite seeking to simplify what already works really opening up what had been a relatively Niche genre to the
[03:17] broader audience of Gamers from all walks of life for example in world Warcraft players were split into two morally gray factions of Alliance or Horde with each faction getting their own playable races building on the tri
[03:30] the alliance you could play as night elves gnomes dwarves or humans whereas The Horde had cows that turned to cats religious hulks Jamaican
[03:42] Avatar people with tusks and what I could only describe as people who comment skill issue you know who you are but they go further by fixing every problem they found in EverQuest so that their game
[03:55] would be as accessible as possible for anyone to play you can't go the bathroom you're stacking suer armor iconic Warcraft characters would be interacted with to gain quests that subtly progress players through new locations dying was
[04:08] no longer a scary nightmare of penalties because you could be returned to your body as an invincible ghost and mounts were provided to make going from place to place the greatest thing ever but that wasn't all because wow built-in
[04:21] social features from the start so raing a dungeon or making friends was as easy as possible hey
[04:37] problems a lot of those first months were spent really just trying to keep up with demand just trying to stabilize the service to get to a point where players and not have to wait or not have their
[04:49] unlike their previous games World of Warcraft was a 24/7 always online World millions of people were paying to work at every single month including really
[05:02] powerful people like Superman you were home but you were playing World of Warcraft and the phone rangs and you're like I'll get that later I'll get yeah Kryptonite bullets hanging around downtime was not an option now for
[05:15] downtime was not an option now for context this game took 8 years 169 made it a day with the backing of a billion doll Sinister 6 obsessed company what so to keep up with new content maintenance customer support and bug
[05:29] maintenance customer support and bug fixing the wow team had to be fixing the wow team had to be massive but no because somehow they made the entire game with 40 people 40 so naturally blizzard
[05:44] employees were feeling a little pressure sure a massive world with accessible gameplay players could socialize in was part of the reason for World of warcraft's longevity but keeping the game up and running for
[05:57] millions of people to play any second of of the day yeah that seemed like something they needed to
[06:13] blizzard hired a ton of new devs fix a ton of problems and now morale is a lot ton of problems and now morale is a lot higher sort
[06:26] feeling confident that they know exactly why players love world of Warcraft because with the burning Crusade they add two new playable races Right Out The Horde and what look like space goats for the
[06:39] alliance the game gets the level cap bumped from 60 to 70 and flying mounts are added for the very first time we had to figure out how to let characters fly except what's most interesting is Blizzard does something new that pushes
[06:52] the game to the next level you see Warcraft 3 was beloved by everyone who played it specifically because of its St and amazing characters so in this expansion they bring back one of those amazing characters illin freaking storm
[07:06] rage I mean just look at that guy he looks freaking goo tastic but that's not all because they also make getting to the expansion's new Zone a historic
[07:22] of Warcraft was a full-time job so the day that the expansion hits players from all over the world collectively take a sick day to gather around this portal the dark portal what are your symptoms I have the chills I'm feeling
[07:35] nauseous and my head's killing and the beauty of the dark portal was the second that the expansion released it' be open for everyone to experience at the same time it didn't matter if you were a blood elf or a space
[07:48] goat everyone was going to Outland to stop illin and the burning Legion quite frankly when the burning Legion hit store shelves everyone's 9 to5 job went through the same EX itial crisis I'm in danger because it sells 2.4 million
[08:05] copies in the first day and hits a new Milestone of 10 million actively paying subscribers look I'm no mathematician but that seems like a lot of what Mr Krabs would call money somehow blizzard topped the original World of Warcraft In
[08:19] what looked like every way possible there was more to do more to earn more to seek more to explore from the outside looking in it looked like World of Warcraft would be safe so long as it f focused on expanding the world with
[08:31] great characters players could rally towards but if that's really all it took then the real question was could they do it
[08:51] even a question releasing a year after the burning Crusade blizzard triples down on everything that worked before first frankly a better movie than what most
[09:03] it's been over a decade since this thing dropped and I still go back to rewatch it next they go back to Warcraft 3 one more time to make arthus the expansion's next villain who just to be clear is warcraft's most popular character by far
[09:18] probably the greatest most notorious villain ever introduced in Warcraft and that's because in Warcraft 3 you got to play as arthus and watch him slowly transform from a humble Prince reigning in C can the formalities Uther I'm not
[09:31] King yet to the Lich King reclaiming his Frozen Throne like seriously the story of arthus is pretty much breaking bad but in the warcraft Universe you're godamn right Wrath of the Lich King wasn't just another expansion it was
[09:45] blizzard proving they knew exactly why players love World of Warcraft but don't just take my word for it Wrath of the Lich King he probably my favorite expansion like straight up without a question is the best the classes are way
[09:58] question is the best the classes are way better version just infinitely more fun for me to play of the expansion that ever came out yeah wrath was an awesome time and I mean who could blame them there was just so much love in this
[10:10] expansion it it was an honor to be able to come work on the team to help shape the game that I Lov for so long because they add this new death knight hero class any faction can play as a more customizable dual specialization skill
[10:23] tree to help players build their character exactly as they wanted started as how do I save action bars and it turned into what it is now and build new phasing technology so everyone could immerse themselves seamlessly in live
[10:36] way people played the game and it remains a Lynch pin of the game for the past 10 years and all this combined made Blizzard's biggest expansion ever selling 2.8 million copies in just 24 hours and driving wild subscriptions to
[10:51] an all-time peak of 12 million people people are picking up their purchases so they can raise home and plug in the game chances are this is the last time you're for context that's more than the entire population of Sweden okay which clearly
[11:05] implies that Blizzard's got a lot more money but blizzard creates a new problem that even technology couldn't solve you see arthus wasn't just any other villain because his story started all the way back in Warcraft 3 and was foreshadowed
[11:21] through much of World of Warcraft he'd always been there sitting on his throne with what is probably the coolest sword known to man but after beating arthus his story and a huge part of what made Warcraft so
[11:35] special was gone if World of Warcraft was going to carry on blizzard would need to fill the giant void arthus left behind but I mean what do you do after 6 behind but I mean what do you do after 6 years of setup for the Lich King I mean
[11:48] with anger issues out of nowhere to completely destroy the entire completely destroy the entire planet that' just be stupid
[12:04] well okay then apparently that's exactly what they do however during development of world of warcraft's thirdd expansion blizzard gets acquired by one Activision CEO Bobby kodic our responsib is to bring joy and fun to people around the
[12:17] world now for the next 20 seconds I have no choice but to speedrun you through Activision Blizzard so bear with me because I promise you this is important to world of warcraft's future all right so 1991 blizzard becomes a real company
[12:31] through the power of friendship then in '95 a company whose only Talent seems to be buying other companies buys blizzard but when we hit the 2000s Bobby's company Activision starts making gazillions by spamming the ever loving
[12:44] beesus out of their franchises we're talking your Spider-Man your guitar Heroes your Happy Meal toys and of course your Call of Duties where the gloves off they're off except if you look closely you'll notice that none of
[12:57] those franchises have an MMO that specialize in what Bobby wants most money now this makes Bobby mad so in 2008 he merges with the talentless company to get all of their companies and renames the new company to
[13:11] Activision Blizzard and now you're probably wondering what the big deal is well as of 2008 nothing I'll be honest nothing really happens but as of 2010 World of warcraft's next expansion starts to move the game in a different
[13:26] having Deathwing the the giant murder Dragon blow up Azeroth turned out to be a really good in World excuse to modernize a few zones and completely refresh others in doing so it creates a more welcoming environment for new
[13:40] players to join in and not feel lost from six years of content also they give the horde goblins to play as and then they give the alliance freaking werewolves so I'm going to be honest I'm I'm kind of in I mean who doesn't like
[13:53] werewolves right but Blizzard's goal to make the game more friendly for newcomers came with a few unexpected problems they anyone to just press a button to find her group which sounds great on paper
[14:08] but in practice caus newer players unknowingly disrupting what were already impossible raids let's do this lero dragon and sure they wiped the narrative slight clean with deathwing's angry fire but that just caused the
[14:22] connection to the story to feel like it came out of nowhere and surprisingly the problem with the biggest repercussions came from the in-game mounts Starcraft 2 wings of Liberty made less money than
[14:35] wings of Liberty made less money than the first sparkle pony horse in World of Warcraft a $15 microtransaction horse made more money than Starcraft 2 yeah and unsurprisingly this left a lot of fans with foresight for the future
[14:49] feeling salty best mount in the game game I don't even care I don't care this makes me mad you see previously you'd buy World of Warcraft in the
[15:04] expansion pay a monthly sub and Away you went excited very excited this albeit an unintuitive strategy financially incentivized blizzard to make great one would buy the expansion which of course would put them in a lot of
[15:19] trouble except with this new microtransaction based strategy that was no longer the case because if they were able to make something in 5 minutes with one person that outsold something that takes an entire department to make in 7
[15:35] years well I don't want to live on this planet anymore regardless cataclysm sold a record breaking 3.3 million copies in a single day and regained 10 of the 12
[15:47] million subscribers that arthus gave blizzard so technically World of Warcraft was safe I'm going go home for the heck out of this thing but when we look closer we can see players weren't as satisfied as they once were sure
[16:00] Azeroth was completely revamped but no one really experienced it necessarily players just sort of logged in and oh I guess I spawn here now also the whole
[16:12] murder dragon that destroys the entire planet narrative it just kind of Fizzles out like a Disney movie which like isn't even a bit it straight up has the same castle and Firework ending you are azeroth's true Guardians
[16:29] ending you are azeroth's true Guardians and the future of this world is in your hands who green lit that but let's be real okay after amazing expansions like burning Crusade or the Wrath of the Lich King feels great players were fine
[16:44] tolerating a so so expansion I've been waiting long enough 10 and 1 half hour shift of work 6 hour wait for the game it's a good day cuz they knew blizzard was cooking the next big expansion with awesome characters who used crazy magic
[16:57] wielded the sickest sword or whatever the heck green Jesus is apparently capable of you see after taking down Benedict Cumberbatch the world was hyped for whatever insane musclebound fire breathing Warcraft setting blizzard was
[17:10] breathing Warcraft setting blizzard was cooking
[17:25] [Music] next is this actually the game
[17:47] Miss of panderia came packed with a surprising amount of goodies first off Master Shifu is beyond thrilled next the game adds the pandarin as a faction fluid playable race capable of of using the new Monk class which is a first for
[18:01] the series they Center The Game's theme around Chinese culture and architecture that quite frankly looks incredible and lastly they add a Pokemon pet battle system so here's a look at what it would look like this is just a
[18:16] look like this is just a [Applause] mockup okay I won't lie the new direction is a little surprising but it looks like it technically still works I mean the expansion sells 2.7 million
[18:31] copies in just a week and Returns the sub count right back to 10 million so yeah Miss of panderia is technically a success but if you're like me you might be wondering why the heck blizzard would go from something like
[18:45] this to this the pet battle system takes all pets and merges them into a Pokemon like system of turn-based combat collection and
[18:59] Warcraft because when you look at the subscription data you can see China accounted for a huge piece of that pie with that in mind the idea to embrace Chinese culture starts making a ton of sense and In fairness pandas were
[19:13] technically a thing in Warcraft 3 I bring pandemonium yeah I'm going to be honest they were kind of awesome however even though this expansion had a lot of interesting
[19:26] features it also marked the beginning beginning of a bigger shift in Blizzard's design the game was now more accessible more vibrant and more isn't the warcraft I know the warcraft I know is about Orcs And humans and
[19:40] game this feels almost childish it supported more gimmicky features like the pet battle system meant to bring in a newer younger audience I feel like they just kind of gave it a theme to
[19:52] game but it's not so much for experience players already in it and that monetization train well it didn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon make no mistake Mr Pandera seems to be a solid expansions by all accounts but its
[20:08] direction seem to be drifting World of Warcraft further away from what appealed to the core fans like nobody I don't know a single person that's saying oh pandas I'm going to play this game for the pandas the mistake Hollywood forced
[20:21] the pandas the mistake Hollywood forced blizzard to fix in the next of warcraft's expansion and it looks like this one's going to be a big return
[20:34] to what made Warcraft Warcraft I mean look at this trailer we will never be
[20:46] in on it oh now this change clearly worked because Warlords of drain or sells a record breaking 3.3 million copies in in a single day and brings those juicy
[21:01] subscriptions right back up to 10.5 million players nice nice nice so Blizzard's got to be feeling pretty good right
[21:14] well not exactly you see World of Warcraft started getting so huge that around this time Hollywood's working on an official movie and it capitalize on all of that player hype they decide to set that movie in
[21:28] date and time 90% of players were completely unaware of so to help fans unaware of the movie's incredibly strange timeline Choice blizzard sets this expansion in an alternate timeline 35 years in the past that's right
[21:45] somehow World of Warcraft the fantasy game now has time travel okay what's wrong with you so quick recap at this point in World of Warcraft store you sto ill arthus Smog and you've
[22:00] imprisoned some new orc war chief gash hream for being kind of evil well in this expansion garash magically escapes and somehow travels back in time to stop his dad gash hell scream heck of a name by the way from drinking this demon
[22:15] by the way from drinking this demon blood and also turning evil and together as definitely not evil people the two team up to build the iron horde in over to take over Azeroth now do you have any any idea how much World
[22:30] of Warcraft lore I had to read to find out why a giant bald orange orc man was capable of using time travel in a world that looked like Middle Earth because the answer was too much and what's worse is it doesn't even seem to matter this
[22:45] makes me mad because everything about this expansion seems to just implode on itself with barely any content causing subscription numbers to fall off a freaking Cliff so in fear of losing more subscrib ERS blizzard just decides to
[23:00] give up halfway through and focus on the next like me you're probably wondering what the heck this expansion even did well it
[23:15] updates the character models to look less nightmary and brings the magic of The Sims games to World of Warcraft through a new base building feature that they call Garrison The Garrison was a persistent space of your own in the
[23:29] world but you could customize as you saw fit because as you can probably tell people who like this I'm coming up with 32 33 uh repeating of course percentage 32 33 uh repeating of course percentage of survival and people who like
[23:49] person also for roughly the same price as the expansion itself players can now pay to boost any character to level 90 or buy in-game gold which is The Game's currency with real money using a new currency called the wow token it's a way
[24:04] for players to exchange with each other time for in-game currency I fundamentally love when games add multiple levels of currency to their multiple levels of currency to their game it's always a great sign always
[24:17] acclaimed content when you can just buy your way through with zero context of what's actually happening now how did players take this players take this not
[24:34] could find about Warlords of Jor seems to be the Joe Rogan trailer like I said before after players saw how little content the expansion really had subscriptions fell so far that blizzard just stopped reporting
[24:49] them altogether to this day no one knows the official subscription numbers because of how bad this expansion bombed this expansion was terrible almost all of the tier list videos have this is the worst then something new
[25:03] happened oh my God uh oh my God fire oh fire oh my goodness see God fire oh fire oh my goodness see those subscriptions they just kept falling falling and falling
[25:20] falling and falling [Music]
[25:33] just shut up this is [Music] blizzard goes back to the drawing board and basically tries to recreate all of
[25:49] these expansions while simultaneously trying to forget these which causes them to bring illin back using the magic of plot and drop one of these sickest trailers they've had in a long time I mean everything about that trailer is
[26:04] mean everything about that trailer is just so it has to be good right well the answer is yes because blizzard pulls out all the freaking stops they bring back Burning Crusades illin they add a new Demon Hunter class like they did in Lich
[26:16] they add new artifact weapons to let players craft iconic Warcraft weapons for themselves they add the Giant and beautiful city of sorar to explore and because the burning Legion is back they add super cool invasions that happened
[26:30] can take part of that was such Uber ponage I mean this is one of the first remember going in you'd see the invasions and everything was just sick and you felt like you were part of something it was like it felt awesome
[26:44] Legion is sick so it's not a shock whatsoever to see that Legion sells 3.3 million copies in a single day proving that World of Warcraft was not only back but it was safe once again finally blizzard devs could see their families
[27:00] again they did it our world is saved except despite how much Legion did right and believe me it did a lot of things right World of Warcraft was turning 12 years old and with all that age came a lot of bloat overly complicated systems
[27:15] dedicated to the most hardcore players an influx of microtransactions in 20 different currencies and social features being somehow eradicated in favor of more accessibility in an effort to achieve more accessibility we kind of
[27:30] removed some of the reasons why you needed to um play with the same group of direction blizzard started with cataclysm and through other expansions had finally caught up with them Their audience was no longer the same audience
[27:45] laptop in the car so I can load it on the way in all honesty because at this point it looked like they had completely split into different directions and some of those people started asking questions
[27:58] uh have you ever thought about adding servers for previous expansions as they were then no and and by the way you don't want to that to do that either you think you do
[28:13] that to do that either you think you do but you up telling your most dedicated customers at an event that they paid to be at that
[28:27] they they were the ones that were actually wrong it's so bold strategy cotton let's see if it pays off for him but despite Blizzard's response of knowing exactly what's best for the average World of Warcraft player they
[28:39] also realized that maybe they did stray a little far from the old days of Alliance versus you are azeroth's true Guardians versus you are azeroth's true Guardians seriously though who green lit that so
[28:54] with battle for Azeroth their idea is and please stop me if you've heard this before to go back to what made Warcraft Warcraft I mean look even the cover art is a reference to the original Warcraft games but I'm not going to lie there's
[29:09] something I just don't understand in this situation see after 14 years of expansions the alliance and horde have overcome the world ending like seven times they killed a lich together a Demon Hunter a Lord of the Rings
[29:23] character they figured out time travel oh yeah and a God the of a planet stabs the world with his sword which yeah by the way that happened so I guess my question for the whole bringing back the alliance versus horde hating each other
[29:38] thing would be why why why our responsibility is to bring joy and fun to people around the world now normally I disagree with Bobby but when combining the pitch of this
[29:52] expansion with the hype that Legion built battle for Azeroth sells a built battle for Azeroth sells a record-breaking three 3.4 million copies in its first day so clearly people wanted this because battle for azoth not
[30:05] only becomes the fastest selling World of Warcraft expansion ever made but it also becomes the fastest selling PC game ever except nothing about this expansion made any sense because aside from the initial pitch everything was lame and if
[30:21] we look back to what worked before then technically battle for Azeroth shouldn't even be working the leader of the alliance went from the sickest looking dude I've ever seen in my life to someone I can only guess does not like
[30:33] the touch of sand it's co rough and irritating and it gets now a freaking Banshee that commits genocide because the equivalent of a rude comment and when she's finally confronted by an army she just kills the
[30:50] main guy while everyone else watches and then somehow pulls A Team Rocket by blasting off again so yeah nothing about this expansion makes any sense the story feels forced the community is more split than ever
[31:05] the leads are basically Looney Tune characters and the game was the most bloated it had ever been there had to be more to the story and it turns out there was you see World of Warcraft subscription numbers get leaked for the
[31:19] first time since dror and let me tell you it's not good you see battle for aoth may have brought in sales with a great pitch but it also dropped World of Warcraft subscription numbers to the lowest point in the game's history The
[31:34] Players had spoken they weren't happy and if blizzard wanted to keep the game and if blizzard wanted to keep the game alive they'd have to do something drastic cookies and cream is actually my all-time favorite
[31:54] some of you your favorite you your favorite flavor is
[32:10] who said that everybody else was wrong and that they knew the answer the entire time only to be that same guy on stage giving them exactly what they wanted you don't want to do that that might be one of the most embarrassing things I've
[32:23] limb and guess that players were a okay with that feels great now for those of you who don't know in 2019 blizzard brings grown men to Tears by doing the unthinkable and completely Reviving the original World of Warcraft
[32:38] exactly as it was in 2004 which is insane oh I started tearing up I really did and I I barely heard about the new expansion because the only other company I can think of that's done anything like this is the Halo guys and we saw exactly
[32:52] this is the Halo guys and we saw exactly how that turned out didn't we thought because for the very first time in World of Warcraft history players
[33:07] could actually compare what classic did versus what retail did without any of the magic of nostalgia it wasn't some theoretical memberberry anyone could shrug off anymore because the differences were
[33:21] World of Warcraft didn't feel like a game to players it surprisingly seemed to come off more like an early social network with plenty of earnable accolades to show off your hard work what got you the role in
[33:35] Twisters yeah I see why you got the roll whereas retail was kind of the complete opposite it was a massive microt transactions confusing plot lines meant to pump subscriber numbers up and 20 different underlying gameplay systems
[33:50] tailored to multiple highly specific groups of people it's just simply not seriously retail had to maintain the pet battle fans The Garrison fans the artifact fans the PVP fans the PVE fans the mount fans the flying Mount fans and
[34:05] raid Fanatics who were obsessed with playing the game with hundreds of screen cluttering add-ons like honestly I I'm just amazed that the blizzard devs are still alive quite frankly except here's the real kicker it
[34:18] really wouldn't matter which version anyone liked more because blizzard decides to support them all if the developers barely saw their family Ames developers barely saw their family Ames before it was about to get a lot worse
[34:32] in 2020 shadowlands brings the Lich King back only to be killed instantly so his helmet can open a giant portal to the afterlife in 2021 everyone calls in sick again to experience the dark portal one more time in 2022 arthus returns despite
[34:45] dragonfly creates an entirely new audience in 2023 blizzard confuses everyone once more by making yet another version of classic and in 2024 they join the Battle Royale crazy 7 years too late bring back Benedict cumber and also
[34:59] dropped the war within expansion as the first of an upcoming six-year Trilogy elephant in the room you see the game just keeps going and going but the real question we all want
[35:13] going but the real question we all want to know and will always come down to money which when we do the math is kind of hard to
[35:28] argue assuming you played from the day that the game released bought every subscriptions you would have spent around around $3,667 60 or when you account for the 20
[35:41] $3,667 60 or when you account for the 20 years of compounding inflation $
[35:53] it's the result because the real answer is much simpler than that looking back World of Warcraft is at its best when it focuses on core MMO gameplay with a grounded Warcraft story players can experience together and it's clearly at
[36:07] its worst when it focuses on everything outside of that like gimmicky systems monetization or endings that bring a smile to Disney yet at the heart of every good and less good expansion has always been the exact same
[36:24] always been the exact same thing people people who l up hours at a midnight launch just to play Early waiting for the World of Warcraft expansion to come out who collectively called in sick to go through the dark
[36:36] portal with everyone else so tonight I'm going to buy it go set it up and play All Night Long who started friendships with a simple wave who screamed Leroy [Music] Jenkins who bought this specific mouse
[36:50] or built an overly expensive PC only to play this specific game you see it all comes down to people blue collar workers white collar workers celebrities moms dads or people who use table salt to protest $25 mounts
[37:08] okay maybe that was just asmin you see it didn't matter if you liked cookies and cream or if you liked vanilla because World of Warcraft was never just a game like sure it's a job sure you we got a company to run we got
[37:20] a product to put out but that's not the point I got like seven of my friends in a while I my ex-girlfriend I got ex-girlfriend emphasis on without the community wow just wouldn't be what it is I love wow I'll Always Love wow I
[37:33] love wow wow was like a huge part of who I was I am a wow Andy through and through it's a place people could call home I'm a simple man okay I love World of Warcraft that's where I met my husband actually got a lot of memories
[37:47] attached to it and I go back to it all the time so I'm going to play wow I'm this thing it's that simple we're all kind of United by this space you know that we spend a lot of lot of time in and that's a very special
[38:01] [Music] thing and as long as that door stayed pictures of me in this for quite a long time it would always be
[38:17] video then you're definitely going to want to check out how Call of Duty became Unstoppable next as always you're beautiful you're Goose tastic and keep it cute now we can finally play the game oh yeah okay Kenny add eyes of the Beast
[38:32] oh yeah okay Kenny add eyes of the Beast to your hot bar