We Need to Talk About Classic Plus…

0:00 I want to talk a little bit about Classic Plus.

0:01 So, this is something I want to do and I

0:03 think would be like a fun community exercise to do.

0:06 I want to spend some time on stream

0:08 and and I've actually been building some tools out, working on some things.

0:12 I want to go over and I want us to like community design classic plus on stream.

0:17 I think it'd be a fun thing to do.

0:18 I think it'd be interesting to go through and kind

0:20 of talk about what you'd want to see in Classic Plus.

0:22 What is Classic Plus?

0:23 Classic plus is just like a random name that we kind of made

0:25 up as a community of okay take vanilla wow and then plus, right?

0:30 But what does that mean?

0:31 And it means something completely different to everybody.

0:34 For me, what classic plus is?

0:36 Imagine you take vanilla wow and what if vanilla wow had never ended?

0:43 And what is vanilla wow?

0:45 What is classic?

0:45 What is vanilla wow?

0:46 You know, say classic plus.

0:47 Well, classic is like, you know, anything that's old, right?

0:51 Classic is vanilla.

0:52 classic is up to Wrath of the Lich King.

0:54 Everybody has a different definition,

0:56 but I think if you're talking about a classic plus at level 60,

0:59 what if level 60 had never ended?

1:01 And the design principles of what that vanilla

1:05 woow to Burning Crusade kind of era is.

1:09 My thought process behind a classic plus is

1:11 kind of that vanilla to Burning Crusade era,

1:14 like maybe like the Burning Crusade pre- patch, but the portal had never opened.

1:20 What if the Dark Portal had never opened?

1:21 What if you never go to Outland?

1:23 That's kind of the way that I see it.

1:25 There's a lot of good ideas that have come about

1:27 from the community and like from other like private servers and stuff.

1:29 People really like some of the things that Turtle WoW did.

1:32 I've taken a look at it.

1:33 It's good to look at all these things.

1:35 And I really hope that that's what Blizzard does.

1:37 Takes the ideas and finds out like, "Hey, this works.

1:40 Why?

1:40 Why does this work?" A good example of this is is like stat squishes, right?

1:44 Like the band-aid fix for a stat squish is the issue is the numbers are too big.

1:48 numbers get too big whenever you're looking at damage numbers,

1:51 health numbers, whatever.

1:52 The eyes and the mind, the player, it's just harder to comprehend.

1:55 Like, why work with big number when small number do trick?

1:58 So, what they do is they just throw a band-aid on it.

2:00 Time for a stat squish.

2:01 And now, that's kind of what you have to do.

2:03 But that's that's kind of like the easy

2:04 to understand explanation of what I'm talking about.

2:06 In a perfect world, the power creep and the scaling

2:09 and everything in the in the game would have been designed.

2:12 Now again, this is very idealistic, but in a perfect world,

2:14 it would have been designed in a way that through the expansion and stuff,

2:17 there was a nice sort of proper power curve that people could appreciate.

2:21 Now, one of my opinions that I have talking about power creep and stuff,

2:24 and this might be unpopular, I think the next patch and itemization

2:27 in the next patch kind of ruined itemization in WoW.

2:31 It gets really bad and it kind of it kind of peaks in Wrath,

2:34 but throughout all of Burning Crusade,

2:37 Knax is like the patch that came out and was like, "Okay,

2:39 people are complaining about, oh, why do I have spirit on my warrior gear?

2:43 Why do I have this gear?

2:44 Why do I have that gear?

2:45 It's not efficient.

2:46 It's not." So Blizzard took that and they were like, "Okay,

2:48 we'll make the gear more efficient." But what ended

2:49 up happening is they took those itemization points and created

2:52 the most just insanely efficient suit of armor that anybody

2:58 could imagine for whatever spec that tier 3 gear was for.

3:01 So for a paladin, insane holy gear.

3:04 Like if you're a full tier three paladin in vanilla, you're a god.

3:08 A literal god.

3:09 Same goes for a warrior.

3:10 Whatever spec it is that you play, like your gear is insane.

3:13 I feel like they went and they they did this thing and it

3:16 ended up causing this problem over time

3:17 that ended up making everything hyper optimized.

3:20 I think I think the culture of MMO players being super minaxi

3:24 I kind of think that would have happened anyway to some degree.

3:27 However, it's kind of exacerbated by the fact that it's so available.

3:30 I think there's a lot to talk about with classic plus and I think

3:32 I think the discussion of classic plus

3:34 it has to start with these design principles.

3:36 to kind of rehash my version of classic plus and what

3:40 classic plus is is what if vanilla woow had never

3:43 ended and kind of going with the design principles of what

3:45 is like a vanilla woow to Burning Crusade pre- patch.

3:48 Now the Burning Crusade pre- patch that we have

3:51 that we've seen recently is not the same Burning

3:53 Crusade pre- patch that the original pre- patch was

3:56 cuz we went from like patch 1.12 to patch 2.4.

4:01 For those of you who aren't familiar,

4:03 vanilla WoW wasn't just vanilla and this is

4:04 the game and then they had different content releases.

4:06 No, there was constantly changes.

4:08 There was 11 patches.

4:09 You started with patch 1.1 in vanilla and then they had itemization changes.

4:14 They had class balance change.

4:15 I mean, it was the crux of what legacy servers were and what what made people

4:19 so excited about vanilla and everything was this Blizz-like

4:23 concept that was created by the Nostalas team.

4:26 That was the that was the nostalgia was the private server that really like

4:29 launched into the freaking atmosphere the desire

4:32 for legacy servers right and then they

4:34 got shut down that was the big thing then they gave their code

4:36 to Allesium who made a spin-off was doing some like you know under the table

4:41 taking money weird stuff so then lights hope came about white kidney came

4:45 in and hijacked the servers and created

4:46 a new server called lights dude private serum

4:49 is amazing it's so funny so anyway that was kind of like how it

4:52 all happened that's how it all went down and then and then allesium Well,

4:55 they went and they eventually made Turtle Wow and and all that, right?

4:58 And then now Turtle Wow is getting sued, you know, all that kind of stuff.

5:01 Will Classic Plus be a better continuation of Classic or better as Sod 2.0?

5:04 I did not like Sod.

5:05 Let's take it a step back.

5:06 You know, whenever I talk about like band-aid fixes

5:08 and stuff like that, I think Sod did some things well,

5:11 but Sod is like the ultimate example of band-aid fixes taken to the extreme

5:16 where they were like throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks.

5:19 Hey, this isn't good.

5:20 But then they throw a band-aid over it to try and, you know,

5:23 hey, let's just push this thing out there.

5:24 I think if they design Classic Plus

5:26 in the same sort of vein that SOD was designed,

5:30 it'll be an it'll be a massive failure.

5:32 There's just a lot of problems from a system standpoint.

5:35 Now, ironically enough, I do think it was like whenever if you play SOD,

5:39 it's like pressing your buttons is fun.

5:41 It feels fun, but it doesn't feel like classic WoW.

5:43 It's like does it matter if it feels like classic WoW if it's fun?

5:46 Yes and no.

5:47 Actually, there's some argument to be made against that.

5:49 But I think that at its core, like that's what draws people in.

5:51 You want to hook people in with like the what could be.

5:54 you want to hook people in with like that sort of nostalgia.

5:56 However, the good game design, it actually being fun to play all these things

6:01 and and it feeling like it's what you expect to play.

6:04 Especially nowadays, man, people want what they know they will like.

6:09 And people are afraid to try new things.

6:11 Not everybody, but a lot of people.

6:12 The MMO audience is very much like that.

6:14 Everybody is just just scratching and clawing and drooling

6:18 and just frothing at the mouth wanting a new MMO.

6:22 but the second they get a new MMO, they hate it.

6:25 It always happens, right?

6:26 Now, there's a lot of reasons for this and sometimes the MMO is just not good.

6:30 It's just the truth.

6:31 So, uh whenever you talk about like what is Classic Plus,

6:34 I talked about the starting point already.

6:35 So, there's a lot of like nittygritty discussion to have

6:38 about Classic WoW and Classic Plus and all this stuff.

6:41 And in my opinion, we still have not gotten the best version of Classic WoW.

6:44 Like, I don't think we got the best version

6:46 of Classic WoW that Blizzard could have made in 2019.

6:48 I feel very very strongly about that.

6:50 thing that what we saw from like kind of design principles

6:52 and the concept that the Nostalius team went with which was adopted

6:56 by Allesium by Light Hope and kind of changed the ch it

6:59 literally changed the entire trajectory of how

7:01 private servers operated before classic released.

7:04 I think that was the way to do it

7:05 but Blizzard never really did it exactly that way which is

7:08 very frustrating to me cuz I I I spent a lot

7:10 of time before Classic launch talking to Blizzard about this.

7:12 There's some things that I talked to them

7:13 about that they they did which is nice.

7:15 Like originally there was going to only be four patches for vanilla.

7:18 I think they even announced at Blizzcon they only

7:19 wanted four patches and I was like I remember

7:21 like sitting there I had like a two I think it was like a two and a half

7:24 hour meeting talking to the devs and I'm

7:26 like these are all the reasons why this is

7:28 a terrible terrible idea and it's going to kill

7:30 the game cuz originally there was 11 patches, right?

7:33 One of the other things is like spell batching.

7:34 I was never like a huge fan of spell batching.

7:37 The reason why I was a huge fan of spell bashing was not

7:39 because of it existing in general because a lot of people wanted it.

7:43 What I was worried about is like what if we're wrong?

7:45 What if Blizzard overcompensates?

7:47 Or what if we are wrong about the spell batch window?

7:50 Cuz on private servers,

7:51 I think we had a 200 millisecond batching window and in reality

7:55 it was 400 milliseconds and on private servers was only in combat.

7:59 So what Blizzard did,

8:00 they put it 400 milliseconds and they threw it on the entire game.

8:03 So lag uh looting was lagging.

8:05 Uh any sort of interaction with an NPC,

8:07 you want to buy something off a vendor, it was laggy.

8:09 Everything was like the whole game just felt kind of laggy.

8:11 It was kind of stupid.

8:12 as opposed to private servers which had a 200 millisecond batch only on combat.

8:16 What a batch is batch is a latency buffer to make it to where

8:20 if some people have worse internet

8:21 that there's less of a discrepancy between somebody

8:24 with good internet and bad internet which is really good for like let's say

8:27 if somebody plays overseas which on private

8:28 servers like we were playing on European servers.

8:30 A lot of people now that hate batching they hate the version

8:33 of batching that they saw in classic 2019 which was terrible.

8:37 It was horrible.

8:38 Uh, even I wasn't like a big fan of batching before that, but I was like, "Yeah,

8:41 if you want to put it in and test it and see how people like it,

8:44 that that'd be fine." And I think that's what they should have done in the beta.

8:46 However, they were like, "Well, you know, no ch people keep saying no changes.

8:50 People keep saying no changes." And I'm like, "Guys,

8:53 you have to account for the times." There

8:54 was a video that I put out before Classic came out that I was I was really kind

8:57 of like uh I felt very strongly about this.

9:00 You have to account for the times and you have

9:01 to realize that no changes is not a real thing.

9:04 People don't really know or people don't really

9:07 even remember what was going on in vanilla.

9:09 What people do know,

9:10 what people do remember is what they saw on private servers recently.

9:13 What people do know is how they felt.

9:15 And my big argument, you can go back to this video.

9:18 Classic WoW needs changes.

9:20 It was either might need changes or needs change.

9:21 I forgot what the title is, but you can go back and look at this video

9:23 from years ago and I talk about all this stuff.

9:25 And I'm like, the feeling of authenticity

9:28 is so much more important than factual authenticity

9:30 because nobody knows how much armor this random

9:34 gorilla in outside of Gurabashi Arena had.

9:37 Nobody knows that.

9:38 Nobody has any idea.

9:40 That stuff doesn't matter.

9:41 Factual authenticity doesn't matter.

9:42 What matters is that people feel like they're playing the game that they

9:45 that they grew up and they loved and and all that stuff.

9:48 That's the thing.

9:48 Yeah, you have to c capture the experience.

9:50 Look, before we get into the nitty-gritty,

9:52 I want to make a series of videos talking

9:54 more about the nitty-gritty of the design principles of this.

9:57 I'm talking about like the talents and and kind

9:59 of what the game is and everything.

10:00 I think where you really have to start, what you really have to talk about is

10:03 what you want to see in classic plus contentwise.

10:07 If you're talking about vanilla forever, level 60 forever,

10:10 and you're looking at the design principles of like,

10:12 hey, it's Burning Crusade pre- patch, but the Dark Portal never opened.

10:15 Okay, that's that's my sort of vision for Classic Plus.

10:18 That's what I want.

10:19 Okay.

10:20 Well, what else happens?

10:22 There's so much stuff here.

10:24 And yeah, I know Turtle Wow did a lot of good things.

10:26 I I don't think everything that Turtle did is feasible or even makes sense,

10:29 but like I think there is some good ideas that you could pull from it.

10:31 I do think it's wise to look at what other things have worked from a community

10:35 standpoint and see how you can make it

10:36 apply or maybe something similar even here, right?

10:39 Like Hyel is in the game, right?

10:41 Hyel is in the game on the map.

10:44 There's stuff that you can do in Ashara, right?

10:46 Right.

10:46 Wait, do I really have this corner of Ashara discovered on this character?

10:49 It's crazy.

10:49 But like there's stuff that you can do in Ashara, right?

10:52 Hyel is literally right here.

10:54 Okay.

10:55 It's right under Winterring.

10:57 Okay, you go you can actually glitch into Hyel.

10:59 You can you can go here and it's the the geography is all there in vanilla.

11:04 They had all of it.

11:04 There's just so much that you can do, you know?

11:06 You can go here and then you have um but you have Grim Batl right here, right?

11:11 These are all things that they actually ended up putting in the game later on.

11:14 And like Cataclysm, they like kind of resurfaced.

11:17 They redid the whole world and they added a bunch of different things

11:19 that like they originally wanted to put in and never never put in.

11:22 We actually talked to Jeff Kaplan about this a little bit.

11:24 And he's like, "Oh yeah,

11:25 I mean these were all things that were like all a part of the drawing board,

11:28 but then you know it's over time it's

11:30 like oh well this gets put in this expansion,

11:31 this gets put in that expansion." But you can see it all there.

11:34 This is the grey main wall.

11:36 It's even named you can scroll over it

11:37 and at the top of the screen you say grey main wall.

11:40 This is where the organs are in Cataclysm, right?

11:43 This is where they come from.

11:44 So all these things are there.

11:45 If you go into uh if you go here into Hillsrad,

11:48 you go into Altterra, Doran, right?

11:50 Deran is right here.

11:52 And then eventually Doran, it's protected by the arcane mages,

11:55 but it gets, you know, lifted up into the sky and then they

11:57 take it into Northr and all that stuff, right?

12:00 I think there's a lot of different stuff

12:02 that you can do within the scope of Classic WoW as it is and unlock these areas

12:07 and add content with like more of a horizontal progression.

12:10 But not only that, again, I'm going to save some of the nitty-gritty,

12:13 but I talked about how the next patch I think

12:15 is was really bad for the the future of WoW.

12:18 I actually think they need to do a rebalancing of the itemization,

12:21 not to make things better,

12:23 but to make things a little bit worse and to to break down

12:25 this power creep because if you want to have a more horizontal progression,

12:29 I think the best the the absolute

12:32 best patch and it's arguable between these two,

12:34 but 1.6 was Blackwing Layer, 1.7 was Zolar Rub.

12:38 If you talk to most of the uh like vanilla WoW enthusiasts,

12:43 almost everybody will tell you either one of those two

12:46 patches is the absolute best patch for itemization.

12:50 Now, you can make some arguments about like, you know,

12:53 they did some things to pull some things up in 1.10

12:55 and in 1.9 they did some reworks and they added an AQ,

12:58 but at that point everything is already scaled out of control.

13:01 So that ZG patch, that BWL patch, the itemization is amazing.

13:07 Um, like vanilla actually peaks in that area

13:10 of the patch progression because the itemization is so good.

13:13 Talking about like these different places they could open up.

13:15 Like one of the things that I would really like to see

13:17 is like what if they opened up like they unlocked Doran.

13:21 I think they I think they should add like new quest hubs, right?

13:24 So like if they unlocked Doran and they made Doran

13:27 like a quest hub that could be here like closer

13:31 to this horde side and I know that's really really

13:33 close to to Unders City and it might get terrorized.

13:35 On that same front, I think if they added like

13:37 a like a horde quest hub here on this side near Grimbatl

13:41 and they opened up Grim Batl as like a dungeon

13:43 or a raid or something like that, I think could be really cool.

13:45 There's just there's so many different things they could do.

13:47 Man, if you go here, you go you go over here to uh to right is

13:52 in the game and there's like a there's a there's an awesome quest chain.

13:56 Like it's so so loreheavy.

13:57 If you go into the Badlands and you go to Old Man, right?

14:02 Old man, you do the old man quest chain.

14:03 It's like an insane lore dump of like the history

14:06 of the dwarves and everything that that the dwarves are about

14:10 and how like the Azeroth was created and all that and then

14:13 it leads you to and then it just kind of dies.

14:18 It just kind of ends.

14:20 I think if they were to expand on these kinds

14:22 of things I think would be super cool.

14:24 Another example of something that's a little bit less cool but still cool.

14:26 Where is it?

14:27 Oh yeah.

14:27 Yeah.

14:28 Uh Timber Hold right here.

14:29 Right.

14:29 Going into Winter Spring.

14:31 Okay.

14:32 still kind of cool, right?

14:33 But that's a whole another area, right?

14:34 Timberm hold is like maybe maybe there's something there.

14:37 I think I think Turtle Wow did something with Timber Hold, right?

14:40 Some people are kind of intrigued by that idea.

14:42 But there's like a lot of areas out in the world

14:44 that there's just so much more that could be done there.

14:46 Even some of these like off islands like Isisle of Dread.

14:49 Like there's like this is like for like one quest chain.

14:51 Maybe there's something else that could be done there.

14:53 There's just so much map.

14:55 Alcaz Island.

14:56 Wait, how do I not have Alcaz?

14:57 Okay, this character is bugged because didn't I

14:59 have to discover Alcas Island for a scarablord?

15:02 Is that wasn't that part of the scareboard question?

15:04 Yeah, we like we did a whole thing there underneath the cemetery in Duskwood.

15:08 Yeah, I mean, well, I will say this.

15:10 So, I don't want to like leave too much of a bad

15:12 taste in people's mouth about like how I feel about Sod.

15:15 I think Sod had a lot of problems, but I do think they did a lot of things well.

15:19 And one of the things they did do well was Karazhan Crips.

15:21 I think Kerazhan Crips was a great example.

15:23 By the way, you know, I skipped over Karazan.

15:25 Karazhan is in the game.

15:27 Karazhan is in the game in vanilla.

15:29 The tower is there.

15:30 Maybe there's something to be done with Karazan.

15:32 Maybe I mean Karazhan, if you just look at it, it's so big.

15:35 This thing is not meant to be a 10-man raid.

15:37 It's basically it's like they sized it for like a 40man raid.

15:40 You know what I mean?

15:41 Like I think Kerazhan Crips needs some work,

15:44 but like for what they did with it and for the little

15:46 resources that the Blizzard had given the classic team,

15:49 I think they did a pretty good job.

15:50 It was still cool design-wise.

15:52 Now, I just touched on something that I think

15:54 is the crux of the entire issue with Classic Plus,

15:57 with Blizzard, with everything, and it's resources,

16:00 and it's it's the allocation of those resources.

16:03 It feels like Blizzard does not support the classic team enough.

16:07 Maybe it's not even fair to say Blizzard because,

16:09 you know, the freaking Microsofts and the Activisions and, you know,

16:13 the Overlords over the years, I feel like,

16:15 have just kind of like beaten the soul out of so many things.

16:18 And it's really really frustrating to see because

16:21 especially when you get a chance to like

16:23 meet some of these devs and to talk to these people and you know how passionate

16:26 these guys are and even if you disagree

16:27 with them on some things like for example like

16:30 I said I harp on Sod a lot and like Sod is kind of like Agran's baby.

16:34 I think Agrand is great.

16:35 I've had the chance to talk to Agran a bunch of times.

16:37 He's a wonderful person to talk to.

16:39 He actually know like I'm a stupid MMO player who thinks

16:43 the devs are idiots and don't know anything about their own game.

16:46 Okay, like most of us,

16:47 but then you talk to these people and you're like, "Oh, wait.

16:49 Okay, they they do get it." But then it's like, "Well,

16:53 who's who who here is freaking making the call

16:56 to not let certain things happen or to not make

16:58 certain things able to happen?" I'm I'm starting to frustrate

17:01 myself talking about this a little bit because it

17:03 is frustrating sometimes whenever you talk to these people

17:05 and you feel like everybody agrees with what you're saying

17:07 and you're saying the same things that like the community

17:09 feels and then it's like it's very frustrating, man.

17:15 It's very frustrating.

17:16 I'm hoping that at some point somewhere or somewhere, you know,

17:19 in their freaking ivory tower, they're like, "Okay, you know,

17:23 maybe we'll actually do something here that works."

17:26 Sometimes it just almost even feels like there's like,

17:28 you know, whatever nobody is they don't say anything.

17:29 You're talking to somebody and they're not

17:31 they're not saying what they want to say,

17:32 but you can feel what they want to say.

17:34 Man, it's like and I and I just hope I hope that if

17:39 if they really do actually want to do a classic plus that it has

17:43 a proper investment and care and the MMO is is it an MMO is

17:48 a living breathing world that has to be taken care of very very carefully.

17:52 You have to be very quick with whenever

17:53 you want to whenever you want to add things,

17:55 whenever you want to remove things, whenever you want to change things,

17:57 whenever you see something is getting out of control.

17:59 You got to stop the bots.

18:00 The botting is is insane.

18:02 But a lot of this stuff is like it's it's been done with.

18:04 I mean like for years Blizzard they had game

18:06 masters that you you talk to an actual person.

18:09 You had people sitting there just you know

18:11 like popping freaking bots off and banning people, right?

18:14 But then what happens is they get acquired by Activision

18:16 and then freaking deep pockets Bobby comes in and he's like,

18:19 "Okay, yeah, we're going to get rid of all these people.

18:21 We don't need any of this.

18:21 Why do we have any of this?

18:22 Let's just we can automate this system.

18:23 We can do this.

18:24 We can do that.

18:25 Oh, there's bots.

18:25 Why don't we get bots?" Those original sort of like principles

18:28 that are put in from like some of the old guys.

18:30 And I I think this is like an annoying thing.

18:31 I bet if you currently work at Blizzard,

18:33 it's probably like an annoying thing to hear

18:34 because it kind of gets obnoxious when you're like,

18:36 "Oh, it used to be like this.

18:38 Oh, it used to be like this." But the fact of the matter

18:40 is is this is just kind of how people feel, right?

18:43 And the other fact of the matter is that it's not like that anymore.

18:48 The bad man is gone.

18:51 The bad man is gone.

18:53 Even that interview with Lex Freriedman,

18:55 Jeff Kaplan was talking about that guy who was like, "Okay, well,

18:58 Jeff is here talking about like the future of Overwatch

19:00 and like what the the long-term plan is." And he's like,

19:03 "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:04 Whatever, buddy.

19:05 Is this going to make us x amount of money next year?" And it's like,

19:10 how can you predict that?

19:11 There's no there's no way that you can predict that.

19:14 That guy's gone, too, by the way.

19:16 A lot of those people are gone.

19:17 Now, unfortunately, a lot of the old people that were good are also gone.

19:20 In fact, most of them are gone.

19:21 like the the Jeff Kaplins and the Mike

19:23 Mooreheims and and and these people, right?

19:25 Even the people that made Classic 2019,

19:26 a lot of those people are unfortunately gone now.

19:28 But that doesn't mean that there's not

19:30 other good people that are currently working

19:32 at Blizzard and currently working on the game that care a lot about classic.

19:36 And I do think that's really important that they care about classic, right?

19:39 They want to I I think if you're working

19:40 on the classic team and if you're working on classic WoW,

19:42 you need to you need to live, breathe, freaking[ __] piss,

19:47 freaking if you can do it, it needs to be classic.

19:50 Okay?

19:51 I feel like if you're working on an MMO,

19:52 it kind of needs to be like that is what you do.

19:54 And I understand work life balance, but I completely disagree with that.

20:00 I just feel like if you're working on an MMO, like that is it, man.

20:04 An MMO is not a 9 to5.

20:08 No dev is addicted to WoW as you are.

20:10 Do you want to know?

20:11 Okay, can I tell you guys something?

20:13 The last time I went to Blizzard,

20:15 I had somebody who worked at who he's worked at Blizzard for about 20 years.

20:18 Okay, somebody who's worked at Blizzard for about 20 years in front

20:22 of a a group of people who also work at Blizzard and stuff said,

20:26 "I love when SPF is here on campus." He goes,

20:30 he's like, "You know why I love when SPF is

20:32 here on campus?" I don't even agree with him obviously,

20:35 but it just it boosted my ego through the roof.

20:38 He goes, "I love when SFAN is here on campus because he

20:41 knows more about this game than anybody else in this room." I'm like,

20:47 "Okay, no, you're gonna make everybody hate me.

20:49 Stop." He's like, "He knows way more about

20:53 this game than the rest of and I'm like,

20:56 damn, nobody knows a damn thing about this game than Yeah.

21:03 So then my ego went up through the roof and then I drove

21:05 off in my Rolls-Royce and I put my sunglasses on smoking a cigar." Chad,

21:09 the end user will typically know more

21:10 about software than the people who develop it.

21:12 That's actually true.

21:13 If you if you've ever worked in like

21:14 any sort of like game dev or software development,

21:16 like you know that like the people that know the most about the game

21:20 aren't always the people that make the game

21:21 because the people that make the game, they they're they're like making the base

21:25 of the tree and they're building this tree up, right?

21:28 But then the they don't know whenever they build this up what happens.

21:32 And like whenever whenever you have all the different branches, right?

21:35 Like you have like the the roots and everything, the trunk,

21:37 but then what happens when you get to the leaves

21:39 and the branches and all this other stuff?

21:40 It's like you get so far away from from where they're working on that, oh wait,

21:44 I didn't know that happened over there.

21:46 That's why you have bugs, right?

21:47 That's why you're like, oh, um, this thing is overpowered.

21:50 We didn't think that was going to happen.

21:52 But the but the player base finds that out.

21:54 The bottom line is like I hope that Classic Plus is good.

21:58 I hope that they actually do do a classic plus.

22:00 I hope that it's good.

22:01 I hope that it's it's not some kind of like bastardization of like

22:05 they're taking retail WoW and they're trying to make one game for everybody.

22:09 No, it needs to be a classic MMO with classic MMO design principles.

22:12 It needs to be vanilla.

22:14 It needs to be Burning Crusade, that sort of era.

22:16 Okay.

22:17 What if vanilla wow never ended?

22:19 What if level 60 WOW never ended?

22:20 I think you need to rebalance the itemization to fix the power creep

22:24 that happens from the AQ40 into the next patch and kind of like ruins it.

22:27 And you have a horizontal progression.

22:29 You add new content.

22:30 You add Grim Batl, do something with Karazhan, add in Hyel,

22:34 maybe Timberall Hold, throw in Doran, the Grey Main Wall.

22:38 You have the Greyman wall.

22:39 You have Gilaeas.

22:40 You add all these different things in hell.

22:42 You could even go in.

22:44 You can do some stuff with the high elves, right?

22:46 You can you you might even be able to do something with Silver Moon, right?

22:48 Some some Burning Crusade things, right?

22:50 Like I I mentioned Karazhan already, right?

22:52 Hell, what Sod did with Scarlet Enclave was incredibly creative.

22:56 They took the the whole area that they added with uh

22:59 with Wrath of the Lich King and they were like,

23:01 "Okay, wait a second." By the way,

23:02 that was an insane technical advancement for the game

23:05 that I don't know if people really realize how big

23:07 of a deal Scarlet Enclave really was and how

23:09 big of a deal the expansion on Tears Hand was.

23:11 Cuz Scarlet Enclave is one thing, but the expansion on Tears Hand was

23:14 an insane technical advancement in WoW that it's like,

23:18 wait a second, we can take the WoW map and we

23:21 can add like the way that they do their servers and everything.

23:25 The way that the fact that they could go and add and like basically like copy

23:28 or like just attach two parts of another

23:30 different expansion entirely together is kind of insane.

23:34 I'll tell you firsthand they did not think they could do that years ago.

23:37 And I've I've been told that from people who

23:39 used to work at Blizzard a long time ago.

23:40 I think Blizzard is cable and make a good Classic Plus,

23:42 but they'll ruin it with the whole egregious

23:44 microtransaction store[ __] I I don't know about that.

23:46 I mean, maybe they will do some kind of microtransactions because

23:49 freaking you daddy Microsoft or daddy Activision or whoever comes in.

23:52 I don't even know who's the boss anymore.

23:53 I have a lot of hopes,

23:54 a lot of high hopes for Classic Plus, and I really hope Blizzard delivers.

23:57 I think it'll be a fun thing to do

23:59 on stream where we go through and kind of talk

24:01 about the design of Classic Plus over the course

24:03 of maybe the next few weeks or some period of time.

24:05 I have a tool that I'm working on to like make talent trees.

24:08 I do think there needs to be some kind of rework of talent trees

24:10 going into Classic Plus from vanilla that draws

24:13 a lot of inspiration from Burning Crusade.

24:15 In fact, I think if you were to take the Burning Crusade talent trees

24:18 and then mash them down into what is essentially like the level 60 version,

24:23 like a scaled down level 60 version

24:24 of the 41 point talent trees would be pretty cool.

24:27 I also think transmog is a huge L.

24:30 I think if they add transmog, I think it'll turn a lot of people off because

24:33 when I talk about the design principles of classic WoW,

24:35 that is like a core thing.

24:37 Like transmog is not classic.

24:39 It is not a classic MMO type of thing.

24:41 I think it is an insane L to have

24:43 transmog in classic plus if they if they have it

24:46 if if that's what they decide to do or like

24:47 I don't think they should be using retail models.

24:49 I don't think they should be doing transmog.

24:52 There needs to be a distinct difference between

24:53 what classic plus is and what retail wow is