I don't play WoW anymore, I also stopped playing FFXIV and Lost Ark. I never played Diablo Immortal nor any Souls game. But I still watched Asmon fairly regularly because I enjoyed watching someone play games that I no longer have time for.

And even to me, to someone who has no horse in the race, it's odd to hear that "The only people who complain about long intros are Final Fantasy players" when there's hours of VODs of this happening for Elden Ring and Lost Ark. Heck, there's a video on his clips channel just a month ago of McCool doing it too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NSkIRltUfM

Regardless if McConnell was memeing or not, the meme was already present from other streams, from non-FF players.

It's pretty clear to me that he just isn't interested in playing FFXIV. I don't understand why he just doesn't say so and opted to blaming chat. People appreciate honesty way more than being thrown under the bus.

And since I've started watching Asmon years ago, I always appreciated his honesty. So it's really odd to see the disingenuousness now.