I dislike streamers because if I dispelled their buffs, they will cry to some simp GM who will then give me either a perma or a 6 month ban.
That’s why.
To put that much time and energy into hating someone that doesn’t even know that you exist, I don’t know, but to me, that seems like a waste of time.
Especially when you consider he’s not spending any of his on you.
Thing is, there’s a high chance that those who watch his stream, play the game already. Meaning that the actual PR value is a lot less.
A probable reason to why they are lenient, might be because of the negative impact it can have on players who already play the game. Just look at how much of an uproar there is on the forum when they finally get around to enact punishment on a “popular” streamer.
But there is another aspect as well of it, people’s sense of equality being treated the same. If 2 people commit the same offence in-game, they should get the same punishment. But if person A is a streamer and gets a milder punishment than person B, then it can have a negative impact as well.
All in all I think streamers are overrated. Especially those who think they should be treated “specially” just because they have their own personal army of cultists following them blindly. The game should be equal for everyone, be it streamer or normal player.
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Asmon have said multiple times he knows his audience. And a majority of them dosen’t even play wow, some do. But it’s not alot.
Of course but there’s many that come across his stream that never played the game at all and no matter if you like him or not he’s entertaining to many and thus increases the likelihood somebody will pick up the game because of it.
Considering how many talk about Asmongold on both EU/US forums, my guess is that there would be more people applauding Blizzard for this decision rather than oppose it.
People need to stop thinking that they’re on the same level as streamers, of course (big) streamers are given more leniency as they bring attention to a game that has been out for 16 years on platforms where new(er) generations are active on. The likelihood of them indirectly bringing new people to the game is way higher than any individual is able on here.
There’s currently 42k people watching World of Warcraft streams on Twitch and that’s without Asmongold being online, when he comes on he has anywhere between 30-60k viewers on a regular basis.
Idealistic but unfortunately not how the world works, everything is on a scale of merits vs demerits, you as a single player bring so little to the table for Blizzard than somebody that brings in new players and can help people keep playing the game for that off-chance of getting their character visible on his stream.
It would not be of benefit for Blizzard to ban Asmongold for every minor infraction he commits as it isn’t great promotional material to ban big streamers, as they can(and will) take their viewerbase to another game which can potentially hurt their income. Especially if Asmongold decides he’s done with Blizzard and moves over to Ashes of Creation/New World and takes with a good chunk of his viewerbase.
in all honesty, WoW is the most mentioned and most popular MMO out there. People have already heard of it, on more than one occasion. It’s in popular culture and it’s pretty close to being a phenomenon right now. Like Zelda and Final Fantasy, it’s become a house-hold name that people have heard of. People will pick it up and try it regardless of what a streamer is saying.
To be quite frank, reviews and “word of mouth” is far more powerful from a marketing perspective than 1 streamer saying something on a youtube video. This from someone who has worked with marketing for 10 years. The best PR you can get, is the positive review from someone who plays the game. In the end, a streamer is just one person. Blizzard is sitting on a potential on its 3-4 million subscribers. If they get 10% of them to give a positive review of the game, that’s still more “mouths” speaking positively about their game than a streamer is reaching. Sites like metacritics and mmorpg have tremendous power, given that the users give a score and feedback on the product. Just as it can have a whole lot more devastating effect given negative reviews.
I think you’re over-estimating streamers a bit. From a marketing perspective they’re just a cog in the machinery. The most important one will always be the customer.
As said, me - as any other players - have more power collectively than a streamer have. Did a streamer bring WoW crashing down from 12 million subscriber to what ever we have today as they stopped reporting subscribers? It was the negative feedback and reviews that caused WoW to come crashing down from its throne.
Streamers make entertainment videos, that’s it. The reach out to 30-50k viewers on average. They don’t have as much marketing power as the entire score of the player base of the game. That’s what Blizzard has misunderstood for years, as they’ve done the one thing that one should never do when relying on people to buy your product; turned their deaf ear to the consumers.
I think you’re overestimating a streamer’s powers. People in many cases are watching a streamer because of the game he/she is playing. It’s not guaranteed that someone will “move over” with a streamer if he starts playing another game. And it certainly isn’t connected in a way that if a streamer stops making videos about that game then that viewer will stop playing the game he’s playing.
As for the income, it’s hurt alright but not because of streamers. Blizzard lost touch with its playerbase and suffered the consequences of it. That’s a mistake based on their disconnection with their customer and has no connection to whether or not a streamer has said anything.
World of Warcraft is one of the most mentioned, I believe OSRS(Runescape) holds the crown in this regard, but even so it’s an addition of free marketing on a platform with tons of Fortnite/Valorant-kiddies that could potentially come across World of Warcraft as big streamers like Asmongold put the game in the Top 5-10 position with their viewership.
I would think Zelda and Final Fantasy are more known with current generations of gamers than World of Warcraft, as these two franchises are popular on consoles and are advertised a lot more in daily life than World of Warcraft.
One streamer that can potentially reach anywhere between 30k and 15 million users on a platform definitely brings more to the table than several people telling their friends about the game. Him having 30-60k viewers brings World of Warcraft in the Top 5-10 games on Twitch and he’s often in the top 10 watched streamers on the platform.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying word of mouth is worth less or that he will ever reach all those 15 million people but I think you’re underestimating the potential reach he has on the platform.
We have no idea what the actual numbers are at the moment so for the most part it’s speculation, the game having fluctuating subscribers has a wild variety of reasons. There’s no need for metacritics or any other site regarding this as the players leaving all have their own seperate reasons for doing so and the “low’” influx of new players I feel is mainly due to the game not being as accessible as others and the subscription-based model which is seen as bad to many. Most people that heard of the game but don’t play it were negative about it being subscription-based.
World of Warcraft requires a lot more thought to play the game than most other games, people these days seem to prefer games you can open up, queue for a match and just do your thing. Over the past few years Blizzard has taken some steps to make the game more appealing for new players and Exile’s Reach is a good example of that, so the low influx of players before that is somewhat understandable.
Personally I’ve talked to numerous people about this game and most of them weren’t interested in it, of all the colleagues and friends I’ve spoken to over the years only 1 currently plays the game and another might return in Shadowlands but both played this game since Vanilla.
So it really depends who is in your social circle, it’s not a very tangible thing. Sure our combined reach is far higher than Asmongold’s but we may not be “enough” to convince somebody to play the game. Whereas somebody that is entertained by Asmongold for something other than the game he is currently playing, might grind people down to the point that they try the game themselves.
People generally start watching a streamer because of the game they’re playing, but they keep watching their streams for the entertainment value it offers. Some others might be bored and take a look at the top streamed games or top streamers and come across Asmongold and check it out regardless if they know or like the game beforehand.
There’s also no guarantee that they won’t, they will certainly be more likely to purchase and try out the other games and if Asmongold sticks around in that game and they like it enough it will still be a loss to Blizzard even if they don’t cut-off their subscription.
I do not dislike them it just annoys me when somebody links a vid and says “discuss” without adding there own view .
I do not want to watch a 2 hour video without somebody giveing there own input about it and giveing a brief TLDW discription .
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You’re talking about the GM who also got fired not more than a week ago after that? 
That situation you talk about only happened because people complained vocally about it on forums twitter and directly to blizzard. If that person did not make a video (or was it screen shots of the chat not sure at the moment) on it and made a big fuss about it the GM would have gone with no action.
I know of other times where gms have given streamers privliges that they would not give to normal people. If you bother to take the time you can also find times, you are not going to take the time though.
I personally dislike them because of the drama and to much subjective , lack of insight on how actually coding / implementation is done .
Normal dudes trying to make a living ?
They talk like they are game designers to attract masses of avergish individuals ?
When streaming started there where 2 categories of streamers technical and charismatic streamers now we got what ?
They can’t even follow basic procedures like explaining something objective .
Don’t wanna put them in the same pot but what i have seen are not worthy of my visualization .
Personally i don’t get the hate because nobody forces you to watch them.
I mean i don’t watch F1/ice hockey/football or any other sports because i have no interest at all towards them doesn’t mean i hate sports i just don’t watch them.
I would get the hate if we were living in the 80’s when there was like 2 or 3 channels on tv but in 2020 there are thousands of tv channels and thousands of streamers there are so many options what to watch that it would make 80’s kids heads explode.
So he -is- culpable then? He can’t throw up his hands and go “Not my fault” when his audience contains racist homophobic sexist antisemites who advocate the gassing of people then?"
I mean if he -knows- his audience, he knows it contains those. Which means he knowingly drags these morons to servers.
Which is it? Is he responsible for his fanbase, or does he not know his fanbase?
Hardly. And problem is not the streamers, but the fanbois and gurls, who come to other places explaining why something is dogma because of what their idol thinks. Especially since those, who’d care about those streamers would follow them in their platforms and cannot care less what X, Y, Z thinks.
So really it is not about hate of streamers, but the behaviour of some followers. There is a difference.
Exactly. They’re such degenerates.
When i read or hear his name it makes my blood boil.
Because everything that is popular is bad, and because that’s what the forums are made for, to complain. You are not allowed to feel emotions of positivity on the World of Warcraft forums.
idk if you look now at asmons stream, you will see hes raiding and you perfeclty understand why you dont like him… or why people dont like him, cause he’s being toxic and stuff.
Personaly I was never fan of world top guilds, “hardcore” steamers, and this sort of people…
Since time memorial those guys promote strange way of play the game, and they very offten using cheesy and snealy methods to gain their goals while in same time their skill is cca average. Loook blizzard tournament for example, i watch it to see skills, and what i see? only average skilled guys who have high skill to form good premade, but thats not quality worth to be displayed on torunament, i dont watch tournament to see how those monkeys create meta setups, but how they play… /shame.
I used to love to watch WoW streamers, but it started to get to a point where they started to act entitled and preach their opinions as facts and because they hold so much influence in the game, it seems to of rubbed off on some of the player base.
It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth when anybody acts like that, so I lost interest in watching any streamers.
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