Twitch streamer Asmongold explains why he thinks raids in WoW are bad and what new MMOs do better

The biggest MMORPG streamer on Twitch is Zack aka “Asmongold”. For personal reasons, he is currently streaming irregularly and mainly via his second channel. There he was now about World of Warcraft, especially the raids are not doing well.

Who is Asmongold?

Although he grumbles a lot about Blizzard, he’s still impressed by the new Dragonflight expansion. He was particularly taken with the Caller of the Dracthyr. Gameplay of the new class can be seen here:

Asmongold thinks raids in WoW waste too much time

This is the situation: Since 2021, Asmon has also increasingly shown Final Fantasy XIV and Lost Ark. With the latter, he even broke his audience record. When he returned after his WoW abstinence, he was annoyed by the “terrible and boring raids.”

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What bothers him about the raids: On August 1st, 2022, Asmongold posted a video titled “Blizzard Is Killing WoW”. In it he mainly criticizes the raids. These are outdated, antiquated and a waste of time.

Asmon accuses WoW of deliberately wasting players’ time. A large part of the boss fight is busy with completely different things. This also means that many players simply no longer have time for raids.

This is how a raid in WoW works from Asmon’s point of view:

• The organization: First of all, you have to get the whole group to the right place. Forgot Warlock? Then 2 people have to run all the way back to get missing people.
• Wipe Protection: One person should always survive to revive the whole party. If you don’t have that available, you’ll have to run all the way back in the event of a wipe.
• Trash mobs: Then endless waves of trash mobs would have to be cleared out of the way, which are no fun and only artificially prolong everything.

According to Asmongold, what could actually be done in 30 minutes inflates to 3 hours. At some point, people wouldn’t feel like it anymore and then they just wouldn’t do it anymore. The game doesn’t respect their time.

The difficulty of the raids themselves is not the problem at all. It is much more the organizational hurdles that you have to overcome in order to get to the raid at all. That is the real challenge.

The trash mobs in particular seem to annoy Asmon. They used to have some value. So you could learn the mechanics of the boss through them or get cosmic flux, a currency in WoW.

Also, you just didn’t realize how lousy some mechanics were when there was even less direct comparison. Now, however, they are a remnant of a bygone era. Other games would have left WoW behind in the meantime.

Raids should focus on the essentials

Here’s how other games do it better: In FFXIV and Lost Ark everything is better. There you are actually busy most of the time with the boss himself.

• Epic raids in FFXIV no longer have any trash at all. You go straight into the boss fight and can start right away.
• The Abyss raids in Lost Ark do have trash, but you can go straight back to the boss after a wipe.

Both FFXIV and Lost Ark also offer raids for much smaller groups than WoW, making organization a whole lot easier. In addition, you keep your food buff in FFXIV after death, which again makes it easier to organize and prepare for the raid, since you don’t use up as many items.

This is what Asmongold wants from WoW: WoW used to drive innovation in the genre as it pioneered many areas and improved upon the MMORPG mechanics that already existed. Today, everyone would benefit from that prep work, except for WoW itself. They would have to lead the way again. In addition, one should focus on mechanics that actually represent an enrichment for the players:

These improvements are not reflected in World of Warcraft’s design. And they have to be. World of Warcraft needs to go back to what made it a good game in the first place. A pioneer of the genre.

Asmongold via YouTube

And more concrete? When you die, you should respawn right in front of the boss without having to fight all the way there again. There should also be a portal there to summon fellow players.

The food buffs should by no means be completely removed. Instead, they should be designed to be more unique and affect the way you play. He hopes that Dragonflight will do the same.

Can players also do something better? Asmongold is annoyed by the mentality of some players. They are proud of having their time wasted. Just because you’re able to overcome such a time-wasting mechanic yourself doesn’t mean the mechanic itself is good.

Here he probably wishes for a rethinking in parts of the community. He’s also interested in players who haven’t been around that long or who have such a high skill level. They too should be able to have fun in raids.

What does our editors say about this?

Cortyn sees things a little differently:

“Most raids in World of Warcraft simply have a different target group than those in Lost Ark. Raids are supposed to be activities that last several hours – just a full-length program, a big, coherent adventure. It certainly doesn’t take forever to return, but these are now much shorter than they used to be. You can always argue about trash mobs, for some they are just filler material, for others they are just logical inhabitants of the respective place – henchmen who also have to be defeated and who sometimes also drop nice loot.

Blizzard has already adjusted the most annoying problems with raids in WoW over the years, which is why I can only partially understand Asmongold’s criticism.

Apart from that, the raids in WoW are still considered a prime example of good boss design with interesting mechanics in most communities. A lot of other MMORPGs would go for fights like this. But they’re also so good and memorable because they take time and don’t take 20 minutes to finish.”

Irina thinks Final Fantasy XIV gets a lot right:

“While I can’t tell you how it is in WoW, I definitely don’t miss the trash in FFXIV. At the beginning of FFXIV 2.0 there was still trash in the Bahamut and Alexander raids, but that gradually fell away. The loss of the food buff after death was initially handled in the same way as in WoW and later changed. I remember how that was properly celebrated by our guild. They’re small ‘quality of life’ tweaks that you learn to appreciate when they don’t exist in other MMORPGs.”

how do you see it? Have you already defected or are you loyal to WoW? Are the mechanics really out of date, or just what WoW is all about?

But Asmongold can also hit completely different tones. Even if he doesn’t have a good hair on Blizzard, Dragonflight also makes his eyes shine.