Listening to Dan talk about WOW is kinda like listening to Jenny Nicholson talk about theme parks, I don’t really have any interest in either thing but the amount of thought and care they put into it make it very entertaining

"Shouting the same words at each other, with different implicit meanings." An excellent description of most of the internet.

I remember playing classic with my older brother when I was 14. Had no clue then how to be a 'good' player, but he never made it about that, he just liked doing quests with me and helping me explore Azeroth. Obviously there's little insults and banter, brother style, and he did rope me into being a hunter so soloing wouldn't be tough on me, haha, but that was during classic, and exploring that world was so fun, and my brother really made it feel populated.

"It's effectively a church schism in video game form" OK, that was a good one

I haven't played wow for more than 20 minutes but I finally feel like I understand why people do. Thanks Dan

I think the people who keep saying "ITS AN MMO" every time he mentions the people who prefer to play alone don't really get what he means. I tend to mostly play either by myself or run dungeons/raids few friends, but I still enjoy the fact that at any given time I could stumble onto another player and hang out for a bit. Even when playing alone is just running around doing quests I tend to always stumble onto someone doing the same thing. Last week for example when I was finishing up the last quest chain in Stormheim it was completely empty save for me and this dwarf paladin doing the exact same quests - we ended up partying up until the end, hung out for a bit in Dalaran and then went our separate ways since I wanted to go to Highmountain and he was headed for Val'sharah. Today I decided to stop and help a mage with a rare they were having trouble killing and we again partied up for a bit and then went our separate way. Yesterday while waiting for Sha of Anger to respawn everyone waiting had an Alliance vs Horde dance-off. That is my usual experience when leveling. I don't know, maybe the server I play on is especially "nice" or something, but I don't feel like I'm alone on this one. The solo players don't want to play the game as if it was single-player, they just prefer spontaneous casual interactions and don't want to HAVE to be ideal spec, geared to the teeth and join a guild of people you might not even enjoy being around in order to be able to play. Cause at that point it starts to feel less like a hobby for your free time and more like a second job.

15:00

Dan has spent ~6% of his life for the past 15 years on WoW.

"Note: video contains internet"

a lifetime wow player's tempered look at classic and vanilla wow that doesn't worship at the alter of old school nostalgia and acknowledges the badly dated design choices in vanilla wow? color me shocked.

For some reason hearing Total Biscuit rant about some badges like it signified the death of human decency is hilarious to me.

"Well," says KZfaq, "now that you've seen a very clever media scholar give an in-depth and evenhanded examination of the history of World of Warcraft, rightly dismissing the shouty men and their performative outrage, would you like to see a response to this video from the shouty men, more than likely featuring said performative outrage?"

38:30

"If there is nothing to do. If nothing is meaningful. Then you are free to self-direct."

A few years ago, a Final Fantasy XIV player asked the producer of the game Naoki Yoshida if he would consider re-releasing the original "classic" version of FFXIV that premiered in 2010, a la WoW classic. You know, the version famous for being so bad that they shut down the servers for 2 years so Yoshida and a new team could rebuild the game practically from the ground up. After the question was translated to him, Yoshida responded with one word: "NIGHTMARE!"

37:37

I somehow found myself playing WoW a few years ago despite hating multiplayer games. I played it 100% solo, but I did so on an RP server. The most memorable moments for me was whenever I was questing and found a group of players roleplaying, especially so if it was in an otherwise unremarkable part of the game world. It was like running into an amateur improv theater performance, I'd just sit back and watch them for a few minutes.

Press "F" for Dan not getting his raptor.

Dan: I don't want to impose any moral judgement on how people play games

This 'calling back to a mythologized perfect past' thing is getting uncomfortably close to...well...