Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft

[@andromeda138]

I relate to this so hard just playing Stardew with my family. One brother maximizes and optimizes absolutely everything, aiming to unlock things as soon as possible. Meanwhile our cousin just makes his character look like Luigi and walks around eating sap.

[@NoOneSpecific365]

I mean, I know which person I'd rather play with 🤷‍♀️ cousin Luigi sounds like he's onto something

[@toddhowarddd]

​@@NoOneSpecific365 yeah Im going with luigi as well

[@Cha0sCloud]

Your brother sounds like he has way too much time on his hands. Your cousin OTOH sounds like a true Stardew player. 👍

[@PointsofData]

​@@Cha0sCloud his brother sounds like he enjoys min maxing, and might enjoy speedrunning. Both of which are valid ways to have fun so long as you aren't shaming other people.

[@AssortedFern]

Your brother sounds like he'd REALLY enjoy Factorio

[@Tamlinearthly]

Countless years ago, in the earliest days of Vanilla WoW, I'm just poking around somewhat aimlessly killing Troggs for a quest that was taking just forever, and some wandering Warrior I don't know suggests we party up and kill them faster. All well and good, but then he tells me, "You take Aggro." So I ask him, "What's Aggro mean?" I had never heard the word before--never played an MMO before, in fact. He was totally incredulous: How could I not know Aggro? It was my job, etc. After some prodding he explained the meaning of the term and why it made sense for me to do it; we killed some bad guys, finished out the quest, and all was well. Or so I thought. Literally YEARS later there's a thread on Blizzard's WoW forum asking what's the worst party you've ever been in in the game, and sure enough, some Warrior stops long enough to pipe in, "Oh man, I met a Paladin once who didn't even know what Aggro was." They're going to carve this on my tombstone, just you wait and see.

[@Duiker36]

At least it sounds like he was patient with you in the moment. That's worth a lot.

[@58209]

oh gosh, that reminds me of the first time i tried playing a healer, and in ragefire chasm people were yelling at me about not using bubble, and i had no idea what they were talking about because i didn't have a spell called "bubble".

[@Slumbering_Alex]

I hate that someone even considers that worthy of putting in such a thread. "New player doesn't know how to play" shouldn't come off as a significant affront to anyone.

[@DuckReconMajor]

I knew nothing of dungeons or anything when I got randomly invited to deadmines as a fire mage. I had no idea what i was doing so i just started blasting. thankfully after making a mess the party was patient with me and explained aggro to me

[@TheXVodkaXFairy]

I have never been one for multiplayer games because of the fear of interaction, doing bad and/or dragging other players down. But I did play LoL with my ex and after getting absolutely reamed in the chat for being a sub-par healer I never played the vanilla game again and just stayed in the other game modes. These are meant to be games I enjoy in my spare time, not an unpaid second job where I get yelled at by some random. It was a normal match too, not even ranked. Not to mention how you get treated if people find out you're a girl, I'm a transguy and my voices passes but I am forever scarred from voice chat.

[@NikHem343]

In Guild Wars 1 there was a tutorial world, which was a completely different instance from the main game to which you could not return to once leaving. To get the best armor in this tutorial - which was somewhat useful in the main game - you needed to farm x items from two different enemies. I’ve put 100+ hours into Guild Wars, 99% in the main game, but the best memory I have from all that time is when I created a character named „Tutorial Merchant“, farmed those two mob items and then sold it to other players for very little gold, gold that I had no use for, because I already had the best tutorial equipment. Whenever I sold out, I ran into the woods again, farmed, got back into town again and announced my goods to the travellers. Most people were really appreciative. Some were on their Xth character and just wanted to get the tutorial over with. Others were new players and I like to think I added just that much to their wondrous experience with my small nonsensical business. Great memory for me.

[@alestrius]

I remember having a vaguely related experience where I played GW1 for maybe, idk, 20-35 hours? Most of it in the tutorial because I wanted to do all the exclusive things there first before fully leaving since I didn't really intend to come back. I was really struggling to get some specific rare drop, I think it was just like a bag or something, and I spent like 3-4 hours trying to farm it. Then I mentioned that on the discord server at the time and some guy just came up and gifted it to me, and that guy's kindness making my day is genuinely the only memory I have of GW1.

[@ArDeeMee]

In Runes of Magic, I used to farm the resources you needed for the lvl 10 and 20 special abilities. I had fun, farmed low lvl dailies items, and made good money. And, being a priest, buffed newbies with 400+ hp. Ah, memories… =)

[@acridyd]

When I was playing Elden Ring in 2022, I really wanted to create a new character named ¨Helpful Invader¨ then invade in the starting areas and genuinely help whomever I invaded. I wanted to lead that player through dungeons and point out threats for them. I wouldn´t have minded if they just outright killed me either. I really just wanted to help the community since there was so much anger about PVP and online play at the time.

[@isenokami7810]

Even as someone who doesn’t play MMOs, I’m inclined to call you a saint for providing that kind of service.

[@Alucard-A-La-Carte]

Something I loved about City of Heroes were the groups of high-level players who'd just sit in the spot where all new heroes spawned out of the tutorial and handed out free equipment and resources to anyone who'd clearly put a lot of work into their character/backstory.

[@Ro-the-redhead]

I played wow when I was little on the family computer. I played in what I called "single player mode" I turned off the chat box and I would spend hours exploring the maps, doing fetch quests for npcs, and selling pelts from low-level animals I killed. It was great! I didn't know what guilds were and I leveled up very slowly. WoW has some really cool areas to check out! The games pretty fun when you don't know what people are saying.

[@aa-tx7th]

exactly how im playing my return to wow im not going to go past the free trial on any of my characters until theyre all lv20 and all im doing is questing in the starting areas one character per race. each has a different thematically logical subclass just finished my first, a female dreanei holy priest wow is by far at its best in the early game probably will stick to only classic content whenever possible

[@sdranch2800]

Basically the same thing I do now in dragon flight. It is super rare for me to say anything in chat, I rarely ever run dungeons, haven’t raided since Cataclysm. I quest, and farm mounts / pets. Level characters of each race and class just to have fun playing.

[@Ro-the-redhead]

@@aa-tx7th you got the right idea! Happy exploring friend

[@Ro-the-redhead]

@@sdranch2800 I'm so glad I'm not the only one who enjoys Single Player Mode. Get those pets/mounts in peace!

[@Arthurhimself]

I can relate to this, but on another game: Runescape. When I was a kid I was doing just things I thought were cool, like leveling only killing zombies cause why not, and just farming rune essence because the cave looked cool. When I went back and played on the oldschool server I got to the point it took me 2 years in about 15 days and I stopped playing. It sucks that the optmize mindset got to me, cause it ultimatelly killed the fun for me.

[@mb73861]

My college friends and I still laugh about back in 2005 when a guy in our dorm kept looting during fights in wailing caverns. And he would actively deny it. Then during a fight the game lagged real hard and everyone was stuck moving around in whatever animation they were stuck in. Zach was stuck in the loot animation. He still denied it. 😂

[@ultimaxkom8728]

Is that a pathological liar or did I just misunderstood the term?

[@Jonintheronin]

@@ultimaxkom8728 Yes some people literally cant help it and are massive pos lol

[@Revion91]

I remember this bug.

[@WobblesandBean]

And that's when you kick him from the group and block him.

[@termitreter6545]

@@ultimaxkom8728 Pathological liar means something pretty extreme, and someone that compulsively lies all the time. Dont think that thing in WoW is enough to make that deduction^^

[@Mirrormn]

As the original author of WeakAuras, I never expected it to become such a pervasive (and perhaps controversial) piece of paratext in relation to WoW.

[@ChRoNiC717]

It's really interesting to encounter someone whose original work went far beyond their initial expectations for the mod. I remember downloading WeakAuras back when I played WoW in WotLK (the first and only expansion I played), when it was part of a suite of mods that would help in raiding and it really did help! The work you did there was absolutely appreciated by not only myself, but I'm sure everyone else who used that mod. I am curious about your history with it, as well as your viewpoints on the material covered in the video as someone who is tangentially involved in the whole thing.

[@Mirrormn]

@ChRoNiC717 Well, for one, I think I'm firmly on the side of enjoying addons and how they evolved alongside raid encounter design in WoW. But that's inherently related to two factors that the video covers: 1) I'm one of the people who enjoys the hierarchical stratification produced by modern end-game raids, and 2) I'm a software developer, so the actual act of creating software solutions to raid mechanics (or seeing other people create them) is both interesting and accessible to me. And then, to downplay my contribution a bit: WeakAuras was the second major addon I developed, the first being a very complex and niche addon for coordinating assignments on the Lich King. A fight-specific addon. WeakAuras is very popular because of its great flexibility, but that flexibility is mostly just a thin translation layer that provides convenient access to Blizzard's underlying tools for addon development. The point is, WeakAuras doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't do anyway with fight-specific addons. And honestly, the way it is used nowadays - with prominent streamers and raiders releasing comprehensive class and raid "packs", which become well-known and proliferate across the playerbase - it is almost indistinguishable from what addons are supposed to be in the first place! If WeakAuras didn't exist, I think a lot of the exact same things would be done through custom addons. They would just be slightly more difficult to share around. So I guess my thought is that I'm honored and bemused to have had an opportunity to affect so many WoW players, and to have made a concrete contribution to a years-long push and pull in game design that has inspired books and video essays like this one. But in the grand scheme of things this tension - the tension between addon-lovers and no-addon purists, the tension between structured and unstructured play - seems inevitable to me.

[@ChRoNiC717]

@@Mirrormn Thanks a lot for your viewpoint, it's quite illuminating and is interesting by dint of being quite unique as someone who developed add-ons - as opposed to being a developer of the game or simply a player.

[@nihzit8185]

WA is one of the main reasons i'm always coming back to WoW. I really love to have my UI, the way i want it and the way i can read it the best. To me and many players it's already a part of the game, next to raids and dungeons :D The best part was a friend of mine who wanted to start progressing in WoW and he was like "WAs? nah not my thing..." a few weeks later: "i need a WA for this, oh and i want this to be displayed, and i need to change this other WA. I reworked my entire UI, it's so much fun!"

[@codycoy2943]

I never really used weak auras and had quit the game by the time they became necessary. What was the original intention of weak auras?

[@Gunbudder]

one of my closest friends i've ever had played like that barefoot gnome at the start, only he refused to cave. i love that guy and he played the game HIS way until everyone else got tired of the game like 7 years in. he told me later it was because he hated Warcraft a lot, but loved spending time with us, so he made the game fun for himself. it made us all feel terrible because we never considered if he enjoyed the "correct" way of playing WoW

[@shayneoneill1506]

Reminds me of a guy in Eve Online who absolutely refused PVP or really any of the normal ways to play. He just sat around the main market regions and socialized. Eventually he got so trusted by everyone that he was the games go-to mediator for disputes, and trusted middle man for risky trades, and when one day someone managed to glitch a capital ship into a market system by mistake, he brought the capital ship off them knowing that the devs would delete the ship thus kinda screwing up the player. The devs ended up doing something unusual, let him keep the ship on the condition it was never used for pvp (In theory, though probably not in practice, a dreadnaught could defeat the concord npc space police, thus defeating the protections of hi-sec space. They would not have trusted any other player to keep the ship. And the entire player base was 100% down with this one off bending of rules.). So he spent his time in this giant dreadnaught mining newbie area rocks with battleship mining lasers (no such thing as capital ship mining lasers at that point of the game, though those came later) and resolving problems for people. Dude blazed his own trail and became beloved for it.

[@NeedMoreKimchi]

@@shayneoneill1506 never heard of this guy, so i thought it would be difficult to find his name in such a massive game as eve online. but typing "eve online trusted player" immediately his name appeared 😂i guess there's not that many that have his level of reputation.

[@elsistemamackenzie]

The man, the myth, the absolute legend, Chribba. God bless 'im.

[@Andreas_Mann]

@@shayneoneill1506 That is fucking amazing. I miss EvE dearly and if I ever lose my entire social life I am comming back to it.

[@AdamGaffney96]

I've been there, both as the person trying to get their friend into playing the "right" way, and also being the friend who hates the game, but is just there to vibe and chat to friends.

[@johnesco]

A few years ago, around Cata, I was teaching a new gamer (she'd never played anything but solitaire) how to play Wow. They asked me about doing dungeons and I warned them off that people would be rude and inpatient. She was still learning to use WASD without looking at the keyboard. So we agreed she would join but I would take over if things got rough. This group... like.. "oh, you are new? We we shall sit here while you grab loot, just tell us when you are ready for the next room." Nicest players I'd EVER met. Wish there had been more.

[@dakotawoodruff2622]

A few year ago around cata would be 14 years ago lol

[@Deprexx]

Women privilege

[@TheHomiekid]

@@Deprexx bruh 💀

[@kyleb4781]

it's really cool that Dan has started making hours-long documentaries SPECIFICALLY for me, I appreciate that.

[@queencharlene]

my two biggest interests in High School were Pink Floyd and World of Warcraft, so Dan's channel feels like targeted advertising 😂

[@yamii3281]

on the opposite hand, i could not care less about warcraft but am somehow absolutely enthralled listening to him talk about it. either im easily amused or dan is really good at what he does

[@milkcarton6654]

uh sorry they are for me, i can prove it because i subbed to his channel like a month before he did the NFT video. Coincidence? Suuuuuurre.

[@Sexychaos14]

Oh I feel that

[@IstasPumaNevada]

@@yamii3281 Any subject can be interesting if it's conveyed by a knowledgeable, engaged person in an entertaining and well-arranged way. I too could not care less about WoW (I tried it during a free weekend, stopped after about an hour, it's just not for me), but I find the evolution of rules/norms and subcultures very interesting. (Like, I never watch F1 racing because one or two drivers/teams being guaranteed to win the year due to an absolutely ridiculous monetary advantage is not entertaining, but I like watching videos discussing the ramifications of F1 rules changes.)

[@giascle]

As someone who has never played WoW, my biggest takeaway from this vid is "wait, it's not SUPPOSED to look like that?"

[@ChocoRokk]

The plot twist is that the game is quite beautiful under all that UI.

[@erichall090909]

The irony is a lot of players don’t have a shit ton of ui

[@erichall090909]

I’m general you want as little UI as you can while still having all the info you need. Back in the day players crammed thier screen with it but also there was a lot less to need to see back then. Mechanics have gotten to the point now where you need to see as much of the screen as possible

[@Murzac]

@@erichall090909 Not only were there less need to see, there was also more time to absorb information. Back then it was okay to just stop for 10 seconds to look at all the information you had available and to figure out what's up because not much would happen in that 10 seconds. Now in a typical boss fight in a raid in that 10 seconds 3 different mechanics are going to trigger that you have to react to. Funnily enough my need for boss timers has actually gone *down* over time because if the boss takes like 10 wipes to kill, it's simple enough that you don't really need them anyways. And if the boss takes 50+ wipes to kill, you'll have good enough grasp on the ebb and flow of the boss by the end that you'll just *know* when mechanics are about to happen.

[@joaquin5028]

​@@erichall090909also 16:9 monitors make our 4:3 UIs look way uncluttered

[@hannahwilson6994]

As a blind gamer, I was glad to hear the world of opportunity opened up by addons for people with disabities get a mention. I have struggled to find playable games, struggled to play those games, and struggled with feelings of isolation and rejection as I continually try and fail to contribute in multiplayer games. The one and only game I have ever found where I didn't constantly feel like I was letting the team down was World of Warcraft. I don't play anymore, but bigwigs voice and weakauras weren''t simply ways I used to enhance my play, they were the sole reason I was able to play at all. Not only did they enable me to enjoy the game, they also enabled me to play at a decently high level. I've cleared Mythic raids and got KSM several times. In a world which is at best difficult, and at worst actively hostile, the feeling of triumph I got from being able to contribute productively to my team's success cannot be understated. It's nice to know I'm not the only one.

[@LochNessHamster]

I genuinely cannot even begin to imagine functioning let alone thriving as a blind gamer, or even a user of computers. That speaks volumes not only about you but about the influence of community generated software to aid people with disabilities, and how important it is to have a space where people can help each other like that. I've spent a lot of time thinking about alternative controller layouts for people with physical disabilities, or missing digits or limbs. But I can't say I've ever even considered the possibility of accessibility for blind gamers. It just seemed too impossible to be worth thinking about. I'm happy to find out how narrow minded I've been about that, and that there are thankfully others who are not so narrow minded, and have made significant progress.

[@facundogarcia1118]

@@LochNessHamster yea but imagine the savings in pc monitor , dude could have a very old cheap one and be done with it

[@robot3266]

@@facundogarcia1118 I mean it is an advantage, but I'd rather keep my eyesight

[@idontwantahandlethough]

that's so sick! I can see the screen and I couldn't even get _close_ to beating a Mythic raid lol. What class did you main?!

[@calebmccoy9476]

wait what how? and why? Maybe if the layout of the raid or dungeon was actively voiced out every meter or so, like chess.

[@Michael-eq8th]

The irony of being called a tourist in a game you’ve played since 2005 because you didn’t take classic seriously is rich

[@NathanWubs]

It's because the paratext tells you that you need to become an eltist asshole, else you are not true wow.

[@sauriel596]

Main pld since wotlk up to current, but its not until lately i started main one in the classic servers too, I'm fully aware about the class variations in power, but always been giving those snobs the middle finger. I like metzen the draw artist for some stuff in warcraft 2 and such, since he likes alliance and paladin, all other blizzard staff is for the horde. Ion however hates pld , so thats probably why they got made bad. That guy needs his royal silverspoon stuck up his ass he was born in his mouth with. I am just simply a fan of arthas since wc 3 at least up until he turning undead.

[@greed1sgood130]

@@NathanWubs literal plague of this game

[@ShjadeNexayre]

@@makingadjustments It makes sense when you consider that most of them have this mindset because it's what they've been told they should have rather than anything they've determined independently. That kind of thinking doesn't generally generate quality.

[@HarrDarr]

You're called a tourist because you are not going to stay in the game, you will revert back to retail or wherever else. Your opinion as a tourist doesn't matter, because your fashions are ephemeral, only playing classic for the hype not for the love of the game.

[@JohnGenericName]

That line “Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game” is painfully relevant in MMO style games. I remember when Black Spindle came out in Destiny you couldn't get into raids without it. Almost every LFG group demanded you have Black Spindle with specific rolls or you'd be denied entry. Never mind the fact that the raids had been completed countless times before the weapon even existed. If it wasn't "optimal," it wasn't acceptable.

[@barkerbeans620]

Not to mention the "Have Gjally or Kick" Posts lmao

[@chrislontz2722]

Destiny is a good example of toxic optimization in gaming. Crucible is constantly being ruined by people playing ONLY to win.

[@maxgustafsson7802]

Guild Wars 2 was horrible for this around launch (haven't played much since then.) Since no character is really built to be Tank or Healer, and everyone can heal themselves, the fastest strat was for everyone to be a DPS. I think about 50% of max-level dungeon group would ve "zerk only", meaning you HAD to have berzerker gear (+crit rate, +Crit Damage, +damage) it sucked. Hard.

[@AdrianRodriguez-zs1lo]

Not to mention that LFR did more damage with specific perks too. Any sniper would have realistically worked tho

[@anewhero1216]

A ridiculous ask even at the time, given that at that time, there were exactly 2 raids - Vault of Glass, the very first one, and the raid Black Spindle drops from, Crota’s End. There were no strategies for either raid that required Spindle - Crota was functionally the only boss in his raid and damage was done with rocket launchers, and Vault of Glass could certainly have been made easier by Spindle, but it was months old and plenty of strategies already worked in Vault lol

[@pankaches2723]

I played WoW for 10 years, starting with the end of BC/beginning of Wrath. I'd found a great community of friends, people I thought I'd want to experience the game with for the rest of its life. It's a bit sad and maybe pathetic to say now but I found someone I had loved through WoW. I'd started and built a raiding guild with my friends and my girlfriend, I'd been one of the raid leaders and the main tank for our raids for years. Then when my job meant I couldn't play as much as the others, I get ONE item level behind some other guy and I'm replaced as tank, told I don't have enough gear to join as DPS, and that I could come back when I had better gear. How? When my one source of improving in the "numbers" game, playing with my friends, had been taken from me? I would eventually stop talking to all of them over time and decided to just play the game for myself, leaving the guild I had helped build from the ground up and experiencing what content I could on my own. It was really sad for me, having spent about ten years playing this game and all these characters and helping shape a small community. It worsened the depression I had already suffered from to play like this, knowing what I was leaving behind (or rather, what I felt had been stripped from me) and playing alone, and I eventually stopped playing altogether at some point during BFA. I know some people like the numbers part of the game, making sure everything is completely and 100% optimized to make the most of each click. But, for me, this video puts into words everything wrong with the game I've never been able to put into words myself. It's a combination of nostalgic, cathartic, sad, and reassuring to watch this video. Thank you, Dan.

[@thoughtvirus9854]

I don't think it's sad or pathetic at all to have found love through a hobby you enjoy, lucky maybe.

[@TheDutLinx]

Yeah, it was exactly this feeling that led to me quitting. Wonderful to see it beautifully analyzed by Dan, many years later

[@AdamOwenBrowning]

I had a similar experience. I think one of the worst things that I did in my life other than heroin was getting seriously good at this game where you never really have fun doing the hard content anyway. I definitely had fun, but we also would say things like "us shouting at you is an understandable reaction to failure" after we made a female member cry and leave out of stress. We genuinely believed that was perfectly acceptable behavior. Well, she drives ambulances now, is married and doesn't play MMOs. My bad for real, we taught each other it was OK to bring each other to tears about numbers and split-second timing. She wasn't a thin-skinned person. Logging in just makes me feel crushing depression where everyone I played with has either moved entirely or is a burnout early 30s nobody who plays WoW all day. This isn't all WoW players of course - just that small subsection who experienced social and in-game success near the beginning and had it all slowly slide downward from there, refusing to let go. I play FFXIV and see the same kind of numberlovers, chuckle at myself, and keep my distance. As for love? I know of a couple today that met in RuneScape when I was seven and are still together. They have a child and still play video games. Don't call yourself sad and pathetic. That's just a bitter feeling because of how it was taken away from you, it's not the truth. For me, I got older and needed to work then suddenly "What do you mean you can't play this game up to six hours a day?" was a question i got, a question that pushed me out like yourself.

[@xandermin]

I'm so sorry that happened to you. Losing friends is never easy, the friendships we make with people online can be just as fulfilling & meaningful as those we make in the actual world, so losing them is just as difficult. I wish you all the best 💛

[@jeffm3283]

Oh man there's people in WoW that treat the game like a corporate business job. You must log in. You must do your drills. Etc. Can't imagine playing like that

[@apig1049]

"worlds become real when we care about them, not when they look similar to our own." gonna go find a window to stare out of for the next 500 years. this month has been so good for the longform videos, but i am also so incredibly full of big existential thoughts

[@Sahdirah]

I haven’t gotten to this place in the video yet, but that quote reminds me of The Velveteen Rabbit.

[@TheFettman13]

In Vanilla I rolled a Tauren Druid, purely because he looked and sounded cool. I knew nothing about classes and roles, the meta etc. I knew nothing about playing optimally (or even somewhat decently probably) and would form an early version of a hybrid druid purely by accident. I'd get asked if I could tank, I'd look at my kit and be like "Yeah it's possible", and it would go poorly. I'd be asked to heal, see that I have healing spells, and it would go poorly. After that, I eventually just started collecting rare things. Miscellaneous items, critters, objects that have literally no value, weapons, anything that even sounded fun. I made so many bank alts, dressed them up like pimps, then just started playing to make gold from buying, selling, and farming. I literally didn't care to raid or even dungeon unless there was a cool item. I became a merchant and in my mind I won.

[@VostokApollo]

Oh hello vanilla tauren druid, I'm WotLK/Cata tauren BM Hunter, and I'm barred from ever doing any raids or heroics because I am a leper worthy of only scorn and disgust.

[@sauriel596]

back when no game needed achievements, we made our own fun goals to do

[@teagankoth-jw9ps]

So you basically just became trazyn the infinite

[@ronnickels5193]

So to make the game fun you became a gold farmer?

[@abg5381]

that's awesome

[@madamebin1914]

Literally just finished the contrapaneur video and was like 'ah well. 4 months until the next one' and then this came up!! My excitement is immeasurable

[@violin245]

Same I was not expecting anything this soon! This guy makes my month.

[@Dethmaster64]

Your day has been made

[@Joe-yi5nv]

Same, I was literally in the middle of that same video

[@agentep9979]

and my day is made.

[@agentep9979]

had opened the video some time ago, and refreshed it now, and it seems I commented way too late

[@drppenev]

Thank you for verbalising why I never got into WoW. You get absolute freedom to run around in an interesting fantasy world and players made it an office job with spreadsheets.

[@samizdatbroadcasts7654]

Beautifully put.

[@The86Ripper]

You can always choose to ignore the gear/ilvl farm/grind and play completely casually. Just saying. You still need a thick skin and a strong stomach. Also arguably *some* of the optimizations are fun and help push some things you wouldnt be able to do without them.

[@Valeforer]

@@The86Ripper If you need a thick skin and a strong stomach to play completely casually, maybe it's not a good MMO to be played completely casually.

[@N0noy1989]

@@The86Ripper Or... People can go to FFXIV where the community is eager to help people learn. And that's one of the main reasons people switch.

[@sporeham1674]

@@The86Ripper I'll stick to my NMS trading faction lol

[@JCintheBCC]

56:00 is a really interesting point. My small guild did the same back in 2009. Outside sources were discouraged. We banned reading WoWhead. Theorycrafting was right out. We wanted to experience the game and encounters organically, and it made everything harder but more satisfying. After a couple months we got good at it. We started "solving" dungeons and bosses faster. We felt good. Then we noticed that Brian was always the first one to "remember" a boss' big attack and "anticipate" a movement or a mob spawn. He was always the first to crack a strategy. Once we started looking for it, we saw that Loren almost always had the right element enchanted on his weapon the first time we fought a boss, and Jon was exact to the tenth of a second with his threat generation. I got called out for my Tankadin's rotation being a macro when someone heard my bag of chips crinkling over VoIP. We were all lying.

[@ich3730]

And it turns out, people just naturally like to learn things and will do it anyways even if you ban it xD

[@yeungscs]

😂

[@jayjaygolden5123]

oof :(

[@itzi7868]

this is why people say it's baked into the game design, what ends up happening is you either emulate the same guides, or, you hit a brick wall that requires guides, because developers are making the game's challenges with those guides in mind..

[@skootties]

@@ich3730if you learn anything from this video, learn that this behavior is not "natural", but a consequence of how the environment is structured. even if these players went into it specifically with the goal of not playing optimally, they still existed in a wider social environment that valued optimal play, and they still played in a game world biased toward optimal play. these factors influenced their decisions.

[@FungiiDraws]

i will never forget putting this on as bed time noise and getting woken up by 21:36 with a genuine feeling of being confused and under attack

[@aBlackMage]

Thank you for that amazing mental image lol

[@blehbleh9283]

Thank you for the warning

[@fauxrowsdower7610]

mfw I nap so bad a twitch screamer sorry streamer calls me trash

[@user-lt4ty5ij6z]

Please do not put on video essays as a bedtime noise, you will lose language concentration function.

[@Ya0w]

​@@user-lt4ty5ij6z i tried searching for any evidence of this and found nothing so a source is welcome.

[@thomasbachrach]

You verbalised and researched a feeling I've had for a long time that has caused me problems in multiplayer games; I don't want to spend time calculating the mathematically optimal way for me to walk in a straight line, I don't want to practice my mousework every day to the point I give myself hand tremors, I just want to enjoy the game and enjoy getting better. That's part of the reason why I enjoy games like TF2 and Overwatch because the casual modes enable goofy behaviour and I can just stay there. You get people who take it too seriously, but it doesn't really matter in the game.

[@jonathanwilliams3713]

You can be an absolute goon, spec something outlandish and non-meta with non-optimal talents and you will be able to clear all of the game's content offerings at the lower difficulties. If you're fine with playing casual modes on OW and TF2, that's pretty comparable to LFR or normal raid difficulty. You have the same freedom to be goofy in those places. Obviously, there's limitations to your goofiness, no you can't throw on all intellect cloth gear on your warrior and expect success. I don't think WoW would be a very worth-while game to play if you could get away with that though on any level.

[@sunn7615]

Last time I played Overwatch the casual play rooms were filled with shitbags and assholes who would yell at people for things as simple as picking a character they didn't like. Has it changed since then? (I last played in 2018)

[@thomasbachrach]

@@sunn7615 I've heard this but never seen it very much, no more so than in any other game. I play on EU servers so perhaps they're different? Finding people to play with beforehand might be worth it if you want to get back into it. I understand why you wouldn't play after that though. It's not very nice to experience.

[@mysticwizard1943]

You should give Deep Rock Galactic a try. It basically lives in that space of being as casual or high-skill as the player wants, with built-in systems that promote camaraderie and goofing off at every level. It's completely cooperative and non-competitive, but can get just as tense as any PvP shooter (just without all the trash talk).

[@Dong_Harvey]

@@mysticwizard1943 i love Deep Rock Galactic, and I can vouch for everything this guy is saying.. But I think the game hates me

[@yomamma7025]

I work as an agricultural extension officer and holy shit, the similarity between the problems outlined here and the problems surrounding adoption of best practice in the agricultural industry are mind blowing. Truly, this video is just shining a light on human nature

[@J5L5M6]

I've never played a moment of WOW. In fact, the most footage of WOW gameplay I've ever encountered is by watching this video... I say this as someone in technical product marketing, listening to the information presented here, all I could think of for context was trying to understand and communicate with open-source software developers. This world (pun unintended) is indeed a microcosm of typical human behavior patterns.

[@FFXfever]

Can i ask for a little bit of elaboration? What is the problems in agricultural industry that are similar here? That efficiency must be embrace or distributors will remove you?

[@roflcopterIII]

@@Vasoslaihiala gosh, maybe the skin care or make up online community. There's a lot of in versus out practices you can see on the reddit subs dedicated to them. That said, wow is definitely an online game that has fairly even gender participation

[@sigmaminus3296]

Seconding @FFXfever's request for an explanation - do you mean that agricultural engineers are obsessed with min-maxing? I'd love to hear more from you on this

[@Melesniannon]

@@FFXfever I think the issue outlined is that people care more about the rules, about the ritual of doing something, than they do about the actual outcomes, which is why he's referring to "problems surrounding the adoption of best practices". I face similar things in my job in education, where if I have a method that produces tangible improvements over the old method, I can't get it adopted unless I show proper obeisance to the company culture by writing an extensive proposal, passing it through my team lead to my manager who then discusses it with the management team who will eventually vet the proposal and send it back down to me to implement. And if the proposal is too complex (not in execution but in theory), that last bit just doesn't happen, because it then touches upon tangentially existing habits that people don't want to change. Not because they can't, but because they don't directly address the original problem directly, but are only indirectly affected by the necessity of executing the improvement. Simply put, an existing ritual takes precedence over actual results and whenever introducing some kind of improvement you each time have to overcome the mountain of "how things are done".

[@hell0mega]

hbomberguy, jenny, defuctland, and now folding ideas giving us hours long videos about stuff most of us weren't previously interested in but the execution is so good that it makes us invested. i cant wait to watch this!

[@pnutz_2]

another one to add to the queue

[@BrutalSnuggles]

Forgot knowing better

[@torwag3924]

now imagine actually playing 5 hours of wow every day and getting served this video

[@sheyko6090]

We're getting so blessed with great content

[@christopherhammond5142]

Who's Jenny? Looks like I might have to add her to the list.

[@snozzmcberry2366]

I have 16000 hours played in this game. Having that entire portion of my life so expertly outlined, rationalized, discussed, contemplated, and articulated by someone else like this is... fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable.

[@saintallison]

I feel the same

[@bratdfortd]

there is an adage in skateboarding that the best skater at a park is the one having the most fun. I play Old School RuneScape and this quote helped me stop worrying so much about efficiency and achievements but focus on actually enjoying the time I spend logged in.

[@ShjadeNexayre]

I'm reminded of the incident that first made me quit WoW altogether (as in not just "taking a break" but intending to never play again). It started as something of an instrumental play bullying thing-I was the only melee, a rogue, in an heroic Lost City of Tol'vir run with 4 guildmates. Not my guildmates, unfortunately: the other four were all in the same guild, I was the odd man out. So after the first boss is done, they start making fun of how bad my DPS is, way below the other two, almost in range of the tank's damage output. I briefly explain the first boss is considerably less melee-friendly so of course the ranged DPS will shine, they're not having it, so fine, I stop talking to them and we move on. We get to the second boss. I end up a good 10% ahead of either of them. I don't tease them about it; I just link the meter results. We get to the third boss. I'm even farther ahead of the other DPS. I don't even bother linking the meter, because they all shut up about it after the second boss anyway, I figure I made my point and don't need to rub it in. And as I'm headed toward the entrance to the last boss's area... I get kicked. No warning, no discussion, just poofed out of the group. See, the boss of that heroic had really nice agility drops-it was why I was running it in the first place, to get some upgrades for the rogue-in particular a really good agility-stacking trinket. And they didn't want me in the party to compete for that drop with their hunter. So they kicked me, which meant I was locked to an instance that only had one boss left in it for the day, which meant I was unlikely to be able to find a group willing to join that instance only to kill the last boss while missing out on the first three. They didn't just screw me out of a chance at the loot for that run, they'd effectively scrapped my ability to finish that run at all that day. I logged out and uninstalled. Who needs a community like that in their recreation time?

[@Mousse9]

Yeah, that’d make me uninstall too. I’ve had 2 instances where I ragequit. One almost, one actually did. Guild Wars 1, played the Monk (healer) in a PUG, along with another guy, so 2 Monks. Mission went bad, one guy started yelling how bad the Monks were, that we sucked, etc. And he would show us what build we should have had and how to play it. He literally ordered us to stay there so he could switch to his Monk. The other Monk just laughed and left (logged out I think), I just moved to another town, not wanting to listen to a crazy weirdo. Bad move. He private messaged me all sorrs of very colorful swearwords. Copypasted too, since nobody could type that fast. In like 5 seconds my entire screen was filled up with him cussing me out. I typed a response (just a “screw you” I think), only to find out he had blocked me! He ranted and raved at me and I was blocked from saying anything back. After I had blocked him in return, it took me a while before I played again. Never again did I do multiplayer with my Monk again though. The other instance where I actually quit was a small MMO which name I don’t remember. Had played it for a bit, trying out all the classes, and stopped for months. So I hop back in the game, on the last char I played. The second I logged in, someone messaged me in chat for me to heal him. I’d forgotten all the controls, and was desperately trying to find the button for the heal. Ofcourse, he started cussing me out constantly. I somehow found the chat function and told him I had just logged in after months and forgotten the controls. Know what he said? “Oh. Wanna team up?” As if he wasn’t just telling me to go unalive myself. Told him “F you”, logged out and uninstalled the game. Hell is other people.

[@hhattonaom9729]

I'm sorry that happened to you, they were just a bunch of salty noobs. you could have laughed it off, but I respect your decision.

[@magischzwei]

Blizzard did eventually address this problem by enforcing personal loot for all content. But on WoW Classic in pugs this behavior is rampant. People will either stack classes that don't compete with them on loot for their group or kick damage dealers before the last boss in heroics to reduce loot competition. This happens often.

[@ShjadeNexayre]

@@hhattonaom9729 It was a last straw/camel's back thing, really. I'd been on the fence about sticking around in general and that kinda exemplified why it wasn't a community I enjoyed playing with anymore, along with a laundry list of other things. Uninstalling was, in a way, laughing it off to move on to other things. And as @mag points out below you, this is the kind of behavior that was clearly becoming more prevalent rather than less. That incident may have been some "salty noobs," but it was indicative of the direction the game was going for, well, the reasons given in this video. And as anonymous, server-spanning PUGs became the norm and changed group dynamics. I *loved* running heroics in BC content, I had so many heroic badges from that that I could buy anything I wanted from the Sunwell vendor when that patch released with hundreds left over. But that was when groups were all still on your server, still people you might actually run into in the world or whose guilds you'd know or who might know yours. I wouldn't go so far as to say there were more consequences for being an asshole, but it felt like people respected the group at least marginally more. I can't say the *game* was any better then, I'm not some BC purist (though I do still badly miss the BC warlock talents, rip 0/21/40 nuke squad), but the atmosphere around pugging then felt different. And then we got global group-finder and that kinda gradually went out the window. Not a direct cause-effect situation, but it sure didn't help.

[@RedSpade37]

I'm glad you brought this up, and I also wanted to ask about your last sentence here: Is there a community worth our time? The experience you've recounted here is similar to my own, and not just with WoW, but also Dota, Dead By Daylight, and even Adventure Quest. Are there any communities for games like these worth it? It seems people like you and I get the same results, no matter where we go or what we do. Personally, I've gotten back into Terraria, and also the Dynasty Warriors (and all their spinoffs) games.

[@leandervr]

Hearing someone speak up for healers getting starved for gear warms my heart

[@redpandaluver8561]

Same

[@DairunCates]

It's not just in WoW either. In early Overwatch competitive, support points were severely undervalued, which led to pro-healers getting ranked out of their teams and casual healing players getting stuck in a loop of rank loss/ELO Hell (because they needed to win 2-3 times as many games as they lost to gain rank). This kind of focus on "killing power" is an industry-wide issue and has drastically affected the makeup of competitive multiplayer team-based games. Games NEED healers to be interesting, but DPS players are always given drastically preferential treatment.

[@jeremyphillips3087]

If God wanted you to have gear he wouldn't have made you healers.

[@andromidius]

Unless you're a Holy Paladin, in which case you're giga geared due to literally zero competition. Heck, even the off spec Paladins in my guild are giga geared better then their main spec right now.

[@jalalal8056]

@@DairunCates FK em bro who gives a sht

[@matthewchapman7301]

I wish I could like this video more than once. I cannot understate how much you guys managed to identify and articulate something about WoW that I've observed for a long, long time but haven't been able to ever express properly. Thank you for this video!

[@sausig773]

Hey Dan, not related to the video, but one of my all-time-favorite internet moments happened a few months ago. I was in a discord channel for Slay the Spire, when a random user hopped into the general chat to suggest that the game devs could make Slay the Spire NFTs. What commenced was the online version of an audible groan from everyone in the room as everyone proceeded to cite your video on NFTs, and rebuffed the newcomer with well-articulated points. The newcomer must have been someone at least a bit invested in NFTs or fairly young as he just didn't seem to grasp any points made to him. He just seemed to think NFTs were good, and why wouldn't the devs want to make NFTs of the game? This unanimous agreement on a subject none of us had talked about up until that point was so satisfying to me, so thank you for changing so many minds on the subject, or more so just giving a link to throw at dumbass crypto bros who come calling. It's a beautiful thing.

[@jonathanlgill]

The FTX scam that's dominating news headlines is just yet more proof that nobody should be mucking around with cryptocurrency.

[@rift1067]

Really proud of both Folding Ideas to have such an impact, and you guys for taking it to heart. I hope the dude in question at least starts having second thoughts about his NFT investment if he unfortunately has.

[@fjordojustice]

This had absolutely happened to me as well. I was in a group argument about nfts a few days ago and I remember slowly realizing that everyone on my "side" of the argument had watched Line Goes Up and agreed with it's excellent points.

[@BillPeschel]

This is heartening and why we need to produce and watch more content like this. You can influence people through reasoned arguments, if their beliefs hadn't been solidified already.

[@joshuaevans4301]

I think there is another idioculture that is often overlooked - and it's the one I belong to: The solo background players. People just doing some quests and maybe some random dungeons. We are basically the player-controlled "NPCs" you see questing in the overworld, roaming the old world, or filling out the heroic dungeon queue

[@anyakeyes]

As an ex player, questing, leveling alts, collecting mounts and running outdated content because its fun? I feel you.

[@dudere]

That was, but I just quit the game. The UI update has more information so it is less readable for me. I am just done now. My account is still going so I logged on today to help a friend while I still can. I was in a zone alone. Warcraft combines players in zones. The means no one in the world was playing in this particular high level zone in warcraft. Frightening.

[@Yankyal1]

@@dudere final straw was a more customizable UI? Seriously?

[@Erelyes]

Yep. WoW works far better when the player is treated as 'A' hero, not 'The' hero.

[@outsideofadream]

This was me during my fairly brief trysts with WoW back in the day! I just wanted to explore, maybe level up.

[@Raniphae]

"Worlds become real when we care about them, not when they look similar to our own." That's a line that's going to stick with me for years to come. Thank you for this fantastic analysis; I really value the clear love you have for the game despite and sometimes even BECAUSE of all the messiness of optimization it pushes us to. I think there's genuinely a lot of value in WoW's community, but it's crucial to take a step back and identify when the numbers get warped into being an end in and of themselves, rather than a tool along the way.

[@Grivehn]

I only saw this months later, but it is going to be a quote sticking with me as well. Just beautifully put.

[@lubu9209]

I swear, the 'metaverse' came to mind, as an world that isn't "real" for most people because only advertisers and megacorps care about it.

[@jonathonjollota8661]

I think this might be one of the best video explanations of how “toxic” behavior and development of gameplay changes over the years. Amazing knowledge bomb

[@ericwilkinson567]

This is vidicating to watch. I played WoW a bunch in highschool. I was "bad" at it, but enjoyed it well enough. I ended up questing solo most of the time since most group play had this dynamic, which does seem antithetical to the whole MMO concept, so, felt like kinda a shame. The most fun I had was self-directed. Sneaking as a Horde rogue into Alliance early zones and steathily helping low-level Alliance players meet their questing goals. They cannot talk to me, so they couldn't tell me my DPS sucked.

[@Jeff-uu9vo]

there are servers for roleplaying and there are single player games. dunno why you'd inflict your own lack of interest on other people.

[@feihceht656]

​@@Jeff-uu9vomost people don't want to deal with self obsessed number crunchers, actually

[@Jeff-uu9vo]

@@feihceht656 most people don't want to take two hours to complete a heroic dungeon

[@ulysse6916]

I forgot the name of your channel and was trying at some point to find it back by searching phrases like "angry man critics suicide squad editing while drinking booze" with no success. I am so happy that the algorithm brought you to me once again with an astounding work about my favorite game. cheers

[@sightninja]

This has to be one of the funniest comments I’ve ever read on this website.

[@drpibisback7680]

Of course you couldn't find the video searching that - he was pretending to drink _cough syrup,_ not alcohol.

[@enjikap1217]

this truly has been a blessed month for long-form content

[@greg4629]

why. what other ones have you been watching

[@ThePhantom4516]

Yes please give examples, I would love more to watch

[@aryelovestrand2143]

The most recent Hbomberguy video about the oof sound is pretty crazy/Interesting and he's very aligned with folding ideas ideologically if you care about that

[@enjikap1217]

@@greg4629 defunctland, Jenny Nicholson, and hbomberguy

[@greg4629]

@@aryelovestrand2143 I don't

[@AdamGaffney96]

This is something that actually puts me off games, but not for the reason you'd expect. I'm a very instrumental player, I have a long term goal and I like to optimise for it as much as possible. However that actually puts me off playing a lot of games that encourage that behaviour, because I find it super overwhelming. Instead I'd much rather do that in smaller games not designed for that optimisation, where the act of optimising feels like a departure from the game, and a whole new horizon, not the intended result. I think of this when me and my friend play PlateUp. I love to optimise the placement and automation, being very careful about making the most of the least number of items, ensuring to prep things in advance to get the best number of conveyors, desks etc. However he is very much the opposite, he loves when the cosmetic rounds come about because he can plan how he wants the restaurant to look, he spends time at the beginning coming up with a fun name. One obvious example is the meat fridge: it has roughly a 2/3rds hitbox, whereas most items have a 1 square hitbox. What this means is that when the fridge is facing the correct "aesthetic" way i.e. the door is towards the player, there's a common risk of getting caught on the object next to it when walking away with the item, which could genuinely end a run later on. The optimal solution is one I do without question: reverse the fridge. Due to it's orientation, the back of the fridge is perfectly aligned with the border, meaning that this issue doesn't happen. However he would prefer to having it the door round, because even though it can actively hinder the ability to cook the meal, it looks better, and immerses more as it fits his aesthetic. And I've actually come to realise that us being opposed like this is why we love playing games together so much. If we play a game together, he love to handle the aesthetic stuff that I don't care for, and I love to optimise the technological stuff he doesn't care for. Another example is in Modded Minecraft, when we played a server of mods I put together, I built a nuclear reactor, I put together all the machines to power the base, create items, further "progression" etc. He put together a cool looking base for us, plus handled all the food requirements and had an amazing time working with magic, bees and farms. It worked together perfectly, cause I could show him what I've been working on and give him something that makes his life easier, then he can show me his ideas for our space base, for our warehouse etc, and I can work my functional parts around the cool designs he has. It's just a perfect synergy between our opposing play styles!

[@Satherian]

I love the talk about PlateUp because I find myself in both camps. I love having a good looking kitchen but I also love a well-optimized kitchen

[@boiledelephant]

This is bromance for life right here. Don't ever fall out of touch with this friend.

[@Blueeyesthewarrior]

I need a friend like yours 😭

[@AdonisOuranios]

This sounds like me and my boyfriend lmao, he is very focused on optimization while I'm more or less a househusband Granted I also enjoy some degree of optimization, but I will decorate the hell out of anything given the opportunity, and in his own words all he can build is a box

[@IHomie1]

I have had two main experiences with WoW. The first was as a young kid who couldn't get a subscription, so I could only try out the free demo, and the second was in college trying to play with friends who were veteran players. When I was young, I wasn't any good at the demo, but I still felt a huge amount of wonder at all of the cool stuff you could get and explore, and I wished I could have played more. In college when I tried to play with my friends, they told me to use the max level boost, pick a healer since it would let us get into dungeons easier, and had me run through the first quests needed to play the first dungeon. I felt like I couldn't even stop to read the quest giver's text, and I only ended up playing a couple of days.

[@oilslick7010]

Oh man I had the same experience when I returned to WoW after an absence of 8 years. Difference being that I DID have an decent first experience back in 2005 when I enjoyed the RPG side of things with like minded players who, like me, played their first MMORPG. Like you said: just wandering around, discovering stuff, etc. I expected some of this magic to return, but no..... It felt so pointless not to be able to EXPERIENCE anything, just rush through everything without uttering so much as a word. Gave up on MMO's after that since they ALL suffer from the same mindset among the playerbase. Back to single-player CRPG's for me....

[@Dermetsu]

Playing with veterans, even when they're your friends, is always a rushed joyless experience when it comes to MMOs sadly. I don't want to skip the whole game, follow a wiki for the meta, and have my friends one shot everything for me.

[@asmrtpop2676]

@@Dermetsu A real friend makes a new character to start with you ❤

[@Dermetsu]

@@asmrtpop2676 that's true!

[@yankokassinof6710]

@@oilslick7010 i guess thats why im never going to abandon my roguelikes :)

[@glupik1234]

As an anthropologist who's been trying to convince academia of the relevance and importance of 'virtual' worlds this video is so cool. It's satisfying but also a little bit sad how we all have only a handful of references that we circle around.

[@J5L5M6]

You're a visionary. Dig in and write a paper!

[@yankokassinof6710]

if this cheers you up, when i get to university ill be doing researches and papers and studies on this kind of topic, if i dont manage to do this in philosophy or public relations (or whatever you call it in english) which are the courses im attempting, i will in the future when i manage to get into psicology

[@TheShanoGamerPlays]

It is astounding how much a microcosm of human behaviour can reflect that of the behaviour of the world at large, at least to some degree. It seems we can actually learn a lot about human behaviour via smaller, virtual worlds because of the fact that they are sometimes more direct and, well, smaller, and thus potentially easier to holistically study than, say, that of a country. There's still a lot to learn from mediums like games...

[@xBINARYGODx]

@@TheShanoGamerPlays well the problem with that is that people will, even is very social virtual settings, not really be themselves (or more of themselves) in this setting vs the real world. Of course, the virtual world strongly affects the real one - so... maybe actually you need to look at both, not because one helps inform the other, but because you need both to understand all of reality.

[@arthurschopenhauer1070]

Isn’t the point of anthropology to learn about cultures? This is a trivial recreational activity in the developed western world, yet there are still people whose language and religion and way of life we know nothing about, that you think this deserves priority honestly seems a bit prejudiced

[@sullivannick]

"Each video represents a brick in an echo chamber that carries a subtle yet deafening resonance" is a hell of a line

[@clintonleonard5187]

All in all it's just another brick in the wall. -Pink Floyd

[@Emidretrauqe]

I still remember my favorite videos from Classic and TBC. They were just videos of people breaking the game, screwing around, trolling other players... all of the things that modern Blizzard and the community views as haram.

[@LAK_770]

Looking back on this video a year later, it's a testament to Dan's skill as a filmmaker and his well-earned good faith with his audience that something this profoundly niche, technical, and outside the usual purview performed so well. Truly out of left field, but just a great watch.

[@adjsmith]

I only played WoW on-and-off for a little over one year circa 2005/2006. At that time everyone I interacted with who also played WoW was rushing to the end-game content with an incredible fervor. They *all* powerleveled to maximum immediately. They left me in the dust. I explored the world, played through various minor quest chains, enjoyed the little stories, and eventually got stuck and bored because there was nobody at my level to play with and the quests became too difficult in many places for me to play solo. Basically, I had no one to play with because I played the game "wrong" in their eyes. I've never come back. WoW Classic tempted me, but I wasn't about to pay a subscription and then join a guild that would push me to powerlevel. Instead I spent the intervening years/decades playing all up and down the gamut of strategy, shooter, single-player RPG, and casual indie "whatever-genre" games. Sounds like I made the right choice for my fun.

[@int3r4ct]

That story about Moistrainbow getting shit for not maxing out his keys hits home as someone who raided somewhat seriously for years when I was younger. I was in guilds where me and friends would be much higher on meters than other players, but we would get shit for not min-maxing our gear, or using a different set of talents than what the “meta” was from the top rated guilds or not playing as much or whatever. It always bothered me that the other members seemed to care more about following what the big boys were doing and following some “meta” or “rules”, and less than the actual results. Yes, I did not run dungeons every hour of every week, and sometimes I would forget flasks or food buffs and sometimes I would prefer non-meta talents or non-BiS gear pieces or whatever. But if I’m #3 on the DPS meter and everyone below me didn’t forget that stuff, is me not following the “meta” or the “rules” really the problem here? It really bothered some officers than I just did not care to sim craft every piece of gear I got. I knew what stats I needed, and had enough of an understanding of the mechanics to know which piece would generally be better. If it was something like a side grade that might give me an extra 0.5% more dps, I didn’t care. I’d just use whatever I think would be better. Always pissed me off that they would give me shit for this when I would kick their ass on meters without doing any of the simcraft bullshit. Famously, one of my friends, Jelly did not use a boss mod. He literally refused to tell anyone in the guild this, because he assumed they would just boot him. Jelly was a fucking savant at his class. This man was parsing like 98 percentile *consistently* but he just didn’t need a boss mod and didn’t want one. Eventually one of the officers learned that he didn’t have one and gave him shit, but he was #1 on the meters in every single fight, so they couldn’t exactly just boot him. Hope he’s still out there kicking ass and not giving a shit.

[@inaizy]

I think this is all really true, but it’s funny that we only feel comfortable defending people’s choices of not following best practice, or installing mods, if they fulfilled the objective (such as dealing the most damage) anyway

[@AJD-od9nq]

Lol, the fact that you still get worked up about it 😂

[@guyincognito5663]

@@AJD-od9nq Grass

[@VinceDick]

@@AJD-od9nq It's like you didn't even watch the video you're commenting on. His story is completely relevant, and he doesn't seem "worked up" at all.

[@ero9631]

Im a healer and dont raid because its too time consuming for me but often rush HC raids in rdm groups on first few weeks of the addon for the story. But i can understand that kind of if the boss is almost down and for example i got a little bit better gear it could save the group from wiping and we would have killed him. But as long as you are only in HC just play the mechanic because dps or hps is never the problem. I hate when people get so fixated at the meta. so often seen hunters or locks at m+25 that have about the half of the dps than an off meta class because they think about their talents and class rather than just copy pasting.

[@Tortoiseshel]

In Disney's Toontown Online, the playerbase developed a very specific strategy for getting through high-level Cog facilities as fast as possible, mostly based around the Sound Gag Track; Sound Gags are low-damage Gags (weapons) that hit all enemies, and you get a pretty substantial damage boost if multiple Toons use Sound on the same turn. Now, I was a very young child (like, 5 or 6 when I started out) when I created my main Toon, and I built her without the Sound Track (Toons could have all but one Gag Track; I think most people went without Trap, it has the highest damage but needs to be used in conjunction with Lure, so most considered it too risky to be worth it). All this culminated in me regularly being denied entrance to HQ Boss Battles (raids) for being "Soundless", despite having almost maxed out Gags and Laff (health, but also basically equivalent to character level) otherwise. It's funny to think about it now, but back then as a little kid, it really felt like I was being bullied by everyone, especially since I named my Toon after myself.

[@SomniaCE]

It's also quite hard to imagine that a Toontown dungeon would require all that much from a group of players

[@aturchomicz821]

MMOs truly are all bullshit lmao

[@strayiggytv]

I really think people who play games like that, where all that matters is a number going up as quickly as possible, are fundamentally missing something in their irl lives. Like they're basing their entire being in how good they are at a game and it can't be healthy.

[@DsiakMondala]

You don't understand, they couldn't possibly have you least the Boss battle take an extra 2minutes of their time.

[@aturchomicz821]

@@DsiakMondala lmao

[@elifromdavis]

This video is absolutely packed with complex ideas and is so beautifully crafted. I've watched it like 6 or 7 times now and I find myself coming back every few weeks because there are just so many things to think about. Astounding work.

[@barge489]

This really nails how much I loved MMOs as a 12 year old kid getting lost in EverQuest, not having a clue about anything. I remember my best friend and I hearing about another place and actually asking for directions. We set off from kelethin, a tiny piece of the game. But all we ever knew to they point and made our way across the butcherblock mountains. Past a dwarf city and an ocean by boat to Freeport. Which blew our minds. Then how I was ok with it as a teenager playing EQ, while being aware of things like Alakazam. But the magic was gone. I wasn't discovering things anymore, I was looking up known information. The mystical world of EverQuest turned into perfect maps. The wonder of the monsters found turned into timed and patterned spawn points. The thrill of getting that sudden rare drop off that one creature that's got a different name or skin than the others, replaced by a probability table. There was still fun to be had, we crossed the entire game world with level 1 characters one time. My fun no longer came from the explicit systems of the game, I had to make my own. By the time I migrated to WoW with my friends, this was how virtually everyone we knew played. There never was the thrill of discovery, just the satisfaction of efficiency. I enjoyed wow, but never in the way 12 year old me was enthralled by ew, at no fault of Blizzard, it was all how I interacted with their great game world. I am unsure if I chose to kill the magic or of games moved past it and I was long for the ride. But this is the reason I never really went back to MMOs after a while despite trying many of them. It's the constant engineering the fun out of the amazing virtual worlds. When all the magic is data and I am conscious of all of this knowable data. I will inevitably choose to know the data, instead of feel the magic. Single player games don't have the same social pressure of optimisation and it's easy for me to do a "discovery run" before choosing to optimize the crap out of a game. I think I would love an MMO style game that would be effectively uncatalogable. Something that "cataclysm-ed" itself in short intervals, but the degree of content generation needed for they would likely have a lot of knock on effects and might not result in the best game.

[@Patashu]

Maybe a procgen MMO? It'd be an extremely hard project but I love the idea of fundamentally undocumentable games. Like roguelikes, where while you can ascribe good tactics and strategies and there are known constants, the best way to play them cannot be said objectively since every run is different.

[@antalwahlers3574]

"There never was the thrill of discovery, just the satisfaction of efficiency." That's a good one. Thx.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

Same i began with EverQuest Online Adventures. I'm realizing there are MANY of us... i started Classic WotLK 2 weeks ago and began a video series on it. I've been pretty dejected about the stark contrast between myself and the majority of chatter i see. It's all parses, bs tryhard crap. Not my thing lol. I'll be ignoring it. I need to start making content that appeals to the more casual EverQuest fan, because i am one! WE DO EXIST, and nobody gives us very much space to exist. . . i'm all about the journey, the atmosphere, exploration and making REAL friends. Not being used for gains.

[@khodges72]

I wish I could go back to being a 10 year old playing Wow for the first time. Have you found any single player games that do capture some of that magic?

[@guillempares2282]

@@khodges72 Zelda BOTW for me. Just enjoy the game, avoid guides. It made me (at 29) feel like me at 16 playing wow for the first time. (Well to be fair wow was even more incredible because of the social interaction, but I don't think you can recreate that in a single player game)

[@LiquidNCAK]

I think another aspect about paratext in WoW is that it's made WoW exceptionally hard for anyone to get into. It's decades of systems and hundreds of thousands of videos and guides built upon each other where each iteration makes the previous version entirely absolute. For example, I started WoW on Legion after my friend encouraged me to try it. In fact, it was my first MMO. And at the time, Legion had a level cap of 120 and when you make a new character it just throws you into the deep end. Suddenly, I had dozens of options on my rogue and none of them made sense. My only tutorial was on how to auto-attack. I tried to look at a guide but they all assumed you were familiar with the previous system in Warlords and you mostly just needed a refresher. And wherever I tried to turn to for advice... people just had a hard time explaining it because they've engaged with the system for a decade. It took months for anyone to even think of explaining keybindings to me, let alone proper rotations and raid load outs. This even happens in the same expansion. I had to quit at the beginning of Legion since I was moving and when I came back at the end of the expansion I had to tredge through so many old systems that I had to wonder what the point of any them was. Like I had to spend a good week getting mana for the Nightbournes before getting supplies for the Lightforge then getting materials for my Artifact weapons or spending gold on my Order Hall. I was just doing them because I had to. This also goes for the narrative too. Legion was the culmination of a lot of storylines in Legion and Legion refuses to really explain any of it. It was only after I played Warcraft 3 some 5 years later that any of it really made sense to me. Who was Varian? Sylvannas? Sargeras? Archimonde? The Burning Legion? WoW just assumes you know. And even if you don't know, WoW just assumes you'll find out eventually through the community. And the resources the community points you to are exasperating long videos by people like Nobbel who, imo, gets the story together but has a hard time contexualizing the importance of any it, at least compared to likes of Platinium WoW. It was even worse in Shadowlands where it felt like the story demanded you watch lore videos to understand anything happening.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

This is part of the reason WoW is slowly bleeding out, and will continue to do so unless they somehow fix this mess and soft reboot the mechanics, and i mean core mechanics of raiding etc. It's just too much these days. Most people dip a toe in, see how insane it is, usually by looking at one image of weakaura's or whatever, and they nope out.

[@MaartenKok]

@@EQOAnostalgia Exactly, therefore, my advice to Blizzard would be simple: don't fix WoW, end it. Then build a new MMO that can start anew, and allow new players to flood in again.

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

Your use of absolute instead of obsolete really messed with m y mind.

[@vonriel1822]

@@MaartenKok This is something I got pushback on once before when I said it, but I stand by it: Any MMORPG should stop at 3-4 expansions and reboot itself, offering bonuses to longtime players as well as those who have accomplished certain things. Once it's been ~10 years, accrued technical debt hogties the developers while accrued game mechanics make it oblique to get into. And as Cataclysm showed, players won't accept a complete restart on what they think the game should be like without bitching about it for literally decades after the fact, not to mention the low level of impact all that spent time had on their largest group of players, endgame grinders.

[@HenriqueRJchiki]

Sounds like a skill issue to me my man

[@TheBaronDen]

I was one of those in 2004/5 who stuck to my pirate aesthetic and refused to wear any helm other than an eye patch or any shoulder armor at all. And I was one of those who put that beloved character on the shelf for the next 5 years I played to instead play a character with no fixed aesthetic so I wouldn't feel like I was holding back my friends when I spent time with them in dungeons and raids. Thank you for the video. It brought back a lot of feelings, and a whole new wave of gratitude that I got out when I did.

[@shizachan8421]

transmog was such a great addition to the game.

[@ShjadeNexayre]

@@shizachan8421 Even with transmog some concepts have limitations. When Cataclysm came out, I decided to try starting a new character on a new class and went with a Belf paladin. But her story was goofy: she was a rabbit who'd been turned into an elf to wield justice after escaping the culling of Stratholme. Pure silliness. But it's why I always had her wearing the easter ears as her helm. You can't transmog that holiday hat onto a real helm. Or at least you still couldn't as of the last time I played in early Shadowlands. Maybe that's changed now. You definitely couldn't in Cata. So she was effectively not wearing a helm from level 1 up to the early-mid 70's in LK content, where you can get a helm model that is close enough to looking like it has bunny ears to work for the idea.

[@comradep8519]

@@ShjadeNexayre the current thanksgiving event has a holiday hat that doesn't have an armour class so it can be transmogged into anything, but i don't know about the easter one at some point in dragonflight we're supposed to be able to transmog white and grey rarity gear as well, but it's not here yet

[@SirMalorak]

​@@ShjadeNexayreThese limitations became a LOT better though but I get it, this is still limiting. Transmog used to just have goofy fun is something I never really focused on but it makes me appreciate it a lot more. Thanks for this perspective.

[@ai-aniverse]

The most fun ive had playing wow was helping randoms level. Being stuck in raids for hours was something that ill never do again. Being ex-military, the power trips based on a video game never sat right with me.

[@disasterdom]

As a "Wallace" type WoW player, I really appreciated this. I'm perfectly content to just play the game solo, at my own pace, working on achievements that sound fun, exploring and casually leveling through zones, and just sort of "vibing" throughout Azeroth. Thanks, Dan!

[@FishboyAbzu]

I'm a wallace too, I just wish I had someone to hang out with and talk to in game too.

[@chestterfield]

Same! Been playing for +10 yrs and in my early years tried my role as a healer- never worked. It didn't worked in wow, lol or any other pvp type of game. Now I'm happy to vibe on my own collecting mounts and achievments.

[@ulogy]

This is why RDF being yeeted from WOTLK Classic is problematic. Promotes folks siloing entirely.

[@m1bl4n]

Hi fellow Wallace's!

[@jtsiomb]

Yeap, I would give up stats because I refused to dress my wizard in vests and trousers. Kept my lower level robes for quite a while. Nobody shouted to me about it though, because I hated the minmaxers so I never joined their guilds or went raiding. I just understood that part of the game was not for me.

[@LEXXPortPatrol]

I find the editing in this absolutely facinating, no cuts, just one massive timeline with all the elements already laid out, almost letting you get sneak peaks at future parts of the videos as the camera smoothly transitions between sections. Really cool!!!

[@vaughan01]

jon bois and BobbyBroccoli do this exactly with really cool presentations of timelines and references, I’d highly recommend checking them out.

[@hastyscorpion]

This is in the style of chart party.

[@SoftBank47]

@@hastyscorpion pretty good.

[@jadedtermite2513]

It's similar to how secret base makes their videos especially the dual narrators.

[@gljames24]

Yeah, Chart Party Google earth style movements video editing is always a fun time.

[@invisi-bullexploration2374]

I remember when I specced endless rage on my warrior even though 'the math was bad' as far as using up a talent point on something that on paper didn't pay off for the cost. Thing is, I was using it to make other players panic and make mistakes with all that coming down on them. It wasn't anything you could point to on a spread sheet, it was a psychological terror tactic. I was eventually justified learning that some Korean arena players certainly DID spec ER for the same purpose.

[@burnin8able]

I may not have ever played WOW, but what you're describing here sounds a whole lot like a situation that comes up every once in a while in competitive fighting games. that situation being that a player will choose to play with a character or methodology that has been established as "low tier" or otherwise not tournament viable with the explicit intention of exploiting that exact establishment. Competitors don't see X character as viable, and as a result don't care about learning the intricacies of their matchup, and as a result, are caught off guard when they go up against a player using said character.

[@zizzlefax8861]

@@burnin8able so pretty much being unable to counter a character or strategy because it's off meta?

[@burnin8able]

@@zizzlefax8861 yeah pretty much. in fighting games "off meta" basically is just all the characters that don't get played often at a high level, so when they do see the spotlight few players know the matchups.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

@@burnin8able Right but i mean, during the peak of Socom 2 i would pull out a pistol just to merk a fool for the dominance factor. If i died, who cares? I had a pistol, i mean wtf do you expect!? If i kill yo ass... bro, break your disc, you're buttcheeks lol.

[@nessa-parmentier]

Another case of "the math is bad" in a very different context : While leveling a character through dungeons, a rogue specifically, there was that one time our tank died to a boss that we hadn't even downed halfway through. One of the DPS players told us to stop fighting and just die so we could get our tank back quicker and start over. But I, another DPS, turned out to deal high enough damage to consistenly keep the boss' aggro, and was mobile enough to keep the boss moving without it constantly dealing damage to me. The healer was able to keep me alive and, finally, we downed the boss with me, the rogue, as a "tank" for most of the fight. Rogue tanks are not a build that exists ; a rogue shouldn't be tanking a boss, it's not effective, and so on... but we pulled it off. And it was **really fun**.

[@baltakatei]

I bumble about in FFXIV just enjoying the music and scenery. Multiplayer dungeon thingies seemed scary but I found them really enjoyable once I realized there was a lot of room for mistakes and most people were accomodating of sprouts like me who like watching cutscenes for the first time.

[@Internetzspacezshipz]

Yeah, I think FFXIV has a much more chill community compared to WoW it seems, at least from watching this video haha.

[@Heriarka]

I am still left wondering why? Is it really just because ff14 does not push mods/addons the way WoW does? There *are* mods for raid performance, the devs just don't want them openly talked about.

[@Krakoan_Lorax]

@@Heriarka WoW has a much more competitive nature than other MMOs because of the emphasis on things like World Firsts and Arena Tournaments etc. Elitist Jerks exist in every MMO space, but in WoW they are directly catered to and rewarded for their behavior.

[@Heriarka]

@@Krakoan_Lorax I don't play WoW so I don't know this- are World Firsts actually immortalized and celebrated in some big way officially? Because first raid clears are also things people compete for in FF14, it's just not something most players will really think and aspire about.

[@tytanyx]

@@Heriarka I think it helps that a lot of people consider FFXIV as a JRPG first before it's an MMO. A bunch of people that play it are trying to enjoy the main campaign and the other activities around that. Not to say there isn't a toxic side to the game, especially with raiding, but it's rare because I guess the community is conditioned already to just be chill about it. Also the devs themselves encouraging people to take breaks if they get bored instead of needing to constantly stay subbed to get the best gear.

[@MizukiTheUnderPro]

Worlds become real because we care about them. That's gonna stick with me for a while. I can tell this was a labour of love, not only highly informative but created with alot of care. Beautiful

[@Nighthawk-oj5ve]

Folding Ideas turning into Secret Base. The crossover I was always hoping for, but never knew I needed it

[@MM-ob3ke]

Video Essays in the Age of Loneliness

[@sublime3784]

I’m getting vibes of Secret Base Atlanta Falcons series

[@MK.5198]

Well, you should credit the style to Jon specifically, because he's basically the one who invented it

[@merl1nduh]

Let me add Bobby Broccoli, Summoning Salt, and Joseph Anderson to this list

[@theverynoob]

@@merl1nduh Lotta respect to them but they came way after Bois and at least in the case of Bobby Broccoli, he completely recognizes the lineage.

[@RobTunes]

1:17:53 "And with all of this established, we can finally say the quiet part out loud: players make world of warcraft look fucking ugly." GOD JESUS YES THANK YOU

[@bluegaming1346]

just false though, a lot of pro wow players have insanely clean UIs

[@ightman712]

​@@bluegaming1346not in that sense my dude

[@holstatt6896]

@@bluegaming1346 WoW's soul looks like the most generic creep chris hansen talks to on to catch a predator. i think that's whatthey meant.

[@SnailHatan]

@@holstatt6896I think you mean it looks like Chris Hansen. Dude is a predator of another kind.

[@gnickthegnome1981]

@@SnailHatan really weird take, dog

[@Brent-jj6qi]

The ending of this video is so much more beautiful then the ones you guys wanted, incredible documentary. I just wish I had realized and said something on my first watch, not 10 months late.

[@littlebird862]

This really hit me hard as a disabled gamer. I always feel like I can't really join any kind of game related community because so much are focused on optimizing everything, and my body just can't keep up. No matter how many videos I watch I'll never be as optimal as an able bodied player who doesn't struggle to use a keyboard. If I join a guild that wants to focus on being the best then I'll always hold them back. It's really depressing because that's also how I tend to get treated for my disability anyway. I can't even escape being judged for my physical ability in a completely virtual environment. It's really awful how isolating it is. I really just wish there were more spaces where I wasn't judged on my abilities in some way.

[@chubokuway]

You kick ass no matter what. I wish you the best

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563]

My experience with gaming communities is that they always, always replicate the worst aspects of our society while suppressing the good ones. Every form of intolerance you can think up, they're eager to practice it. They relish in their obsession with numbers, competition and prestige. They insult you for performing poorly, for playing certain ways, for being a certain way. Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would choose to be in a game community of their own volition. The real world might be harsh, but at least it has laws, various types of ice cream, and people discussing how to make things more tolerable, not less.

[@chubokuway]

@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563 Fr fr spittin' straight fax

[@Miraihi]

On the other hand, most gamers that don't have any serious health problems lack the time to devote to such guild.

[@FireBreathGames]

Amazing reflection. Thank you for sharing that!! It's a bit counter-intuitive how isolating games like WoW can be, it being a social game and all. Someone else mentioned the game brings out social extremes and I agree completely. There is such a strong hierarchy and sense of power elicited by the game that so many players (myself included) are very drawn to, "to fit in", and I think it's why a lot of people can be so intolerant. When you bring someone down, you lift yourself up. There is no stronger motivation than feeling socially cohesive within "the group".

[@JimmieHammel]

I stopped playing WoW because I like being bad at it. Everyone was always harassing me to get my character to max level so I could raid with them, but I was enjoying exploring and soloing dungeons and collecting pets. I tried playing fully solo without a guild, but that was lonely.

[@fadedjem]

Literally took 30 seconds of comment scrolling to find people lamenting how hard it is for us bad players to advertise that they "need coaching" by their group. It really doesn't occur to some of these people that we aren't lost souls waiting to have our lives improved by the right instruction in how to play our character on-meta.

[@TheXVodkaXFairy]

I got invited to play with some people my fiancé knows but I don't care about maxing dps or having the 'right' spells or kit. I liked just wandering around and playing music through my headphones and for the most part they respected that but they would try and 'fix' my character by telling me what to equip or what spells I needed. But there was no room for me to figure out what I think best fit my character or how I wanted to play. I would turn up to raids since they wanted to help level us (most of us were completely new) but I felt like I was just decoration and didn't have any interest when the second aggro came off the tank, all of us would die. I just made my goal to get a cool mount instead and it was way more fulfilling.

[@Helion102]

@@fadedjem Well, to be fair, they know what you don't. They were once newcomers, and now they are not - so they can see both sides of a transition you only know one side of. That, and it used to be outright not possible to play with people that aren't roughly similar to you in power. Sure, some people just want to be egotistical and flaunt their superior skill in a video game - but they aren't the only people who are trying to help newcomers get up to speed. Some people feel that it's just more fun to play together on the same level, and want you to share in that fun

[@JimmieHammel]

@@TheXVodkaXFairy yeah, exactly... When I used to play, I liked playing as a discipline priest. (2007ish) At the time, there was exactly 1 way to "correctly" play a priest, and that was shadow. Later it became acceptable to play holy as well, but discipline was "wrong." And people would constantly tell me it was wrong. And I KNEW that. I just liked it better. It fit my play style. People constantly trying to explain why my choices were bad made the game really boring for me. I knew the reasons. I understood the reasons. I just wanted to play the game the way it was fun for me without constant annoying input from people trying to make me have fun the way THEY would.

[@ghostcassette6012]

You might enjoy FFXIV friend. There's a ton of non-raid stuff to do (including a main story that doesn't get retconned every patch like wow seems to), and most people are chill about explaining mechanics

[@slopoke89]

I was pretty well into WoW up until shortly after Cataclysm, and when I was asked why I stopped playing by my guildmates, I told them I didn't want another job. All this boils down to you having to be geared well enough to even participate, do enough research to know what to do, and ultimately deal with the stress of not effing up your role to the point where you're not invited any more. Each one of those is a huge time sink and seemed more like work than a thing I did to have fun in my off time, and as I grew older, I had less disposable time. I'm glad I watched this video, as it breaks down essentially what caused this new work, and was just a result of the circumstances of the era it came out in, the technology involved, and just plain people. Thanks Dan and everyone else involved in this great piece.

[@lordcarve]

You always had to get gear to participate in vanilla, just in 40 man raids many got carried

[@embyveddii]

People have always considered me weird of silly for never really running Dungeons or Raids in any game. But this is why. I have to sit down and understand what to do, I have to play enough to be geared enough to do it, and even during that first time I'm worried about effing up, and constantly checking the guide to see I'm doing what I should. So I rarely do WoW Raids or Destiny Dungeons/Raids. It's a chore

[@zona_moribunda]

Exact reason I stopped playing pretty much any mmo

[@MsMoonDragoon]

This is why I stopped playing WoW after legion. everything this is funneling into eventually making you raid now, and raids are so fundamentally unenjoyable I find the entire game pointless now. they used to have so much to collect and do outside of that where if raiding wasn't your thing you still had plenty to do every xpac, now everything is locked behind raids. I used to raid when I was younger, and its apart of why I fucking hate most other people today. I don't want another job. I want to play a fun game and have an enjoyable adventure with friends. WoW threw that aspect in the trash long ago.

[@lrock48]

When it becomes a chore, it loses the fun factor. Same reason why I quit EverQuest.

[@beckyszemelyesen]

I haven't seen your videos before, I was a bit scared that this will be another bashing "wow is dead" type of video which I really avoid. I was so pleasantly surprised, this was one of the best videos I have seen in a very very long time. Nicely researched, perfect examples and great thoughts shared. Thank you so much!

[@DavidLeeKersey]

Well we now know why there was such a long time between "Line Goes Up" and "Contrepreneurs" Dan was working on at least two major videos at the same time.

[@justine.exehasstopped5114]

Also, based on some editing streams, the process of making Contrepreneurs seemed like kind of a nightmare (he had to rerecord some bits because of bad lighting, the editing was tough, stuff like that). Really makes you realize how much time and effort goes into videos like this. It's honestly incredible, and I admire anyone who does it.

[@Raph584]

and spending a lot of time playing WoW

[@judasdubois]

@@Raph584 Research! I did like the sniping back in forth between Dan and choice. "where he posts barely watched videos that die on the vine." "Dan's sad guild sits about here."

[@Kafiristanica]

Dan you're one of the only creators where upon watching a new video in it's entirety, I will immediately or as soon as I can later, rewatch the entire video over from the start. Your videos are so information dense and thought provoking they warrant multiple views. Thank you for your work.

[@DavidLeeKersey]

Totally agree. I think I watched "Line Goes Up" all the way through three times in the first 2 weeks it was out, And have maybe watched it 5 or 6 times total.

[@johnnyrivers8110]

Your videos have really been on another level the past few years, Dan.

[@BRAINDAWG1O1]

They really have been

[@Xondar11223344]

The visuals in this one are next level.

[@beefy256]

He's getting millions of views on multiple videos now. I think he has the time and money to do what he wants and at a level of quality that he wants. He's a massively talented film maker.

[@Jeff-uu9vo]

it's a bunch of self flatulating with unnecessarily big words and over contextualized wastes of time. this dude took 2 hours to say "people should decide to play games with people who share interests with themselves"

[@DerGrundi]

A friend of mine (who doesn't talk to me anymore) is very competitive. So competitive in fact, that he doesn't differentiate between ranked and unranked online matches. In games like Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege and Apex Legends he tended to tell us what to do and how to play. Everything, no matter if ranked or unranked, has to be the way he wanted it to be and if you do something your way he would be mad at you. This even applied to Co-op games like Payday. We didn't play to win, to have "good" stats and stuff like that, we played to have fun with friends. Nobody cared, how good you were since we are all friends and this is all that matters. He was fully aware of it and didn't care. So when we pointed out his sometimes rude behavior, he disappeared and never talked to us again. This case might be more of a social matter than anything else, but for me this was the ultimate form of competitive toxicity, where "wanting to be the best" leads some people to yell at you for basically anything, no matter what kind of game you play. In this case, one of these people, was one of our closest friends.

[@fruitfruitfederation3932]

my only WoW experience was a friend badgering me for 2 months to play, so i downloaded it and within the first 5 minutes got told i was making the wrong character and was forced to change classes and not 3 minutes later had the laptop taken away from me because i didn't know the controls. so much of this just makes the way they acted make too much sence.

[@asmrtpop2676]

That’s so sad you experienced that! But not uncommon for the community. My dad introduced me and he never criticized what I picked or how I set up my talents, he just helped me quest and would mail me 20 slot bags. That was back in TBC. I’ve played on and off since, sometimes with friends I made in game but eventually people always stopped logging in, and since I mostly do solo stuff, I became more and more isolated in-game. A month ago I convinced my boyfriend to get it, because I want so badly to just have a buddy in the game (and, we have been needing a new game to play together!). He kept asking what he “should” play and stuff and I told him not to worry about picking the right race/class/talent combo, just pick something and we’ll explore the world. He’s a gnome mage and he we are having a blast even when we wipe.

[@BigHotSauceBoss69]

@FruitFruit Federation it sounds like your friend is just an asshole

[@fruitfruitfederation3932]

@@BigHotSauceBoss69 oh they sure where in that instance, but the root of why they were being so rude was down to efficiency. Like that was his issue; that I wasn't been efficient. It was really weird because up till that point they were super chill about other games, i was being an inefficient dummy all the time, but that was the one time he was very "You gotta do This, This way. You Cant be That. That's Not the Best way to do it."

[@Joralion]

@@fruitfruitfederation3932 Strange, it's like he just wanted you to skip learning about the game and just play with him at whatever his skill level is. Terrible way to get anyone to play any game.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

@@Joralion I used to be like that. "why aren't you me, wtf!?" lol. Don't recommend it.

[@chronosemagram]

As an added note on mods, during my own classic experience I wrote a mod which would look for heals which prevented killing blows and would give a shout-out to the healer that landed one before someone went down. It was fun to create, and added purely social value. It also led to some amusing moments, one where people who used healing potions that prevented their death would also get a shout-out. Never bother to create an actual UI, but it's there on github. A lot of this ties into comparison being the theft of joy. One thing which you touch on that has been lost is the satisfaction of figuring things out for yourself. It seems like the tendency is to skip that step and look up the answer. On some level it's like looking up the solution to a crossword puzzle. Ultimately it comes down to the individual and what gives them joy, but there is so much about current society that leads to a death of the experiential experience in favor of grinding numbers. No right or wrong, but when we dismiss personal growth and that experiential aspect, it feels like we partly abandon the soul in our quest to be the best robot. Everyone has their own goals and desires, neither path is inherently right or wrong, but life is already full of pressures to forgo living in favor of producing an end result.

[@justachannel8600]

While I do agree that the fun is in figurimg things out yourself I've always eshewed guides for that reason the reality is that a professional minmaxer probably has already figured out a more effective way. And many games there's still a learning curve after you follow the build order. But maybe its about different things like clicks per second and that's not what you enjoy. Tough call.

[@dackattac]

This might be my favorite comment here. I especially love the word "joy" because I feel it captures how rewarding it is to engage with a game that's lovingly crafted and special to you (and I don't play WoW, but I've played a fair deal of FFXIV; I Get It). Plus, it sets that pleasure apart from 1) the cheap dopamine rush of low-effort mobile microtransaction chaff, but also 2) the Thrill of Victory. Because winning is a pretty good rush, yeah, but the flip side is "the agony of defeat". When gamers lose (especially in a _purposefully high-difficulty dungeon),_ and not only fail to take the loss in stride, but _flip out,_ lash at their teammates, or demand others take these experience-compromising measures as prophylactic against further L's, I can't help but wonder if the game gives them _joy_ anymore. If it ever did.

[@feykingjulian]

completely agree

[@duncanhull12]

"abandon the soul in the quest to be the best robot" *chefs kiss*

[@zuresei]

it's a great thing to work with a team to try and find the solution to a problem. unfortunately, this means you will either eventually find the solution, or give up trying.

[@kirabrown2656]

When I first played WoW - with the 2 week free trial - you want to know what I did in that second week, once the limitation began to press in? I ran. I ran from Dun Morogh to Booty Bay, then from Ratchet to Thousand Needles, a mid-teens Dwarf Hunter dying over and over and over and over just to see what was over the next hill. I knew my time was limited and I wanted to see as much of the world as I could. And I fell in love with wow through that experience, but after I had the game the deeper I got and the more I played with others the less welcome I felt until I eventually left.

[@TheXVodkaXFairy]

There's something about imagining a dwarf speeding up a hill and dying repeatedly only to speed up the same hill that just makes me smile. Making your own fun like that is what role-playing games were (at least to me) what role-playing was meant to be about. It does bum me out that not playing the 'right way' means that people think they get a free pass to bully/dictate the play style of other people who just wanna have a good time.

[@hoodiesticks]

I did the exact same thing in WoW Classic a few years ago. After it became clear the game wasn't for me, I just took an in-universe vacation. My druid had just unlocked his shadow wolf thingy that let me stealth past enemies, so I just wandered around. I even took screenshots and compiled them into a travel journal of sorts. It remains my best memory with the game, and it genuinely made me feel like I was on an adventure, carving my own path. I actually got to engage with the world and its environmental storytelling more, now that I wasn't following quest markers. After checking out almost every zone in the game (and even briefly leveling an Alliance alt to see their cities), I ended my journey, my character, and my account all at once by jumping into the depths of Blackrock Mountain.

[@jaywulf]

@@hoodiesticks Totally got that. My best memories of the game was standing on a mailbox in Bloodhoof handing out bags to noobs. Nothing brought that feeling of helping others back. Not any expansion, not Classic re-relase.

[@nilesta]

Some of my best memories of WoW are running through the tram tunnel between Iron Forge and Stormwind (because I wanted to see what was in it), seeing the Naga and the treasure chest, then being immensely disappointed when I figured out it didn't exist in the overworld. The death run of newbie elfs trying to get to Ironforge, and going back in my 20-30s to escort a few. Riding around the world on my first slow-ass mount, just because I could. On my server there was a thing where a bunch of level 1 undead ran to Glodshire, with a few higher level priests, and caused a zombie invasion. It was amazing.

[@HelenHunt69]

I joined the game, met my spouse and am in a guild with decades old friends, we still raid/m+ to this day.

[@kurlykrenins]

1:21:22 "The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience." - Dune

[@Mr_Wallet]

Something that often gets overlooked regarding paratext and the worship of skilled players: players can be absolutely brutal about any deviations in play from the expected standard, including ones which are objectively superior to the instrumental goals. There is an implicit assumption among most players that they are at the end of history, and that no further innovations in playing the game will be forthcoming, and even that all the relevant tricks of the patch that landed 10 days ago have already been completely figured out by the broader community; new strategies are perpetually impossible for anyone to discover, because surely someone would have thought of it by now. Anyone who is not at the absolute top of the recognized hierarchy is absolutely excoriated by allies if they attempt anything outside the "meta", regardless of lack of evidence that the unusual tactic won't work. This includes strategies so powerful that, should the "experts" discover them later, they become standard practice overnight, often requiring developer intervention to limit their dominance. But it doesn't matter how overpowered the strategy is; if it's not yet adopted by the elites and the community at large, it's is utterly unacceptable to attempt, even in relatively low-stakes situations; you are "throwing" if you dare to use something unfamiliar, unless you've earned the esteem of the entire community by being a truly top player. I suffered through this several times when I played League of Legends, where Gold-level players were utterly intolerant of any unorthodox tactics, and consistently threatened to report me to game administrators to be banned; only to have top players discover and adopt the same strategies weeks later. The worship of orthodoxy even at the expense of instrumental results is strange and fascinating to me... I'm sure it bears some psychological relationship to "that's the way we've always done it" thinking.

[@Patashu]

'end of history' is such a good cross-genre analogy to draw, woah

[@GeneralBolas]

While the issue you bring up manifests as worship of orthodoxy, I think the core of the problem is simpler: people are afraid to waste their time. The problem with researching new strategies is that most new strategies fail. Most unorthodox tactics will not bear fruit. People spend hours and hours banging away at some theorycrafted strategy and have nothing to show for it. If you're in a middling guild, and you want to succeed, you *could* spend a lot of time trying to figure things out. Or you can just do what the successful people do. And while the former *might* allow you to succeed better, the latter already has evidence that it works. Indeed, one of the reason the upper-tier guilds are successful is because they have the time to invest in trying stuff out. Lower-tier guilds that have less time to play the game don't want to waste that time to try something that probably won't work. And yes, this quickly metastasizes into deification and worship.

[@Mr_Wallet]

@@GeneralBolas I failed to mention (because my comment was getting too long) that my experience was exclusively in the "unranked" mode of the game - specifically the safe haven for experimentation that wouldn't spoil an important skill ranking. It's an ideal carve-out for people to experiment against other players in an even lower-stakes environment than competing in a video game. True, if you're about to have a bad time then you're locked in for 15-45 minutes, which is not trivial. But given that there was also skill-based matchmaking in the unranked system, a predilection towards foolish experiments would be baked into the player's matching. What I basically observed over several thousand games is that most players, on an emotional level, fundamentally do not believe that skill-based matchmaking works, even though they have no argument for how it hypothetically couldn't, and they cannot be argued out of this emotional position before or during the game. And that they're weirdly hostile in the specific carve-out for supposedly low-stakes play where people deliberately go to learn how to play other characters.

[@EphraimGlass]

@@GeneralBolas, You said "if you're in a middling guild, and you want to succeed, you could spend a lot of time trying to figure things out"... The first quote from this video that really hit me was, "It is taken as value-neutral and objectively true that expertise and success are the natural objectives of play and thus, the default mode of play that players owe to those around them. In other words, it's bad manners to be bad at Warcraft." It's the "and you want to succeed" that's the crux of things. I don't just want to succeed, I want to succeed on my own terms. Which is to say, I don't want to read a guide or install a mod and just follow instructions to win. My favorite thing about games is "the pleasure of finding things out", to borrow a great phrase. I don't think I'm alone in that but it's often just taken as a given that outcomes are more important than processes. More than anything, that's the attitude that makes a game feel like a second job to me. If I'm not permitted to enjoy the process of pursuing a goal and am expected to find joy only in the achievement of the goal, my motivation to play dwindles.

[@GeneralBolas]

@@EphraimGlass I understand and I can agree with that. But I was specifically explaining why it is that these people deify the paratext industry and dogmatically insist on following the lead of the best players: because it *works.* Its the path of least resistance. You want "the pleasure of finding things out," and more power to you. But many people are more interested in the goal than the path towards achieving that. And to some degree, I get the feeling that WoW has evolved to prioritize such play. If they're designing bosses *assuming* that players are using heavy mod support, then the bosses they're designing have to be difficult enough that solving them manually requires a *huge* time investment. A time investment that only professional and semi-pro players can reasonably invest. It's a feedback loop: if solving the game requires *days* of effort, most people will gravitate towards pre-made solutions... or just not play the game. Which leaves the player base as one that's divided between those who can afford to *spend* days to solve the game and those who feed off of those solutions. The rest of the potential playerbase just bounces off WoW.

[@TalkingVidya]

Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.

[@lagg1e]

The curse of multiplayer. The accusation that you hold others back, because your presence forces others to rely on you. You just cannot play any co-op or team game that has years of history.

[@beatnik09]

I think this misses the mark of the video. As said multiple times instrumental play and fun are not separate.

[@shinankoku2]

Word.

[@ronnickels5193]

Main reason I quit playing Diablo 3 and multiplayer games in general

[@INeedUrTurnips]

@Your Wrong Moby Dick is about a man trying to kill a whale. No need to read the book now!

[@AverageDrafter]

In Mario Kart, while I was hugging curves and defending my lead my son decided to ram his kart in front of a stage full of Koompas dancing, throw down the controller, jump up, shake his ass shouting "Woo Hoo! Yeah! Let's Party!". I've never been more pwnd in my whole life. Not only was I playing THIS game incorrectly, I was playing EVERY game incorrectly. GG son.

[@HarbingerOfDuh]

Wholesome content right here, +1,000,000

[@KetsubanSolo]

@@HighOctane01 as long as you're not grieving ofc

[@xiphosmaniac]

LMAO damn, you won the race but your son beat the game. absolutely amazing

[@whitemoose8667]

Ill take an exaggerated and possibly made up story for 500 Regis

[@andeggbreaks]

@@whitemoose8667 literally what about this story is in any way exceptional or unusual

[@slackerman9758]

The “stand here and do what you are told” aspect of raids is what made me stay away from them. I mean, why would I trade the freedom of doing what I want on Friday evenings to get, over a period of months, slightly better items where I would get to stand somewhere different and do what I was told.

[@Frameygamey]

To get better items? You literally answered the question. My question would be “why would I keep playing an mmo without achieving the obvious goal of getting better gear”

[@slackerman9758]

@@Frameygamey Oh, so your idea of “play” is to stand in a spot and do what you are told. Your idea and my idea of play are apparently different.

[@Grarlic]

​@@Frameygamey The burning question is "why do I want purple items if I have to raid for months?" My answer is that I don't and would rather do 5-mans or play Smash Bros.

[@Frameygamey]

@@slackerman9758 Yes they are, I would prefer to actually progress in the game

[@slackerman9758]

@@Frameygamey If doing exactly what you are told (and getting yelled at when you don’t) is how you want to spend your free evenings, good on you. Not what I consider fun, though. You don’t have to play that game, you know.

[@Temzilla2]

It's so wild just having everything that is said in this video permanently internalized in your BONES because you've been playing and experiencing it all for over a decade playing WoW then having it described effectively with words. The battle between free play and instrumental play in chapter 1 is just so engrained in your blood that you don't even realize it happening but you feel it happening. The weird psychological effect of the vault on guild dynamics and the overall strange takes on loot (As well as the weirdness of low end players roleplaying as elite players.) is so incredibly relatable. The two identical hallways example is present in an endless number of video games, the first of which that pops up in my mind being the Wintertodt boss in old school runescape, where 90% of any given bossing group picks the east side of the boss (by default the "right" side) and there are funny micro meme about "right gang" etc. The feeling of the "squeeze" of paratext pushing all the players to play more efficiently and not just the players interested in optimizations, because of the social pressure. I have a theory that this is also a source of some of the toxicity in the playerbase, because they are simply so familiar with the expert play patterns and a deviation from that is seen as that person wasting their time. Also the wow classic discussion being initially about difficulty, and then players just kind of realizing en masse that classic was being "run" by the optimal play, top tier raider bros.. This whole video almost feel cathartic with how much it resonates as true to anyone who's been playing or even been paying close attention to wow over the years, and how it's been shaped by all these factors.

[@leonardorossi998]

I remember playing in high school, on a private server (Wrath of the Lich King). It was around 2009-2010. I played for one year and a half. Then I got to raiding. I was playing a paladin, which at that time meant I had to deal with adds (which, being a private server, behaved unpredictably). The gist of the raid was: We woud be called to join We would be instructed on how to do the boss by the higher ranked members of the guild (aka: they read the guide online). You would be yelled at if you went off schedule, or you asked for explanations You performed the instructions and the rotations You would be rewarded with a piece of equipment that did not really change anything: sure, your numbers were a bit higher, but you would have kept doing the same stuff all over again. Very quickly I realized it was the equivalent of an office job. School was literally more fun than that. I just stayed before there were a few people whose company I enjoyed, and leaving would have felt like abandoning them. But it did not last forever. The part I had fun with was trying to solo dungeon content. Simply because it felt like doing something that was not guaranteed to work, and having to rely on my ability to solve problems to do it, because the server had bugs that the official ones did not have enough to make the guides unreliable.

[@feykingjulian]

@@leonardorossi998 i completely relate to your experience! for me i realized i simply have more fun in experiencing things and figuring them out for myself than in following a guide (or person summarizing a guide). this seems to be a huge rift in the playerbase, those who define the game by "following the rules"/premade optimization vs those who define the game by "figuring it out"/asking questions and getting answers.

[@Frommerman]

When you say two identical hallways, I immediately thought of the north and south stairs in Lumbridge castle. Everybody, LITERALLY EVERYBODY, uses the south stairs, in 100% of cases, no matter what, even though both staircases are equidistant from the bank at the top of the castle. Nobody would ever use the north stairs. Ever.

[@Afflictamine]

@@Frommerman I'm pretty sure its because the back door to the castle is closer to the south stairs. I noticed this literally the other day when I was playing lmao. If you want to head in the direction of Draynor then it is faster to use the south stairs. If you want to head to Varrock then it doesn't matter which stairs you use since you end up walking out the front of the castle anyway

[@NormanVN]

@@Afflictamine it's also closer to the kitchen, and importantly the basement where the rfd chest is. And closer to the spinning wheel. South stairs have everything useful. North stairs only take you to the bank.

[@KingsandGenerals]

I would prefer not to get called out like that.

[@jimmyjazz2063]

😂

[@ry8539]

woah random

[@GojiMet86]

This is why I have tended to stick to playing by myself. When I play GTA V, I drive the buses and do my thing, or when playing Minecraft, I stick to digging my tunnels and exploring areas alone. It's been a decade since I've played with other players online. Less fun when most people online are interested in grinding it out.

[@MrMephistoMori]

"Someone calls Wallace a bad player. No one disagrees." Why do I find that line so brutally poetic and beautiful and sad? I'm not even past the intro and already I've paused the video just to have this deep moment of contemplation and reflection with myself and my relationship to games and even more broadly play and art... Dan, you're more than a brilliant video essayist. You're a brilliant mind. Period.

[@WowRobbynn85]

Feels nice to see roleplayers get a bit of the spotlight in a video like this. Roleplay is so dear to my heart - so many stories, so many memories and friends.

[@cara3566]

RP on wow can be really fun. The large scale events the community organizes on its own is amazing.

[@pisschungus9583]

What do you even do in roleplay. Do you just sit around and pretend youre doing stuff by typing?

[@TechneMakre]

@@pisschungus9583 its basically making a story between you and who you rp with, building on it a bit each time 'why though' to have fun and enjoy good company, of course so yes sometimes its chilling in an area and typing out what your character is doing, and sometimes its a full fledged battle with a mob, or a duel with another player (at least that's what i've seen in other mmos, i've never played wow)

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

I was never a full-on roleplayer, but i nthe few MMOs I played I always went right for the designated-roleplay server. Playing with interesting people is always better than playing with optimal characters, and having some space to inhabit the world more completely pays off in a way non-multiplayer games can't.

[@trexpaddock]

It breaks my heart, that Role Play, in a Role Playing Game, is so often forgotten, marginalized, and punished.

[@thereisnospoon205]

This some high quality guild drama where a famous KZbinr brought receipts, love it

[@bartz0rt928]

That end quote is one to remember. The discussion of free versus instrumental play has given new words to something I've struggled with for a while: I'm bad at games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, and I think my problem can be explained with these concepts. The games appear to focus on free play, where you just chill out, grow some beans or collect fossils, and I generally like playing games in that way. However, behind this wholesome veneer I can _feel_ all sorts of systems, timers and progression gates that lend themselves to optimization, and through optimization, more desirable outcomes. I get the urge to aggressively min-max to achieve these most desirable outcomes, but I know that if I do that I'll end up playing the game in a way the designers didn't want me to and I ultimately won't enjoy; too instrumentally. My FarmVille farm was just a big field of soy. I also just really suck at the fishing minigame in Stardew Valley, and I hate it.

[@Akires23]

I had a ton of fun with Animal Crossing until I followed a guide for crossbreeding flowers and getting on every day to water and reposition any new hybrids I got. It burned me out and I wish I had never done it. Going back now still doesn’t feel the same.

[@olorwen18]

Likewise, though I don't play WoW or other similar games, I tend to play games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing intensely until I burn out. I recently started playing Stardew again (I exited out of a Stardew game to watch this video, actually) and it articulated a great deal of what's felt frustrating about returning to the game: I either find myself doing instrumental play or feeling like I'm not "good" at the game because I haven't optimized it enough. It'd be nice to let myself do freer play in these games, but it's astonishing how difficult it is to get out of this min-maxing mindset, even in a single-player game.

[@veelogation3890]

I got a mod that changed the fishing minigame to something that I preferred. I think that helped with the chill feeling. I also feel myself going toward mix-maxing sometimes, but I find myself thinking in circles and getting bored of homework and not actually playing. I think I use Stardew Valley as a challenge to myself not to min max, because (IMO) nothing in the game is ruined by going slow or not trying. Sometimes I'll have a goal like to finish a dungeon but it'll be constrained to just that. Interestingly, I've been replaying the game with Stardew Valley Expanded installed which adds a lot to the game including some quality of life features. Now that I have more farm land I don't want the pressure of using so much energy on, I've optimised it for value just so I'm not having to put effort into thinking about it as much. Or, more recently, one of the areas I've turned into a sort of cafe-looking place with some bee houses and fruit trees but otherwise only decorations that don't require maintenance.

[@PinkManGuy]

The moment I realized Feng Shui was a thing in Animal Crossing I absolutely lost my marbles and destroyed the aesthetic of my home just for some benefits... In a silly game about animal neighbors and catching beetles...

[@irvingwashingtonable]

I completed every single thing in community center except the fishing ones. Fishing is the worst

[@doomstadt2371]

Nothing says "death to fun" quite like turning an adventure game into an office job. I joined a guild 6 months into WoW, and quit the entire genre about 3 months later. Sorry, i just wanted to have fun.

[@hpintrepid]

Really love the Jon Bois/Secret Base shoutout at the credits. I'm so glad the style is spreading. Truly a fantastic outline for compelling storytelling from a medium that is so obsessed with the noise and grandiose, the simplicity displayed by both you, and by Bois/Secret Base, is such a welcome calm from otherwise chaos. Thank you for these wonderful stories!

[@StanleyFlinn]

the wild thing about it is that, and I'm not saying Jon didn't develop the style deliberately, but so much of it's conventions idosyncracies grow out of Google Earth of all things. I'm watching a WOW video with aesthetics borne out of Jon Bois drawing football plays on top of football stadiums in google earth and then just layering more and more content and style into the format until something sublime comes out the other side.

[@spyczech]

BobbyBroccoli is my other favorite pioneer of this style, his recent one about the guy who faked discovering a new element was so good and the visualization helped my squishy humanities brain understand it

[@benjaminkiaunis]

Came here to say this as well! The Jon Bois influence is strong here, and it's a great method of storytelling.

[@andrewmeyer2036]

I was thinking the same thing! Love the statistical analysis angle with every graph/graphic.

[@Glazius7]

Digital media can provide a truly enormous canvas to work on and more people need to take advantage of that.

[@LAAV69]

I'm not sure if this experience is related to the topic of the video. I started playing the original 1987 Final Fantasy recently and made a party consisting of the Warrior, Thief, White Mage, and Black Mage. A couple of sessions into my playthrough I pulled up an online list of all the game's spells to see what my mages' paths are going to look like. In the process of doing that I came to discover that a lot of the spells in the NES/Famicom version of the game are bugged as to be useless or outright non-functional. This led me to reading up on the bugs elsewhere in the game and found that the Thief is statistically less efficient at defeating enemies had that character slot been filled by a second Fighter. For a moment, I had the feeling I should start a new game and follow some "optimized" party configuration (like 3 Monks and 1 Red Mage or some such). I didn't follow through with that mostly because I was a considerable way into the game. But the result of this is that I have an amusing newfound fondness for my Thief. He's the substitute Fighter who does his best and boy howdy I can tell just by playing that he doesn't bring a lot to the battle and dies easily. But I want to protect the little guy; it has become a little narrative in my head that brings me closer to this relatively light-on-narrative game (compared to FFII). It's not optimized, it's not the best party configuration, but it feels so good because it creates a story of struggle against the odds - which is fitting for a game about fighting monsters and saving the world. I found out that each class can develop into higher tiered versions of their roles (e.g. Fighter into Knight). I'm gonna be so pumped when my lil useless Thief becomes a useless Ninja.

[@clackjaw4017]

If you want to suck all the joy out of that game the most optimized setup is 2 fighters and 2 red mages. The red mages just buff the fighters and you steamroll the game. Long live your thief.

[@redpup112]

I'm personally more of a Monk guy myself, but the Thief deserves more credit for trying his best. Also, later versions do make the Thief more... powerful (?) but I don't think that changes any strategies. Also also, I'm always happy to see people learn about the weird rat tail promotion side quest that makes all of your silly little guys into silly _but buff_ guys!

[@Induratize2]

As someone apart of the DS3 Speedrunning community I am happy you mentioned that your enjoyment can coexist with the speedrunning strategies regardless of how insane True Any% runs are. You would be surprised at how many people insult speedrunners and the runs due to us using extreme strategies and glitches. It is a running joke that we make fun of when people tell us that "Glitched runs aren't real speedruns".

[@minerman60101]

I remember all the idiotic comments like that about Elden Ring runs that uses the zip glitch

[@Imperial_Squid]

I think more people need to learn that using a few speedrun techniques doesn't mean you're ruining the game, once the game is in your hands it's yours to do as you please (death of the author and all that)... I was having a fucking miserable time doing the Master Trials for LoZ BotW and just decided to cheese it thinking the speedrunners would've found a few good tricks... I ended discovering that wall clipping was a thing and actually pretty accessible so I spent an hour learning that and loved it! Was it "true to the game" in that I didn't spend another 30hrs being miserable? Maybe... Was it a blast to just break the game anyway? Fuck yeah it was!

[@generatoralignmentdevalue]

I'm an outsider, but I always thought the glitches were the point.

[@SimonBuchanNz]

The dumbest complaint about speedrunning by far is "you're not even seeing the game" as if the strategy crafting part didn't involve tearing apart every polygon.

[@hairymcnipples]

I don't find glitchier speedruns fun to watch for the most part especially when they're games I have personally played - I want to see actual, but highly optimised, gameplay because it's what I find fun - but the idea that glitch heavy runs aren't real speedruns is entirely ridiculous. Plenty of games have categories with high levels of conventional play if that's what you find fun but there's no reason to piss on someone else's enjoyment.

[@Astral161]

God this is such an illuminating video. You never cease to dramatically shift my perspective on topics by providing context, and information when you post a new video...

[@snarkywriter1317]

We “Wallaces” of the world appreciate this analysis. I particularly love that you cited your sources. As a psychologist I’ve always been fascinated by the social construction of games and gaming, and the motivational factors that drive people to engage with games in specific ways through specific sets of behaviors. I went through a spate where I tried online multiplayer games (specifically Fallout 76 since I am a fan of the Fallout franchise and ESO since I am also a fan of the Elder Scrolls franchise), and I really do feel like I made a mistake in trying them, for the reasons you articulate. As someone who is firmly motivated by what you define here as “free play” mechanics and system design, the extremely instrumental nature of these multiplayer games, their instrumentally motivated player communities and paratextual content, and the developers’ general focus on maximizing engagement through forming feedback loops with the most vocal members of their player communities (who are almost exclusively instrumentally motivated players) all came together to make me feel like my roleplay-centric, non-combat oriented, story-driven preferences and playstyle were neither supported nor at all wanted by basically anyone involved with these games, especially as the games were updated and evolved while I played them. While I gave each game a good couple years of play or so each, and did reach high levels in both, it definitely wasn’t how I wanted to spend my leisure time ,and while a fascinating source of behavioral data and study, even that wasn’t enough to overcome how badly my motivational preferences clashed with the games’ inherent designs and surrounding social and paratextual environments. It’s a problem that I think a lot of publishers and development teams are trying to solve, but they seem to be unable to do so since it’s a problem their accompanying communities don’t actually see as a problem, and that’s the real issue to overcome (not that I think that’s even possible, sadly).

[@MK.5198]

So glad, first of all, to see that jon bois' animating with google earth style is spreading. the recognition may not be public per se, but the real ones know. Can't wait to see what dan and bobby come up with for it as time goes on.

[@woodsbabe2505]

Yesssss Bobby Broccoli fans unite!

[@kwastimus]

clocked it as soon as i saw the timeline. it’s a really slick presentation format

[@hrwise89]

I had assumed Jon Bois was somehow involved after starting the video but before reading the description. It is definitely a fun style. The music was a little Jon Bois-y as well, though not quiiiite as sad-lonely-sax-y

[@thepassingstatic6268]

I was just thinking that. Once the 1st 10 seconds of the video started I was like "am I watching a Dorktown video?"

[@FransLebin]

Bobby owns. He's beating Bois at his own game

[@yyzhed]

Noticing the "race to the world first, presented by FTX" logo in some of the footage made me connect two concepts. It's the financialization of everything all over again.

[@geoffreyprecht2410]

Capitalism ruins *literally* everything.

[@LEOTomegane]

that's a special kind of ironic easter egg ain't it

[@Patashu]

the Dan Olson Cinematic Universe extends its scope

[@BunnLilah]

I had no words to explain why I lost interest in Overwatch other than "it's not fun anymore" until I watched this. It explains my issues so well! I always wanted to play the character I liked the most, but if everyone else picked certain characters and YOU didn't pick the ones that matched, your own damn team would shit on you and blame you if they lost, and if they won then they'd say it was in spite of you. I play games to have fun with the side effect of feeling good if my team wins. But it's not fun to be yelled at for trying to enjoy yourself. It's a shame because I really enjoyed Overwatch but the playerbase ruined it for me.

[@TheCyndigirl47]

This has unlocked ancient memories. Our guild/raid leader would run Molten Core in first-person mode, we'd laugh and ask how he could see anything happening, but didn't get mad at him. Kind of wild in hindsight.

[@PanelHopper]

Every time Dan makes a Wow video, I’m reminded of how little of the game I played back in 2006, when I played it for a month max, because it was in the zeitgeist. It’s the equivalent of watching the first hour of the first episode of a show, then watching the final ever episode of the tenth season. I love learning more about the game.

[@asmodiusjones9563]

Same. Last time I played WoW they were about to add PVP play. I still can help but see it as a Warcraft III spin-off.

[@PanelHopper]

@@asmodiusjones9563 burning crusade was either just about to come out or had just come out when I stopped, my retail copy came on a disc, in the box, something which, I’m told, WoW doesn’t do anymore.

[@_yelo]

As someone who has played WoW sporadically for the last 12 years, a lot of this really struck with me. Whenever I come back from a break I just feel lost, like I've never played the game before. Dungeon strategies are already solved and everyone but me knows them. Not strategies like "don't stand in the fire" or "interrupt the heal" but how to skip entire bosses, and exactly which trash pulls the rogue should cloak through. I've just launched the game for the first time in 3 years, I don't know this, and if I ask I'm called out for it. When I played a bit more seriously around Cata, we always asked if people knew strats and marked locations and mobs before pulls, now I only see that happen with organized raid groups. Groups I can't even join because I don't have the required experience. Also, I found your mention of the Sepulcher hallway very interesting, because every group I have ever been in has gone left. Is this what separates NA from Europe?

[@johnathanwright5216]

Haha same. Right when he started talking about sepulcher and hallways, I was like yup. My guild goes right because I’m a main tank, and they go where I go. Then I joined a pug to gear a dps and EVERYONE goes left and I was like whelp, I guess the trash might be slightly easier going this way. So surely my next raid, as the main tank, we started going left.

[@satibel]

The experience on the other side: people can't fucking do the bare minimum of putting a pillar between them and the boss when they have a target on their head for the 5th time after we explained thrice.

[@tombuis8485]

@@satibel There are people for whom the content just seems to happen around them. There is no amount of chatting in text boxes that will teach them mechanics because they do not care to learn. I usually learn to write it off as a language gap and just let it happen

[@Ashaeron]

This is a common problem for people who don't play the start of an expansion, when everyone else was learning them. You weren't present for the learning period and now you're a detriment compared to another equivalent player. It's not fair, but that's the mindset now. You can find these routes if you go looking for them, though, the guides are out there. Hopefully less impactful in Dragonflight as dungeons will cycle each patch.

[@TheChikius]

"but how to skip entire bosses" - Not to mention sometimes I want to actually experience the dungeon, but I don't get a single second because everyone wants to level their 16th alt as quickly as possible. I barely managed to squeeze out any fun from Shadowlands between an already subpar expansion and how much the game culture has shifted towards optimising play based on rewards. I can only imagine how much sadder the pub experience is for others, at least being a healer main most groups are very reluctant to kick me.

[@BunnLilah]

I love that first quote. It's kind of sad that developers set out to create deep interlocking systems that are beautifully hidden under the art and graphics of a game, and then players take that and reduce it back down into numbers and code.

[@NathanWubs]

It's but it's even harder to ever fully on change that. Even FFXIV devs can't do that. Some developers lean into things like this too like Fromsoft, be elite look up things, etc to become this elite.

[@Somewhere_sometime_somehow]

Yeah, it almost feels like a weird form of vandalism but perpetrated by number crunching type people.

[@SioxerNikita]

The thing is ... That is what people have always been like. You made a radio? Someone will pull it apart and see how each component connects ... Not much different here. People are interested in what is below, and it is a thing they enjoy quite significantly. The problem is when looking it up becomes expected general play, that is when it is sad. There are certainly devs that loves seeing people dissect the systems that they created, and end up discovering quirks they hadn't even known was possible. You are kinda... Ignoring that part.

[@VostokApollo]

@@NathanWubs It cannot be understated how much better of an experience FFXIV is as a result of it being against the rules to use 3rd party software, though. Structurally, functionally, and culturally, FFXIV is a far healther game all around.

[@songbird666]

"Even the social elements of the game, things seemingly free of numbers, become vessels for the propagation of numbers." 47:30 - brought to mind the way 'numbers' become omnipresent in even the most intimate parts of our personal lives; our time, food, family, through the vein of Capital. We have to grind, and because that is the way the 'game' has been shaped by social consensus, we watch the macros of ourselves and our relation to labor even when we're not being observed by a superior. We feel the pressure at all times, work, sleep, or play, to keep an eye on our cooldowns.

[@ZedAmadeus]

It's interesting, I've never heard it described as _free_ vs _instrumental_ play before. It's always been intrinsically motivated vs extrinsically motivated. Cool to know where that originally came from. Also, great music throughout.

[@AnnieAturday]

My girlfriend is actually the sole SIMC dev for the warlock class, and the first thing she said when I linked the video was "oh man, I hope my work isn't pilloried in here" and its funny because you explicitely used the warlock sims, and when I brought that up she was really worried. I'm glad you didn't lambast the people who do spend the time to work on the functionality that everyone uses, and instead focused on the people who focus so much *on* those things, because the people who actually dev for stuff like SIMC are very often the ones chased down with pitchforks and torches when discussion on these sorts of topics are done.

[@alecwest5935]

Yeah the culture isn’t their fault, people are people and those devs making tools for everyone to use in their freetime deserve a lot of respect for doing it. They’re passionate about it and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with using those tools or enjoying that type of play. Even as someone who’s never player WoW, I thank people who make those tools for everyone since they’re useful and, whatever the reasoning is, they’re just making something people like to have.

[@Regis_Philbin]

This is maybe my favorite video on youtube. Obviously the subject matter is right up my alley, but its so well done that I've put it on in the background or passively and have watched it fully probably 10 times at this point and its not that old. Truly my youtube "comfort food", just thought you should know.

[@524mills]

I still remember the first time I realized that the community was going to kill Classic WoW. I was playing some AV on the Alliance side, and for once, we were winning. People in chat were complaining about this, actively encouraging us to lose and do worse so they could continue farming honor. When we got pushed back towards Dun Baldar, the people in the chat were celebrating the game going into an unfun, endless grind between the two armies. They weren't playing for fun. They weren't playing to win. They were playing to lose in a slow, unfun, unengaging way, simply because it was the ideal way to farm honor. I unironically, genuinely, cannot understand why'd you want to waste your time on Earth doing that. Deliberately losing at a game over the course of hours, just to get marginally more honor than you would by playing seriously and actually having fun.

[@wmcarter6096]

On my server, for horde, the serious honor grinders would quit less than 10 minutes in if they released we wouldn't win fast enough. It was better for honor gain to leave and start a new AV

[@nyanko8972]

A similar thing happens on the server I’m playing on. I play bgs for fun and I’m sure other people do too. However, there’s always someone in the chat that’s complaining about the score or about playing badly. They just want to finish the game as fast as possible. Why do these people play games if not to have fun…

[@Bloodlyshiva]

"Mostly because that particular grind was/is the most hellish, and anything to make that even slightly faster...." Is probably what the reasoning is.

[@ItWasSaucerShaped]

Same reason the same species of tech bro never factor mortality into the equation or even think about it conceptually when building a system: they have no clue at all that their time is limited and zero appreciation for what it means to actually waste time.

[@TaylerJDust]

They are playing to have fun, it's just that what they find fun is different from what you find fun

[@_kirb_]

This video was shocking for me because it made me realize that I constantly idealized "free play"...I used to sit around in awe of other people doing it, having more fun with that than actually playing the game. I also sucked at instrumental play and never had a guild, but I ONLY did instrumental play solely because I was too afraid to do any free play. I grew up like this. It's wild to me that anyone would actually hate someone that just wanted to play their own way. Edit: I kiiiind of got around it in singleplayer games that let the player have a degree of freedom. But, yeah, not the same.

[@lcmiracle]

Nah, fuck your mum

[@glaszn]

I actually play the game for 15 years, but never had a problem for not being "instrumental" ... I only buy when price for expansions was off, play when pvp sessions was ending and now Im just playing free with my 20 lvl twink.

[@Yulenka-]

I never played WoW, but what you said sounds a lot like real life, haha. "Free playing" IRL must be the most enjoyable way to live, yet it's scoffed at way too often 💀

[@LochNessHamster]

@@glaszn Free playing with a twink who's 20 sounds like a good time.

[@ifnyou]

@@Yulenka- Yes, the parallel with IRL is quite close, actually. A happy and satisfying life involves as much free play and as little instrumentality as possible, but one of the main blocks to achieving this is not that you run out of money or whatever, but the intense social pressure to take on the same anxious, miserable instrumental style of life that everyone around you is suffering through.

[@Geist363]

Very interesting, this really captures for me how I feel playing modern WoW. Its a game until you reach endgame, then it turns into some kind of continued performance assessment.

[@Somewhere_sometime_somehow]

Thats a nice way of putting it

[@drizzy11244]

That's exactly why I stopped playing wow.

[@RobotPanda15]

This is such a great case study on not just Warcraft, but multi-player co-op/PvP in general and toxic activity geared SOLELY towards being the most efficient and optimized method of playing any video game. Really well done.