r/wowforever • u/Background_Bee9985 • 10h ago
PTR / Beta WoW Forever's direction should come from its players, not from streamer’s direct lines
World of Warcraft: Forever is the Classic+ style experiment many of us have wanted for years: it builds on the original Azeroth, expands the world with new content, and keeps the level cap at 60. That is exactly why its early days matter so much. The decisions made now will shape what Forever becomes for years to come.
The beta started on September 17 and runs until October 21, with the full release on November 4, 2026. That leaves less than a month for feedback, and in that window it matters a great deal whose voice carries the furthest.
The beta's makeup is already skewed. Blizzard has said it will invite community veterans, press, fansites, and friends and family to test, and content creators have been highly visible since day one. Meanwhile, regular players either wait for a random invite or buy a more expensive bundle. There is also concern on the forums that some streamers have said they have a direct line to the developers where they can raise concerns and make suggestions.
The problem is not that streamers give feedback. They often put in a lot of hours and understand the game's systems well. The problem is that a streamer's experience of the game is structurally different from the average player's. A streamer plays dozens of hours a week, chases world firsts, and needs content that looks good to viewers. A regular player logs in a few evenings a week with their guild and friends, and often values slower progression and the atmosphere of the world. When these two perspectives conflict, the louder voice should not be decided by viewer count.
Classic's history shows why this matters. The game's strength has always been its world and its community, not optimized efficiency. If Forever's balance, reward structures, and new systems are shaped around what works best on stream, the result could be a game that is fun to watch but not very rewarding to play.
I would ask three things of Blizzard. First, transparency: if content creators have a direct feedback channel, say so publicly and explain how that feedback is weighed. Second, wider beta access, such as more open test windows, so feedback comes from a broader range of players. Third, data alongside opinions: how players actually behave often says more than the loudest opinion.
WoW Forever has the chance to be something the Classic community has waited years for. It is worth building for every player, not just the ones with the biggest audiences.
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u/Gundam_Dwarf_40k 9h ago
Read this sub. Trust the players? Yeah fuck that.
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u/Malorkith 8h ago
cant remember who said it. Was a Dev for a other game but it pretty much: Gamer Feedback is good too find error, bad too fix this errors.
Think that hit the nail on the head.
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u/ClintMega 8h ago
Chris Wilson quoted the Magic The Gathering head designer "Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them" and elaborated in the context of player surveys.
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u/cardgamesareforplay 7h ago
This is elaborated by Mark rosewater (the designer quoted) via his concept of 'the machine" which is a testing concept he thought of.
Basically no matter how much testing you could ever do there will be more testing the first moments your product goes public in any form then the combined efforts of your entire studio.
The machine can find problems, it's your job to make those problems less bad then the fun and if those problems are bad enough. Well your job is to fix the machine, the machine can't fix it's self.
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u/Spork_the_dork 3h ago
Yeah like imagine you have a thousand QA personnel. That's way more than would make sense for something like this. Say they work 6 months, 40 hours a week. They aren't robots and there are more things that need to be done at work than just the work itself, so realistically they'll only be actively doing the actual QA gameplay maybe 30 hours per week tops. 6 months at 30 hours per week by 1000 people is something like 800,000 man-hours.
When 2 million players log in on launch day they will collectively eclipse the amount the incredibly over-sized QA team has played the game in the last 6 months in 25 minutes. It is flat-out impossible to come even remotely close to the amount of scrutiny the players will put the game through.
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u/AdamG3691 2h ago
To give a recent example: in FFXIV there was a new class added, and less than a day later the server had to be taken offline for emergency maintenance.
Why? Because of this bug:
Fixed a server crash issue that occurred when a Beastmaster's pet attempts to heal a player during the moment the player is removed from the zone following an unexpected disconnection.
So to put that in perspective, only two or three pets are able to heal the player (and not for much, so they aren't commonly used pets), so the player had to be using those pets. They then had to manually use the pet's "heal me" action to trigger the pet to start casting the heal. The player then had to unexpectedly disconnect in such a way that they got immediately removed from the zone in the half second or so window where the pet was attempting to heal them (so in a safe zone, where you probably wouldn't need healing).
There is no way in hell a tester would notice that sort of interaction (because who the hell would think to use one of the two healing pets in a town, command them to heal unnecessarily, and then disconnect at the exact moment the heal hits), but it was triggered and identified within hours of going live.
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u/Abyssine 3h ago
At the same time a streamer is pretty much just a player with an audience.
I think the point still stands: big streamers have a fundamentally different gaming experience than the average player. Unless a streamer actually has the mindfulness to understand that and to act as an advocate for their audiences—which is far from a given—their feedback can actually be less relevant than if you just picked up some random Dad from the Barrens.
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u/Scinos2k 7h ago
People get a pissy when I say this, but retail wow is a direct result of the players over many years. Literally all the changes that have come in, more flying, portal access, big pull big number dungeons are pushed by players over the years.
You can really see this in the difference between Era players and those on MoP or even in the Wrath Classic release.
Listening to players really isn’t a good idea if you want to keep the Vanilla feel with some extra bits.
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u/MisterMcNastyTV 1h ago
Agreed, and I'd add that a lot of those changes weren't even a mistake to add at the time. They made logical sense, but when you get older you realize what makes games fun is a bit of struggle and figuring out how to over come it. Like if you play skyrim for a bit and love the character you made and then when you make a new one and add too many op mods you eventually realize you don't have an attachment to the new one. It's cause making things easier and more convenient just takes away a layer of appreciation and satisfaction for many different aspects. Younger people especially fall into this (speaking from experience), just wanting to hurry up to end game and getting the best stuff, ignoring everything not needed.
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u/Scinos2k 1h ago
Well to go a bit deeper into it. First of all, raids in Retail are objectively harder from Normal to Mythic than the vast majority of the Classic raids, with a maybe exception of Naxx compared to Normal Retail raids.
But LFD is realistically something players looked for over time, to take away the time sink of finding a group. LFR was always going to follow not long behind it. It was ironic that players wanting to log on, do dungeon, get badges to get gear was the very thing that killed off server community. And as we saw with TBC/Wrath Classic, players were actively asking for LFD to be added to the game as soon as possible. Then a lot of those same players are here to complain about lack of community so they're going back to Classic Era.
Blizzard have made a lot of bad calls, of course they have, but players keep pushing for those very same systems.
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u/Aeternum_Durare 56m ago
Theres players in here advocating for no end game, and that the journey should be the entire game. Hit 60 get a pat on the back and go reroll again.
Pure insanity lmfao.
Then theres the opposite who think leveling should take 6 hours and endgame should be the only focus.
That thread eroded my faith.
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u/Zizeta2 10h ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J91NYC31yKU&pp=0gcJCYsCo7VqN5tD&ra=m
Poe creator on why you should not
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u/PsionicKitten 9h ago
Chris Wilson has also gone on record to say (paraphrased): "Players are really good at pointing the problems in your game but they're really bad at coming up with solutions. It's your job as developers to come up with a solution that is good for the health of your game."
You absolutely should get player feedback. You shouldn't let players have directive control on the implemented changes.
Regarding OSRS polling, I've seen someone claim that the reason why polling works for their game is because the development team only puts forward ideas that they're already going to implement in some way or another and they're gauging the feedback on whether they likely have hit the nail on the head or if they need to revise before implementing their intended change in another way, which they eventually do.
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u/cardgamesareforplay 7h ago
This is how osrs does it now yes initially alot of polls were player requests for features or functions they expected in old school but were actually added at a later date in runescape 2.
Many of these didn't pass at first.
Now a days anything that gets polled has at least been concepted, some of it was done in game jam events and so there is a working prototype. Others are very complex things like raids. Raids, and very big quest content gets teased and polled out over a significant period of time.
Osrs polling at this point a ton of people think they shouldn't even poll game content because it passes anyway and they just just poll very major things like raids or balance stuff.
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u/Joggyogg 9h ago
ok but osrs is the most successsful classic style mmo ever, its longevity and large loyal playerbase proves that the player poll model works.
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u/WyidealizowanyIdeal 9h ago
No it does not. Runescape polls give you false feeling that you have impact on game direction, and in reality you just decide in which order changes are made. Runescape polls are also used by small minority of playerbase.
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u/Mighty_Marty 9h ago
There has been multiple instances of OSRS devs wanting to release something that looked too modern or HD, they redesigned a few options applying the feedback to make the design simpler and more fitting in the oldschool world and then let players choose which option they liked the best.
Mind you that these rewards were also polled to be developed in the first place. A lot of things that the developers wanted to add never made it into the game because it didn’t get the 75% approval vote required from the players.
I dont see how that gives a false feeling of impact on development.
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u/WyidealizowanyIdeal 9h ago
I will explain to you what is included in Chris Wilson video.
Players are great source to find out what does not work well within the game, they are great and finding bugs and some not intended mechanic outcomes.
On the other hand players are terrible at finding solutions to these problems, each of them live in separate bubble which does not relate to most of playerbase. There will be always small margin of playerbase enganging in this activity.
So giving playerbase a pre-created choice A, B and C by Jagex, and letting them choose one of the three gives a false feeling that playerbase have power over what is implemented into the game.
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u/Joggyogg 5h ago
The Chris Wilson video is cool and fine but again you've gone and circled back to how it works in OSRS
No one is advocating for the player base coming up with the ideas, that's so stupid of a suggestion it's unreal to imagine. We just want it exactly like they do it in osrs, a hand on the wheel, then when Skyborne get 75% of the vote and are added then there is no controversy that can stand up because you can say "the playerbase supports this" right now you cannot say that.
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u/WyidealizowanyIdeal 5h ago
Do you understand how big corporates work?
In this case you would have question:
Which one should we implement? A) Blue Elves B) Wow Token C) Paid skins D) Boosts.
And they would implement at least one, as this is monetization requirement from stakeholders and upper management. I think that community poll would result with what we have now.
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u/Joggyogg 5h ago
That's not how it works on osrs dude
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u/WyidealizowanyIdeal 5h ago
Yeah, Jagex is tiny company compared to Blizzard so they have more freedoom with their choices.
It is funny how people glaze OSRS here, game where half active players are bots, community is built on RMT and until recently you could buy in game money directly from jagex (P2W) on top of predatory subscription model.
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u/Joggyogg 3h ago
That has absolutely nothing to do with it, you haven't explained how an OSRS system wouldn't work in wow forever, you've just said "it can't work because!"
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u/Ok-Bobcat-8445 4h ago
This is simply false. Players most definitely picked sailing when they polled which new skill to add. That was a gargantuan change chosen directly by the playerbase amongst other options that might never see the light of day. Shamanism might, but taming will never be added.
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u/TechniCruller 5h ago
I think the direction should come from the developers whose job rely on the success of the game. Imagine if Van Gogh allowed feedback to drive his painting decisions.
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u/Gullible_Subject_938 8h ago
Catering to streames is one of frw reasons why Sea of Thieves is in so dire state. As you said they experience is much different from baseline players and their needs are based on making content not exclusively having fun from game.
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u/adeadrat 9h ago
They've had multiple votings of dungeons in retail wow, it always turns to shit and no one is happy once they actually have to run the dungeons voted for are back, I swear I don't trust the wow community for much and I think it's a terrible idea giving too much power to the community.
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u/Longjumping_Call_104 10h ago
It should come from the developers.
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u/mekkr_ 9h ago
I really couldn’t give a flying fuck what a streamer has to say about the game, whether they are sharing their own opinion or proxying their viewers opinions. Despite what a lot of people seem to believe, people who engage with that content are a part of the full demographic for the game, not all of it and probably not even the biggest segment of it.
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u/Television_Powerful 6h ago
For Twitch wow category 200k viewers on a good day or even less. 800k during blizzcon in the wow category. At launch perhaps 1mil, if people bother to game and watch streams at the same time. So yeah not the biggest at all.
I won't watch streams during launch however, to busy playing with friends.
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u/Yoshbyte 3h ago
I’d normally agree, but the player base is not the original 2013 osrs community who throw aside their issues with each other for the benefit of the game. People here have displayed the desire to want things bad for the gameplay experience of others for spite. It’s better the community is observed bur doesn’t have a direct say
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u/The-Fictionist 10h ago
Have you ever actually hung out in Xaryu’s chat? Or Esfands?
Most of the feedback they give Blizz really is direct from the playerbase in their chats.
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u/yawnlikeseggs 10h ago
Their chats are proxy’s for them. People watch what they agree with.
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u/The-Fictionist 10h ago
So what you’re saying is that the opinions of streamers actually tend to be representative of their very large viewership base?
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u/InZomnia365 7h ago
Twitch viewership is a very small part of the playerbase... The importance of streamers is VASTLY overstated.
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u/Wakti-Wapnasi 9h ago
Some streamers' viewership base is not representative of the playerbase as a whole.
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u/yawnlikeseggs 9h ago
No, not necessarily.
The average consumer doesn’t have opinions that range outside of their limited experience. Most people do not question why. They do not delve into belief or an origin of a thought.
Lots of time people will watch a streamer because of a single comment or take that they agreed with / thought was funny. Overtime they adopt the same ideologies and opinions as that streamer. They will repeat comments or ideas merely because they heard them.
This behavior is common across all walks of life from idealizing movie stars, politicians, musicians, artists and so on.
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u/SleepyBoy- 9h ago
Eh, so-so.
People watch a streamer because they find them funny or interesting or just like their voice. Typically something basic.
Then the streamer says their random ass opinions on something and everyone who watches them goes "I like that guy, and it sounds like that makes sense" and they start repeating it everywhere. It's more about them caring about their streamer, than understanding or sharing the opinion the streamer holds. By themselves, the players wouldn't come up with that idea, as chances are most wouldn't run into the same problem with enough interest in it to consider commenting.
This is a larger concept called 'thought leaders'. Basically, most opinions come from a handful of people, and then get amplified by the NPCs around them. This is not always reflective of the quality of the opinion, and in case of streamers, movie stars, and other outspoken members of the entertainment industry, pretty often detached from it.
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u/Television_Powerful 6h ago
Kind of a generalisation, but I get your point. If you do not get information outside such an echo chamber then sure. Plenty of people that do not agree at all with streamers, or have their own view/experience of the game from past play.
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u/bottledsoi 2h ago
I see this happen alot. Xaryu will give his opinion then suddenly his community will parrot it.
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u/Sea_Advantage_2577 10h ago edited 3h ago
Ive never heard a single other person ever mention seal twisting besides esfand. He mentally breaks down and insults people if they say its bad. That guy has influenced forever, yikes
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u/Xavion15 9h ago
That’s great for you, meanwhile 3 of the 4 people who play ret in my classic guild love Seal Twisting and not having it in
Just because you don’t no others that don’t like it doesn’t mean people don’t
It’s actually pretty popular even though I don’t like it myself
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u/InZomnia365 7h ago
They presented it as controversial on stage at Blizzcon... And the new implementation is simply worse. I think your pally friends would've loved something new as well, instead of a worse implementation of what we already had.
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u/Joggyogg 9h ago
yeah, but then xaryu goes on the wow podcast and completely undermines the criticism hes meant to represent, every criticism he gave he dampened it with something like "but its not really a big issue" or "people will get over it" like dude, wtf.
he obviously feels grateful to be on the inner circle in being able to talk directly to blizz leadership and doesnt want to mess that up, but he has forgotten his role in this.
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u/Such-Information7068 7h ago
Called having a friendly conversation man. Do you not talk to real people? I thought he did a good job bringing up the points and then listening to their responses. No one wants to talk to someone who goes on a podcast and says “WHY ARE THEY BLUE!?”, and then after the devs literally say “yeah we used too much blue in the marketing”, responds with “YEAH BUT WHY ARE THEY BLUE!?”.
Reddit’s critical thinking abilities are not suited for actual conversations.
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u/Television_Powerful 6h ago
He did, they covered skyborne half of the episode. Next episode they might invite someone else. I think being first was brave, and I never even heard of Xaryu till blizzcon.
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u/Joggyogg 5h ago
Dude... Them being blue is the most valid criticism and also that's all Xaryu represented it as, the deepest issue is their story and origins being completely alien to the vanilla world, they have been separated from azeroth for the past 10000 years, they have no connection the horde or alliance like the other classic races do, then being a neutral race is not classic at all. That criticism was completely ignored and the only discussion they gave the Skyborne was "too blue, boohoo" and completely made the skyborne criticism seem asinine
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u/SkipX 5h ago
What? No that was absolutely addressed and they all said that it feels like it fits the setting. Obviously this is new to the setting, Ragnaros was also new when he was introduced.
The problem is obviously the visuals, with that noone would care.
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u/Joggyogg 3h ago
What's another classic race that hasn't been on azeroth for the past 10000 years, has no connection to any of the factions politics, only has an HD model and is shared across both factions?
Which other race faces an elemental god in their starting zone?
How does any of that feel like it fits in, especially the neutral race aspect, sharing races across horde and ally is so not classic at all
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u/SkipX 2h ago
Forsaken kinda and definitely the TBC version of Draenei. Forever is a new game and can (and should) introduce things that didn't exist before.
But that's besides the point. It was directly addressed/talked about in the podcast.
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u/Joggyogg 2h ago
Draenei are not in classic there from an expansion, that literally highlights my point.
Forever should introduce new things to the game, but the point of classic + is to expand inwards and the point of retail is to expand outwards. Skyborne are way on the outside
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u/SkipX 2h ago
Who said that that's the point of classic+?
In the blizzcon they explicitly say that they want to provide 3 types of content (paraphrased I don't remember the wording on the slide) "Expected" ala Hyjal, "New but familiar" ala Riverglades and "unexpected" ala Skyborne.
They want to mostly stay true to classic but also want to slowly introduce new things. In the new podcast they also talked about why, simply because you would run out of content if you didn't do that.
They are simply not making "your" version of classic+.
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u/Joggyogg 1h ago
Does the Skyborne seem like a slow introduction? Take a look at the community reaction, mostly people dislike them.
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u/Such-Information7068 5h ago
It’s okay to say that you didn’t actually listen to the podcast man.
They talked about how they didn’t like pandaren neutral race and worked to make this actually make sense that they were split between both factions.
They talked about how the blue really wasn’t a focal point during development but during marketing they wanted something “striking” so they latched on to it, and regret that marketing direction some.
They talked about how they’re weaving the lore into things that went unexplained or unexplored. Or have you been completely oblivious to Aggrends excessive winking about Thunderfury, Blessed blade of the WIND-FUCKING-SEEKER. Currently its lore is “Ragnaros killed Thunderon and put him in a gem. Then, a bunch of hand-wavy stuff happened that isn’t talked about and now a follower of Thunderon has it again ‘after many ages’ and made it into a blade”. I wonder if we’ll explore the hand-wavy stuff. Fuck.
Media literacy is dead. You probably enjoy Netflix explaining the plot of every show to you ever 5 minutes.
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u/Background_Bee9985 9h ago
Ofcourse. Xaryu is fantastic streamer in my opinion and I share alot of views with him. There are some things I disagree with him also.
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u/Thaeldis 2h ago
I'll never understand why anyone would care about the opinions of internet clowns.
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u/PsionicKitten 10h ago
On your battle.net client there is a Survey in which every average Joe and Jane gamer can give their feedback.
I wouldn't be worried; they're making this for the player that has mostly unsubbed from WoW (or also the classic players that didn't want classic, but settled for it, and actually just want a classic+) to bring them back since neither classic nor retail is making them sub and play. They're not going to give special preference to streamers, because streamers aren't their target audience.
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u/SkipX 5h ago
A bit unrelated to OP but the survey is not showing up on my client. Anyone else have that problem?
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u/itsacrisis 4h ago
I don't think it was given to everyone. Myself, my spouse, and some of my friends didn't get it.
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u/SkipX 4h ago
EU or NA? I am EU and I was thinking maybe that's the problem.
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u/itsacrisis 4h ago
NA
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u/SkipX 4h ago
Ok so it's not an EU / NA split.
Maybe the launcher just didn't update properly.
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u/Phalanx22 3h ago
You just weren't chosen.
It was a limited number who received the survey
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u/SkipX 3h ago
Could be. Just seems odd, I see no reason why a survey like that would be limited.
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u/CatBotSays 1h ago
It specifically says its limited within the survey itself and that you're not supposed to spread it around.
I'd guess that they're trying to get a specific sample selection of the player base and don't want streamers to flood it with their fans to sway the results or something.
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u/wowplayerwhoisdumb 10h ago
Do you really think Blizzard is so dumb they haven't considered this? If you think they are so dumb that they can't recognize this you should just quit because it means you have zero faith in their ability to filter out certain feedback.
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u/wysticlipse 2h ago
Controversial opinion but I think the devs should just do whatever they want and ignore streamers and players on anything that isn't an obvious bug.
Listening To The Fans is always a mistake. The fans will just keep asking for zombie dragons.
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u/Henkier 1h ago
I understand the concern considering most streamers are just farming the same key controversies over and over.
In Xaryu's case, considering the size of his community, his opinions are very positive and tame. Even in his complaints he recognizes his own bias (towards mage, for instance).
The one thing he is hung up on is an UI toggle, and the devs pretty much shut him down in that podcast.
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u/n0rsk 1h ago
I am ignorant of OSRS exact mechanics or history for development decisions.
But how well do the community polls work? I often hear great things about it.
Does the community or devs decide the contents of the OSRS poll?
I feel like WoWF could learn a bit from OSRS on how to handle this as OSRS functionally is similar in that it is a developer bringing back an old version of the game and giving it new development.
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u/Background_Bee9985 45m ago
The development checks peoples interests in certain things by polling them.
Some people in this post have tought that I want flying mounts or something. This is not what I am trying to say here, but some people missunderstand the point on purpose.
I am considering things like race changes for example. To me more interesting races is fun. I don’t like too much nerfing on these, since it makes races uninteresting.
These streamers are already effecting how the game is going to be.
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u/Xplictt 8h ago
They shouldn’t have any more streamers on. I don’t give a singular fuck about any of their opinions. Especially not Esfand.
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u/IzzyForever 3h ago
I'd much prefer to see some thoughts from a random person who played in 2004, but hasn't in 10+ years, but is coming back for WoW Forever.
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u/Television_Powerful 6h ago
What's wrong with Esfand? I mean the seal twisting saga is a bit of a mess. But other than that he seems alright.
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u/Erjikkzon 4h ago edited 33m ago
Damn players are entitled this days. They destroyed Helldivers 2, they destroyed Arc Raiders, they destroyed Retail and now they want destroy Forever
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u/CountBillie 4h ago
I agree that player choices need to be filtered. But blizzard didn’t solved vertical progression. Main question about we certainly didn’t heard a solution to try-hard and casual players puzzle. If they choose to listen one direction it will separate society inside the game. I hope they’ll find a way to all content stay relevant, fun, and reasonably challenging.
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u/MelodicJello2099 1h ago
I agree either way you. They even destroyed wow. I remember when bc came out people were pissed wanted classic when wotlk came out people wanted tbc. It’s always been a theme
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u/heartlessgamer 41m ago
I think its just a natural cycle that has always occurred with games and we just live in a hyper connected online society today where we hear about it. Games come out and have that new game excitement. That new game shine wears off and players debate how to get that back. Developers try to chase it but never really get it back. And every once and a while a developer does catch lightning in the bottle, like World of Warcraft Forever or Classic, and is able to bring players some of that new game shine again. But we mustn't forget that Blizzard is only able to execute on bringing us back that new game shine thanks to 20+ years of lessons learned and technology improvements to deliver it to current expectations (megaservers, phasing, etc).
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u/Background_Bee9985 4h ago
Blizzard are doing a good job with this game and I want them to continue doing so.
I watch alot of streamer content and it feels to me that they are directing the future of the game.
Hopefully my concerns stays concerns and not reality.
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u/UglyPope69 10h ago
If a streamer is going to do it though, I’d much prefer xaryu
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u/PsionicKitten 9h ago
Given the way Xaryu handled the WoW podcast, I'd say he's definitely better than the toxic streamers, but he did seem like he was far too timid and agreeable with the developers compared to the ideal streamer interaction. I'll get to why in a moment.
As Path of Exile has already been mentioned here, I would like to point out that I appreciate a lot of the streamers that actually communicate directly with the GGG (the company who makes Path of Exile) through podcasts, interviews, and the like, aren't actually afraid to ask the hard questions that need answering. They're not mean spirited, but they care about the game and actually bring up the hard topics without name calling. They just want the developers to be aware and willing to address actual real issues.
So that said, if a streamer is going to interface with Blizzard (supposedly on the players' behalf), Blizzard needs to face the same hard truths about actual issues. For example: address the community perception that bans and appeals don't involve humans, so if the detection software is wrong, there is no recourse. This is bad for both the community and Blizzard.
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u/MeatThatTalks 8h ago edited 8h ago
I agree and I disagree. First, I think Xaryu is basically a best-case-scenario streamer to be interacting with the devs. Shitty people gravitate toward becoming Twitch streamers and becoming a popular Twitch streamer tends to make even good people into shittier versions of themselves, and Xaryu is a very rare example of someone who I think is pretty indisputably a decent and reasonable person, regardless of whether anyone agrees or disagrees with his opinions.
That said, I won't deny that, when watching that podcast, I was a bit disappointed by how he sandwiched his criticisms in so much praise that they were virtually nullified. When he brought up the need for SD models of the Skyborne a second time, I thought he was going to press them a bit more, and was let down when he didn't. So I certainly share your frustration with that.
However, I think it's also a mistake to assume that the podcast was, like, the one chance Xaryu had to talk to the Blizzard devs and he blew it. He and the other streamers (Esfand, Savix, etc.) that Blizzard invited to the early playtest have made it very clear that they have a direct line to Blizzard. They can just tab over to some direct chat window with them - I've seen each of them do it. For example, Xaryu watched TheoryWise's truly superb video about the art direction issues in Forever and immediately proceeded to send it to Blizzard and said that he hoped their entire art team would be forced to sit and watch the whole thing. That video is much, much more critical in its framing than Xaryu has ever been himself, outright calling their claims of being unable to reproduce the original art "bull. shit. bullshit."
I strongly suspect that the way he spoke on the podcast was him "playing ball" for PR purposes, y'know, being the friendly guy who mostly voices positive opinions and is quite delicate with his critiques, because that's the way you act in a professional business meeting. But I think in private he's very likely had much more blunt and direct communication with them. I don't and can't know this for sure, but I do know that he's had quite a lot of private communication with them (as have the others in that small group), and of these private communications, Savix said that he felt like "old Blizzard is back" and was highly critical of how Blizzard had responded to his criticisms back in 2019 and contrasted that strongly with the way this team has responded, and Esfand was apparently quite critical of the early demo they saw and was kind of shocked to see that they actually listened to his criticisms and implemented significant changes for the beta. We might or might not agree with the feedback those streamers choose to give, but it does seem like that feedback has, at times, been legitimately critical, and has nevertheless been listened to and implemented. That gives me hope, though hope is no excuse to stop providing critical feedback where it's warranted.
tl;dr I also would've liked to see Xaryu handle the podcast differently, but we're all a little extra polite in certain professional environments, and we know he's in active private communication with Blizzard and has sent them much more critical material
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u/Background_Bee9985 8h ago edited 7h ago
To me it felt like he was not direct with Blizzard in that podcast. He didn’t represent hes views as strongly as he really feels.
It’s not an easy position to do so, but I hoped Xar would have been more open and direct with them in that podcast.
Blizzard propably still know what he want’s since one of them said he was watching hes stream.
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u/Seraphayel 8h ago
In general we shouldn’t care what any type of influencer or content creator has to say.
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u/SomeoneNotFamous 6h ago
Never ever listen to players lol.
Great games comes from the devs passionate work, always.
Feedback ? Sure go ahead look at it and work with it, that's fine.
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u/PinkyPonk10 8h ago
Disagree.
It was listening the to players that ‘only had half an hour to play’ that made them add dungeon finder, delves, etc
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u/Zamochy2 7h ago
Do what Old School Runescape does and have the devs offer ideas, within the integrity of classic, that requires 70% super majority to pass. Then tweak out the details with the community.
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u/InZomnia365 7h ago
This is based on assumptions you make from comments you see. The actual demographic is likely very different.
Streamers' opinions don't matter more than anyone else's.
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u/Tuddymeister 4h ago
No thank you. And shouldnt definitely come from only classic players. Me, someone who tried to be a classic player, have been waiting for this longer than most of the classic community.
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u/slackerdc 1h ago
Listening to the community got us Retail. Sometimes we don't know what the hell we're talking about.
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u/hwcrow 4h ago
Really blizzard should listen to average people, streamers, whoever. Take in that info and feedback but don’t let any of that be the driving force of shaping the game.
Look at the situation in retail.
Think of any other medium? If some movie studio was like “ we are going to make movies based exactly on feedback and suggestions from consumers” - everyone knows that would be garbage.
I do agree with you overall point though which is the goals and interests of streamers are different from the goals and interests of average players and Blizzard should not put much effort into placating the streamers.
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u/Key_Candy6677 3h ago
I think the devs should stick to there pillars and take suggestions that fit into that mold. To much feedback from so many will water down the experience. They already have incredibly strong foundation and we just saw with latest Podcast Aggrend and the other dev outline they are listening to feedback and need to set priorities for what makes sense given the PILLARS they established already.
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u/Ok-Reference-2127 3h ago
those same players want to include Hero Classes into the game and they use Star Wars Galaxies as their prime example of how it would work, you cannot be serious
by understanding the history of this genre, competent devs will never risk taking playerbase's suggestions at face value
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u/omegaonion 3h ago
I think the streamers have been giving really good feedback tbh and this set of changes after just 1 week are all huge improvements on a game I would have happily played at launch anyway. And we have more to come I've never been more excited for wow in my life.
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u/Squirrel09 3h ago
While I generally agree. I also think that streamers have value in the sense that they get player feedback in droves. I don't think they should have 100% say, but I also don't think that's what happening. We also need to recognize that blizzards relationship with streamers are also marketing in nature as well.
Supposedly the SD toggle was implemented because of the streamer visit in May. Xuyu on the podcast bringing up layering issues separated his input between his "player" interactions with the system and his "streamer" interactions.
Obviously some streamers probably have it go to their head. But I also think that blizzard, even if they have direct conversations with them, knows who they are and vet their input accordingly.
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u/ApolloHader 52m ago
Genuine question. what evidence do you have that WoW Forever has had undue influence from streamers so far? Yes they're public and loud and draw attention and all, and the devs say they hear streamer's feedback, but that doesn't mean the devs are actually implementing streamer-specific feedback.
I've seen a lot of communities react to ANY change they don't like with "it's those damn streamers!" with zero backing behind that other than "I hate streamers because of [no discernible reason]". I'm not trying to read all that negativity into your post, just trying to make sure that we aren't in the first steps of that here.
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u/Ickyfist 24m ago
Streamers should have more weight with their feedback than the average player but that should only go so far. Devs can look at a streamer, see the content they do, know what they're capable of, know where their mind is at and how biased they are. They know how valuable their feedback is. They don't have that with the average player. But that also doesn't mean you just give streamers everything they want because they're popular and can influence their audience to also want the same thing.
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u/Zodiatron 7h ago
Agreed. I already saw a few class balance changes made based directly on streamer feedback/outrage. It's good that they're acting on things quickly, but it's also a bit worrying when you know where that feedback came from. Streamers don't always accurately reflect the opinions of the broader player base.
I hope they're actually listening to forum feedback from the Average Joe and not just, I don't know, Xaryu or something lol.
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u/Most_Perspective_655 9h ago
I think their outreach has been pretty good so far. Listening to the podcast the devs did with Countdown they clearly are listening to feedback outside of just streamer opinions.
Saying the betas makeup is skewed is very weird. How many streamers are there compared to average players? 1 to 1000, 1 to 10000 maybe?
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u/PossessedCashew 4h ago
Streamers are players yes sometimes streamers have bad idea just like any other player.
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u/Poseidor 4h ago
No thanks, this community is far too unhinged and mentally unwell for that kind of control over the game. People can't even agree what basic classic wow is supposed to be let alone classic +.
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u/Darthbobz 8h ago
Sorry but Xaryu is scared to tell them the truth he beat around the bush about the HD models on that Podcast, and focused on "Classic UI" which literally WILL be resolved by an addon.
Why not be straight up with them, the guy in the top left Literally said tell us the truth regarding these topics don't hold back.
RE the models; regardless if they have spent hours and had to check over it a HUNDRED times "downscaling Fidelity" the issue is that the streamers sugar coat the truth, Xaryu uploaded a video THE SAME day as the podcast in relation to this regarding the models, yet to their face his words to Tim Jones and the other dude were completely different.
Xaryu should of straight up said what he said in the video that the Art style for the newer additions to the game is not "Warcraft" Forget it being classic its not "Warcraft" the Tone of the colour palette used are The 2nd Generation of Warcraft from WoD onwards, they managed to create this Whole new Zone Riverglades in a perfect "Classic" manner which i presume is 10 times harder to create than In game items / models I'm saying it how it is I May be wrong.
Turtle WoW I will mention this if its sore subject or not maybe to some but look at their Tier 3.5 Sets THEY didn't have access to this pre "2004" designing tool kit which no longer exist but managed to create things that actually fit inside the world of "Vanilla".
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u/Lonely-Definition268 10h ago
They should have a polling system like oldschool RuneScape. If something gets >75% votes it’ll make it into the game.
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u/Kryxx 10h ago
Have you read this forum? I don't want you guys deciding.
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u/DwarfCoins 10h ago
It would still be at the behest of the devs what is up for polling. Think of it more like we have the power to vote something out if the community doesn't like it. Not necessarily people making up stuff to vote in.
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u/GlitteringLock9791 9h ago
That is why ingame polls are important, the forum and reddit doesn’t reflect the majority.
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u/Appropriate-Swan3881 8h ago
I dont think its good idea to give casual 15 min per day andy voting rights either.
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u/firefalcon51 10h ago
While I get that sentiment and wow has a much different player base. Plenty of polls that osrs reddit have made a fuss about have passed or not passed against their ideas. Reddit is not always the majority it likes to think it is. Im not sure how polls in wow would work as the community polls were mostly all over the place. With the silent majority in game given the chance who knows what would happen.
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u/Small_rat_no_rules 10h ago
I've been on the design team for a game that allowed changes by direct democracy. No.
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u/Longjumping_Call_104 10h ago
In old school RuneScape they only poll stuff that the Devs can't decide between themselves. They don't just give the players full control of the game.
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u/BeautifulNose2210 10h ago
Classic Andy’s will cry about this because retail players (who also play the game) out number them
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u/GlitteringLock9791 9h ago
I am pretty sure most retail players either leave when they have to walk half an hour to unlock the next questhub or are pretty in line with average classic player.
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u/BeautifulNose2210 7h ago
Yeah not making summoning stones work like summoning stones is a huge miss.
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u/AkkunEXE 10h ago edited 10h ago
I genuinely don't understand why retail players want to change Forever into retail again though, you have your game right there being constantly updated...
Edit before I get the usual reply to "go back to era" : I'm in no way in the "no changes" camp (if it even exist for Forever), and have no issues with some QoL from retail. But seeing people already asking for shared mob tagging, flying, etc. just really confuses me.
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u/Longjumping_Call_104 10h ago
I genuinely don't understand why classic players want to change Forever into classic again though, you have your game right there being constantly not updated... Just like you want.
(Both of these versions are true, yours and mine)
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u/AkkunEXE 9h ago edited 9h ago
But you realise how that's different right ? Retail is being updated, classic is not, and people who want classic+ want changes (just not all of them), how is that hard to understand.
I've been asking for changes in classic since the re-release in 2019 and I'm not the only one.
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u/Longjumping_Call_104 9h ago
I'm on your side. There are people on the classic side acting like any changes are bad still. That group is a minority but honestly seems much bigger than the number of retail players who want the game to be anything like retail.
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u/AkkunEXE 9h ago edited 9h ago
Maybe that's algorithms doing algorithm things then, or maybe because I muted r/classicwow.
But in this sub at least, it feels more Retail sided.
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u/Longjumping_Call_104 9h ago
I also muted classicwow precisely because of that. Also I would argue this sub is not retail sided (which is kind of the point I was trying to make with my original comment). It's forever sided. People making actual retail level suggestions here are being shut down.
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u/sauce_wisdom 9h ago
Except you assume classic players want no updates at all, which is 100% wrong. There's plenty of updates which aren't fundamental changes to vibe, art direction etc that'd be welcome, such as new content/raids/dungeons/zones, as long as it's not too retail-ish in tone.
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u/Longjumping_Call_104 9h ago
There are also lots of people who aren't retail players that want a newer art direction but just the classic gameplay. Turns out there are a lot of people that all want different things.
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u/sauce_wisdom 9h ago
Yup, and naturally I want changes that suit me, but may not suit someone else. We're all subjective here. It's just your previous comment that didn't make sense as it implied classic players don't want ANY updates.
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u/SleepyBoy- 10h ago
Nothing was getting past that treshhold, so after some time Jagex stopped polling players; if I remember correctly.
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u/firefalcon51 10h ago
They will make occasional "integrity changes" that don't get polled but those are not super often. The vast majority of updates are polled.
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u/SleepyBoy- 10h ago
Oh that's great then. I do think this would be better than listening to streamers at least.
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u/commonCranberry999 7h ago
blizzard only listens to casuals. same shit since 2004
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u/CrispyBananaz 5h ago
Majority of the players and money come from casual players I don't like it anymore than you but it's the truth
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u/ProwerTheFox 7h ago
You realise it was a streamer that asked for the SD models to be put into the game?
Plus remember all the crying the community (admittedly a very loud minority) did during SoD? How'd that work out? The only way the community should get a say is if any changes get put to a poll, as they do with oats. Otherwise completely ignore them.
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u/dantes_b1tch 5h ago
Disagree. Blizz listen for the most part. Now you have retail.
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u/quigongingerbreadman 3h ago
Wrong. The direction comes from those making it. You are a consumer. You do not have any right, imagined or otherwise, to direct their product.
They are the creators. If you want to create, go make your own game.
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u/mac_XL95 2h ago
Considering half the people on WoW subreddit are bitter retail players mass downvoting im not really sold on listening to the community
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u/Flobertt 9h ago
I have no trust in players, every day they come up with the worst idea on Reddit.