The Classic WoW Waiting Room | Esfand Live 05/06/2026
Esfand
0:00 So this is something I want to do and I
0:01 think it would be like a fun community exercise to do.
0:07 I want to spend some time on stream and I'm and I'm
0:09 actually been building some tools out and I'll I'll working on some things.
0:13 But I want to go over and I want
0:17 us to like community design classic plus on stream.
0:21 Okay?
0:21 I think it'd be a fun thing to do.
0:23 I think it'd be interesting uh to go through and kind
0:25 of talk about what you'd want to see in classic plus.
0:28 What is classic plus?
0:29 And there's like a lot of things that like classic plus is just like
0:32 a random name that you know we we kind of made up as a community, right?
0:35 Classic plus is like a name kind of made up as a community of okay,
0:39 take vanilla wow and then plus, right?
0:42 But what does that mean?
0:44 And it means something completely different to everybody, right?
0:47 It has an entirely different definition to uh any single person that you ask.
0:54 For me, what classic plus is is imagine you take vanilla
0:59 wow and it's like what if vanilla wow had never ended?
1:07 And what is vanilla wow?
1:09 What is classic?
1:09 What is vanilla wow?
1:10 You know, we all say classic plus.
1:11 Well, classic is like, you know, anything that's old, right?
1:15 Classic is vanilla.
1:16 Classic is up to wrath of the lich king.
1:19 Everybody has a different definition.
1:21 But I think if you're talking about a classic plus at level 60,
1:24 what if level 60 had never ended?
1:27 And the design principles of what like that vanilla wow to burning
1:34 crusade kind of era is My guild from server nights layer
1:41 wants to go horde for plus and I hope blood elves
1:43 are in plus so I can play a paladin I love holy.
1:47 Yeah, maybe.
1:49 Um I mean my thought process behind a classic plus is
1:53 like I said kind of that vanilla to burning crusade era,
1:57 like maybe like the Burning Crusade pre-patch, but the portal had never opened.
2:04 What if the Dark Portal had never opened?
2:05 What if you never go to Outland?
2:10 That's that's kind of the way that I see it, right?
2:13 And like there's a lot of good ideas that have come about
2:17 from the community and like from other like private servers and stuff.
2:20 People really like some of the things that Turtle WoW did.
2:22 Uh I I've taken a look at it and I like I mean I don't I I I
2:27 think that it's good to look at all these things
2:31 and I really hope that that's what Blizzard does.
2:34 And like looks at all the things and like
2:35 takes the ideas and finds out like, "Hey, this works.
2:38 Why?
2:38 Why does this work?" Um I don't think it's good to listen to people directly.
2:44 So, as a developer, as a game dev,
2:46 I don't think your job Your job as a game developer,
2:52 people a lot of times talk about how Blizzard doesn't listen to the feedback.
2:56 Um you know, they don't listen to the players, yada yada yada.
2:59 My opinion is I think they listen to the players too much.
3:03 Uh I I think that a lot of game devs these days,
3:07 especially new age Blizzard, I think they listen too much to the players.
3:11 Wait, what the heck?
3:12 What's my Get out of here.
3:26 It's the White Heart of the Woods.
3:27 I didn't realize I was back there.
3:28 Anyway.
3:29 Um I think they listen to the players too much and I think
3:33 that a lot of people I I don't think there's a lot of people
3:36 that are really like informed enough to make like a a proper sort
3:39 of like to to have like a legitimate discussion about what classic WoW is.
3:44 And whenever I say they listen to the players too much,
3:49 specifically what I'm talking about is I think
3:53 that they go through and they see feedback,
3:56 they take feedback, and they apply feedback.
3:59 And your job as a game developer is not to do that.
4:02 Your job as a game developer is to take
4:05 the feedback and translate it into something that makes sense.
4:09 Because a lot of times a player
4:11 will will experience something and they'll be like,
4:13 "I hate this." Or they might do something.
4:16 There might be some player behavior that occurs.
4:18 But your job isn't to go put a band-aid on it and fix it.
4:22 Your job is to go and and at its core figure it out.
4:26 If you have an injury,
4:27 let's say somebody tears their knee, you don't have you know,
4:30 they don't just give it surgery and you know, boom, it's fixed.
4:34 You've got to do physical therapy.
4:36 You have to work on it.
4:36 You have to do exercises to build it back up, right?
4:38 You have to go and and and at its core
4:40 you have to build it from the base back up.
4:42 And I think a lot of times with what we've seen with retail WoW over
4:46 the years is they go out there and they
4:48 just kind of throw something and they're like,
4:50 "Hey, you know, this will work, right?
4:53 Hey, this fixes this problem." Instead of seeing that hey,
4:57 uh we made a big mistake and we need to go back and and kind
5:04 of fix this whole sort of design from the from the bottom up.
5:08 And whenever they don't do that, part of it's because
5:10 they can't and it's like too far gone certain things.
5:13 Um and like uh a good example of this is is like stat squishes, right?
5:18 Like the band-aid fix for a stat squish is well,
5:21 the the issue is the numbers are too big.
5:24 Numbers get too big whenever you're looking at damage numbers,
5:26 health numbers, whatever.
5:27 And then the eyes and the mind, the player, it's just harder to comprehend.
5:31 Like why work with big number when small number do trick, right?
5:35 So, what they do is they just throw a band-aid on it.
5:38 Time for a stat squish.
5:39 And now that's kind of what you have to do,
5:40 but that's that's kind of like the easy
5:41 to understand explanation of what I'm talking about.
5:44 Uh whereas in a perfect world the power creep and the scaling and everything
5:49 in the in the game would have been designed now again this is very idealistic
5:54 but in a perfect world it would have been designed in a way that through
5:57 the expansion stuff there was a nice sort
5:59 of proper power curve that people could appreciate.
6:03 Now one of my opinions that I have talking
6:07 about power creep and stuff and this might be unpopular.
6:09 I think I think the Naxx patch and itemization
6:12 in the Naxx patch kind of ruined itemization in wow.
6:16 So it gets really bad and it kind of it kind of peaks in wrath but throughout
6:22 all of Burning Crusade and actually it is all
6:26 throughout Burning Crusade but especially it starts in Naxx.
6:30 Naxx is like the patch that came out and was like okay people
6:33 are complaining about oh why do I have spirit on my warrior gear?
6:38 Why do I have this gear?
6:39 Why do I have that gear?
6:39 It's not efficient it's not so Blizzard took that and they
6:42 were like okay we'll make the gear more efficient.
6:44 But what ended up happening is they took
6:46 those itemization points and created the most just insanely
6:51 efficient suit of armor that anybody could imagine
6:55 for whatever spec that tier 3 gear was for.
6:57 So for a paladin insane holy year.
7:00 Like if you're full tier 3 paladin vanilla you are a god a literal god.
7:05 And same goes for a warrior and everything right?
7:10 Whatever whatever spec it is that you play like your gear is insane.
7:14 So with that being said um I feel like they went and they they
7:23 did this thing and it ended up causing this problem over time that ended up
7:26 making everything hyper optimized and that I
7:29 think I think the culture of MMO players being super min-maxy I kind of think
7:34 that would have happened anyway to some degree.
7:36 However it's kind of exacerbated by the fact that it's so available, you know?
7:45 Yeah.
7:46 So, uh what if they add a virtual currency and pay real money for buy Okay.
7:53 Hold on.
7:53 Hold on.
7:54 Let's Let's talk about the Let's talk about the base of the game design.
7:57 Yeah.
7:57 The season one end?
7:58 It did.
7:59 Oh, by the way, we never Let's just a little little bonus.
8:02 Let's check this out.
8:02 Let's see the uh the results.
8:04 I haven't even looked at the board.
8:06 I haven't even looked at the board yet, okay?
8:15 21 Dude, that went up a lot.
8:21 2121.
8:23 It went up 11 points in the last day.
8:32 But, that's fine.
8:33 You know why?
8:37 Because I was over by 26 points.
8:42 Easy.
8:43 Easy.
8:47 My guess was 2300.
8:48 Actually, let me see if I was right.
8:49 My guess was 2300 for 5v5.
8:53 Uh for 3v3, my guess for 3v3 was going to be 2500.
9:00 Oh, 2463.
9:05 Man, I was close in in threes and I I didn't even play forever.
9:10 I really want to do more threes and fives.
9:12 And then I just tanked I tanked my twos at the end of the season
9:14 cuz I was just I was playing for fun after we got safe glad.
9:17 But, yeah.
9:19 Congrats on glad.
9:19 Thank you.
9:20 Yeah, we did.
9:21 We did get gladiator.
9:22 So, three-time Burning Crusade gladiator.
9:24 Thank you.
9:26 You 100% made the right call to go on one last arena.
9:29 I know.
9:30 You know, remember that?
9:32 I said we need to play one more.
9:34 So, so if you were watching that stream, we got Gladiator on stream.
9:40 And like they did not want to queue and I was like, "Guys, trust me.
9:43 I I feel like we have to play one more." And we got that mage cheese team.
9:48 And we just went in and just boom,
9:50 just cross CC all of them and just one by one just chop them down.
9:53 It was so good.
9:55 Yeah, so good.
9:58 So, I agree with that loot.
10:00 If you're looking to get one piece of loot in a week
10:01 and some of that stuff is going to be Okay,
10:02 so so yeah, let me let's go back anyway.
10:04 Let's go back and deviate back.
10:05 Okay, I just wanted to kind of brag a little bit about Gladiator number three.
10:09 Um but let's kind of let's kind of roll it back a little bit.
10:14 Um I think there's a lot to talk about with Classic Plus and I think
10:19 I think the discussion of Classic Plus
10:21 it has to start with these design principles.
10:23 So, like I said, to kind of rehash my version of Classic Plus
10:28 and what Classic Plus is is what if vanilla WoW had never ended?
10:34 Excuse me.
10:35 What if vanilla WoW had never ended?
10:37 And kind of going with the design principles of what
10:38 is like a vanilla vanilla WoW to Burning Crusade pre-patch.
10:42 Now, the Burning Crusade pre-patch that we have that we've seen recently
10:47 is not the same Burning Crusade pre-patch that the original you know,
10:52 pre-patch was cuz we went from like patch 1.12 to patch 2.4.
10:59 So, for those of you who aren't familiar, you know,
11:03 vanilla WoW wasn't just vanilla and this is
11:05 the game and then they had different content releases.
11:07 No, there was constantly changes.
11:08 There was 11 patches.
11:10 You started with patch 1.1 in vanilla and then they had itemization changes.
11:15 They had class balance change.
11:16 I mean, it was the the the crux of what legacy servers were and what what made
11:21 people so excited about vanilla and everything was
11:24 this Blizz-like concept that was created by the Nostalrius team.
11:28 That was the That was the Nostalrius was the private server that really
11:31 like launched into the freaking atmosphere
11:35 the the desire for legacy servers, right?
11:38 And then they got shut down.
11:39 That was the big thing.
11:39 Then they gave their code to Elysium who made a spin-off.
11:43 Elysium was doing some like, you know, under the table taking money weird stuff.
11:48 So then Lights Hope came about.
11:50 White Kidney came in and hijacked the servers
11:52 and created a new server called Lights that Dude,
11:54 private server drama is amazing.
11:55 It's so funny.
11:56 So anyway, that was kind of like how it all happened.
11:59 That's how it all went down.
12:00 And then and then Elysium people they went and they
12:02 eventually made Turtle WoW and and all that, right?
12:04 And then now Turtle WoW is getting sued,
12:06 you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
12:09 Yeah.
12:11 So anyway, um yeah.
12:17 Guys, I think Zaru is a liar.
12:19 I I don't think I don't think Zaru is at Blizzard.
12:21 I think he's a I think he's a liar.
12:23 Okay.
12:24 Um and I I yeah, I don't think I don't think they
12:28 I don't think they would invite anybody out there ever to do anything.
12:33 Um yeah.
12:37 So Uh yeah, yeah, I think Turtle's getting shut down a week.
12:51 So would Classic Plus be a better continuation of Classic or better as SOD 2.0?
12:57 I did not like SOD.
12:58 I I don't think SOD I So whenever I let's let's take a step back.
13:02 You know whenever I talk about like band-aid fixes
13:04 and stuff like that, I think SOD did some things well,
13:07 but SOD is like the the the ultimate example of band-aid fixes taken
13:13 to the extreme where they were just like
13:15 throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks.
13:17 Hey, this isn't good,
13:18 but then they throw a band-aid over it to try and you know,
13:20 hey, let's just push this thing out there.
13:22 And I I really I really don't think it think if they
13:27 design classic plus in the same sort of vein that SOD was designed,
13:32 it'll be an it'll be a massive failure.
13:35 I think I think there's a lot of problems from from a system standpoint.
13:40 Now, ironically enough, I do think it was like whenever if you play SOD,
13:44 it's like pressing your buttons is fun.
13:46 It feels fun, but it doesn't feel like classic wow.
13:48 Right?
13:49 And and it's like does it matter if it feels like classic wow if it's fun?
13:53 Yes and no, actually.
13:54 Um there is some there's some argument to be made against that, right?
13:58 Um but I think that at its core like that's what draws people in.
14:02 You want to hook you want to hook people in with like the what could be.
14:04 You want to hook people in with like that sort of nostalgia.
14:07 However, the good game design, it actually being fun to play,
14:11 all these things and and it feeling like it's what you expect to play,
14:15 especially nowadays, man.
14:16 [clears throat] People people want what they know they will like.
14:22 And people are afraid to try new things.
14:24 Not everybody, but a lot of people, right?
14:26 And I would say particularly like an MMO
14:29 the MMO audience is very much like that.
14:31 Everybody is just just scratching and clawing and drooling
14:36 and just frothing at the mouth wanting a new MMO.
14:39 But the second they get a new MMO they hate it.
14:43 It always happens, right?
14:45 Now, there's a lot of reasons for this and sometimes the MMO's just not good.
14:48 That is just the truth.
14:49 But I think part of the reason is
14:52 because people just like they like what they like.
14:54 It's the same reason why people, you know,
14:56 they have Netflix and they freaking watch Arrested Development 100 times.
15:00 It's the same reason why, you know, Peacock even exists.
15:03 If it wasn't for The Office going to Peacock,
15:05 Peacock would be dead in the water, right?
15:08 You know, people just won't they'll just replay.
15:09 It's the same reason why people watch my stream, okay?
15:12 It's every single day it's a rerun, but they're like, "Look, I don't know.
15:14 It's comfy.
15:15 I like having S fan on the screen." It's the same day.
15:17 It's same you know, no changes, dude.
15:21 [laughter] That's but what that's what it is, right?
15:25 Um And and it's just it's just what it is.
15:30 Sometimes, you mean most of the time, true.
15:32 Generalizing a mob audience versus like, well, I mean it kind of, right?
15:36 Uh praying for competitive PvP in some way isn't
15:38 strictly based on the amount of time you spend playing.
15:40 So, uh I think there's a lot of misconceptions about vanilla WoW,
15:44 and that's kind of where it starts.
15:48 That's that's why a lot of these discussions and talking about
15:50 creating classic plus and stuff makes it's why it's very difficult
15:54 because these misconceptions like the honor grind is strictly only related
15:59 to how much time you spend on it um and nothing else.
16:04 It is heavily that, but but the idea
16:06 that it's nothing else but that is just wrong, right?
16:09 Um now, with that being said, okay?
16:13 I think I annoy people whenever I talk like this, by the way,
16:15 and I and I get that, but it's just I'm I lay out all the facts.
16:19 I lay out everything that I can think about, and it is what it is, okay?
16:22 I'm sorry I don't sensationalize.
16:25 I'm sorry I don't just freaking get angry at nothing for no reason.
16:28 I just like to lay it all out there.
16:30 All right?
16:32 So, yeah, time invested is huge, right?
16:36 Player agency, time invested,
16:38 these are all like core principles of an MMO that are really good.
16:42 And the honor system kind of does that.
16:43 However, in the original honor system, while it had some problems, okay?
16:49 While while the original honor system had some problems, definitely.
16:53 Uh even for me, like whenever classic came out, I was like, yeah,
16:55 I think you should consider like getting rid of um
16:59 the the uh the threshold that you need for decay.
17:04 Or no, sorry.
17:05 Uh let me let me rephrase that.
17:07 So, the original honor system,
17:10 I'm not going to turn this into a video explaining the original honor system,
17:13 so I'm going to try to explain it in two sentences.
17:15 You have you know how like in arenas you have MMR,
17:18 you have matchmaking rating that's invisible?
17:21 In the honor system, you had something invisible called the rank points.
17:25 So, rank points are given to you based off of formula that is that is determined
17:30 based on your standing of how much honor
17:32 you have on the server for a week, okay?
17:36 And you need to attain a certain amount of rank
17:38 points in order to go up a certain percentage of rank.
17:42 And um I used to Sorry, you need to go get a certain amount of rank
17:46 points in order to to go up the ranks.
17:49 And you need to attain a certain amount of rank points in order
17:52 to even begin to move the progress bar once you get to a certain rank.
17:58 I know that's super confusing.
18:00 The original honor system is not good, per se.
18:03 Um but it does it's it's not strictly time invested.
18:09 There is like some some some wants to scale in there.
18:12 It's just that you you have to really understand like what it what it is.
18:15 Like I think they reworked the honor system
18:16 for Saud and for like era or for anniversary.
18:19 And the way they reworked the honor system is kind of bad.
18:22 Cuz the way they reworked the honor system for anniversary literally is that.
18:27 Literally is time invested, nothing else, because you had to get 500k honor
18:30 a week and you're automatically uh bracket one RP,
18:35 you're bracket one rank points.
18:36 And if you're bracket one rank points,
18:37 you get the maximum amount of increase you can get for every week.
18:40 Uh and then yeah, it's it's as simple as that.
18:43 So, yes.
18:46 Uh that is I I think the way they did in anniversary is bad.
18:49 Um but like half of what they did in anniversary is something
18:52 that I actually suggested to them like seven Jesus Christ seven years ago.
18:58 You know what else is crazy?
18:59 Seven years ago, almost on the dot,
19:03 was I I actually flew out to Blizzard for like a secret thing uh where I
19:10 got to see like the classic beta and I was like before before it was announced.
19:14 Like a week before it was announced because and it was I just
19:18 gotten banned from on Twitch I'd gotten banned cuz I had a ban
19:21 on I had a ban on uh YouTube for streaming private servers for 3
19:25 months and then I got banned on Twitch for something I didn't do.
19:29 Um but yeah.
19:40 If you didn't want to close are you a liar?
19:42 Cuz it's funny.
19:45 [laughter] I was joking.
19:47 I was joking.
19:55 [laughter] [gasps] Yeah.
19:59 Um but yeah.
20:11 Any Twitch primes in the chat?
20:17 Uh but yeah.
20:20 See the reason why I said I didn't want everyone to know it was coming.
20:23 Uh I uh I keep my relationships private, okay?
20:28 Um but uh I I did not have sexual relationships with Blizzard.
20:35 Thank you.
20:36 Um hm?
20:38 Got you.
20:39 Joe Thank you for the one year.
20:40 Ginzu knife, thank you for the 13 months.
20:44 We can go public if you like.
20:45 Okay, why am I sweating?
20:48 Oh, freak.
21:06 Bro, WHY WAS THE AC OFF?
21:19 Um No, I I don't I don't think it's a But yeah, no,
21:28 I was joking because I um I said I said Blizzard would never do that.
21:33 But I was I [clears throat] was like working
21:34 with Blizzard for like months before Classic came out, right?
21:37 Talking to But the thing is a lot of So a lot
21:38 of the people that I used to work with are no longer there.
21:41 Like I was I was talking to people from like the Mike Morhaime era.
21:47 The like a lot of guys who are like
21:48 at like Secret Door and Dreamhaven and those guys now.
21:50 Like There's a reason why um Do you guys think it's
21:56 a coincidence that like people just like randomly hit me up about things?
22:00 Like do you think it's a coincidence that Jeff Kaplan just randomly came
22:04 [laughter] on his stream?
22:05 I'm like in the cut.
22:06 You You guys realize that?
22:10 [laughter] [gasps] [laughter] Uh so yeah.
22:16 Any gifters wide hard to Anonymous Arab, HABIBI WITH A HUNDRED GIFTED SUBS.
22:24 Salaam alaikum.
22:25 LOOK AT THAT.
22:26 ANY OILERS?
22:28 Thank you for a hundred gifted subs.
22:34 [laughter] [gasps] Thank you so much, man.
22:37 Thank you.
22:39 Thank you.
22:40 Look at his Look, you we're cousins.
22:42 You know, it's my cousin.
22:44 [laughter] Dude, anytime anybody from the Middle East like I I see if I'm
22:47 like traveling and like I'm in an Uber and the guy's like oh,
22:50 I'm from you know, whatever.
22:51 It doesn't Any Middle Eastern country, right?
22:54 They could say like Afghanistan.
22:56 They could say Turkey.
22:57 They could say, you know, Saudi.
22:58 It could be anywhere.
22:59 Like oh, we're cousins.
23:00 We're cousins.
23:01 We're We're neighbors.
23:03 [laughter] It's just all all Middle Eastern people I know are like [laughter]
23:08 This is super funny.
23:10 Yeah, thank you for 100 gifted, dude.
23:12 Any gifter IS WIDE OPEN.
23:13 WOAH, ONE GIFTED SUB.
23:15 FOZINO, thank you for the one gifted sub.
23:17 Thank you.
23:18 Thank you.
23:20 [laughter] Yeah, all family.
23:21 Yeah, true.
23:22 True.
23:23 True.
23:23 All family.
23:26 [clears throat] Yeah.
23:26 Oh, man.
23:28 What happened to the dark portal?
23:29 Oh, freak.
23:29 Wait, I raised it too much.
23:31 Um okay, kind of kind of redirect the conversation.
23:34 Sorry, I got a little bit distracted there.
23:36 Um On Mother's Day, Asfan calls up mom and says, "Pay up." Okay.
23:43 Wait, what the heck?
23:46 What is going So, yeah.
24:02 [cough] [clears throat] Uh Merlock's next racing plus.
24:06 Do you guys think that they should add [clears throat and cough] Okay, so sorry.
24:09 Sorry.
24:10 Before before I go on cuz I don't have a lot of time today.
24:12 I am very busy the next couple days.
24:14 Um I heard you raged at one of my guildies last night.
24:18 Uh I don't really rage that often.
24:23 But what was his name?
24:23 Maybe I did.
24:26 Like I think it's unlikely.
25:07 What are we doing this today?
25:12 Cool.
25:14 [cough and clears throat] Um the Is that what you think Kurds are?
25:51 One of my best friend growing up was Kurdish.
25:53 Dude, you know who parties?
25:55 Like I feel like Okay, so like you know when you're in Texans
25:58 and you have Mexican friends and like Mexicans party.
26:01 Did this jackass just say he doesn't rage that much?
26:05 Then explain this.
26:07 Link.
26:11 Uh buttercup or something.
26:13 Maybe rage was the wrong word.
26:32 Oh, the priest.
26:34 No, I didn't rage at him at all.
26:36 Um people in chat were saying that his 5v5 arena team
26:41 the the they were we were doing arenas and somebody said that
26:45 Any gifters wide Like a handful of people in chat were saying
26:47 that that 5v5 arena team was selling a boost to to priest.
26:54 And then he came in chat and he was like, "What the F?
26:56 I'm not getting boosted." And I was like, "Oh, I don't know.
26:58 I mean, I was just chat was just saying that." And I was like,
27:00 "I I have no idea." Yeah, it's not getting raged.
27:05 It's not It's not rage.
27:08 Forcing to push the offense backwards a bit.
27:17 So, Charles God dammit.
27:23 Okay.
27:23 Um [clears throat] Does that sound like a real athlete?
27:33 It's my visor.
27:34 It's a coat Reese's Cups are the best candy.
27:47 Nothing else comes close.
28:00 Actually, I like Reese's Cups, too.
28:07 Okay.
28:10 The priest came in his chat and asked fan to tell
28:12 that poor guy to kiss his dad on the lips.
28:13 No, I did that anyway.
28:14 Hype train still broken?
28:15 Yeah, it's still The hype train is still broken.
28:17 I don't know.
28:20 Do you think Blizzard will dress combat bug in TVC Arena?
28:22 Uh I basically have no faith that anybody
28:25 in at Blizzard is working on Burning Crusade.
28:27 Um and it's it annoys the hell out of me and I've talked about
28:30 it a lot cuz I feel like they just like do things and I'm like,
28:32 "Hello, what are you guys doing here?
28:33 Why are you guys not doing this?" Uh one
28:36 of the big problems is the MMR problem in arenas.
28:41 It like it's kind of killing arenas and making people not want to play.
28:44 Um I got screwed over by it at the end of the season.
28:50 Yeah.
28:55 Wait, let me go Wait, let me guys show you this thing again.
28:57 Any gifters wide hard do?
28:59 Any gifters wide hard do?
29:06 Chat, look at this.
29:06 This is the original 2007 replica statue outside of Blizzard.
29:14 I got to I got to find a good place to put this thing in my room.
29:21 This is the holiday gift for the devs.
29:30 [clears throat] Explain what's the MMR problem.
29:40 Uh like people are playing arenas and then uh not I'm I'm doing
29:45 a separate video about this whenever I'm I'm back in a few days,
29:48 uh but it's basically it has a lot to do with um [clears throat]
29:53 I play people 2 to 300 rating higher than me
29:55 and I get 10 to 14 points and I'm worse cooked.
29:57 Well, dude, I was I was losing 15 points to people
30:03 like 200 MMR higher than me and they were gaining points.
30:07 But then uh whenever we would queue with people,
30:10 like we would we would win a game and we get zero points.
30:13 Like I was looking at my arena Look at this.
30:17 So, we got to like we were almost gladiator the day
30:20 before and then we started queuing and then look at this.
30:24 Zero points, zero points, zero points, zero points, minus 19,
30:27 minus 15, zero point win, minus 17, zero point win.
30:31 I'm like, "Bro, what is happening?" We randomly had
30:34 one with nine and then zero point, zero point.
30:37 So, we were like tanking rating while winning more games than losing.
30:44 I I I'm I'm going to I'm going to keep
30:46 it I'm going to keep it [clears throat] like, you know,
30:48 to to one topic today because of um I want to keep it
30:51 to one topic today because of the I'm very, very short on time.
30:55 But uh I want to do I want to do some talk about that later.
30:59 Um and like I I really think Blizzard needs to fix this.
31:03 Like I I got I'm I don't know.
31:04 I feel like a lot of people are
31:05 really upset because Blizzard just seems like they're
31:08 like they're treating Burning Crusade like an after
31:10 thought and it's kind of like, "Here you go.
31:11 Here's a No, here you we're going to throw out some bait.
31:13 We're just going to give you something to play with until we're ready to put
31:16 out like a classic plus or something or SOD 2 or whatever." So, yeah.
31:22 One topic gives time about everything other than classic.
31:24 Yeah, but Crow, people keep asking me about other stuff, right?
31:26 So, I'm I'm going to answer.
31:29 [clears throat and cough] So, anyway.
31:32 Um let's let's kind of bring it back a little bit.
31:41 Um Okay, let me let me get back on track cuz
31:45 we kind of got off topic for a little bit there.
31:48 Um I did want to show off the gladiator a little bit.
31:53 Um but then uh but other than that, we kind of got a little bit off topic.
31:57 So, we're going to get back on topic now.
31:59 Um [clears throat and cough]
32:33 Okay.
32:31 So, I want to talk a little bit about actually Let's this guy up.
33:21 When do When do the titles go out?
33:51 Try to get the right resolution.
33:54 Yeah, I do [clears throat] I think getting
33:55 glad in twos would have been way easier,
33:57 but I didn't have like a partner for it.
34:01 I didn't have I didn't have a a shaman that knew that like cuz cuz
34:05 I was planning on playing on with Killawave
34:06 who ended up having to quit the game.
34:08 And then Settle was playing it like we kind of all like
34:11 had people that we were playing with and then my partner quit.
34:13 So then I was like scrambling.
34:16 Yeah.
34:20 Okay.
34:21 So, [cough and clears throat] to continue.
34:24 Whenever we talk about like a classic plus and what a classic classic plus is,
34:28 like I think a lot of the design principles of Oh, God.
34:46 The EULA or it's not letting me click on anything.
34:49 What dude, what game is this?
34:51 Yeah, it's not letting me click on anything.
34:52 So, let me let me restart here.
35:16 What's the meaning of life?
35:17 To to talk about classic WoW forever.
35:20 Mhm.
35:22 Okay.
35:22 So, uh one of the things I want to talk about like what is classic WoW or sorry,
35:26 what is classic plus and like what it is.
35:28 I talked about the starting point already.
35:30 So, [cough and clears throat]
35:32 there's there's a lot of like nitty-gritty discussion to have
35:35 about classic WoW and classic plus and all this stuff.
35:38 And in my opinion, we still have not
35:39 gotten the best version of classic classic WoW.
35:42 Like I don't think we got the best version
35:44 of classic WoW that Blizzard could have made in 2019.
35:46 I feel very very strongly about that.
35:48 Uh I think that what we saw from like the the the kind of design
35:53 principles and the concept that the Nostalrius
35:54 team went with, which was adopted by Elysium,
35:59 by Lights Hope, and kind of changed the changed It literally changed
36:02 the entire trajectory of how private
36:03 servers operated before classic released, right?
36:07 I think that was the way to do it,
36:08 but Blizzard never really did it exactly that way,
36:10 which is very frustrating to me cuz I I I spent
36:13 a lot of time before classic launch talking to Blizzard about this.
36:16 And uh there's some things that I talked
36:18 to them about that they that did, which is nice.
36:20 Like originally, there was going to be only be four patches for vanilla.
36:23 I think they even announced at BlizzCon they only wanted four patches.
36:26 And I was like I remember how like sitting there I had like a two
36:29 I think it was like a two and a half hour meeting talking to the devs.
36:32 And I'm like, these are all the reasons why this is
36:34 a terrible terrible idea and it's going to kill the game.
36:37 Um cuz originally there was 11 patches, right?
36:42 There was 11 patches.
36:44 Uh one of the other things was like spell batching.
36:45 I was never like a huge fan of spell batching,
36:48 but like the reason why I was a huge fan of spell batching was
36:51 not because of it existing in general cuz a lot of people wanted it.
36:55 What I was worried about is like, what if we were wrong?
36:57 What if Blizzard overcompensates?
37:00 Or what if we were wrong about the spell batch window?
37:03 Cuz on private servers I think we had a 200 millisecond batching window.
37:07 And in reality it was 400 milliseconds
37:09 and on private servers it was only in combat.
37:12 So what Blizzard did,
37:13 they put it 400 milliseconds and they threw it on the entire game.
37:16 So la looting was lagging.
37:18 Uh any sort of interaction with an NPC,
37:20 you want to buy something off a vendor, it was laggy.
37:22 Everything like the whole game just felt kind of laggy.
37:24 It was kind of stupid, right?
37:27 Uh as opposed to private servers which
37:28 had a 200 millisecond batch only on combat.
37:31 Right?
37:31 And that's like a It's a It's a What a batch is,
37:34 batch is a latency buffer to make it to where if some people have worse
37:38 internet that there's less of a discrepancy um
37:41 between somebody with good internet and bad internet.
37:43 Which is really good for like let's say if somebody plays overseas,
37:46 which on private servers like we were playing on European servers.
37:48 So yeah.
37:49 Um So that's why like a lot of people now that hate batching,
37:56 they hate the version of batching that they
37:57 saw in uh classic 2019, which was terrible.
38:02 It was horrible.
38:03 Uh even I wasn't like a big fan of batching before that, but I was like, yeah,
38:06 if you want to put it in and test it and see how people like it,
38:08 that that'd be fine.
38:09 And I think that's what they should have done in the beta.
38:11 However, uh they were like, well, you know,
38:14 no cha People keep saying no changes.
38:16 People keep saying no changes.
38:17 And I'm like, guys, you have to account for the times.
38:22 There was a video that I put out before Classic came out that I
38:24 was I was really kind of like uh uh I felt very strongly about this.
38:29 You have to account for the times and you have
38:31 to realize that no changes is not a real thing.
38:34 People don't really know or people don't really
38:36 even remember what was going on in vanilla.
38:40 What people do know,
38:41 what people do remember is what they saw on private servers recently.
38:44 What people do know is uh [clears throat] kind of how they felt.
38:51 And my big argument, you can go back to this video, Classic WoW needs changes.
38:56 It It was It might need changes or needs changes.
38:58 I forgot what the title is.
38:59 But you can go back and look at this video from years
39:00 ago and I talk about all this stuff and I'm like the feeling
39:04 of authenticity is so much more
39:06 important than factual authenticity because nobody
39:09 knows how much armor this random gorilla in outside of Gurubashi Arena had.
39:15 Nobody knows that.
39:16 Okay?
39:17 Nobody has any idea.
39:20 So, it it doesn't That stuff doesn't matter.
39:22 Factual authenticity doesn't matter.
39:23 What matters is that people feel like they're playing the game that they
39:26 that they grew up and they loved and and all that stuff.
39:29 Okay, five-score pack knows.
39:30 But everybody else, nobody else knows, right?
39:33 So, That's That's the thing.
39:37 Yeah, you have to catch capture the experience.
39:40 Actually, on my Mangos core.
39:41 Yeah, exactly.
39:43 You know I met the guy or met one of the guys that made Mangos?
39:47 That's like just randomly.
39:49 He works at Amazon now and he wouldn't tell
39:51 me what his name is because he was like scared.
39:55 But he was like, "You're Asmongold, right?" I'm like,
39:56 "Yeah." And he's like, "I worked on Mangos." I was like, "What?" [laughter]
40:01 And this was like a year after I had started streaming and I was like,
40:06 This is cuz I I was like It was actually kind of crazy.
40:08 Yeah, I I He was hanging out with with uh Raj Patel, actually.
40:13 Yeah.
40:16 Um But look, before we get into the nitty-gritty,
40:20 I want to make a series of videos talking
40:22 more about the nitty-gritty of the design principles of this.
40:26 I'm talking about like the talents and and kind
40:28 of what the game is and everything,
40:29 but I think I think what you really have to start what you really
40:32 have to talk about is what you want to see in classic plus content-wise.
40:37 If you're talking about vanilla forever, level 60 forever,
40:41 and you're looking at the design principles of like,
40:43 "Hey, it's Burning Crusade pre-patch but the Dark Portal never opened." Okay?
40:46 That's That's my sort of vision for classic plus.
40:49 That's what I want.
40:50 Okay?
40:53 Well, what else happens?
40:55 There's so much stuff here.
40:58 And yeah, I know Turtle Wow did a lot of good things, right?
41:01 And uh I I don't think everything
41:05 that Turtle did is feasible or even makes sense,
41:07 but like I think there is some good ideas that you could pull from it, right?
41:10 If If I do think it's wise to look at what other things have worked
41:14 from a community standpoint and see how you
41:15 can make it apply or maybe something similar.
41:17 Okay?
41:19 But like even here, right?
41:24 Like Hyjal is in the game, right?
41:26 Hyjal is in the game on the map.
41:28 There's stuff that you can do in Azshara, right?
41:31 Wait, do I really not have this corner
41:32 of Azshara I've discovered on this character?
41:34 It's crazy.
41:35 But like there's stuff that you can do in Azshara, right?
41:38 Hyjal is literally right here, okay?
41:40 It's right under Winterspring.
41:42 Okay?
41:42 You go You can actually glitch into Hyjal.
41:45 You can You can go here and it's the the geography is all there in vanilla.
41:49 They had all of it.
41:50 Um there's just so much that you can do, you know?
41:54 You can go here and then you have um you have Grim Batol.
41:59 Oh, I'm too big.
41:59 You can't really see the the Batol.
42:02 Here, let me let me make sure you guys can see the Batol.
42:06 But you have Grim Batol right here.
42:09 Right?
42:10 Like these are These are all things that they actually ended up putting
42:12 in the game later on and like Cataclysm they like kind of resurface.
42:17 They redid the whole world and they added a bunch of different things
42:20 that like they originally wanted to put in and never never put in.
42:22 We actually talked to Jeff Kaplan about this a little bit.
42:25 And he's like, "Oh, yeah.
42:26 I mean, these were all things that were like all a part of the drawing board,
42:29 but then, you know, it's over time it's like,
42:31 oh, well, this gets put in this expansion.
42:32 This gets put in that expansion." But you can see it all there.
42:35 This is the Greymane Wall.
42:37 It's even named.
42:38 You can scroll over it and the top of the screen you say Greymane Wall.
42:42 This is where the Worgens are in Cataclysm, right?
42:44 This is where they come from.
42:47 So, all these things are there.
42:48 If you go into um If you go here
42:51 into Hillsbrad and you go into Alterac, Dalaran, right?
42:55 Dalaran is right here.
42:58 And then eventually Dalaran it it's protected by the Arcane mages,
43:01 but it gets, you know, lifted up into the sky and then they take
43:03 it into to Northrend and all that stuff, right?
43:06 So, I think there's a lot of different stuff
43:10 that you can do within the scope of classic WoW as it is and unlock these areas
43:16 and add content with like more of a horizontal progression.
43:19 But not only that, again, I'm going to save some of the nitty-gritty,
43:22 but I talked about how the Naxx patch or I think
43:24 it was was really bad for the the future of WoW.
43:27 I actually think they need to do a rebalancing
43:29 of the itemization not to make things better,
43:32 but to make things a little bit worse and to to break down this power creep.
43:36 Because if you want to have a more horizontal progression,
43:39 I think the best the the absolute
43:41 best patch and it's arguable between these two, but 1.6 was Blackwing Lair.
43:46 1.7 was Zul'Gurub.
43:48 Right?
43:54 [cough] If you talk to most of the like vanilla WoW enthusiasts,
43:57 almost everybody will tell you either one of those two
44:00 patches is the absolute best patch for itemization.
44:05 station.
44:06 Now, you can make some arguments about like, you know,
44:08 they did some things to pull some things up in 1.10
44:11 and in 1.9 they did some reworks and they added an AQ,
44:14 but at that point everything is already scaled out of control.
44:18 So, that ZG patch, that BWL patch, the itemization is amazing.
44:24 Um like vanilla actually peaks in that that area
44:29 of the patch progression because the itemization is so good.
44:32 There's things that are you can do creative kind
44:34 of like weird What the How People still play this game?
44:47 Oh, what rings you got,[ __] Wait, what spec am I?
44:54 Dude, you're using a fab?
45:02 /cast turn undead.
45:04 Oh, no, it's it's the undead.
45:05 It's a demon.
45:06 I'm in freaking Burning Crusade mode.
45:10 This guy freaking fabbed all over me.
45:15 I can't kill this guy.
45:16 This guy's got full consumes.
45:17 I'm freaking washed.
45:19 I don't even have my key binds.
45:29 I'm not I don't even have a trinket on, man.
45:31 I'm so dead right here.
45:35 I'm I'm freaking whatever.
45:37 Jackass.
45:37 All right.
45:39 This guy freaking or swing to I have no add-ons, no nothing.
45:42 None of my I'm having to click my grenade.
45:46 [laughter] Like I got nothing.
45:46 I have nothing.
45:48 So, anyway, jackass.
45:53 Okay.
45:54 Anyway, um just almost killed him.
45:57 Yeah, well.
45:59 Um I mean, I I wouldn't in a fair I won't win that anyway.
46:03 But, uh uh but still.
46:08 [clears throat]
46:11 The uh the warlock has been waiting years for someone to log in, true.
46:17 Um That's green screen, thank you.
46:30 Uh Mom, look how long I'm on TV, true.
46:38 He defending his ring master drink, yeah, true.
46:42 Uh anyway, where was I?
46:50 Uh I was talking about the different different places they could open up.
46:52 Yeah, so talking about like these different places they could open up.
46:55 Uh like one of the things that I would really like to see One of the things
47:03 that I would really like to see is like
47:07 what if they opened up like they unlocked Dalaran?
47:11 I think they I think they should add like new quest hubs, right?
47:14 So, like if they unlocked Dalaran and they made Dalaran
47:17 like a quest hub that could be here like closer
47:21 to this horde side and I I know that's really
47:23 really close to to Undercity and it might get terrorized.
47:26 But, on that same front, I think if they added like a like a horde
47:30 quest hub here on this side near Grim Batol and they
47:34 opened up Grim Batol as like a dungeon or a raid
47:36 or something like that, I think could be really cool.
47:39 Um There's just there's so many different things they could do, man.
47:43 If you go here, you go you go over here to to Uldum, right?
47:46 Uldum is in the game.
47:49 And there's like a there's a there's an awesome quest chain.
47:52 Like it's so so lore heavy.
47:54 If you go into the Blasted Lands or sorry,
47:56 you go into the Bad Lands and you go to Uldaman, right?
48:00 Uldaman, you do the Uldaman quest chain,
48:01 it's like an insane lore dump of like the history
48:05 of the dwarves and everything that that the dwarves are about and how
48:08 like the Azeroth was created and all that and then it
48:12 leads you to Uldum and then it just kind of dies.
48:16 It just kind of ends.
48:18 And uh I think if they were to expand on these kinds of things,
48:21 I think it would be super cool.
48:23 Uh something that I think is a little bit less cool but still cool.
48:28 Another example of something that's a little bit less cool but still cool.
48:31 Uh Where is it?
48:38 Oh, yeah, yeah.
48:39 Uh Timbermaw Hold right here, right?
48:40 Going into Winterspring.
48:42 Okay?
48:43 Still kind of cool, right?
48:44 But that's a whole another area, right?
48:45 Timbermaw Hold is like maybe maybe there's something there.
48:48 I think I think Turtle Wow did something with Timbermaw Hold, right?
48:51 So like some people are kind of intrigued by that idea.
48:55 But there's like a lot of areas out in the world
48:57 that there's just so much more that could be done there.
49:00 Uh even even some of these like off islands like Isle of Dread,
49:03 like there's like this is like the for like one quest chain.
49:05 Maybe there's something else that could be done there.
49:07 Um There's just so much map.
49:19 Alcaz Island.
49:20 Wait, how do I not have Alcaz Okay, this character is bugged.
49:26 Cuz didn't I have to discover Alcaz Island for Scareboard?
49:29 Was that Wasn't that part of the Scareboard quest chain?
49:38 Yeah, we like we did a whole thing there.
49:43 Underneath the cemetery in Duskwood.
49:45 Yeah, I mean well, I will say this.
49:47 So so I harp on like I I don't want to I don't want to like
49:51 leave too much of a bad taste in people's mouth about like how I feel about SOD.
49:54 I think SOD had a lot of problems.
49:57 But I do think they did a lot of things well
50:01 and one of the things that they did do well was Karazhan Crypts.
50:03 I think Karazhan Crypts is a great example.
50:05 By the way, you know, I skipped over Karazhan.
50:08 Karazhan is in the game.
50:09 Karazhan is in the game in vanilla.
50:12 The tower is there.
50:13 Maybe there's something to be done with Karazhan.
50:14 Maybe I mean Karazhan, if you just look at it, it's so big.
50:17 This thing is not meant to be a 10-man raid.
50:19 It's basically like if you just It's It's
50:21 like they sized it for like a 40-man raid.
50:24 You know what I mean?
50:26 Like I think Karazhan Crypts needs some work.
50:30 But like for what they did with it
50:32 and for the little resources that the Blizzard
50:35 had given the classic team uh I I think they did a pretty good job.
50:40 It was still cool design-wise.
50:43 Uh Now I just touched on something that I think
50:47 is the crux of the entire issue with Classic Plus,
50:52 with Blizzard, with everything.
50:54 And it's a resources and it's it's the allocation of those resources.
50:59 I don't think It feels like Blizzard does not support the classic team enough.
51:06 And maybe it's not even fair to say Blizzard because you know,
51:12 the freaking Microsofts and the Activisions and you know, the overlords, right?
51:18 Over the years, I feel like have just kind
51:19 of like beaten the soul out of so many things.
51:23 And it's really, really frustrating to see because
51:26 especially when you get a chance to like meet
51:28 some of these devs and to talk to these people
51:30 and you know how passionate these guys are.
51:32 And even if you disagree with them on some things,
51:35 like for example, like like I said,
51:38 I harp on SOD a lot and like SOD is kind of like Agron's baby, right?
51:42 But I like I I think Agron is great.
51:44 I've had the chance to talk to Agron a bunch of times.
51:47 He's He's just He's He's a wonderful person to talk to.
51:50 He actually know like I I'm a I'm a stupid MMO player who
51:56 thinks the devs are idiots and don't know anything about their own game, okay?
51:59 Like most of us.
52:00 But then you talk to these people and you're like, "Oh, wait.
52:03 Okay.
52:04 Like Like he They do get it." But then it's like, "Well,
52:06 who's who Who here is freaking making the call to not let
52:10 certain things happen or to not make certain things able to happen,
52:14 right?" I'm I'm starting to frustrate myself talking about this a little bit.
52:17 Because it is frustrating sometimes when you talk
52:19 to these people and you feel like everybody
52:20 agrees with what you're saying and you're saying
52:23 the same things that like the community feels.
52:26 And then it's like It's very frustrating, man.
52:30 It's very frustrating.
52:33 But I'm hoping that at some point, somewhere somewhere, you know,
52:38 in their freaking ivory tower, they're like, "Okay." You know?
52:45 Maybe you know, maybe we'll we'll actually do something here that works.
52:59 Cuz I I do think there's Sometimes it just almost even feels
53:01 like there's like You know whenever nobody is they don't say anything?
53:04 You're talking to somebody and they're not
53:05 they're not saying what they want to say,
53:07 but you can feel what they want to say and it's like [sighs]
53:12 And I And I just hope I hope that if
53:14 if they really do actually want to do a classic plus,
53:20 that it has a proper investment and care and the MMO is is it An MMO
53:25 is a living breathing world that has to be taken care of very very carefully.
53:35 Very carefully.
53:36 And you have to be you have to be very quick
53:38 with whatever you want to whatever you want to add things,
53:40 whatever you remove things, whatever you want to change things,
53:42 whenever you see something is getting out of control,
53:44 you got to stop the bots, okay?
53:47 The botting is is insane.
53:49 Like But a lot of this stuff is like it's it's been done with.
53:54 I mean like for years Blizzard,
53:56 they had game masters that you you talk to an actual person.
53:59 You had people sitting there just, you know,
54:01 like popping freaking bots off and banning people, right?
54:05 But then what happens is they get
54:06 acquired by Activision and then freaking, you know,
54:09 deep pockets comes in and he's like, "Okay, yeah,
54:12 we're going to get rid of all these people.
54:13 We don't need any of this.
54:14 Why do we have any of this?
54:14 Let's just We can automate this system.
54:16 We can do this.
54:16 We can do that." Right?
54:18 Oh, there's bots.
54:19 Why don't we get bots?
54:24 And then but then so it's like a lot
54:25 of like those original sort of like principles that are
54:27 put in from like some of the old guys
54:28 and I I think this is like an annoying thing.
54:30 I bet if you currently work at Blizzard,
54:31 it's probably like an annoying thing to hear because it's probably
54:35 always it kind of it kind of gets obnoxious when you're like,
54:38 "Oh, it used to be like this.
54:39 Oh, it used to be like this." But the fact of the matter
54:42 is is this is just kind of how people feel, right?
54:45 And the other fact of the matter is that it's not like that anymore.
54:52 The bad man is gone.
54:56 [laughter] The bad man is gone.
54:57 Even that interview with Lex Fridman,
54:58 Jeff Kaplan was talking about that guy who was like, "Uh okay, well,
55:02 Jeff is here talking about like the future of Overwatch
55:04 and like what the like the long-term plan is." And he's like,
55:07 "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:08 Whatever, buddy.
55:09 Is this going to make us X money next year?" And it's like,
55:14 "How can you predict that?
55:16 There's no There's no way that you can predict that." That guy's gone,
55:20 too, by the way, right?
55:22 A lot of those people are gone.
55:23 Now, unfortunately, a lot of the old people that were good are also gone.
55:26 In fact, most of them are gone, right?
55:29 Um like the the Jeff Kaplans and the Mike
55:32 Morhaimes and and and these people, right?
55:34 Even the people that made classic 2019,
55:36 a lot of those people are unfortunately gone now.
55:38 But that doesn't mean that there's not
55:39 other good people that are currently working
55:41 at Blizzard and currently working on the game that care a lot about classic.
55:47 And I do think that's really important that they care about classic, right?
55:50 They want to I I think if you're working
55:52 on the classic team and if you're working on classic WoW,
55:54 you need to leave Sorry, you need to live, breathe, freaking[ __] piss,
56:00 freaking If you can do it, it needs to be classic, okay?
56:04 I feel like if you're working on an MMO,
56:06 it kind of needs to be like that is what you do.
56:08 And I understand work-life balance, but I completely disagree with you.
56:12 [laughter] I just feel like if you're working on an MMO, like that is it, man.
56:19 Like an MMO is not a 9-to-5.
56:24 No dev is as addicted to WoW as you are.
56:27 Do you want to know Okay, can I tell you guys something?
56:29 The last time I went to Blizzard,
56:32 I had somebody who worked at who's worked at Blizzard for about 20 years, okay?
56:35 Somebody who's worked at Blizzard for about 20 years,
56:38 in front of a a group of people who also work at Blizzard and stuff,
56:43 said, "I love when Esfand is here on campus." He goes He's like,
56:48 "You know why I love when Esfand is
56:50 here on campus?" I don't even agree with him,
56:53 obviously, but it just it boosted my ego through the roof.
56:56 He goes, "I love when Esfand is here on campus because
56:59 he knows more about this game than anybody else in this room." [laughter] Okay.
57:06 No, you're going to make everybody HATE ME.
57:07 STOP.
57:10 [laughter] HE'S LIKE, "HE KNOWS WAY MORE ABOUT this game
57:12 than the rest of them." And I'm like,
57:14 "Damn, nobody knows a damn thing about this game then." [laughter] But yeah, no.
57:23 It's like [laughter] Well, yeah, so then my ego went up through the roof.
57:34 Yeah, and then I and then I drove off
57:36 in my Rolls-Royce and I put my sunglasses on smoking a cigar.
57:40 So.
57:42 Yeah.
57:42 Yeah.
57:43 Yeah.
57:45 [sighs] [clears throat] Chad, the end user will typically know more
57:48 about software than the people who develop it.
57:49 That's actually true.
57:50 If you if you've ever worked in like
57:51 any sort of like game dev or software development,
57:53 like you know that like the people that know the most
57:56 about the game aren't always the people that make the game because
57:59 the people that make the game they they're they're like making
58:02 the base of the tree and they're building this tree up, right?
58:05 But then the they don't know whenever they build this up what
58:08 happens and like whenever whenever you have all the different branches, right?
58:12 Like you have like the the roots and everything, the trunk,
58:15 but then what happens when you get to the leaves
58:16 and the branches and all this other stuff?
58:17 It's like you get so far away from the from where they're working on that oh,
58:21 wait, I didn't know that happened over there.
58:23 That's why you have bugs, right?
58:24 That's why you like oh, this thing is overpowered.
58:28 We didn't think that was going to happen,
58:29 but the but the player base finds that out, you know?
58:35 So, it's not really it's not really like a it's
58:38 like a it's like a funny thing to say,
58:39 but it's not like a it's not like a weird thing, you know?
58:46 I miss being excited about wow.
58:48 I mean, look the the the bottom line is like I hope that classic plus is good.
58:57 I hope that they actually do do a classic plus.
58:59 I hope that it's good.
59:01 Uh I hope that it's it's not some kind of like bastardization of like
59:06 they're taking retail wow and they're trying to make one game for everybody.
59:09 No, it needs to be a classic MMO with classic MMO design principles.
59:14 It needs to be vanilla.
59:15 It needs to be Burning Crusade, that sort of era, okay?
59:18 What if vanilla wow never ended?
59:20 What if level 60 wow never ended?
59:22 You re- I think you need to rebalance the itemization to to fix the power
59:27 creep that happens from the AQ40 into the Naxx patch and kind of like ruins it.
59:31 And you have a horizontal progression, you add new content, you add Grim Batol,
59:36 do something with Karazan, add in Hyjal, maybe Timbermaw Hold,
59:40 uh throw in Dalaran, the Greymane Wall, right?
59:45 You have you have the Greymane Wall
59:46 and um freaking Worgen starting zone, Gilneas, right?
59:52 You have the Greymane Wall, you have Gilneas,
59:54 uh you you add all these different things in hell,
59:57 you could even go in, you can do some stuff with the high elves, right?
1:00:01 You can you you you might even be able to do something with Silvermoon, right?
1:00:03 Some some Burning Crusade things, right?
1:00:05 Like I said, I mentioned um I mentioned Karazan already, right?
1:00:10 Hell, what Sod did with Scarlet Enclave was incredibly creative.
1:00:16 You know, they took the the whole area that they
1:00:18 added with uh with Wrath of the Lich King,
1:00:21 and they were like, "Okay, wait a second." By the way,
1:00:23 that was an insane technical advancement for the game
1:00:25 that I don't know if people really realize how big
1:00:27 of a deal Scarlet Enclave really was and how
1:00:29 big of a deal the expansion on Tier's Hand was.
1:00:33 Cuz the Scarlet Enclave is one thing, but the expansion on Tier's Hand was
1:00:35 an insane technical advancement in wow that is like,
1:00:39 "Wait a second, we can take the wow map and we
1:00:42 can add like the way that they do their servers and everything,
1:00:47 the way that the fact that they could go and add and like basically like copy
1:00:51 or like just attach two parts of another
1:00:53 different expansion entirely together is kind of insane.
1:00:57 Cuz I'll tell you first hand, they did not think they could do that years ago.
1:01:00 And I've I've been told that from people who
1:01:02 used to work at Blizzard a long time ago.
1:01:06 So, yeah.
1:01:08 I think Blizzard is capable of making a good classic plus but they'll ruin
1:01:10 it with the whole egregious microtransaction store[
1:01:13 __] I I don't know about that.
1:01:15 Um I don't know.
1:01:17 I don't know about that.
1:01:18 I don't I don't know if they're they would I mean,
1:01:19 maybe they will do some kind of microtransactions because freaking,
1:01:22 you know, Daddy Microsoft or Daddy Activision or whoever comes in.
1:01:25 I don't even know who's the boss anymore.
1:01:26 Um but yeah.
1:01:32 I I definitely think I have a lot of hopes,
1:01:35 a lot of high hopes for Classic Plus, and I really hope Blizzard delivers.
1:01:39 And I think it'll be a fun thing to do
1:01:44 on stream where we go through and kind of talk
1:01:46 about the design of Classic Plus over the course
1:01:48 of maybe the next few weeks or some period of time.
1:01:51 Uh I have a tool that I'm working on to like make talent trees.
1:01:54 Uh I do think there needs to be some kind of rework of talent trees
1:01:57 going into Classic Plus from vanilla that draws
1:02:00 a lot of inspiration from Burning Crusade.
1:02:02 In fact, I think if you were to take the Burning Crusade talent trees
1:02:05 and then mash them down into what is essentially like the level 60 version,
1:02:10 like a scaled-down level 60 version of the 41-point talent trees,
1:02:13 would be pretty cool.
1:02:17 So, yeah.
1:02:18 Is Classic Plus even confirmed?
1:02:19 No.
1:02:20 But, it's like a fun thing to talk about.
1:02:22 I also think transmog is a huge L.
1:02:25 I think if they add transmog, I think it'll turn a lot of people off because
1:02:28 when I talk about the design principles of Classic WoW,
1:02:30 that is like a core thing.
1:02:33 Like, transmog is not classic.
1:02:34 It is not a classic MMO type of thing.
1:02:38 I think it is an insane L to have
1:02:39 transmog in Classic Plus if they if they have it.
1:02:42 If if that's what they decide to do.
1:02:43 Or like, I don't think they should be using retail models.
1:02:46 I don't think they should be doing transmog.
1:02:49 It needs to be a distinct different There needs to be a distinct
1:02:52 difference between what Classic Plus is and what um what retail WoW is.
1:03:05 I like so does take the only have tabards or cloaks for transmog.
1:03:10 I mean, if even, right?
1:03:11 Like a tabard I think a tabard is kind of like whatever, right?
1:03:17 Like I don't I don't really care about that, but then
1:03:19 there's like the whole like slippery slope concept, right?
1:03:22 But the thing is like tabards don't give you stats.
1:03:24 Cloaks give you stats.
1:03:25 And And one of the main things about transmog with the gear
1:03:28 and the stats uh is you see gear that you know that type of player.
1:03:33 So like if you're in PvP or you you can eyeball test people,
1:03:36 whereas you can't really do that with transmog.
1:03:38 Um and it just makes the whole game weird, right?
1:03:43 Now I don't really care about tabards as much
1:03:46 because my my argument against transmog doesn't apply to tabards.
1:03:49 So I I can't I feel like if I'm going to argue against something it needs to be
1:03:53 it needs to be based in logic and I need to have like a specific reason for it.
1:03:56 And sometimes that reason might be as simple as I just
1:03:58 don't like it and that's kind of a stupid reason, right?
1:04:01 But I I think that most of the time whenever I'm arguing against
1:04:06 or for something there needs to be some kind of logic behind it.
1:04:10 Yeah.
1:04:11 We call targets in arena like 90% based on how he looks geared.
1:04:14 Uh sometimes, yeah.
1:04:21 Everyone goes by what I had so everyone looks exactly the same is boring.
1:04:23 No, cuz not everybody has all the same exact pieces of gear.
1:04:27 So anyways, uh chat I'm running late.
1:04:31 I have a I have some things I have to do.
1:04:33 I'm very busy over the course of the next few days.
1:04:36 Um I'm a businessman and a businessman is very busy man.
1:04:40 So I have to go do some things.
1:04:42 I'm working on some stuff with Starforge and uh
1:04:45 some cool things with Starforge are coming up.
1:04:47 And uh I'm also uh doing a lot more things.
1:04:53 So yeah.
1:04:54 Are you coming to raid tonight?
1:04:55 No, I will I will not be.
1:04:57 Um I'm going to I'm going to be raiding on Saturday.
1:05:01 Oh, wait.
1:05:02 Hey, we need to talk about Tuesday night raids for next week.
1:05:06 Because we have Thursday night launch.
1:05:08 I I hate that Blizzard launches on Thursday.
1:05:11 Uh actually like so much.
1:05:13 I hate the Blizzard launches on Thursday.
1:05:16 So.
1:05:20 Yeah.
1:05:24 Uh, but yeah.
1:05:29 Star Forge aka going to Blizzard talk about Guys,
1:05:32 I'm not I'm Guys, I'm not going to