I’m interested in your opinion! I am working on my master’s thesis about video guides for WoW, and there is currently a survey running until August 10th. It takes about 5 minutes to complete, and every full response is a huge help. 
You can access the survey via this link: https://survey.lamapoll.de/Warum-schauen-Menschen-Videoguides-zu-World-of-Warcraft-WoW--English
I only watch video guide if there is no text guide. Text >>>> Video. I don’t need schoolboy with bad mic showing me the full questline for 30mins, when it could be just 5 line of text containing quest names.
I don’t. I hate having to watch a video - well, rather I hate having to put on headphones and listen to someone who:
Give me a written guide any day of the week, but video guides? No thank you
Finished the survey.
I don’t watch gameplay or class guides. I loathe ‘best X ranking’ videos and that sort of thing.
I do watch lore videos and just general news about the game or sometimes I watch an opinion piece about a topic that interests me.
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I avoid video guides as much as possible but I think I’m unusual. I just don’t gel with it. I zone out, especially when half of it isn’t even relevant to me, content creators waffle on far too much for me. I am best with concise written information and that has become more and more rare these days. Equally I don’t like streams or watching someone else play.
This format is kind of the best of both worlds for me. I can look at purely dps tactics, and mainly what the difference is for Mythic.
Even if I’m questing and I get stuck with something, I’m far more likely to find something helpful in wowhead comments than a guide.
I’m old though. So I blame it on that.
Happy to help, good luck with your thesis.
I only play about 3seconds, does that count as watching them?
I just finished the survey. But I want to ask something…
What kind of Master’s degree is that where video guides about a video game are part of it? I am not aware of the existence of Video Game undergraduate studies, let alone postgrad.
I watch some M+ short guides (Hazel ones, for example) because it just makes more sense to have good visualization instead of static screenshots and text descriptions. Also, I tend to absorb tactics while going to M+ dungeon bigger than +2 for the first time, and I don’t have second screen to check for notes in process so I just listen at 1.5x speed and sometimes alt-tab to check what’s next.
I read both text and video guides. A video guide can be especially helpful when I need to get from A to B, I need to find an item or I would like to understand the tactics of a boss in practice.
Text guides are very useful when I want fast results for a simple task. It is harder to skim a video than a text.
I am studying specialized communication in writing instructions (official Technical Documentation and Multimedia Communication). Video guides are not the typical kind of instructions we research (normaly its instructions for machines) but video guides are also a kind of specialized communication. So my research is kind of a new approach in that way i would say 
I usually prefer reading guides but sometimes a video is better, for example if it shows a specific place where to find something.
However, I avoid videoguides longer than 1 minute because they’re usually filled with useless information. The shorter it is, the more concise and shows me exactly what I want, without the narator’s life story.
And if it only shows the game, without the creator’s face and without their voice, it’s perfect.
I did take the survey - the problem, however, is I don’t watch videoguides, and yet I’m forced to have an opinion about whether or not the channel (that I don’t watch) focus on wow or other things - this means your data is now inaccurate at best and just plain useless at worst. You can’t tell from the questionaire because you didn’t offer an option for your participants to elaborate/comment, and it might not mean anything for you or you thesis, but it’s definitely something you ought to be aware of.
Good luck with your thesis though, I hope you’ll knock it out the park
Random question, but what exactly do you study to have this topic as your master’s thesis? Can you really not find anything more fitting? Master’s thesis is supposed to expand the world of science, is the willingness of wow players to click into videos what you determine as valuable contribution?
Come on, you can do better.
I would watch them as they were required to watch when i was raiding, But no matter how many times i watched them it didin’t make me any wiser, I learn by doing, so i stopped raiding and watching guides. - But i guess if the guide had detailed things like showing how the bad spell effects looked like and so on, perhaps it would be easier to grasp.
The survey is just one aspect for the research. Besides that, i also did interviews with creator of that type of guides. Both sides are relevant for the research, cuz they influence each other (more or less) and that is the interesting part. Typically the creation of instructions is one-side and strong regulated by a client and rules. So through the eyes of specialist communication, videoguides created by (seemingly) people from the community are a interest subject of research.
PS: My lecturer also conducted a study on a conversation from a forum like this one. At first glance, it didn’t seem very exciting either, but from a communication science perspective, there are always interesting aspects
Thanks for the feedback. It certainly helps me with the evaluation and reflection of the project
I watched the 2min boss guides from yt when used to mythic raid. They were helpful and packed with all info i needed in short nothing but essentials type format. Also helpful in preparing raid warnings like from bigwigz and knowing what they will be for in the fight.
I don’t, going into a dungeon or raid with a checklist of mechanics/abilities being learnt via watching a video beforehand just feels wrong. I find fun in learning how to deal with things like that myself.