Protecting MMORPG Players From Themselves

[@madseasonshow]

Shoutouts to phase 3 incursions. Episode #4 of MMO Theory. Check out the rest here: kzbin.info/aero/PL0hAOfdoZQkJHhrPzWFJ-nFUwbpFO15Ll

[@Zaudejis]

Btw "He told you so".

[@Driftbye]

Praise phase 3 incurions, gameplay that allows me to eat dinner and watch my backlog of shows and movies.

[@baddogedn3943]

I was there with you in classic 2019, I saw you in a bg while doing my r14 grind, and I asked if you where the guy, and you said you where. One of the highlights while ranking back then

[@kylehumble4793]

shoutout to phase 3 incursions xD hahahahaha legit could not and hated phase 3 for that, did a few no kill runs and quit, sad to see that it was the meta

[@ChessJew]

Sid Meier said something like, "Players will always try to optimise the fun out of a game," and WoW is an every day testament to that.

[@jjstraka1982]

Players have been more detrimental to WoW than Blizzard ever has.

[@TheTundraTerror]

First off, that was Soren Johnson who was lead designer for Civ 3 and 4. Not Sid Meier. Second off, the blog post where he said that was talking about exploits. Lastly, his conclusion was that developers need to learn to respect the time of the player.

[@hachijospaniard5643]

And at this point he only cares to launch historical 4X game after another, and never making something different like a true Alpha Centauri spiritual sucesor. What´s you point again?

[@jjstraka1982]

@@hachijospaniard5643 what's stopping you from making it??

[@hago3779]

To be fair, when most games mechanics are boring chores players usually will want to speed up the process for the reward.

[@TheTaintedeclipse]

My younger brother got High Warlord back in 2005, I was living with him during that time and man it was insane to watch him do it. Gotta remember that realms weren't connected at that time so your pvp battleground pops were entirely dependent on whether the opposing faction on your server was queuing and had a healthy population. He did it on the server Medivh I believe, which was a medium to low density population at the time and he became a complete zombie to get it. Online 24/7 he would sleep in-between waiting queue's with a pair of headphones on max volume so the GONG sound of a queue pop would wake him up as being a medium pop server it could easily be 40mins between each game. Once he started reaching the higher brackets the other PvP'ers on the ladder reached out to him to have a sit down and organise taking turns to who could be High Warlord next so they didn't kill themselves grinding to compete against each other. This worked out well, as they would reach out to the top 12 on the ladder and setup the system so everyone wins. Well, that is, until it got to my brother's turn that is, as he had 3 other players decide NAH I don't care that you have a fair system in place, I'm not interested in waiting so I'm going to take first. Poor bastard went that entire week pushing harder then any other previous warlord on that server in months to get the number one spot, and in the end he got it! Two Months later Blizzard released the pvp tokens so everyone could buy High Warlord gear. He is still salty about that to this day.

[@MissPopuri]

Gif gud Mf’ing man I love you 😘

[@NCArtVT]

Great story! I don't recall a token in Vanilla that made the ranking gear obsolete (EDIT: December 5 2006 was prepatch 2.0.1 which allowed honor points to be spent as currency, a few weeks before TBC launch) My server had only a few R14 but I remember they were a force to reckon with and to this day I still remember their names. Ruckus (Orc warrior) and Brazen (UD Mage) and the Alliance was Grantham (H Paladin)

[@Sodam.insane]

@@NCArtVTprepatch for tbc allowed all rank14 gear to be purchased for honor. So I assume his brother did his grind very late into vanilla wow. I’m not taking anything away from his achievement because I couldn’t get past rank 11 before I questioned my mental state, but I enjoyed buying full warlords set ans weapons in prepatch :)

[@dozzer88]

Wow😅

[@CoNteMpTone]

We need this story being turned into a live action movie.

[@DirkusTurkess]

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Average mmo discord.

[@alewis514]

and most girls in MMOs are guys that want free gold and epics. This deception worked much more often than it should.

[@Biouke]

@@alewis514 MMORPG = Many Men Online RolePlaying Girls

[@Griefhand]

@@alewis514 these people can smell losers from a mile away so they try to get advantage of it like everywhere else

[@mrbigglezworth42]

@@BioukeOn the internet no one knows you’re a federal agent.

[@ryodark]

That story about the social engineering fake friend deranking scheme against the bracket breaker is completely bonkers.

[@CyborgNinja442]

Fr, that's some sociopathic scheming weirdness.

[@sean7269]

Yeah, people took bracket braking very seriously as it can be selfish (and the people that make the brackets can be very selfish too - ie not letting anyone other than their friends/popular people get the top spots) wonder what the back story was for that guy

[@Obelion_]

look into eve online stories, they go abosolutely bananas. i think one guy infiltrated another corp (like a big guild) for several years, playing with them all day to the point he had access to all their ressources and stole all their assets. its equivalent to taking everyones gear away basically and they were basically gone after that. people will bully each other into quitting on the regular. theres even a semi confirmed story someone drove to another guys house and cut the internet cable to make him disconnect in the perfect time so his titan ship could be killed (which is like multiple months of grind for an entire guild to make). it has its own charm but it got way too toxic for me, but the stories are golden. also any griefing is completely allowed unless you involve real money etc

[@willyphallicus9958]

Pathetic really.

[@adamgroszkiewicz814]

Back when gaming was real. Vanilla WoW had all the best chisme.

[@Melsharpe95]

Remember: When they originally introduced the Jedi Class to Star Wars: Galaxies they could be PERMA-KILLED. Yes, that's right. They introduced a Class that you not only had to grind for, but would also die permanently when they got killed. 1st gen Jedis were all scared to do any content because it meant a single fuck up would set you back years.

[@thearmourboy3254]

Thing is though the first ones didn't really grind, they just kind of stumbled into getting it. Those that came later are the ones that did all of the grinding. I ended up doing 31/32 professions before mine unlocked. The first few that unlocked did like 5 to 7 and most of them had already done that just playing. The first Jedi unlock on my server Tarquinas, never even leveled it, he never wanted to play Jedi.

[@juliettbravobravo]

Damn that is wild.

[@Peacefrogs3854]

@@thearmourboy3254 hey man! could you tell me how long it took for a "short" or "long" profession to finish it? the only thing i got is, that it was a "long grind" but i have literally no idea how much time it would end up taking someone to achieve that.

[@thearmourboy3254]

@@Peacefrogs3854 alot of it depended on how many credits you had and just how much you were willing to spend. Something like Image Designer could be done in one night basically, however something like a crafting profession could take several day to several weeks depending on resource availability and credits. Some of them got easier with time as people figured out how to afk them like with entertainer and combat ones usually weren't bad but could slow down pretty good if you didn't do them in the right order.

[@Peacefrogs3854]

@@thearmourboy3254 alright, sounds horrible xD, thanks for the answer

[@Spumoon]

Started in BC so I've never had an understanding of the Honor system. I've just been watching "HK: Recruit" pop up over dying players' heads for 15 years with no concept of what it means behind the scenes.

[@drtaint]

Lol I remember this. As a horde player, killing alliance players you'd see HK: Private (since that was the lowest rank for alliance). For months I just assumed it meant it was my own private kill and I got all the points for it or something.

[@Herttaseiska]

it baffles me that they just stopped giving ranks after tbc

[@Whitemale112]

They still have ranks they're just tyed to cr rather than time spent

[@mancamiatipoola]

First time seeing HK i thought to myself "hunter killer". Yep, i am a freaking hunter killer! XD Then i discovered that building in Valley of Spirits where the PVP vendors were and i was like "ohhhhhh, so this gear is for hunter killers then! nice!" XD

[@Fabriciod_Crv]

One thing to point out is that these systems are just fundamentally awful, one transforms the game into a job (Rank 14) and the other completely negates the player's choices (Jedi grind).

[@rept7]

MMO players: "Why don't more MMOs have super exclusive and crazy rare items?!" Game devs that know about WoW honor: "You don't want that! You don't know!"

[@MissPopuri]

Got gud or something

[@Anders-vl6kk]

You think you do, but you dont?

[@iller3]

Hasn't stopped koreans from making their games pretty much nothing BUT that kind of grind

[@KontrolStyle]

also in EQ we had to camp key fragments to make keys to get into the 'secret' raids. It was amazing for the time, but players nowadays would just quit rather than camping the mobs for the pieces.

[@86Corvus]

Ambitious peoole dony mind insane challenges. And thats who its made for. A casual cannot comprehend its not for them because they cannot fathom the world doesnt revolve around them.

[@scriptohmy7834]

Fun facts about the Jedi grind: 1. There was no Jedi profession originally, it was added post-launch at the behest of LucasArts. 2. When it was added, it was four randomly selected professions, one of which was "silent." (the holocron said nothing). 3. This was later increased to 3+2 silent, 3+3, 3+4, and 3+5, so you'd need to pick master 8 of the 32. This was not announced to the playerbase and greatly increased the grind time. 4. During the Hologrind, Jedi were bugged and couldn't finish their skill tree, getting stuck at 4444 Guardian. This was because you needed Apprenticeship exp to train Master boxes, but Jedi couldn't get that exp, since it only came from teaching other players skill boxes (like 1xxx medic could be taught by anyone with 1xxx medic). This was never fixed. 5. This version of Jedi could wear armor, lightsabers did kinetic damage (good armor had 80-90% kinetic resist), and if they died too often the character would permanently die. 5.1 Permadeath was a rolling total over... 7, 14, or 21 days, I don't remember which. I think it was 5 deaths over the course of 21 days, but I honestly don't remember. 6. During Publish 9, the Jedi grind was completely changed and was timegated, *and* the Force Ranking System was implemented a little while afterward. This is basically the SWG equivalent of r14 grind, which was mathematically impossible to accomplish without cheating (fight clubbing) and account sharing due to the insane decay each day. The highest you could get, if you were no lifing the game, was around rank 7.

[@placeholdername3206]

I played SWG for 6 months and during that time i only saw ONE single Jedi, and it was just a guy riding past me on a swoop bike. Don't remember the exact year or witch patch, but i remember the WoW open betas were closing in so probably 2003. I remember an old teacher of mine from High School who was a total Star Wars and D&D nerd explained how the Jedi force sensitive system worked, cause this info wasn't widely available and people that did know, were gatekeeping the info. He did the grind while he was recovering from some sort of accident and he was home. Think it took him 6 months and he got off easy he said. Was kind of bummed how it just involved grindin skill trees, it ruined this super secret allure it had.

[@danielgpmarques]

I got rank 14 the month of my birthday. Spent 6 months grinding with a team, being the last of that month with about 18 hours of daily game time - did it all by myself without cheats, but i burned out. I almost skipped my birthday party scared of loose 1 week of grind (or worst).... yeah i rly thought postpone the party since that would be my last week to R14...

[@Sleepy.Time.]

RL friend of mine was the first rogue grand marshal on our server and it pretty much ruined him and he quit the game not long after and never went back

[@brelshar4968]

The Rank 14 grind was the real insanity. Nowadays newer players moan about having to "grind" a factions rep to exalted over the course of a couple weeks.. meanwhile those of us that know get PTSD flashbacks like we were in Viet Nam.

[@Melsharpe95]

Everyone would PvP back in the day because it was easier to get discounts. Sergeant Rank came with a -10% Faction Discount so a couple of PvP matches meant your fast mount and training would be cheaper to buy.

[@Polterbun]

Yeah, and that rank discount would stack with faction discounts. Like, 20% of 1000 gold is 200 haha. It's huge, I would always get at least SGT just for that.

[@tasty8186]

I was a noob 14 year old back in BC and my friends and I still PVP'd towards the end of every level bracket, just because it was *the* thing to do

[@MissPopuri]

What is the discount for Knight rank players?

[@hackintosh3899]

Everyone would pvp because everything was not as min maxed and gear disparity wasn't horrid. Same reason world pvp was active and doing whatever you wanted. In real vanilla I never got past rank 10 (which was VERY easy to do back then) on a mage had the mageblade, AV offhands all the way to pre patch tbc (where we got wellfare rank 14 gear) and I trashed people. I stopped MC the second I got the eph power trinket and never raided again on my "main". My friend didn't even have that level gear on his rogue and we farmed in wpvp bg's most of our play time. Very few people raided and the mentally ill playing wow was like 5 percent where it's probably 75 percent now. I went in AQ 40 saw the grind it would be, respecs it would require if I still wanted to actually have fun pvping, laughed at it and said good luck gentlemen, l'm just gonna hang out with the boys. Those AQ raiders got farmed in pvp. They all had raiding specs, all they did was farm consumes and raid and run dungeons and occasionally went in BG's with bad pvp specs. They couldn't afford the respecs because there wasn't layering and known instant farms or dungeon boosting. You had to go to WAR to farm arcane crystals in silithus caves on the one instance and the only reason me and my buddy did that was 1) it was fun pvping 2) we wanted epic mounts 3) we had to buy those stupid AQ ability/spell scrolls. Now everything is min maxed, everything is broken due to instances, farms, gold buying and selling and bots. Vanilla doesn't work at all similarly to how it did. You would have to remove instance farming completely, lower dungeon farm drops, remove botting and remove boosting completely just to get it even close and you still can't put the jack back in the box due to game knowledge. I was considered the best ele shaman on an alt in vanilla and I had the AB dagger, lol green shield from AV, rank 10 gear, was orc and had engi nades, sappers which maybe 10 percent of the player base even used back. They had raid professions (no one thought engi would end up bis and it wasn't until AQ until people mass rerolled to it, but very few full AQ 40 guilds even existed)) and a gathering. That level gear on my shaman would be a joke in today's playerbase. WoW simply became a game designed by and for incels when Ion took over. you either forfeit your life or you take a back seen as a "sh@#er". He didn't see issues in Classic because that is how incels play current WoW. It's a JOB. No thanks I choose an actual life. To get a wow like experience again you would need easy dungeon gear that = 90 percent of MC gear like it did back then outside weapons and you would need easy to achieve rank 10 gear which is how it was back when millions of jobless people weren't farming rank. The OP warrior worked because you had to give the warriors a carrot on a stick so that you had tanks. When Naxx came out the game completely broke because raiding gear scaled so out of control that it broke the game. It was already breaking in AQ. People all quit Classic Vanilla ater BWL for a reason. PvP breaks when you actually have people doing the content. Any future WoW classic release will be a complete failure without a major overhaul and SOD showed you they have no clue.

[@gustanoid]

@@hackintosh3899 Was interesting to read how things were in the past. Thanks

[@gg2fan]

Someone should have gone to prison for designing the vanilla honor system

[@86Corvus]

Why? Because you think you should be able to reach the top because your mommy told you you are special?

[@Fuel6233]

@@86Corvus put a dent in your keyboard bro? chill tf out it's a joke.

[@BuckScrotumn]

😂😂😂

[@borga6566]

​@@86Corvus You must love the smell of your own farts in the morning lmfao

[@trisnics]

I know this is a unique perspective but I found that things like the ranking system created a lot of interesting and memorable social dynamics. The drama is a part of it. "No lifing" for a goal is part of it. Vanilla had so many parts where having good social skills mattered. As did networking, and yes spending time playing the game. So much so that it's next to impossible to find any other video game with so much social depth and it's hard to find even things in real life that do. It gives a different experience each time you play through and gives a story to each server, one that can be remembered. It seems like Blizzard is intent on taking things like this out of the game. See the handling of the world bosses in SoD. I don't find getting a gear drop, especially one that every other player can get easily, to be anywhere as interesting or exhilarating as the social aspects. This is what the Vanilla game, and even Classic 2019, truly used to have.

[@cattysplat]

Chasing the dragon is a hell of a time. People will destroy their life just to get a little bit closer. MMOs feed the inner degen inside all of us to just keep grinding a little longer, until the sun has come up and we are a mess.

[@Sistik123]

Had a guildmate reach high warlord in Vanilla the day before they changed the entire system to just honor spending lol

[@Davidhenry1210]

He got the eternal glory of finishing the hardest grind in gaming and the title.

[@Sistik123]

@@Davidhenry1210 yea it was the server Scilla he was a warrior named FQ Guild Eternal Sin.

[@dozzer88]

Good Memories

[@86Corvus]

Based gioldmate.

[@mrmacguffin6886]

Did we finally get Madseason’s face reveal on the thumbnail?

[@madseasonshow]

pretty close by the end of my grind honestly

[@CoNteMpTone]

Madseason average viewer face reveal.

[@Dobertson]

Man. There was a mage on fairbanks that had his entire family sharing his account. He was NEVER offline. Held the bg brackets at like 2mil honor for weeks till people paid him to stop.

[@PhattPhatt07]

Lol.. I wonder how much gold or irl money he made out of that. Dude was playing 10D chess while everyone else was playing checkers 😂

[@RaptorJesustology]

ixider was a 1 man show bro no family involved

[@zira-fairbanks381]

I remember this lol.

[@Thoregor]

Games aren't supposed to be jobs.

[@BLACK80085]

Id rather get into a job i atleast get payed here and not pay someone with time or even money. Ive heard someone make a joke that youre gonna have to pay to have job soon, well there you have it, its true in regard to online or games in general the mmorgs especially.

[@brianflowers1498]

Ranking was not a sunk cost fallacy. It was a sunk cost system.

[@jdc673]

Just wondering, everytime they re release classic... why tf do they keep that dogshit system in there when nobody likes it?

[@conanmcclanahan1069]

My brain started to melt around 5:07 into this video... because I realized just how deeply I as a casual player was being "farmed" as a Knight-Captain/Champion who could only PVP after raids. The leaders of that group would constantly call full-halts to our group PVP'ing together, sometimes after only 2-3 games, even though we rarely lost a single game... I'm now 99.99% sure that myself and the one or two other people who would join this group multiple times per week (with all of our raid gear) were just platforms for their GM titles. INSANE!

[@ewelxyn]

My rank 14 grind was the most fun experience i've experimented in video games -playing with great players -almost everyone was friend -playing in a 10 rank 13/4 rank 12 arathi premade -being friend with the opposite factions rankers (they was mind controlling me in AV and letting me dozens of HK when i was in PU and them premading) -Doing roleplay and deathroll when capped/almost capped -Having 20+ bracket 1 spot per week (45 one week with the help of multiboxing people) -Playing against great premades (Gehenass horde, Lucifron horde and crazy horde russian flask premade lol) -Doing 5-0 against some premade They was some drama and some people trying to break (unneffectivly) but it was not that significant and we was more joking about it than anything else. 4 years laters i wouldn't have changed anything.

[@HermannTheGreat]

We never get that time back though despite the then fun

[@trisnics]

Great story, I had a similar experience. I also have NO regrets whatsoever about the time spent on this. It was during peak covid and I was making friends that I still talk to and working with a team to fight against other premades was awesome. I could have been sitting there watching youtube or netflix all day and that would have been a REAL waste of time, this was 100x more memorable and fun.

[@OptionalExtras]

Loved Gandling, was a good time

[@GermanBoy00]

grinding to r14 with all the game and system knowledge, so it can be abused, past the original Vanilla doesnt count. I'm sorry bro, but almost everyone had r14 on 2019 Classic (especially with the layering system) or private servers.

[@Terrortrooper]

SWG was honestly the best thing to ever happen to MMOs. I dearly miss the way gathering, crafting and housing (or rather: player cities!) worked. What a great game that was. Even the Hologrind was fun to some extend.

[@MissPopuri]

Extent

[@cattysplat]

Pre-WoW MMOs were truly magical community mysterious experiences. It's a shame so few ever got to play them.

[@megumei044]

I still have nightmares of my R14 grind back in 2006. 4 months of utter hell. How I kept my full time job during the grind is a mystery to me. Work 8+ hours then pvp from the time I got home until I usually passed out or got 2 hours of sleep. Yeah the gear and weapons were cool to have but my real life health took a huge hit from it all.

[@yakhooves]

I totally remember grinding my way into faceplanting into a Lt. Commander with my original warlock when I played during vanilla in 2005-6. I wasn't that great at PvP, so grinding was all it was. But that said, I was always most proud of that Title compared to any of the other ones I earned during my six or so years of play!

[@deekorbel5259]

My fav title was the Jenkins.

[@yakhooves]

@@deekorbel5259 ah yes! I had that puppy too!

[@Mezchna52]

PvP on my server was people sharing accounts for the Rank 12 grind. I didn't realize that because I was 12, and made it to rank 13 before I list access because of falling grades in school. Most fun I ever had.

[@MissPopuri]

Does this server happen to be Stormreaver US?

[@Aven410]

Been a fan of your work for a while buddy. Keep up the good work!

[@Frogzor17]

8:21 "Armorsmoth" and "Weaponsmoth" got an unreasonable amount of laughter out of me.

[@gpturismo]

Yoshida Naoki talked about this a lot. They said it was a balance for higher end players for them to make it where there was something to do verses had to do. They didn't want to force players into thinking they had to do something, but for some reason most players felt that grinds were necessary, (like relic weapons in FFXIV) even when they were not doing the content where it was required.

[@Lorfo11]

Relic Weapons are especially insane to grind for, up to Endwalker where they decided to have the Manderville Weapons to be acquired/upgraded through a questline which only requires a "couple" of Tomes to get the materials from a NPC. In comparison, Shadowbringers has you farm 6 different items for the last part of a relic, in either Bozja or specific raids. Oh and you need THIRTY of each. That's 180 items to grind, for 20 iLvL (going from 515 to 535), which would bring you to Savage Raids iLvL.

[@gpturismo]

@@Lorfo11 Right, but they aren't necessary for progression unless you are a prog raider. NY was talking about how players will make things necessary even though they aren't NEEDED for their playstyle. Unless, you consider Glamour the endgame ;-)

[@cattysplat]

Insane grinds absolutely exist in FFXIV and there are plenty of nolifers playing 24/7 to get them. All MMOs have this gameplay because there will always be players that seek the never ending challenge and exclusivity of rare items.

[@Lorfo11]

@@gpturismo Well, I never said it was necessary. Hell, as you said, only "hardcore" raiders would go for those for the iLvL. Some other folks still grind for Relics for the Glamour or even just the "challenge" of it. But yeah. People tend to go "I MUST have X or Y, otherwise I'll be left behind" when in most cases, it wouldn't even matter.

[@RFdiamond]

Yet again i'm reminded of MTG's Mark Rosewater. In his words: "Fighting against human nature is a losing battle." and "Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win." Optimizing things is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. So naturally if there is a grind or a challenge, people will inevitably find the fastest / most efficient way to do things, even if they are not fun or detrimental to their health. As a game studio especially in the MMO space it should be a crucial priority to recognize that path and make it fun and entertaining. Back in 2004 gamedesign wasn't nearly as figured out as it is today and the Warlord / Marshal grind became a case study in what not to do if you want your playerbase to not devolve into a toxic, unhealthy mess. Funny enough, those same mechanisms are now intentionally abused for monetary gain, see games like Lost Ark / Diablo Immortal or basically the entire mobile game industry at that point.

[@nathanproper5516]

PvP sparked a very unhealthy drug habit in a few of my good friends just to stay awake to attain and keep rank14

[@Infernal_Elf]

Ohh dam that would be quite the documentary.

[@FearsomeWarrior]

The group of people I ranked with in vanilla and classic made it some of the best times. The skill level you get to them you’re at your height is bananas. After not PVPing a week I was unhappy with my performance. Always took a little more effort to get back to crushing enemies like I did while ranking hard. Great memories charging into a post in AV and taking just because I was able to kill everyone and people saw and healed me. It’s the ultimate MVP move going in and terrorizing the Alliance. Getting whispers, “GO GO GO” and telling me they when they needed mana and to pull back. Guild members that did not pvp wanting to help rank was beautiful too. A mage and priest behind me as a warrior made winning any BG a sure bet.

[@Antiheromf]

I grinded Rank 14 and got Thunderfury on a Rogue in both in vanilla and in Classic. Also got a Warrior to Rank 12 with Hand of Rag in Classic.

[@unfinest]

I have grinded 7x Rank 14(4 of them first gen) and 2x rank 13 between vanilla and classic 😅

[@Antiheromf]

@@unfinest That's crazy, I don't know how you did that lol. My Rogue was gen 1 and I was playing 16+ hours a day between raiding and ranking

[@mattjellymonster1488]

I did rank 14 grind on Khadgar alliance in vanilla. I literally lost my job because of attendance finishing rank 13 and 14… totally worth it though lol

[@winkmarketresearch]

These comments are so fucking funny. I genuinely feel sorry for you guys

[@mattjellymonster1488]

@@winkmarketresearch save your worry’s for another person losing a job at 16 isn’t a big deal…

[@mudd8109]

Legend m8

[@GermanBoy00]

I lost my friends, my girlfriend, got kicked out from school and still never even got to r13. My highest ever was a r12 orc warrior.

[@sirskorge]

We had a friend that was grinding to 14, but loosing his life. We did the dishonorkills for a night after he begged us to play for him.. A week later he thanked us. He now got a real job and a wife. I was the best man.

[@mcfarvo]

It's like flushing all of some friend's drugs down the toilet

[@who-the-fuckgivesafuck]

Good job not getting dishonorkilled irl.

[@oleroy4749]

😂😂😂

[@zealgaming8161]

Back in vanilla. My guild used to do rank14s for fun. Naxx raiding server first guild so nobody really stood any chance. The honor points we farmed was 20x as fast as whatever solo player or inferior guild would attempt so just 1-2h of BGs per day was enough for rank14...

[@trx3668]

That thumbnail got me Pshero vibes tbh

[@dijitek]

I got to Knight-lieutenant before I gave up. Taking turns being on watch on Vent for when a queue would pop in the middle of the night and having to sound the alarm for people to jump on. My server was so far screwed alliance it made it really hard. Staying up all night for BGs and green dragons was both absolutely fun and absolutely miserable.

[@MissPopuri]

I’m in front of the Officer’s hall, Wing Nut. Shut your mouth!

[@mattbrown5511]

Always nice to see you posting new content. Hope you are doing good.

[@ZontarDow]

The annual cost of an MMO subscription in those days was 246$ per year in today dollars to play with the cheapest option, which led to a particular type of person who was willing to play them.

[@BasedHorrigan]

Oh man you should definitely bring the post mortem of swg into one of your videos they go so in depth into what went right/wrong, jedi and all of the marketing mingle with the game's health. Btw i'd like to see you tackle what Dragonflight did right/wrong and once TWW launches, your opinion on the state of the game.

[@kimrasmussen7188]

i remember when the horde set up a fake funeral in winterfell and then they just started ganking us. undead rogues were PITAs on my 1st server. when my buddies stopped playing i rerolled on a pve server.

[@Oystercatcher247]

It was honest work and I enjoyed it.

[@mfsoab]

Using social engineering and manipulating someone just because he plays WoW the intended way is truely psychopatic behavior, even more in these modern times. The only gear these people should be given is to secure them in the psychiatric ward. Damn what happened to being just decent human beings? That being said: I started in like the first third of Vanilla, just casually playing, lot of RP, bit open PvP and got into BGs pretty late. I had a dedicated BG day every week and started to dedicate the weekends to it once they announced to get rid of the system. Only brought me to Knight, but I actually love knights so the title was pretty good to me and I still wear it with pride when I have a WoW relapse every few years. Who needs all these 50.000 fancy schmancy modern titles, when you can be a knight instead?!

[@munihousen123]

A great DK remix there in the background.Very Chill

[@ViewTube_Emperor_of_Mankind]

The original honor system was a perverted soul destroyer.

[@drtaint]

FFX Cloyster of Trials music at 5:35 definitely triggered a deeply suppressed trauma in my brain of spending hours on those stupid puzzles because I'm terrible at them. Fitting that it was played while talking about the rank14 grind.

[@carston855]

I remember the first few expansions of wow my guild would farm the easiest version of raids over and over for years and the good stuff everyone wanted would never drop. Lightning capacitor and dragon spine trophy in TBC. I remember in cataclysm several of the hardcore raiders in my guild never completed their 4 set bonus because the DK tokens had a slightly higher chance to drop. Most of the guild wanted to move on to the heroic version of the raids but people were like bruh I still have blue gear on and its 6 months into the expansion lol.

[@v-ia]

off topic but using remixed FF OST as your background music is pure genius. caught me off guard

[@deekorbel5259]

I was a casual WoW player for years. The grind got old and choreghast was the last nail in that coffin. I took my monthly sub and love of buying shop mounts (on sale) over to FF14. Players are a lot less toxic in FF14 which had become a big problem in WoW. I'm seeing more players in FF14 running on the hamster wheel of grind. I just continue to putter along and enjoy my game time. Good video!

[@wynabroad1868]

I'm so glad I experienced this in classic wow. We weren't as extreme as you, I was on a rppvp realm but it was still a great experience and I was glad to get Rank 14 after all my hard work.

[@scytze]

Makes me think how many of orginal max rank players were methheads who would not sleep for 3 days

[@morningbetterlast]

Soloed (with occasional grouping) to rank 11 back in Vanilla with AQ40 geared elemental shaman and to rank 12 on Classic with mostly Naxx BIS arms warrior including Might of Menethil. Was extremely fun both times, would certainly do it again. Just requires you to either be a student without a job or to have a couple of years for COVID lockdown.

[@MissPopuri]

A kid dood

[@mangekosharingan3657]

So obsessed with your new content I love this ❤️ keep it up brother

[@Demy1000]

Your example of Torghast is so true. Blizzard turned a fun, wacky, rogue lite experience and made it another chore on the list to grind for player power. As apposed to an extra activity for just cosmetics and enjoyment.

[@ChristendomUL]

Still miss the hell out of SWG. Was a BH in the pre-cu and was responsible for several pera deaths of Jedi and then eventually knocking loads of Jedi down in the leveling process (once they got rid of perma death). Such a cool and unique game.

[@zepho100]

New changes to rank 14 is good. I remember doing it with the ladder system and it was horrible. People following me around trying to grief my honor, and games. Mass reporting and constant messaging "are you being boosted" lol. It was so bad I didn't even talk to people.

[@billystewart927]

I was a rank 14 in WoW and I can’t imagine doing that grind without collusion and support. Our group won battlegrounds so fast, a lot of horde would just stay in graveyard and let us win to get it over quicker. We rotated people through and it still took a lot of hours a day. But there’s no way a solo player could have kept up with our honor gain, even playing 24/7. There were a few who tried.

[@cobalt968]

It was crazy to see all of the Grand Marshal/High Warlord grind when it was happening, and it’s still insane to hear about it now. To imagine that all of these people sacrificed so much for gear that eventually became obsolete just before the release of TBC.

[@yayano8415]

Lieutenant Commander Kamasu, reporting for duty.

[@renim2974]

The thing that's so tragic is that they could have significantly made it less worse by doing the ranking by class instead of overall.

[@Gigantar62]

or just making a better system in the first place

[@MycketTuff]

Did R10 and just couldn't see the benefit of continuing

[@TheLiamBris]

Same here. I played a Shadow Priest mainly for PVE. The Blue set was more than enough for me, and once AQ40 got released, the Epic PVP set was almost irrelevant.

[@MissPopuri]

Void Lords are no joke. Getting a move on, chief!

[@IamtheV]

Love your work mate. Especially the nod to SWG from time to time. Have fond memories, and I still look back thinking what a great class system the game had. Although I never really cared for the Jedi, so I had that going for me which was nice.

[@Avatar_of_Chairness]

The wrath of Bullcorn cannot be underestimated!!

[@grinchygamed657]

love the ffx music :D (temple puzzle music)

[@RNvidcast]

I got to rank 10 back in the day. I actually had no idea how insane it was, the brackets and cheating revelations blew my mind.

[@Matser117]

New week, new Madseasonshow video. Lets go!

[@joshuakranz9276]

Just started binge watching your channel! Then this is posted 3 minutes ago while looking on your channel, sweet! Love your content and MMO takes and stories. Keep it up!

[@HWLWu]

Aleviltona got deranked on Arcanite Reaper. Still got the video.

[@nicholasrossi7745]

I was there for it, different story than the one you mentioned @madseasonshow but it's worth hearing. Feel free to reach out for the video and story

[@thePhillipForrest]

Wu and Nicros are correct. Alevitona didn't fall the way you explained. The truth is so much better, Long Live Invite Only.

[@143jcm]

look at OSRS 4.6 Billion XP players, 15,000 hours. Probably the biggest grind in any game. Players playing 15+ hours daily for years its crazy.

[@novelezra]

World of Warcraft never ceases to amaze me with the way players expertly fuck eachother over. Its never just "fkd ya mom"; its "this player spent months pretending to be someones friend only to then pull the most petty shit imaginable" That is dedication I can respect

[@snuffeldjuret]

10:55 they could perhaps have made it so that you can only play your jedi character a limited time, like a total of 30 minutes per day, and if too many are logged on, you are in a jedi login que.

[@Avangardum]

The moment I heard about the requirements to become a jedi, especially, about the last profession, where you basically had to gamble for it, I knew this is a terrible idea. It's crazy how devs didn't reject this crazyness and actually made it into the game.

[@RevonChaoz]

I miss binging your videos in 2018, vibing to "calm before the storm" (great music tastes) and dreaming about the release of classic. Before eggs cost 5$ and I was truly jaded about WoW.

[@jonathanmaestas8080]

Although I don't think it was technically feasible back then, SWG should have had Force Sensitive status bestowed on certain players directly by the GMs. They would have had to observe the player base carefully and choose a person that best embodied the "will of the Force", players that were overtly hostile, and just random players with a certain amount of playtime (just to keep things interesting). And NEVER tell the player base.

[@TTMS-Khaz-kun]

Sadly according to SWG Pandora's Box video from Madseason it seems the publisher wanted the devs to really push the Jedi and they probably wouldn't have liked that method.

[@IndicatedGoodLife]

I want to become a project manager in the game Industrie at some point and I will show the game designers of MMOs exactly this one video to teach them to always be aware of your game design.

[@JathraDH]

What designers of MMOs though? MMO's hardly even get made anymore.

[@UncleBoBeau]

Amazing, well done, keep it up

[@icelevel2437]

Hey MadSeason I have an idea for a video. Have you thought about doing a video about your SWG memories similar to your World of Warcraft memories series? I love hearing your experiences in games. Thanks for a great vid!

[@madseasonshow]

That's a good idea. I do have an SWG video coming up, premiere of a new series

[@icelevel2437]

@@madseasonshow dope!! i've never really played it but it's always fascinating to hear about. looking forward to it

[@dentanau]

Great video! I never knew the 14 rank system got so completely out of hand. I have always lamented how the community evolved, and how every aspect of the game always gets optimized, and not wanting to participate in that seems to make you somewhat of a pariah. I was shocked and disappointed when I had a look at classic and saw how it was being played a few years back. In this regard vanilla was a totally different game. I understand why people play that way. It's not wrong to want to maximize the rewards, but it would be great if there would also be some room to just play and hang out and try stuff and learn together, in stead of following a meta developed by people who have a much more profound understanding of everything on a systematic level.

[@TPGodlike]

What is your opinion on the changes blizz implemented to the Era ranking system? the first blueprint i thought was well balanced as it decoupled the honor requirement from other players in your faction, but you still had to farm quite large amounts of honor for the top ranks with a weekly decay in between ranks but without the ability to drop a rank through decay. That meant you would still have to put in significant work to go from 13 to 14 otherwise you wouldnt make it. then they changed it where there is no decay at all which i think is way overshot as now anyone can get rank14 over a long enough timeframe which does not feel fitting to the "prestige" of rank14

[@stevenpitera8978]

Reminds me of what kevin jordan said about certain activities in wow. Most of them are solo grindy, because they are only intended for you to do them while you wait for your friends to come online. THe intent being, they are grindy enough to keep you in so that when people login they can see people in the world. When people are not engaging in the world, what ends up happening is worse; players go "fuck this game is dead, goodbye" never to log back on. R14 honor system is one of those systems, and in hindsight creates some crazy community involvement across the board. But what I think was actually its detriment, was the ability to see your rank progress via addons. They probably thought players would go off and do random things when friends came online since they couldnt really track their progress, so the overall cap was mathematically thought to be ok of a system. But since players could not only track their progress, but others, it allowed them to optimize the fun out of it, even ignoring friends that come online. The token turn in system with honor points used to buy didnt do as well either. Because it takes a community based game mode and makes it the first step on your road to arena gear (which was even more lonely since you basically only engaged with a few players at a time instead of hundreds.). I don't think any MMO came close to the community engagement of vanilla ranking, at least the version that didnt have addons to track your progress.

[@Vaith]

community engagement doesnt always = healthy engagement

[@ryospeedwagon1456]

I find it interesting that when I’ve brought up this concept before, people just shit on me over it.

[@Sweggabeg]

A warrior named Colonrampage at rank 1 is very on brand

[@jinglemyberries866]

1:18 omg that video is a classic, iirc his buddies changed his password xD

[@StrongKickMan]

I started wow with 14 years old and I was rank 1 in arena for 4 seasons in a row. I thought it was super important, without realizing, that the relation to my parents and friends was on a heavy decline. One day my mom cut the internet cable, which saved me. The withdraw was hard though

[@schnippah]

glad i was there when the world was a different one. we grinded rank 14 for a lot of people as a group, no drama queens etc. i even made space all the time for others to do their rank 14 because all in all i only wanted rank 11 for the mounts back then. if only i knew what a big epeepee i would have had now 20 years later with rank 14 on my achievments. oh well but it was just waaaay to boring to slaughter randoms day in day out 16hrs+ ... only meeting a good alliance group twice a day was no challenge so i even later stopped when i noticed groups were full and i was not needed anymore. the only drama i know of was the one i causes with two mates when the cross realms were introduced. we just played 3 days straight alterac valley (where av in SoD btw???) because, now playing on alliance since i could not raid at all as horde player, we finally also had instant battleground invites on alliance so we had a blast as retri pal, disc priest and holy pal with the best pve gear available to stomp in pvp. the people going for rank 14 last minute howevever hated us with passion, cried a lot. i think one of the dudes even did account sharing to try to beat us but just could not. ultimately we decided to stop and allow even the cheater his rank 14 in the end. should at least have blocked that guy from his achievement... thank you for the small trip down memory lane ;)

[@willhendrikz8035]

Back in late '05 or early '06 my sister of all people obtained rank 14 grand marshal. I helped her at the end and we were getting honor like 16 - 20 hours a day for like a month or two at the end. We ended up breaking the bracket and upsetting a bunch of people. They were pissed but it was a FFA imo because she was the last person to get rank 14 on the alliance on nathrezim US server the next Tuesday after honor reset they enabled the patch which removed the ranking system and enabled the honor points purchase system for said items instead of needing the rank you could just spend the honor points on the items instead of needing the ranks to unlock items. All hail rank 14 Grand Marshal Elden (NE Hunter) the last rank 14 on alliance US nathrezim server Side note. I was suppose to be next. inreturn for helping her we would get my character to rank 13, cause fuck going for 14 again Rip And this was back in OG vanilla I was 14

[@Ryan-bn3qk]

It wasn't RP back in vanilla, it was CP. There was no level cap on rank, I got rank 11 before battlegrounds were released and had to scramble level during the final weeks to hit 60. I had an epic mount at level 49.

[@matvarela]

I was grinding pvp and hit knight champion back in vanilla on khadgar server. I was in high-school and didn't realize you lose ranks if you take a break. I went to my buddy's cottage and came back to see my ranks so decayed that I instantly gave up. At least they brought the "title" system to the game remind me of that wacky grinding 😅

[@cattysplat]

Decay really is a deal breaker for anyone who has a life outside of the game.

[@BigDaddyWes]

Man, it's crazy that Torghast was my absolute favorite thing that WoW has ever done, and yet it's one of the most hated.

[@FaultyTwo]

"How do you kill that which has no life?"

[@xsvrrx]

Wow I didn’t know any of this my server was new Ysera when I got rank 14. High warlord in vanilla. As soon as I got it I joined a raiding guild and hard to learn the whole game again as a resto shaman. Thank god for the tbc pre patch so I could actually out dps my team mates

[@alyssarichardson2544]

We ABSOLUTELY need protection from ourselves, as a former Australian-speedball (heroin+meth, been clean for almost 8 years) and recovering WoW addict, I feel like I can discern the specific way it's addictive like heroin in the sheer escapism and endorphin (opioid) release living in a different world (my DREAMS were set in Azeroth, and I'd character-select before school in them) and it's addictive like meth/coke in making people who already think they're kings feel like gods, tapping perfectly into their ego (parse culture / meta-slaves are proof but even back in the day killing a hard raid boss and hitting 2k AR gave me that dopamine release, way more intense than anything dexies (pure d-isomer amphetamine) had to offer. I'm sure we've all heard WoW called "e-crack" and honestly? Accurate.

[@jimbeewalley4132]

Awesome video thank you how does every single video you make slap you just have a certain way with words

[@JulienBertozzi]

I did rank 14 on vanilla. We had an agreement between players doing the most pvp to not step on each others toes The goal was to have one new rank 14 per week. Decided per order of arrival It worked surprisingly well for months

[@JulienBertozzi]

And before attack speed being normalized those weapons were soooo powerful for a rogue :D

[@CruXM85]

I was watching Esfand on the Rank14 grind. It was fun he was always streaming 😂

[@Elfyja]

That was so not healthy. Chat kept telling him to take a break but he kept going on for crazy long grinds

[@karolnie212]

​@@Elfyja To understand how big grind that was - he streamed maybe 10% of his grind rest was account sharing for 10+ hours

[@MissPopuri]

Oh that’s why Emily knows what you did. Give me the Sprite now!

[@Kanoly]

I got to General solo queuing back before the Birmingham crusade. Took pretty long.

[@ZeGD-wg8tr]

i was ranking, played 14 hours a day premade vs premade for 3 month

[@jamescpalmer]

When you're younger, you have time but no money, so grinding is fine. When you're older, you have more money but not time, so games have evolved with us to fit our lifestyles.