Conan O'Brien Provides Clueless Commentary on WoW Championship

[Cognimancer]

Conan O'Brien Provides Clueless Commentary on WoW Championship


Conan might not know a mage from a murloc, but that won't stop him from faking his way through BlizzCon.

BlizzCon 2013 recently attracted many of Azeroth's greatest heroes, and also Conan O'Brien. The TV personality is notorious for diving into games he has no idea how to play, but this time his misadventures weren't just limited to his own session. Conan was invited to provide live commentary at BlizzCon's World of Warcraft Arena Finals, which he did with gusto - despite having no clue what was happening at any given time.

Conan did sit down to play WoW for "about sixteen minutes" to prepare for the big event. If he did much conventional gameplay, we didn't get to see it. What he does do is leap gracefully to his death and try to pick a fight with a stranger. Spoiler: it doesn't go as planned.

Amusing as his inexperience may be to those of us who are firmly entrenched in the world of games, it's always interesting to see an outside take on the things we take for granted. Conan's ill-fated attempt to actually socialize with other players in an MMO really shouldn't be as unexpected as it was. Blizzard can streamline the mechanics to attract more casual gamers, but the in-game culture certainly hasn't gotten any more approachable if you go in expecting those kinds of interactions. Still, the game producer and other commentators take his humor in stride, so maybe Clueless Gamers like Conan do have a role to play.

Source: Team Coco [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdzE4ks3lHo]

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[Drummodino]

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

DAMMIT! I want to see some hilarity!

 

[Janaschi]

I like how annoyed people in the audience looked. WoW is shurious business guys.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

If Conan commentated this game always, even I would watch it.

 

[Baldr]

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

DAMMIT! I want to see some hilarity!

Try this link. (http://teamcoco.com/video/world-of-warcraft-blizzcon-remote)
It may not work outside the US either though. I think you can watch the Blizzcon videos on Blizzcon.com virtual ticket also which has the Day One World of Warcraft stage. At about 2 hour and 50 minute mark is where they filmed most of it.

 

[VanQ]

The uploader has made this video unavailable in your country.

Just like those AU servers that you never made available in our country, eh Blizzard? Yeah, bugger you too.

 

[Baron_BJ]

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

DAMMIT! I want to see some hilarity!

Try this link. (http://teamcoco.com/video/world-of-warcraft-blizzcon-remote)
It may not work outside the US either though. I think you can watch the Blizzcon videos on Blizzcon.com virtual ticket also which has the Day One World of Warcraft stage. At about 2 hour and 50 minute mark is where they filmed most of it.

It works for those outside the US, so I appreciate the link.

I do not like this kind of humor.

If I go to a Nascar event and start treating it like a redneck event being viewed by hicks people would rightly be offended. This is a very nasty form of humor; mocking others.

It's called being able to laugh at one's self.

 

[Seracen]

I do not like this kind of humor.

If I go to a Nascar event and start treating it like a redneck event being viewed by hicks people would rightly be offended. This is a very nasty form of humor; mocking others.

I'd say the ability to laugh at oneself is an important trait. However, I agree with you in this case.

Conan knows nothing about gaming, it seems clear. However, Jimmy Fallon has managed to carve a niche within the geek community, especially with his gaming segments.

So it seems clear, Conan is trying to grab that attention. He really doesn't need to, as his comedy is fine without resorting to such cloying for the easy laugh.

He's just painting himself as a douche, making the obvious jokes, and STILL fails to be "hip" to the demographic that he purportedly is pandering to.

 

[FancyNick]

I don't know, I found it funny.

On a related note, I had no idea WoW did tourneys. Though I am not surprised

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I do not like this kind of humor.

If I go to a Nascar event and start treating it like a redneck event being viewed by hicks people would rightly be offended. This is a very nasty form of humor; mocking others.

You need to learn to get a sense of humor. The ability to laugh at yourself is very important. People shouldn't take life so seriously.

 

[Kenbo Slice]

I do not like this kind of humor.

If I go to a Nascar event and start treating it like a redneck event being viewed by hicks people would rightly be offended. This is a very nasty form of humor; mocking others.

Get over yourself. This isn't meant to be taken seriously and it's all in good fun.

OT: Conan's Clueless Gamer segments are always fun. He needs to do Clueless Gamer more often.

 

[Charli]

Haha this was actually very funny. (Serious WoW player here)

Was grinning the whole way though.

I do not like this kind of humor.

If I go to a Nascar event and start treating it like a redneck event being viewed by hicks people would rightly be offended. This is a very nasty form of humor; mocking others.

This is far from malicious mockery. Like others have said, grow a thicker skin.

I like how annoyed people in the audience looked. WoW is shurious business guys.

Lol I suppose if you're trying to watch a competitive tournament and the commentary is being interrupted by 'lol wassat thing' at a paid event you've a right to be a LITTLE annoyed, but they looked more intrigued than annoyed to me, maybe a touch gormless but that's par for the course. Sides, what's an MMO without your stereotypical 'dis game is srsbizniz' dudes.
Conan didn't exactly look like he interrupted much but that could be the editing.

The funniest part was him trying to provoke the random player in game. I'd seriously watch him try to stumble his way through an MMO blind.

 

[Bug MuIdoon]

I don't follow WoW and have never played it, but the actual competition bit was quite funny.
The bit beforehand.. not so. The section where he's poking fun at the "one lung character" and died falling on snow had me chuckling, but laughing at a guy that met his wife online and "oh this guy speaks a different language, that's funny!" parts were just awful. The situation, funny. This guy, whoever he is, not.

P.S I have no idea how American's stomach terrible laugh tracks!

 

[NitehawkFury]

The comments that Conan was making about the guy meeting his wife online didn't seem all that out of place. He said that he met his future wife as she was going by the name "Deathrat the Troll." That's rather funny. And it really WOULD make a pretty funny story to tell your grandkids.

"Your Grammy Deathrat and me..."

And he wasn't making fun of the German team's different language, he was making fun of his own inability to speak that language. Conan knows nothing about the game, and so when he asked what the guy would be playing, and he explained that he would be focusing on the Deathknight and Elemental for the suspension. When Conan responds by saying "I didn't understand a word of that," it wasn't about the accent - It was the fact that that's not common parlance for someone outside of WOW. That is also why it's funny.

Conan has said many times that he's not a gamer at all, but he does these bits because people seem to enjoy them. He's an entertainer - It's what entertainers do. The absolutely clueless fish-out-of-water makes for a good analogue for people who don't understand our hobby at all.

We need to stop taking every laugh at our hobby's expense as some affront to be battled against. We sometimes just need to realize that what we do is, by and large, sometimes rather ridiculous. Which is why it's kinda funny.

 

[AuronFtw]

Wow, talk about getting thicker skin. I said I do not like this sort of humor, and everybody assumes I was offended. This segment was a vastly more toned down version of others he has done in a similar light, all of which are just mocking cultures he doesn't bother to learn more about.

Pretty much this. Conan is an unfunny **** and has been for years now. His first video game "review" was almost amusing because of his inexperience with games, so it was like "oh, haha, watch me blunder through this experience and talk about it." But after that it was more of the same: it was like watching a shitty anime episode where you know the plot but you're forced to endure its shittiness anyway. They didn't change, they didn't evolve. He simply blunders through games offering a mostly interchangeable dialog over each one, and often doesn't even play the games because he sucks to much to pass the QTEs/shooting sections/fighting sections/any sections.

He's an aging relic of the past, attempting to win the favors of (and hopefully gain some viewers from) the "new" gamer crowd by simultaneously bashing their entire culture and acting like it's hilarious to do so. And given how unfunny he is to begin with, it only comes across as malicious. It's the Big Bang problem: the show is written to insult nerds, not to glorify them. It's made to appeal to the lowest common denominators: nerds who are too afraid of be proud of what they are to stand up and say "this shit is unfunny and also you're retarded, Conan," and non-nerds who are too out of touch with nerd culture to do anything with it other than laugh at it (like Conan).

TL;DR version: I can laugh at myself. I can laugh at my culture. Plenty of shows and podcasts and even entire anime series do it very well; they poke fun at our culture tastefully and respectfully, still "making fun of it" but from the inside, showing that they made even a slight effort to understand it. Conan's idiotic ranting and unfunny slights of a culture he has nothing to do with and zero knowledge of is nothing more than malicious insulting. If you're too disconnected to be able to tell the difference, that's fine; but don't tell other people not to be offended when they clearly see a problem you are incapable of seeing.

There's a difference between self-deprecating humor and unfunny ranting and insults of an entire culture made out of ignorance. Thick skin takes care of the former, realizing that jokes are just jokes. But nothing takes care of the latter.

 

[Nexxis]

Wow, this made me laugh. It reminded me of when I first started playing WoW. I wasn't as bad as Conan was, but I was just as clueless since it was the first MMO I've ever played. Even after I had played it for two years, I still couldn't understand half of the lingo in that game and the tournament stuff goes right over my head. Still, it can be nice watching all the pretty particle effects and people running around on screen. I'm sure they're doing... something. I just don't know what, lol.

 

[MrSnugglesworth]

As a person who watches Esports regularly, having some guy I don't know come on and start interrupting the casters/ being a nuisance would be annoying.

Granted, I love Conan so I thought it was hilarious.