"There must always be a Lich King" - I Really want to see consequences for not having one, its a story beat primed and WAITING to happen.

Remember the events that happened just prior to launch of Wrath? That's the implied consequence according to the game. That was a badass event, the bitching of the midwits that wanted the game to act like nothing was happening notwithstanding, and it should be an occasional thing that happens without regularity and just comes and goes.

in 9.2.5 there is a bloodelf quest coming out that touches on that a bit

There was consequences. Satan died and now Sylvanas is the Grim Reaper and there is no Satan. There's also a permanent portal to hell open. Give me an expansion where the dragons restore the world and lower the seas. Add the land between continents so the islands are mostly connected to the two mainlands and bring back the world feeling to WORLD of warcraft.

It's a "what sword?" Situation. Technically, the Scourge have been running rampant and out of control the entire time we were in the Shadowlands dealing with nipple daddy. The armies of Azeroth have been in a constant struggle fighting the feral Scourge because there was nothing and no one controlling them anymore. You saw this in the Shadowlands prepatch when they had us going around defending areas from scourge attacks- and those never stopped.

The Scarlet scourge did overwhelm the lands of Azeroth.

I feel like Blizzard isn't thinking about Dragon Riding as a long-term mechanic. They see it as a way to make some traversal puzzles on the Dragon isles and once your dragon is fully trained (in the finial patch) it'll work like any other mount.

That sounds like shit. The final prize is "you get a new mount" just doesn't feel like an expansion worthy prize. I also think you're wrong about that, but the way blizz has disappointed us again and again lately I'm not gonna say they won't again.

so youre saying, theyre making it a long term mechanic, just lazily? Wow thank you.

It's rather obvious that they didn't even tried to future proof that feature, and it's clearly going to become yet another "borrowed power" (or player progression) that you leave behind when the expansion is over. The simple fact that it's not retro compatible with the mounts we already have is enough proof of that.

When I first read about this I thought, But I already have about 6 dragon mounts, why do I need another one.

EQ2 was actually the first game with mounts like this. They had your standard flying, a leaper, and a glider. The leaper/glider moved much faster then the flyer but required effort where the flying obviously didnt

I’d like to see the new flight mechanics and how they work when it’s being done as unintended.. like flying downward and colliding into the ground, into mountainsides, etc. everything is fine when it’s as intended but it also matters when it’s unintended if that makes sense

Asmon hit the nail on the head with the engine problem. A simple wow 2.0 would draw a lot of heads if it was a similar game, slightly better graphics and far less engine issues for larger scale pvp, player owned housing would be really appealing etc....

@DrewPicklesTheDark 100% on point. But no one ever listens to player base. They listen to board and the board all want $$$ crawl before you walk and work before you earn!

An actual WORLD of Warcraft

pretty sure a lot of player would cry if they change it.

Most of these issues are not related to the engine though. Also content by content doesnt attract anyone, it needs an atmosphere and organic feeling, most housing systems in games just dont keep players playing, because most people dont wanna play barbie.

@Rickroll everyone plays barbie xmog is true end game

I was very excited about finally getting a new healing class since it’s what I love to main. Then I heard it was a dragon race and I love dragons! Then I saw the model of the dragons and thought, "what in the ever-lovin’ Cracker Jack is that….." So. I’m gonna need Bliz to give me the option to not use that dragon form if I don’t wanna.

Personnaly I like the idea of the new dragon races, they are something that hasn't been in the game before (like the Pandarian), yes it might be for the people that are into "scalies" but frankly i like them. It's a Wargon race that both factions can use. With expainsions there are new things to discover and find. I wish they would bother to have Azeroth finally "hatch" and see what happens to the world, but that would more than likely be the last expansion ever =/

It would be refreshing to see them create a focus on MMO aspects. Focus an expansion on guilds, whether that be through rewards for guilds completing achievements/content, or a renounce system that rewards guild cohesion. The game seems to be idling towards a single player (non-mmo) experience. Guilds and partnering content is what made the game such a resounding success. Nothing succeeds like success, so build upon what has been proven to work. I would love content that absolutely drives the MMO concept, and not small group content, like M+ and small raid groups.

I love the single player aspect. Having to rely on you incels to progress in the game is a huge negative for a lot of people.

This guy has the best nerd rage against WoW. You can see he really had love for the game. He reminds me of a friend of mine talking about his ex-wife. There is a special kind of poison once you loved something and you feel it turned against you. Love the hate!

24:40 FYI for those who dont play gw2, that guy using the griffon is exceptionally skilled, if it was narc props to him not many ppl can fly like that lmao xDD

Takes a lot of practice

Polarising indeed. Still love how Asmon can have a differing opinion and still respect the other persons. Solid character and always entertaining to watch.

Makes me wonder why there's so much Asmongold hate

Unless it's about GW2 for some reason

You get made fun of to your face and don't even notice huh?

@Anedime Sheesh, but I can see it.

everquest had mounts with inertia as well, what they did over time was remove it outside of combat, this way in combat you cant just easily run away from the threat and inertia is a thing, but out of combat, it works more or less like you would want a faster movement to be, a small ramp up to 100 and near instant deceleration, in combat it is a 2-4 second ramp up on a mount, with a 2 second stop from 100%

I liked the cinematic a lot, and to be honest I was surprised Alexstrasza did catch him. Sure, it was easy to guess, but I also expected him to end up crashing simply because every other watcher had crumbled, so I figured they would go with the "he died fulfilling their one duty: bringing the dragons home" So, I was really happy and a little surprised when he got saved.

It reminded me of the cutscene in FF14’s Heavensward when a crazed angry Elezen Ishgardian priest hurled a child hostage off the roof of a church and a dragon caught her.

I think the best parts of this expansion are the revamped talent trees and crafting. I think they could be huge for the game.

But what you don't know is that your talent tree allocation will now give you less abilities than before and offer 2 new talents which are passives from Legion. At least from the samples we've seen.

At this point the game has too many abilities anyway.

@WarlordTF We need less abilities at this point in WoW. There are too many CDs and buttons its hard for new players to ever want to try the game. Simple rotations and powerful CDs would be better than more buttons imo.

@Slanue I'm sorry what? all classes boil down to 6 buttons give or take, I don't count the covenant shit cause that FOTM and isn't permanent.

@WarlordTF yeah your right, but id rather have it be less abilities that are more meaningful then 40 abilities per class but 34 are pretty useless and you only press 6. you get what im trying to say?

Endwalker didn't do much to me until I went through the MSQ and the entire Endwalker scenery made me cry into tears. WoW always had pectacles........and it is my hope this 'calm' scenery will result into great surprises because often that which does not spring much to mind comes out from unexected corner, or something.

i know the talent trees are most likely going to change but the specs are running parallel downwards in the druid tree, putting tanking and healing down the center together so you can grab both sets

Inertia mechanics can cause frustration, however they also make you feel really skilled when you are good at it. For instance in gw2 when you pull off the perfect drift/lap racing in the roller beetle races. Or when you use the right mount for the right situation. Limitations are needed to give challenge. God mode is boring.

I can understand that can be fun for some players but if we're being real, that's not true for the majority. You can take Asmongold's example, PUBG with its incredibly realistic movement mechanics, with realistic driving and fall damage etc, got replaced the moment Fortnite and Apex Legends came out, offering similar gameplay but with less frustrating controls and movement. Or how League of Legends has consistently been way more popular than Dota 2 because it cuts a lot of the tedium of micro-managing your character's movement, such as acceleration and turn rates. Inertia and realism can be fun to play with, but ultimately one of the main reasons why we play games is because we don't like being restricted by real life "mechanics" aka laws of physics, hence why you're flying in those games to begin with.

@Prideqt I’d like to take a moment to explain some gw2 design principles. There are multiple mounts and you have to work to unlock each one which gives a rewarding feeling when you do achieve that. Unlocking them gives you access to new parts of the maps of makes movement more accessible. The reason I use the gryphon is to go starting from a high point like a cliff. But the catch is it can’t glide forever. The reason I use the raptor is for that fastest distance on flat land. The reason for the jackel is tightest turning circle or going up hill or to cheat falling damage. The skimmer for underwater or as other mounts dismount you over water. The reason for the roller beetle is fastest speed over flat ground for a long distance but the catch is it can’t slow down or turn easy. The springer purley for fastest vertical travel as long as it’s not too high. The sky scale for long distance by air and scaling a long distance vertically yet it’s slower then the gryphon and springer as those respective things. Every mount has a weakness and this is due to the implementation through inertia mechanics. Without inertia mechanics mounts have no weakness and I’d just use the one best mount all the time rendering the others useless. It’s an important part of the gameplay to determine which is the best mount for the situation and multiple mounts are core to the reward both functionality wise and cosmetically. Removing inertia mechanics would for all respective purposes render the reward and unlock system meaningless. I’m guess this might work in WoW as they will probably only implement a single ‘god-mode’ mount giving less to unlock and cosmetically achieve and less to think about when playing.

It’s like in shooters - you don’t run around with a sniper rifle all the time you chose the best weapon for the situation. Without mechanics there are no weakness without weakness there is no point to having multiple weapons, or for the context of the discussion - mounts. Your not micro managing angle trajectory and velocity 24/7 in gw2 your just choosing the right mount for the situation.

Everything you have said makes perfect sense within GW2. I've put about 100 hours into the game since launch (GW1 was my first MMO) and I've tried so damn hard to *get* GW2. It just doesn't push the right buttons for me but I can understand the appeal. That being said, GW2 and WoW are very different games. Everything about GW2 is movement. Fast and flowing, even the combat - in my experience, the majority of GW2 cast time abilities can be cast on the move while the majority of WoW cast time abilities can't. There's no dodging in WoW outside of basic WASD movement or class abilities while it's a fundamental mechanic in GW2. I'm probably just boring, but the GW2 raptor (my only mount) pisses me off because of the inertia mechanics. I just want to talk to this dude, why do I need to practice dealing with inertia mechanics to stop in the right place (and then get dismounted anyway)? In WoW, my flying mount means I can jump on it, go up high and go in a straight line. It's downtime where I don't need to concentrate on playing the game. GW2 has made that fun for the people who enjoy it but I'm not playing a combat-oriented MMO so that every single journey is some glorified jumping puzzle. I'm not trying to invalidate your opinion or your enjoyment from mastering a system. It's great that people love the system, but different people like different things and personally speaking, if I did like the system I'd probably have gotten on a lot better with GW2 (and wouldn't be actively put off by the dragonriding system)

as a gw2 player i could not agree more with enertia point. I literaly could not play witcher because of it, I alt+f4 it when i missed a opening 5/6 times with a horse, never opened it again (judge me, enertia is shit in the game) . But enertia in gw2 is smooth and intuitive and actualy fun (except bunny mount, hes shit with enertia, u cant tap-move forvard cm by cm so you have to make a whole ass circle to come 1cm forward, hes so fat u end up bumping every little rock, ) , rest makes you feel like ur good at curving around objects perfectly even tho ur not. Makes u feel cool. Enertia is there more for looks and awesome animations rather then being there for "raptor needs to feel real". The 1cm raptor mount needs to stop, you will never need to be that precise with it like in other games. You will never have to hit a 1x1m door on a mount in a tight curve. (in races yes but that competative). The limitted curving is so precise it feels great tho.

I think it's good that we don't have some bigger badder firster one bad guy. We need a period of calm to create new stories and new protagonists, and set up new antagonists so that they don't feel rushed. Vanilla had no single big bad guy, but you knew about Arthas already, and that's why by the time wrath launched, it was massive. It's finally time to go after Arthas, while his forces have been gaining power for years.

10 years ago I remember Asmongold as a loud, obnoxious and opinionated tri-hard, but this was very mature, rational, intelligent, and insightful! You’ve come a long way and I also hope to see the game go back to just being fun again. Especially now being in my 30s, with barely enough time to call myself a casual. Thanks for the content. Keep it up!

I definitely was wrong with my initial opinion of him, maybe jealous. At this point I am seeing how stupid and wrong I was. This man should make his parents proud as they could be. So mature and intelligent and considerate. It really shines thru when he’s reviewing a 20 minute video for over an hour. My favorite part is the parts where he pauses it and has an interesting side convo for 20 minutes. Got me to download twitch today for the first time ever.

I think most people's opinion changes though once they realise he is the living embodiment of the "target demographic/audience". Like, the dude is a pasty, skinny, -basement- attic-dwelling, "same shirt" wearing _real_ gamer and not a poser. Money and success hasn't changed him or his opinion, it's just allowed him to... game on a better gaming rig lol. I think that's commendable.

They already said Dragon flight would be limited to Dragon isles and may be moved to cover all zones at a later date if players were favorable towards it and that players would have the option to use it or original flying. So I'm guessing it would be like WM with the option to either turn it on or off.

I like the approach they are taking with dragonflight. So far it's looking cool, the return of updated talent trees and funnier things like dragon flying instead of mandatory progression systems. It seems like they want to improve the fundamentals of the game instead of adding more borrowed power.

I think all of theses inertia options should have options in game where the player decides if they want inertia modifiers on their mounts or not.

Having a good crafting system in wow would do some work towards bringing me back into it, and I find the dragon theme interesting considering I've skipped a few expansions now... But it will take more than this to bring me back.

I agree with you on a lot of this as far as like, we don't completely know how it's going to be/turn out except for the cinematic. It wasn't abysmal, but it was definitely something that I watched and wasn't touched by at all. I haven't genuinely played WoW in a long time but every previous cinematic made me feel like "Holy shit I wanna play again!" even if only for a brief amount of time. This one didn't leave me feeling anything at all other than I wasted a bit of my time that day.

I feel like at least for Sylvanas it would make sense that she would destroy the helm of domination. Arthas was the one to kill her and raise her as a banshee, and after she tries to off herself after he dies because it's over. However I feel she may have seen further and figured if it wasn't for The Lich King or Ner'zhul then none of this would have happened and sought to destroy it which she did. I may be wrong but that's my theory on why it makes sense and why she did that.

Despite all my reservations, I don't want to be the person who'd throw tomatoes on everything Blizzard makes these days. I want them to honestly succeed, I want to see them do better, I want the company's name to clean their slate, change their toxic ethos and do better. the expansion hasn't come out yet, and though I am lowering expectations on this one, I am cautiously hopeful. And this is me as an ff14 player who grew up with Starcraft and Warcraft 3+ expansion.

It’s sad more people don’t think like this because everyone just hops on the bandwagon cause it’s fun, rightfully so by all means trash something that is trash but only after it’s been played

I think it's great that WoW is borrowing ideas from other MMOs however I think what is stirring up the ire of the communities is that the majority of recent things being copied are all visual aspects. What I personally find concerning is how frequently they've been imitating visual aspects from other games within just the last few months and how they directly insert these into the game without really putting much effort to at least add their own flair or improvements. I just hope it doesn't keep happening because at the moment all it's telling me is that they're stumped on fresh ideas. I do want the game to be good again but I just hope I can see Blizzard start pulling their own weight and show that they can make something worth diving back into.

copying and assimilating stuff is why wow was the top mmo for so long

@Scribblord You should copy concepts and systems, what the problem here is that Wow is starting to copy assets and designs.

Examples?

As far as I've seen Warcraft has a unique visual design that doesn't copy and in reality is copied by very many games (mobile ones especially). At the very least they are the best early version of this style back when Warcraft 3 originally released. Maybe there is a little known game they stole that visual design from but, when I have watched documentaries about Blizzard it seems that their original art team (mainly Samwise Didier and Chris Metzen) came up with the particular aesthetic that Warcraft utilizes, although it is obviously heavily influenced by earlier visual depictions of high fantasy (such as D&D).

@ShadowZeroFlame Just in the last patch one very glaring example was the Anduin scene with Saurfang and Varian. The scene played out almost exactly like the Heavensward scene in FFXIV with the whole "two characters placing hand on shoulders to lend power to assist someone who is struggling against corruption from evil". If you put the scenes side by side it's just too close. Some other examples are the denizens of Xerath Mortis who create the concept of life and make metallic/ethereal sounds when they speak, just like the ancients from FFXIV in Shadowbringers a few years ago. There's many many more just within the last few months, I could list them but I don't want to make this comment longer than it already is. Again the main issue is the frequency this is happening and how the majority of the things being copied aren't system/gameplay aspects, they're all visual and conceptual designs.

I haven't played WoW in ages but I kinda disagree with using a cookie cutter spec. I usually always went with passive damage/procs over new buttons because there were too many buttons as is and just having fewer buttons to push resulted in better performance every time. Playing a 6 button spec almost perfectly is still better than a theoretically better spec with too many cooldowns and other things to manage on top of fight mechanics and movement.

I want a Caverns of Time expansion where they do an entire expansion to the First War then Second war/Tides of Darkness. That would feel like home.

They should bring crater of azshara into the game as the MOBA that it was rumoured to be except at the start of each battleground each side gets to pick one of their capital cities leaders to do each role (or other choices, whatever would work) and they would be the bosses that would stay in the lanes, and perhaps one for the jungle each side.

Asmon, you are doing great!! I recently started watching your videos these last few years. I have been watching them more recently because I am trying to figure out what my next move in life is and looking for inspiration in a world that is shifting toward technology at a faster pace every day. Thanks for making great videos.

My biggest concerns with the new dragon flying, is that it will be implemented poorly and as the only way of flying allowed in the new expansion it will burn through whatever good will they managed to get back. Also...even if it is successful and beloved...they'll just toss it in the trash for some new gimmick for the next expansion. Blizzard's developed the habit of copying from other games without bothering to find out WHY it worked for them. The Guild Wars 2 flying works because before that, there WAS no mounts. You had to run everywhere. So this was an advancement. WoW's had mounts since vanilla and flying since BC. And the flying mounts moved about freely. A lot of players may feel more restricted, as if it's a step back. Doubly so if dragon flying isn't perfectly done. They will rightfully say, "I gave up (insert cool old flying mount here) for THIS!?" Will you be able to use your dragon outside of the new zone? You are after all making an investment in training a dragon. Is it going to be locked to the Dragon Isles? And of course there's the Sword issue. What happens to dragon flying at the end of the expansion? Players spent months training their dragon. New expansion rolls around are they going to just throw it in the trash...like just about every other system? "What Dragon Flying? There's never been Dragon Flying. But hey! Look at this other new cool thing for the new expansion!"

You make great points watching alot of the interviews and by what and how dragon flying was discussed the dragon flight system sounds like to be a middle ground compromise between not having flying mounts at the start to allowing some flight for the first few patch cycles. Ian did say that if their is enough negative feedback they will eventually let you use the older mounts. Like in other xpacs getting loremaster achements. Now if the feedback is positive they may bring this mechanic or system to the older mounts or into future xpacs.

actually the thing about dragonriding is that u will be able to use it from minute 0, it's not the same as flying as we know it. it's a theme thing for the expansion, the bond with your dragon companion. you will be progressing ur skills through the expansion but it would make no sense to not be able to fly in a dragon expansion from the very beginning. with that said, later in the expansion, maybe one patch later as always, you will get to use ur normal fly, and all your beloved mounts. they repeatedly said that dragon riding is not the same as flying, so maybe for some things you will prefer to use your normal flight. And they didn't say they will put the dragon riding system in the trash can at the end of the expansion, the will hear feedback, and see how the comunity accepts this new thing, if people want it, the will keep it. and u will be able to use ur dragon companion with dragon riding all across azeroth, that's up to the comunity to make it happen.

Imagine typing all of this thinking people care

@Nick Barnes imagine being rude to somebody who is giving his opinion, if you don’t care, don’t read it, and move on :)

I don’t really care if one gimmick is lost after the expansion. What’s annoying to me it’s when it’s 1) isn’t fun (AP grind) or 2) linked to how you play your class (constantly losing player power and abilities). Dragon flying seems pretty fun and light hearted and doesn’t seems to have such a big impact and your character that you’re gonna loose.

It always surprised me how there wasn't a playable dragon race in the game. You see these npc's that can turn into dragons through some of the stories in World of Warcraft. I say it's about time! I think the game will not be complete without DragonFlight. Took long enough. I've always admired how beautiful Alexstrasza looked and how cool Wrathion was.

When Wow first came out it was praised for its easy to learn casual nature. Compared to other MMOs before it, it was indeed casual. People making fun of how casual things are in wow today feel very disingenuous to me. As they were the ones being called casuals back in 2004.

I've been saying for years since WoD that they need to use a new engine, not just mechanics but to truly advance character customization and graphical design. Like imagine WoW on unreal 5, he'll even 4. That and I think WoW would be phenomenal with action combat like Terra had.

If WoW did action combat it would really only benefit from a system similar to wildstars Or the weird half&half of gw2

Excited about the talent tree returning. I hope this is a good exp. Unfortunately, I have lost all faith in Blizzard.

Your main problem was relying on faith in the first place. Focus on what you can see buddy.

@MUG No, ill focus on faith.

I personally think the expansion release will just be a fast final retail cash grab before they focus 0 effort into it and focus on the classic game. I will try it because I'm crazy, but I hope it will be good. Overall in shadowlands I think I put less than 24 hours into the game and just could not continue out of boredom. I feel more likely than not dragonflight will be the same trash. If it all goes bad I'll go straight back to classic.

@Paul s when it comes to WoW, I think the only way you can enjoy it is if you play it casually. Yes, you can say that you won’t be able to progress if you play casually, but I think people just need to change their goals for the game as a whole. There is many things to do in the game that don’t involve needing the best gear possible. Just my opinion, of course.

I get what dude is saying about the dragon taming being a borrowed power, since it wont go beyond the expansion. Can you imagine if they made us have to train a flying carpet or gyrocopter to fly with it in the future? Also, surprised Asmon doesnt think they're going to tie this gimmick to content accessibility, especially when they already said it will be necessary to reach certain areas. Usually he has more realistic takes on these sorts of things.

4:15 he actually has a point all 3 of those clips gave me chills down my spine even years after seeing them. I did like the DF cinematic but yeah it didn't give me that moment of power.

Mists had no massive moment and it’s one of the best expansions whereas all 3 of those clips were from terrible expansions.

Cool cinematics are nice and all but as the comment above me mentions, cinematics have no barring on whether the game is going to be good or not and its a terrible take to make one of your base points on the game dying due to the cinematic that has nothing to do with how the game actually plays.

@Ryan Morrissette mists was not one of the best expansions. It actually had either the longest or second longest content drought before Shadowlands. 5.4 was out for over a year I think before any new content came out. The only good thing was them making legendaries more accessible. The expansions pretty much got progressively worse with the exception of Legion, which tryhards hated because of rng legendaries and titanforging, but those mechanics were great for the average player. I personally rank them like this: tbc, wrath, legion, vanilla, cata, mists, (huge gap), wod, bfa, shadowlands. Mists was pretty average.

@Ryan Morrissette But the MoP intro cutscene was actually good and focused on a race that had existed since Warcraft 3.... This one focuses on some random stone people... It's worse than the Shadowlands intro which I already hated for this exact reason of "who tf are these people and wtf is even going on"

@cs guy TBC fanboys really are priceless... The only truly good thing about TBC was the lore focus and the intro... The fights were dull, the areas other than 1 or 2, were dull... Also contained the worst levelling zone to ever exist in WoW history (Blade's Edge)... Please take off your rose tinted nostalgia goggles.

The cinematic would have been really good if the stone men had to fight off a legion group or other bad guy that broke through the barrier, over the time skip they fight to the last stone guardian defending the isles instead of just waiting, and then boom would have made all the rest better by default and stone guy would be pog not lame

Man I've watched that new one several times now since its been out, but 3 seconds of the Garrosh animation sends chills down my spine...thats how you can tell the new one aint really nothing

I liked the cinematics as well, and since cata, this is the first expansion that has a chance of getting me back into retail.

I think the expansion is geared towards hooking players to return to WoW as it was, i havn't played in ages and how i feel is we will finally go back to logging in and out on alts in front of the raid instance, im actually stoked to return if thats the case. best gear from raids has been gone too long

As long as they introduce a system and players are able to freely interact with the entirety of the system with no pushback there won't be any problems. To use covenants as an example I want to open world as a Venthyr, I want to dungeon as a Night Fae, I want to PVP as a Necrolord and I want to play my tank spec as a Kyrian. Early Shadowlands didn't let you do that and strangled you by preventing you from playing with the system ARBITRARILY, there was no reason to make the system as stiff as it was. In Legion, it sucked playing multiple specs because you couldn't level up your artifact weapon to fully interact with your class and before you had your desired pool of legendaries interacting with the legendary system sucked but once all your artifact weapons were high level and you had all the legendaries you wanted there was literally no problem with the Legion systems. Players just want to play a good game and they don't want something they personally view as "stupid and pointless" or something that doesn't need to exist to stand in the way of them playing the video game.

I think dragon flights gonna be fine, or at least the best direction wow can take. The guy had a point when he said that those 3 clips gave you chills down your spine (I would personally switch bfa with leigion cause I didn't like the bfa cinematic as much), but world of warcraft has run out of stable lore to write off of. Back then we had good lore, which carried the game. (even mop kinda had that feeling of adventuring onto a new continent) However, ever since legion, after the defeat of sargeras, wow doesn't feel like it have a definite 'lore' to it anymore. Shadowlands tried to create new villains, and though it had good potential, we all saw how that turned out. Dragon flight is more about playing it safely, and although it might not be able to completely woe us, it won't be a complete disappointment like shadow lands either which I think is a safe and healthy route for the game as a whole.

Blizzard has been consistently good at one thing: Taking a good core idea and making it both more accessible (both in technical requirements and personal ability requirements) and polishing it up to a level not expected. Most deviations from this formula have fallen flat at best, and actively hurt them at worst.

To this day, and it might be actually low on other people's lists, my favorite game cinematic still has to be that opening to StarCraft 2 when Finley is being suited up to set free. That was pretty bad ass. I still remember that line, "That armor, is now your new prison."

I think Asmongold pointed out two very good points in the videos that I disagree with as well. I don't think that dragon ridi g is borrowed power and I don't think that this mechanic will be impactfull in terms of the survival of wow. These two points were like the weakest in both of the videos.

Dragonflight is (probably) everything I’ve wanted for years. I’ve missed talent trees since they were removed. I’ve missed giant zones since vanilla. I’ve craved early flying, account wide achievements, and no cosmic big bad.

I played over 6000 hrs between the start of wotlk to mid legion. I haven’t played for the last 5 years. For me a lot of it was based on the graphics and the visual mechanics of things like interactions. If I’m gonna be grinding a lot, it would be nice to do it on a game that doesn’t look like it has graphics from the early 2000s. Wow was designed to be an immersive game and for me, the graphics have always held it back. The basic landscape design has always been really good, it just needs to be updated, along with how unrealistic and awkward the motions of the characters and creatures are. If they use something like unreal engine 5 and make a wow remastered, I’ll probably be back on board and playing until I die.

Dragonflight is going to be a big success for wow if they deliver on account wide progression and way less timegating, that alone will get people playing again, new race, new flying, it all doesnt matter if people get to grind their stuff without feeling hamstrung by abitrary limitations

There aren’t many people that have better takes on the genre they’re passionate about than Asmon. Regardless of whether I agree he’s got great takes.

I've been an avid Warcraft player since year 2. For the past 15 years or so the demise of Warcraft has been greatly exaggerated. That said, I do think Warcraft has lost its way. With each expansion it seems to drift farther ands farther from what it once was. Some of the things that come to mind is the lack of tech support from game masters. It use to be if you had problems they would log into the game and not only help you, but stay and chat a moment. Another big bugaboo is scaling. It use to be we looked forward to leveling up and moving on to new areas. Not anymore. From Elwynn Forest to Kul Tiras it is now all the same. The only exception is the professions, a level 10 can make all sorts of things that are of no use to them till the make level 30. Another thing I despise is pathfinder. I'd rather just pay my money and fly like when I made level 30, I hate "to do" bucket lists just to fly. The same for new characters. I use to look forward to expansions with new characters, but not anymore. First the new characters lost their homes and so there was no going back for them and no capital city. Then there came "to do" bucket lists to access new characters. Also the new characters have lost their originality. A dwarf is a dwarf, an elf is an elf, a Tauren is still a Tauren and so on no matter what they call them or what color they make them. And the poor mechagnome look like quadriplegics. Starting with the Broken Isles Blizzard came up with the brilliant idea to make the game more fun and challenging by simply making it more difficult to get around. My last complaint is the game has become so convoluted and non-user friendly. In the beginning it was quite simple. Once you got the hang of game play it generally was quite simple to figure out what to do next. Now I find myself spending more time on Wowhead and less time playing. However much of Wowhead has become little more than meaningless prattle about storyline and speculation about where some name in the game came from.

Dude. The stone guy had more character development than the jailer did.

Idk, kinda to each their own but I liked the cinematic, didn't expect the dragon to save the guardian, didn't expect them to double down on Tyrrs relatioship with the world how they did especially after the events of Shadowlands. To each their own

The biggest issue WoW has is not the content, the engine, or even the borrowed power systems, or systems in general. It's that everything Blizzard implements NEVER gets polished anymore. They have an idea, implement it and if they're not happy with it it gets left behind and all the work on it was wasted. And even worse, it makes the player have to engage with it, knowing they are wasting their time, cause they also know whatever effort they put into it is ultimately in vain.

The cinematic was unexpected for a person that didn't spoil the entire reveal 2 weeks ahead by leaks. Alot of casual players don't care about leaks, that alone is disconnected from the audience that used to be the core audience. This really shows how disconnected content creators, that have to watch every leak, every single tease, are from the rest of the audience and let's be honest, it's not even their fault, but he should've acknowledged it in his video.

As for the borrowed power discussion, we don't know how integral dragon riding is to game play. If the primary game loop relies on it, I'd say it is, but at this point it just looks like a fun addition. As for the crafting overhaul, we're getting the standard hyper-focus entirely at the top end. While max level recipes have been mediocre since WoD, the prime reason crafting sucks is that almost everything crafted below level cap is worthless. If that isn't addressed, only the few obsessive will push through the hundred or so levels of vendor trash to get to anything worth making. It's not fun game play...

I think the cinematic was ok. I just hope the expansion is fun and brings people back. I can't agree with what blizzard has done in the past years but at the same time I do want WoW to do good.

The flying in WoW has no consequences on the gameplay, Guild wars 2 flying serves a purpose, it's part of the gameplay so I think it's pretty cool that they added that layer of skill required to use them. Never played the game, but it would be boring if there were no consequences for over extending while trying to platform to something out of your reach otherwise.

In Archeage i remember that only the people voted as heroes in each faction got flying mounts in a game where the closest you could get to that was gliding. It made those exclusive mounts really prestigious and pushed you to be more proactive within the game and the community if you really wanted a flying mount. Too bad Archeage lost its potential a lot time ago.

Well I think that in TBC and WOTLK content was more linked. Now every single expansion you have to deal with stuff that will be useless in the next expansion. Garrisons, borrowed powers and stuff are grinds that torture you but are obsolete in the next expansion. Imagine if you could actually use all the legendaries you had to grind trough the ages - ofc they would be situationaly used so you still need to get the new expansions gear for some content. On the other hand you could feel the satisfaction of making use of the all items you spend so much time farming...

I think something that Asmon said in this video rings true regarding the Pay to Win model. I remember waiting out in front of GameStop in the middle of the night back in the day when BC launched waiting to get my copy so I could rush home and get it installed and get started on my belf paladin. Back then, I had something in abundance that I have less of now...time. And while I don't really care for pay to win, I feel like the way that things have progressed and the way that companies are constantly pressured to pump out content I feel like the games in their natural form aren't very fun in the sense that I feel pressured to keep up w/ the availability of said content being pushed out. Back during Vanilla, the content came slower, and even though I had a lot more time, I didn't feel rushed. These days, I feel rushed - and therefore - feel pressured to spend money to remain current. I don't like that feeling. I'm not sure I'll even pick up the latest expansion when it does drop. Not that I hate the game, I love the game, I'm just not that interested anymore. The game has definitely changed in a way that I don't much care for, but to that end, I've changed as well.

Blizzard to be fair is super good at making their games feel good so if something is going to be good it's the flying mechanics. Also he's right about the inertia it's common that it is criticized in games that have "floaty controls" because it makes precise movement practically impossible.

The shock on Asmons face when he saw the draknoid and male succubus side by side was undeniable. This is why i checked out from wow completely. They don't only hate their players but actively lie to them to try and gain good faith.

i liked the part where the falling person was saved mid air by the dragon like in ffxiv and that you can fly around like guildwars.

Too be fair, what I personally want is the skill tree thing.. the classes got so boring for me after this long of playing so new talents change how the classes work.. which is a refreshing.

yeah, I'm at least glad Blizz is finally giving in to having loadouts, so I could have different specs for types of content like aoe vs single target, multiple pvp builds, some focused around soloing or farming old content, etc.

Yeah but they won't though. Player choice in power is never a choice, the original talents sucked, the current talents suck and I'll lay odds the new talents will suck too.

@Greg Recovski probably because of some personal bias you have...

@Chris Mead Well, I like options even if they are not meta.. he idea of having options is what is exciting to me in general.. As a guild wars 1 player with over 900+ abilities to choose from and a bar that only allows like 8 at a time.. I prefer more useless abilities/talents than cut down ones. Just the idea of people having set builds and builds specifically designed to counter them excites me on build craft.

You will always pick the cookie cutter builds. This issue is player created issue not a design issue. Players will optimize the fun out of a system if allowed. We want to feel powerful so you'll always pick the higher dps build.

About the cinematic: MoP didnt have a big OMG moment either. These expansions start off slow, which is completely intentional. Because you cant keep forcing the stakes to go up every expansion. Thats how you end up with nzoth getting killed in half an expac and the jailer being a thing. Honestly DF came two expansions too late.

Also, the talent tree was the reason I stopped playing at mists of pandaria. I gave it a try again on BFA and thought it was shit, and then again when shadowlands started and thought it was shit again, mainly because when you get stronger, you should feel stronger, and nowadays its actually the opposite. The talent tree coming back is pretty nice. They might get some money out of me again.

What if the dragonflights REPLACE the flying mounts throughout the whole expansion zone? And what if they, like some examples in Guild Wars 2, CAN'T FLY most of the time? You'd have to gain momentum from the fall or something like that? Wouldn't that fix all the WoW's Fly-Mount problems?

I think what’s been presented so far for Dragonflight has me interested. It seems like a lot of people act like they’ve already played the expansion and know everything about it. I think actual gameplay experience is important before shutting the expansion down as a whole.

Perhaps they are some sort of bronze dragons who played it in the future XD

When it comes to talents, it's also sometimes about skill. I think there were people in lost ark, that used grudge, even though they didn't have the skill for it. I often saw people die Vs the second third tier raid boss, even though I didn't die. I was playing a melee dps, and i wasn't that good

This doesnt apply in anywhere near the same way with tab targeting Micromanaging is where the real skill lies in this type of mmo

25:40 Fun fact: A criticism doesn't need to be "constructive" to be valid. Pointing out that what Blizz is doing is ripping off Guild War without the proper engine to pull it off properly is a perfectly valid criticism and doesn't need ANY "constructive" part to itself to be more valid.

I just woke you h

I think they should make all mounts be able to do flips and all when say.. 10.3 hits. Or limit regular mount alowed flying hight ;)

The stone boy falling was a metaphore for blizzards downfall, and the dragon is gonna take it in a new direction

I'm glad I finally decided to give asmongold a chance and watch his stuff, he's funny as fuck And as a balding 25 year old man, I can relate lmao

As someone who plays both WoW and GW2, I much prefer the way flying works in WoW. Sure, the mounts in GW2 have uses for each mount type, but I genuinely don't like the "feel" of those mounts. It'll be interesting to see what kind of iteration blizz puts on their version with dragon riding, but I can say with certainty that this feature isn't the potential "deal breaker" for me that this guy seems to think it is.

The thing that worries me about the talent tree is we are just making the same decisions as the previous talent tree but in a way where you can non-thematically hybridize your character into performing worse than the basic kits allowed anyways, it feels illusory. It feels like we have the illusion of interesting choices and we'll notice the negative nuances quickly later on.

This has and will always be the case with talent “choices” though. There will always be the best meta choices no matter how it’s laid out, and there will always be suboptimal choices. At least we won’t have bullshit covenant trees and conduits or corruptions or whatever other borrowed power garbage from the last expansions.

honestly man it’s so hard to compete with the people who never stopped playing… i came back for shadowlands after playing BC and a little of WOLK in high school, like a 13 year gap, i really enjoyed most of the game but end game was hell. people would never let me into their groups because there was always someone better, even when i had a legendary and max renown…

I love how even as someone with no prior knowledge of who is or ever was involved in WoW's development at pretty much any point in it's lifespan, I can immediately pick out the employees in that announcement video that have been working on the games for years, and the one's that are literally just tokenistic diversity hires designed to make it seem like Blizzard are a diverse company.

You know, i dont mind this new dragon people race, tbh if i was asked to add a new race to wow, this would be either first or second option i could think of. What i rly want from this expansion are only 2 thing: 1. After 4 years of decent and bad story, i began to desire some good plot. I’m so tired of these attempts of people who dont have any passion and just write story to make us pay more money. Hope this time they will actually try to make the plot somewhat interesting. 2. I want the quests and quest rewards to be more challenging and rewarding respectively. Like, when was the last time you actually FAILED the quest? The last one i actually failed was in WOTLK, and you know what? I remember it. I actually remember how i struggled to complete the side quest from more then 6 years ago, however i cant remember 90% of quests in SL, and that is a major problem with wow today.

they actually said in a interview that dragonflying will be a feature that you can use in almost any zone though I not sure why you would want to when you can just fly.

To your point on players getting older and being ok with p2w: It all comes down to the person and stances they take. I can afford to pay for advancement in my current game, but choose not to support the publisher who took over my main game due to how corrupt they are (Gamigo). Ive taken this stance for 3 plus years now, and have financially supported side games I barely played because they were actively being worked on. I even solely pvp on my main game, but will not support bad business practice of companies just using us (the gamers). I realize the mass majority, however, have no discipline to stay their wallet, but I do my part to put my foot down based on personal ethics. People, in general, enable the current corrupt business practices in todays games.

I agree with you 100% but you’re blowing smoke in the wind here.

I think I don't like p2w because I never know where it will stop. Is this 10 dollar purchase justified or will I need to make another 10 or 15 of these in the next two Months to stay up to date on progress. I'd rather pay 80 dollars for a game once and get access to those skins or perks and never worry about it

@aBradApple True, but the personal stance point isnt because I think my stance will make the difference in a sea of whales, but because I then am disciplined in other avenues of my life to take stances whereas someone undisciplined is just that in life and easily swayed. I agree that the system for games is long past returning back to its former glory, barring an individual makes a stance in how they make their game. Its probably why Indie games are so popular-their devs have passion while many AAA games end up sucking your soul.

The talent system is straight from LOTRO. Not bad at all. I hope it give you a chance to make hybrid builds.

I thought that the cinematic could have been better, but I agree, this is the best direction they can take with the game imho, bring back and improve the classic

Thats why Zack had achived over 1mil Subs. He thinks rational and dont make content shallow. Some content creators look like they read forums and just take feedback from there and just trow a video withouy analyzing every angle

As a member of the the GW2 community I think its awesome to see other games using there idea's. Love the GW2 mounts, and casual game play style. I always tell Hard Core Final Fantasy or WOW players, If you have one main MMO GW2 doesn't have a problem being your side piece.

Wow made that reality for GW2 calm down.

@aLive cs213 GW2>WoW don’t get it twisted

Dcuo had the same shit

Asmons reaction when the guy said he had 10k hours in gw2 at 21:02 pure gold

You know why Blizzard's "innovations" fail? Because they put them up for one expansion, like Artifacts, or Azerite, or Covenants or whatever and then immediately abandon them. They never stick with anything and refine it, they just do ephemeral gimmicks then get bored and do something else.

Agreed! Another great example is the Pokemon series as a whole. It started with Mega Evolution...then all of a sudden dropped it, brought it back after two generations...and still only applies to a select few. Then there were Z-moves...that lasted one generation. Then there was Gigantamax...but only a few pokemon had exclusive transformations, and moved when they grew in size. Not saying these are bad ideas...but its the same problem WoW has.

@Argon1337 i clicked the top comment to literally type out what you typed. Exactly correct.

I mean the Azerite system is just the artifact system except given more freedom of options allowing "player choice". You would get gear and then have the freedom to choose different powers and make your own unique build. The problem however is the meta nature of the game and the fact powers aren't equal means your specifically looking for a set of powers and getting a piece of gear with a worse power(or if your heart wasn't leveled enough to use the powers) may net you a downgrade despite game saying its a upgrade oh and the fact that power. Oh and now the legendary crafting is a bit of both systems stuck together, but your still gonna meta game it so really the choice doesn't matter. People are so far believing the covenant style factions are coming back again in Dragonflight so we'll see about that one.

@-- Yes but these systems are still isolated to their own expansions and then abandoned. While elements of them carry over, most infamously the horrible command tables from the Garrisons, the fact remains that these systems are implemented then abandoned and orphaned leaving progression a disjointed and pointless mess. And the new systems are often far worse. Azerite had nowhere near the cool factor and immersion of Artifacts for instance. We go from wielding legendary lore weapons of ultimate power to a generic necklace, with no connection from one to the other gameplay wise.

I really liked the new cinematic, and I'm a big fan already of Stone Chad. I like that it wasn't trying to pull a "zomg crazy twist!" nonsense again.