[00:04] As classic players, I think a lot of us know and understand this quite well, but I think Bellular is a little more on the retail side of things, so I'm curious Yeah, let's get the popcorn out, sit back, relax, and enjoy.
[00:19] dominating WoW discussion lately. And if used to be, you'll probably get the same kinds of answers, that it felt like world. >> Just think about the original login
[00:33] screen. But if you ask about the last 10 years, I would reckon the answers would change. That WoW doesn't feel as real. That for some reason it feels more like a video game and less like a world that you're sucked into. Now, Crendor and
[00:46] topic recently, >> Crendor one. >> takes. So, I figured we should throw our hat in the ring. And that's because everyone is blaming the same suspects, flying, teleports, and end-game focus.
[00:59] But here's what we realized when we dug through decades of research and scientific publications. Almost everyone's been getting this topic wrong for over 20 years. Because why isn't WoW as immersive anymore
[01:12] is actually the wrong question entirely. >> Wait, was that a joke about the digging into the science? I think it was. Okay, cuz that went over my head. I there I was like trying to like read that on the abstract. I think it was
[01:27] actually just a joke. Okay. Um Some deep breaths here. Bellular, looking nice. I don't know if that's a green screen or if that's like looking good, Bellular. >> The secret sauce was something else. And
[01:40] >> The secret sauce was something else. And one paper from 2005 is a big part of why we forgot it. >> Oh, maybe he's wasn't kidding with the Oh, it was real. >> hit the games industry with one goal, to
[01:52] define immersion in a way games could >> Oh, he's a he was actually being legit. actually getting a study here. >> use going forward. They succeeded, by the way, with almost 1,200 other papers citing it since.
[02:05] >> Oh, interesting. >> challenge-based, and imaginative, which all seem self-explanatory, right? Azeroth's beautiful landscapes hit you with a sense of scale. The ambience made it feel vibrant and real. Exploring
[02:18] dense caves full of mobs with an incredibly responsive combat system just invited you to lock in. And then, the feeling of a big, empty world full of mystery and history, [music] it wormed its way into your mind.
[02:31] So, there you go. Wow is immersive by all three categories, right? >> Is it Was this an editing mistake or am I tripping? Thanks for watching. I'm going to keep watching. >> Well done.
[02:46] >> Because this model >> Am I just sleeping this morning? What is going on? The joke went over my head, and then something that wasn't a joke, I Goodness gracious. >> of immersion rewrote history, and it
[02:59] changed how the industry and all of us talk about immersion forever. And as a result, we left something behind. And for Blizzard, well, it was maybe the >> Yeah. >> we found something far stronger than
[03:13] immersion. Stronger may not be the ideal word. Rather, it is foundational to immersion being possible in a game like World of half-decent movie >> I'm just trying to figure out if that's
[03:26] a green screen or not, to be honest. It kind of looks like it is, but I can't >> or video game, but you always come back out at the end, right? You leave the cinema. But the thing about WoW is, it really seemed to take it one step
[03:39] further. Immersion just doesn't describe how Classic hit the world harder than any game before, to the point where people would be playing WoW like 20 hours a day, often leading to medical incidents and viral news stories. And
[03:52] the way it felt is whenever you left Azeroth, you almost always wanted to leap right back into it or think about when you could. You would plan your next think >> Bro, that that's like textbook
[04:05] definition of addicted. That is how I felt about wow for I mean, I don't I I feel like I was I got unaddicted maybe That's not the point. The point is when I was young, when I was like in middle
[04:21] I was young, when I was like in middle school, okay? I every waking moment was like like sitting there and just thinking about the game. Oh, I still kind of do that sometimes. That's not the point. The point is when
[04:33] I was younger, okay? I would be sitting in class just just daydreaming about the when I get home. I can't wait to like I always like never like I was logged out, but I was never really logged out. You know what I'm saying? I was just like
[04:48] kind of always kind of there. Textbook definition of addicted. >> [snorts] >> That's in the past. >> Think about the people you're playing with. And people are core. We all shared
[05:02] a feeling that Azeroth is a real place. The sense that things that went on in it mattered, that things would persist, that consequences would matter, and that you're going to Azeroth rather than just playing a video game.
[05:17] >> But one step further than immersion has a name. It's actually a feeling, and it is one called presence. >> Okay. >> Presence is what we've forgotten. But first, a quick Linuxy tangent for
[05:31] anyone who's opened up a terminal, saw the blinking cursor, and uh quietly closed it again. This video's sponsor, boot.dev, has something awesome. They just rebuilt their Linux course to just make the whole world of Linux far less
[05:44] arcane. Now, it starts in a real shell running in your browser. about. Well, I had the ad playing in the background, but >> It was a video we watched like a year ago talking about like a third space.
[05:56] Warcraft is that third space. You have like home, you have work, and then it's not home, not work, in that third space where you feel like comfortable and you know, you can just kind of play. And I think for a lot of us that
[06:10] remember. Do you remember that? It was like a year ago. We watched that video. why it was so immersive because it's that third space for us, you know?
[06:30] it's kind of weird since I'm a streamer, but yeah. The new Dave on Dev talks about that. Oh, really? Interesting.
[06:42] >> What up, Zardozco? Can't wait to meet you at BlizzCon, man. Coming up soon.
[07:12] World of Warcraft. And it predates just about anyone watching this video. It's actually said to come from a 1940 sci-fi story called Waldo, which is about a severely disabled man who invented remote control robot hands to do what
[07:26] his own hands couldn't. It's obvious to us now, but remote control was a genuinely groundbreaking [music] bit of tech back then. Waldo, with this technology, was able to exist somewhere that his body couldn't.
[07:41] [music] and it's an idea that struck with readers of that story. Readers like Marvin Minsky, the man who established MIT's AI lab, and who is one of the fathers of AI. Of course, I mean that in
[07:55] the computer science sense, so very much back before people just thought, "AI? Now, Marvin's part of this video because of his pioneering essay on telepresence, thought >> [music]
[08:10] >> of workers using robots in dangerous environments, and technology letting you exist somewhere [music] that your body couldn't. Now, the first application of this was a little bit less inspired, but it was quite funny. It was a company
[08:22] called Teleport, founded in 1993, that sold video conferencing as teleportation, where executives could be somewhere beautiful, and technology >> beam them away from their boring boardrooms. Laughable now, but it forced
[08:38] the question that really matters for this video. How could technology make you feel presence? Like you were truly somewhere else. timing of World of Warcraft is it was kind of before social media at scale.
[08:56] So, when you were online back then on WoW, it was a crazy feeling of like, else." Like, there was online chat rooms, but there was like an actual person jumping around that you could talk to. Before social media, like, the
[09:10] timing was just crazy if you think about it. So, let me think. In high school, it was uh I was a in high school 2008 to 2012. I think Facebook was getting big in like 2008, 2009. MySpace was a little before
[09:24] 2008, 2009. MySpace was a little before that. WoW came out in 2004. Right? Yeah, you You AIM, like, you had chat rooms, but like being able to just
[09:39] just hundreds or thousands of other people right like as you were it's kind still is. But especially back then. >> Well, in 1997 two researchers set out to figure [music] out what this feeling
[09:54] >> Okay. >> Presence has six components and this is where things get weird and interesting. And that's because immersion as we know >> Oh. >> Another one was realism and it came in
[10:07] two flavors where presence comes from something being realistic to the real world, but also from something called perceptual realism, which basically is the thing being realistic to itself. Now, you kind of could have guessed
[10:20] those things already and it's really the other four that set WoW apart. You know the way we would just jump at each other in WoW or maybe throw a buff on a random player running past us. Yeah, well, that is actually what the research calls
[10:33] intimacy. And along with immediacy, it is a key part of {quote} presence as social richness. Of course >> So, WoW is immersive because it has presence
[10:47] because it has intimacy. So, what the key to WoW's So, what the key to WoW's immersion is the intimacy.
[10:59] >> take some notes. >> makes us feel there and present. If you throw a heal to help a player as you run past, they might whisper back and say thanks. That's presence. Specifically, it's when the interaction feels {quote}
[11:14] sociable, warm, sensitive, personal, or intimate. >> Now, the next two parts can be bundled together. There is presence as a social actor within the medium and then there's the reverse of that, which basically is
[11:27] something in the game or at the game itself. And that can be as simple as you literally thanking your pet for saving your life because your pet got a crit. Or maybe cursing the game for refusing to drop your item.
[11:42] Essentially, the more social engagement with the game, power social included, >> I'm trying to think like I don't I don't usually play pet classes. And in terms of items dropping, I I I always get what I want cuz I
[11:57] Yeah, I know. Like I I've >> the stronger the sensation. most important because it's what ties all of this together. And it is presence
[12:09] as teleportation. [music] In other words, what makes you from your In other words, what makes you from your computer chair to Azeroth itself? Well, these researchers determined that being transported actually has three
[12:21] components. There is you are there, which is the bit we usually laser focus on today. And certainly all the conversation about flying mounts, quest markers, and too much revealed lore kind of falls into that. And what this first
[12:33] pretty much all the immersive stuff we've talked about so far and the social stuff. Basic idea that the more you impact the world, the more you embody your character. [music] It's all presence as transportation. But let's
[12:46] get to the second. The second is called it is here. And it's quite funny. It is, as an example, early film audiences fleeing from an oncoming train because they hadn't really seen a film before and the idea of a train hurtling towards
[13:00] them felt really weird. That's a fun little one. And hey, if you pop on a VR headset and something [music] is so realistic it actually spooks you out, maybe you're feeling some of that. But for us, what really matters is the third
[13:14] >> [music] >> we are together. That's what they call it. And you see, these researchers found that the presence of other people in a virtual environment was a major component of feeling transported to that
[13:29] >> Like so, this is kind of why when you play hardcore WoW solo self-found and you're not playing with anyone else, it's still way, way, way better when
[13:42] because you at least see other people running by and interacting with the and there's nothing you could have done cuz you were out of mana, like all of even if you're playing solo, it's still sick.
[13:57] self-found and the realm's dead, you just don't see anyone, it just feels like worse to play even though you're only playing by yourself. You know what I mean? >> Basically, the more you feel like you
[14:10] people, well, because you know those people are real, then the more real that place feels. And of course, they, the researchers, >> were only talking about 1995's version of Zoom calls. Imagine what they'd say
[14:25] about World of Warcraft. So, what we've learned here is that presence goes beyond just immersion. It goes beyond the game having challenge and having sound effects and visuals that just feel really authentic to itself.
[14:40] No, presence is what gives us that sense of Azeroth as a real [music] place. It's the feeling that you were going there, not just playing a game. Warcraft [music] as a cultural phenomenon,
[14:53] >> was as big as it was, because it felt like more than a game. Above anything mattered. And I think everyone intuitively knows that. Do you know who's one of those people?
[15:07] hasn't seen the research and stuff we've talked about today, and she may not actually know that she gets it. But it's certainly good news that she gets it. Now, let me explain how we know that. In a WoW Discord Q&A back in March, Holly
[15:20] talked about World of Warcraft's role as what's called a third place. Now, what >> WE WERE JUST TALKING about this. Not pre-watched, by the way. Maybe that's No, I'm pretty sure I actually heard about uh the third place concept from a
[15:33] G Bay video like a year ago, 6 months ago maybe. this. >> by third place? Well, the first place is your family, where you do a lot of your life. The second place is work or
[15:46] school, essentially the place you're obligated to be. The third place then is a public place you choose to be. And when this term was popularized in 1989,
[15:58] it [music] referred to things like say churches, bars, and cafes. The short explanation is that a third place is somewhere that is fun, convenient, open, >> so proud of myself for remembering this. >> So, if you hung out at the mall as a
[16:10] teenager, the mall was your third place. If you played World of Warcraft, Azeroth was your third place. And if you played World of Warcraft in the earlier days, space, it was your server. Because back then,
[16:23] servers mattered. You would run into the same people in general chats and in >> For a lot of us then, your guild would also become your found family who may as well have been people who literally live in Azeroth, because that's where you'd
[16:36] all hang out together. And for a [music] poignant real example of that, look at the story of Iblin. By all accounts, he lived a rich life with his guild that, because of the challenges he faced in real life, basically otherwise
[16:50] was able to give him. >> Bro, I just I goodness. I just can't I dude, the the retail models, man. I just can't I I just can't. Oh my I
[17:02] oh. >> [gasps] >> Deep breaths, deep breaths. Why are they smiling? This is the World of Warcraft. There's war going on, man. There's imminent threats out
[17:15] there. Why why is everyone so happy? Like >> [panting] [sighs] >> [music] >> MSN Messenger or AIM, but it was still
[17:32] on your PC that you logged into WoW with. Now, don't worry. I'm not going to here. But, this stuff is a large part of what made Azeroth real. And a 2006 paper actually delved into online games as
[17:46] third places and came to the conclusion that they absolutely, definitely are, which I think does seem obvious [music] to all of us by now. So, World of Warcraft established presence, [music] and so it became your third place where
[18:00] you lived out part of your life. A part that, as opposed to the first and second space, was one that you very much actively chose because it was your >> Yep. >> Now, that sense of place, socially, is
[18:14] >> Now, that sense of place, socially, is what made all that social presence, and as we covered earlier in the video, transportation stick. And in ways that it just doesn't today. All those immersive details we've talked
[18:26] about over the years do matter, but nothing matters more than WoW feeling like a real place that we go to. But, sadly, since at least Cataclysm, Blizzard have known that they're making a game, not a world.
[18:40] understands that, and Holly does want WoW to be a third place again. She's literally talked about it. So, the question is then, is that even possible? that popped off. It raised the argument that always comes up when anyone gets
[18:56] too nostalgic. Do we all just miss that time in our lives when we played WoW, really Azeroth was the main thing we cared about? And honestly, it's not much of an argument because to most of us, it is obviously true, and obviously a major
[19:10] part of the discussion. You probably have these days less time and more responsibility and even science backs that up. They measure your ability to get immersed with a trait that they call absorption.
[19:24] And that trait, absorption, has been shown to decrease just a little bit with age. That's only a small part of it though. There is of course an elephant hiding in your pocket. I know it may come as a shock. It's called your phone.
[19:36] We're all pretty much mind broken by the attention economy these days. If you play WoW without a second monitor or a podcast playing, you're definitely in the minority. And I think to some of us playing WoW with just the in-game sounds
[19:48] may feel like being sonically naked. Maybe you don't Maybe you don't alt-tab during a long flight. I'd struggle to believe you. Now this is of course not a new problem, but it is worse than it's ever been. Back in the classic days, you
[20:02] probably had one monitor. Your PC probably struggled to alt-tab out of WoW, never mind run a picture-in-picture video or podcast. Your phone, if you had one, wasn't a full multimedia device full of algorithmically driven feeds and
[20:17] through. Maybe you had a podcast [music] or some music on, but generally you were more focused, immersed, present. Your attention constantly being pulled away kills that immersion and by doing
[20:32] so it kills the sense of presence because if you're checking your phone, you're not in Azeroth. You can't fully enjoy WoW or anything if you're not present in the experience. That's something society largely has to grapple
[20:45] with. Crucially, it's something that WoW has to fight for. If WoW slows down, game, but the more attention grabbing things around you will eat WoW's lunch.
[20:57] And that is a part of why hardcore [music] classic is actually so beloved because the stakes being so high force you to focus. >> Yeah, that's exactly right. >> modern WoW feels like an endless deluge
[21:10] of bite-sized [music] content. It's because kind of has to be bite-sized content in order to survive in the modern environment. >> Oh, maybe this is why I enjoyed Warcraft 3 so much, too, is because I played on
[21:23] hard and I was a noob, so I really had to like I I had to like not even read cuz everyone is like this guy's trolling. Anyway, I had to like literally not read chat. I had to just fully focus on my main monitor or
[21:37] the same mission for like 4 hours. It's like very immersive cuz I had to like think and focus um to beat the game on hard mode as a I loved it because of that. Pretty darn sweet. Same for hardcore
[21:52] Minecraft. Yeah, yeah. It's cool to like have these experiences that make it so alt-tab, you know? Like you're you're locked in and dialed. >> At least that seems to be Blizzard's hypothesis. Now, all that technological
[22:06] and cultural change means that modern WoW can never risk trying to be a full world. Now, on the bright side, it can continue being a damn good game. But, Holly, I don't think the third place plan can really work as good as I
[22:23] >> Mhm. >> And there is one giant thing blocking >> The third place is dead. >> WoW can never be a third place because the internet is no longer really a place. Your phone is in your pocket at
[22:36] all times. You probably have a laptop. You have a legion of alts. None of them are your actual self. Not in the way that back in the day you'd have a character in a big online game and it would be your avatar. No, no. Back in
[22:49] obsessed with the internet as a different world. The novel gave the metaverse its name and its shape all the way back in 1992. Then hackers in 1995 [clears throat]
[23:02] space. And as MMOs started to show up, they got the same [music] treatment. Second Life's name kind of speaks for itself. And take a look at this. The anime .hack sign was about mystery and relationships
[23:15] in a fictional MMO that was >> Yeah, like so I mean we have chatted about this. It's like when you have WoW coming out when it did don't know if any of you played RuneScape in like 2002.
[23:29] after school you log in and just like chat with people when you have a character and you can jump around. Like that is just like a crazy concept. can talk to anyone. It's not that impressive anymore.
[23:43] Um we've talked about this uh a couple times too. The zeitgeist effect was it's the the general cultural, intellectual, and moral climate that defines a specific historical period. I feel like this is just exactly why WoW blew up and
[23:59] when it actually did. Like 2004, 2005, like pre-social media at large, you know. It's like you can't really go back, right? You can't really experience this thing again exactly how you did when it first blew
[24:15] >> Actually called The World. [music] You see, back then you had to sit at your chunky PC, perform the ritual of dial-up connection, and then transport yourself. [music] >> Someone says that's why we need WoW 2.
[24:32] we just mentioned at all. Like that wouldn't change the internet existing, that wouldn't change social media existing. wouldn't change anything in the current conversation.
[24:47] conversation. Just to was of you going online. Of course, these days you've actually got to make effort to be offline because online is kind of the
[25:00] default. Really, with phones, the internet and reality have merged. And if embodied intelligence and a bunch of things like that and tool use, oh boy,
[25:12] walk around with our phones just always attached to our hands, it's a little bit spooky. And it's spooky for a while. You see, social media has bridged the entire world such that we can all exist
[25:25] together in one lovely big blend of offline and online. Now, you might still live an online-heavy life and have online friends, but they don't feel like they live in a different world. They just feel like people far away. You talk
[25:38] to them on Discord or battle.net with the little box that lives in your pocket. And what we see is that modern culture doesn't see game worlds or even the internet as a unique and distinct place [music] in the same way that we
[25:52] used to see it 20 or 30 years ago. Now, you could argue that small Discord servers are in some way one of the last true digital third spaces left. And here's a fascinating thing that backs that up. The actual research on what a
[26:06] researchers have noticed that adding competitive sports-like elements [music] instead of say free play actually breaks what a third space is. Now, if you take a look at any >> That's fascinating.
[26:20] Because when people ask me about should Blizzard when people ask me about should Blizzard add ranked arenas to classic wow, I usually say no. And my answer to that might surprise people, and my answer to
[26:34] that's kind of weird cuz it's like, well, it gives people something to do, but the reason I say that is because it fundamentally changes the way you interact with the world. When you're sitting in a city grinding for rating
[26:46] versus when you're exploring a world because you want to and there's reasons to go out and explore that world. And once you make that shift, RIP. That kind of makes sense with the with
[26:59] the research he just cited. It's like once there once you have something competitive to grind, it's not really like a third space anymore in that same way of just like a world existing there. So, yeah, once again, I don't want there
[27:11] to be a rated system for arenas in Classic Plus cuz it just changes the game to where it doesn't feel the same anymore. I want people going out to world PvP. I want people not sitting in a city spamming queue. I want them to go
[27:24] out and explore the world and like PvP like like Payo does or something like where people commonly traverse, right? And you or you're out there um interacting with the world, right? You can go out and duel, or you can go
[27:37] out and world PvP, but like once there's a rating system and you just spam queue, that's not it for Classic Plus, you know, that's not it. it's it's a weird thing to explain, especially as an OG arena player like
[27:49] myself, but I do feel that way. I really do. >> the major social media platforms, what do you see? Well, technically, they're social hangouts, but the objectives of you as a poster are kind of different. I
[28:03] mean, on Twitter, what do people want? They want big numbers. That's why Discord does stand out as one of the last bastions of the third [music] space because it is your own Discord server and community. Now, with
[28:15] all that established, let's get back to WoW. WoW's position as being game first, social hangout second kind of disqualifies it. And it's the same with basically every other MMO on the market these days. It's almost as if game and
[28:29] place are on a spectrum, and every decision made toward game can end up moving you away from place, away from the presence that made WoW feel so special. Now, that may sound a little bit weird and academic, but just think
[28:42] about it this way. Think about the verbs that we tend to use. You don't meet your friends in World of Warcraft. You play WoW with them while you hang out in Discord. Discord is a place. The other thing is just a game
[28:56] you're playing. Now obviously Ventrilo and TeamSpeak existed long before. Just a game you're playing. Now obviously bro this this threw me back. Ventrilo like that little beep when someone joins and
[29:11] leaves. The push to talk sound. Holy crap. Bro do you guys remember this? join? Oh yeah. Oh yeah dude. Holy crap.
[29:23] Ventrilo and TeamSpeak existed long before but they were always secondary. Guild chat was always first. [music] Now though Discord has taken over as the primary social hangout. Everyone is on Discord before they're on WoW together.
[29:37] And the way Blizzard are introducing Discord to World of Warcraft guild chat proves that Blizzard knows that. It's a brilliant move. But it's also a white flag. Discord won. Blizzard has had to give up
[29:50] and acquiesce. They >> Once connected you're ready to chat. message has been sent from Discord or sent from within the game and be able to can always keep an eye on what your guild is doing whether you're in game or
[30:03] guild is doing whether you're in game or out of game.
[30:18] So there's like a a guild Discord channel and then there's like a guild chat where you can see the Discord messages in game. Super interesting. >> No Discord is where people hang out by
[30:32] default so now WoW is just going to plug itself into that because WoW cannot >> I mean that's pretty true. WoW can't replace it like so even for me, we have um like the Zaryu Discord right here.
[30:48] And in this Zaryu Discord, I have something called guild chat. It's not linked to in-game, but it's much easier if someone's like late to the raid or like, you know, like we need mats or something
[31:03] um to message in the guild chat on Discord. But now you can like link them. That's That's very interesting. >> Basically, Discord won, and now WoW is growing dependent on Discord to function socially. Even if, say, housing is
[31:17] massively successful and people hang out in and around their houses, well, the reagents for that third place magic just do not exist in the same way that they used to. Not back in the day. And for all the reasons and the research that
[31:31] we've went through today. At the very least, not on the scale that Holly seems to [music] want. So, it seems then that while WoW can be immersive when you turn all your extra music and podcasts [music]
[31:44] off and you just enjoy the landscapes and the verse and the art and the well, for presence, is there any hope? >> I just had a thought, which I don't know
[31:56] a good thought or not, but one of the things that I think made WoW immersive back then is actually not having Battle.net. Hear me out. Hear me out. When you had When you ran across someone in-game and you added them to your
[32:11] friends list and you have just your friends list of in-game users, and then they were offline, it was like they disappeared. Like, they weren't there. world. And when they were online, that little that little noise, and you, you
[32:25] want to do Deadmines?" or whatever, and you made that friend. And like, you had people who are online. Now, the difference with Battle.net is you open it up and it says like "Last online 23 minutes ago or like
[32:39] currently playing Hearthstone or currently playing retail and you're just like you're like almost too hyper connected. like breaks that whole experience of like someone logging out or logging in
[32:55] no, now you always know kind of are is their computer on or they're just on Battle.net and they're offline? Like breaks that whole feeling. I've never I've never actually thought about it like that before.
[33:07] breaks that feeling cuz you have all your friends on Discord. You already know if they're going to play or not. Battle.net might have been maybe a little like older social media I guess at scale breaks
[33:21] things that break that but like Battle.net doesn't help there, right? if they're on another character on another realm versus just like are they online or not? Right? It's kind of just the internet, yeah.
[33:33] Just just kind of just the internet. Um yeah, for a while on classic wow I actually don't do this anymore but I actually turned off Battle.net when classic wow came out in 2019 and I played this way for like years where I
[33:45] off Battle.net and I didn't know why I did it. It wasn't for like a specific purpose. I more just did it cuz I was like I'm going to play the OG way but actually kind of cool. You just like add everyone as friends, you whisper them.
[34:00] kind of sick but you know, other things like Discord break that anyway. >> Wow can never be a proper third place, not with how the internet works today. wow to be able to function as a third space, I would say get into role playing
[34:16] and find an RP server that takes that seriously. But for the rest >> I actually did that. So I played hardcore wow and I realized that holy crap, this makes the game feel more alive and immersive than I felt in
[34:29] a long time and then I actually uh there's a retail expansion that came out. This is worth it. So, It's 2 years ago or something. And I was like, I want play retail. I want to be immersed in retail. So, I had the idea of I'm going
[34:42] to roll on Moonguard. So, I did. And I met a bunch of cool people on Moonguard. No, not just in Goldshire Inn. Or I mean not not in Goldshire Inn. But any anyway, like we met Weedelf there, you know, herb vendor. They
[34:57] showed me around, met a bunch of cool people. It was a good time, right? And the thing about Moonguard is they actually like like run up to each other and talk. Every other server, you don't really
[35:09] feel that. You just kind of play the game and spam queue. On Moonguard, you like walk up to someone and say like, "Hey." It's like you're actually like supposed to be played. Anyway, it's actually a good time.
[35:21] I I I've I've mentioned this a few times on stream before. Herb vendor and Weedelf, guys, it's not what it seems like. Anyway,
[35:33] I've talked about this on time, but conversations like this always respark this in my memory. Ichigo Ichie, it's a Japanese idiom, I suppose, that describes a cultural concept of treasuring the unrepeatable nature of a
[35:46] you. Um but I think about this with wow all the time. It's like you can't go back. Even the moment we're having right now, we can't have exactly the same way again. You can only have it one time ever.
[36:02] moment. It's like a crazy thing to think about, right? Citing the fact that any moment in life cannot be repeated. Even when the same group of people get if you had a group of friends and you had like a really good time in one place
[36:17] mimic that same exact thing. You can try, but it'll never really be like that. And that's where like if you guys have seen Lost, I think Lost does a good show good job as a show, kind of describing this of like, you can go
[36:30] back, but you can't really go back, right? [snorts] Anyway, I feel like that's kind of how it is for WoW. mean, you can you can look at this and view it as depressing, or you can look
[36:43] at it and view it through a lens of like, it's also really cool, because you can treasure every single moment. Like, tomorrow is another brand new experience the same way. It also means you can't have it again,
[36:58] look forward to that are going to be these really unique experiences. So, thing to like think about. But, with World of Warcraft, especially like that era we talked about with the zeitgeist effect and now ichigo ichi, it's like
[37:15] Ah, it's kind of how it was, man. You know, kind of how it was. >> No, WoW is not going to become a third place in the way that it used to. But, the silver lining is that the presence that modern WoW has abandoned is still
[37:29] possible. And how we know that is WoW Classic. You see, a study published >> Yeah, just go play WoW Classic. Yeah, yeah, I mean, there we go. Hardcore especially. >> in 2022 surveyed players on what they
[37:41] felt from Classic's relaunch. Nostalgia, of course, was there, but more importantly, the social presence and what's called sense of place were for these people. And they found a promising trend that these two things
[37:56] felt more social presence, they felt a stronger sense of place within Azeroth. Now, for a second, this is going to get really weird. You see, for those actively playing Classic, what ended up happening is that sense of place
[38:10] actually weakened. Now, the researcher suggests that this is down to revisiting the game with way more of a gameplay focus. And that does track whenever you watch, say, other content creators trying out WoW for the first time. For
[38:22] one example, Gbay99 has been documenting his dive into Warcraft with a fresh eye, and he's thoroughly enjoying it in many of the ways that people did If >> One of the reasons he's able to enjoy it
[38:37] this way, um or at least my take is he's doing it offline, off stream. He's not taking handouts. He's not looking anything up or like not looking up like best this, best that. Like not
[38:52] time. He's not trying to speed level. He's using no add-ons, no rested XP, no Questie, reading the quest, going slow. He's putting all of these guardrails on
[39:04] his game play experience to make it feel almost as if he was playing back in the day in a lot of ways. But if you just go in as a new player today, you download a ton of add-ons, you have a max level friend carry you through a bunch of
[39:17] dungeons, you speed level. It's like it's not going to feel like that. stupid. Like when we can go play something else, right?" So he's he's it's very smart, very intelligent. Putting a lot of effort into
[39:31] cultivating the experience that we had. >> Then there was a new classic, divorced [music] from nostalgia and less gameplay focused in the way that we see gameplay today, which I would argue is more narrow than it was in the past. Then it
[39:45] might stand a chance of emulating that original launch. Now, not to put too >> Someone said there's Questie in the screenshot. Is there really? I mean, so this isn't Questie, I don't think. Yeah, no, that's not. That's baseline.
[40:01] he's doing no Questie, but we had to we had to double check. >> was a new classic, divorced from I would argue is more narrow than it was in the Then it might stand a chance of emulating that original launch. Now, not
[40:15] but Classic Plus. You see, if modern WoW is locked into being a season-based, gameplay-focused game, big capital G, all caps, underlined, that's super engaging [music] second to second to
[40:30] second, then Classic Plus can be something different. Classic Plus can be >> And Blizzard did not pick the Camelot code name by accident. It is, of course, King Arthur's mythological castle, often considered an eternal utopia, and not in
[40:46] the milk and honey way, but in the fighting for chivalry until the bitter end way. That's an exciting idea, and maybe it's just a cool name, and they just want to make a game for the super attached end-game classic lovers, but I
[40:59] hope it's more than that. I hope they are going to make a real world instead. I think it'll never reach the heights of the original Classic, also known as but that's just because we live in a different world now, and I don't think
[41:15] video. >> enough. Fair take. >> be good, and I think it can have a sense of presence [music] that is vastly beyond what we've had in modern WoW lately. But that doesn't mean
[41:29] that modern WoW cannot learn from all this research into presence, and should Blizzard need an opportunity and an excuse to do that, well, The Last Titan is the end of the big saga, so what better time to make some change.
[41:42] All that Blizzard has to do is read a dozen or so scientific papers from 30 years ago and integrate them into their game design. >> I don't think Blizzard would ever do that for retail, because to do that with
[41:56] game. Uh one quick example is you'd have to probably remove Mythic Plus, cuz there's a rating attached, and it breaks the idea of like presence and being there with competition, which
[42:10] you wouldn't do. So, I like the idea instead of like you just have two different offerings, right? You have your modern experience and you have your classic one. And the classic experience is more about home
[42:24] and presence and being there and specifically not having rating to grind, like competitive attachment. You're kind of just there and questing and leveling It's a little more sandboxy, right? And then the modern experience is the other
[42:40] competitive experiences, with stuff to grind like arenas, solo shuffle, blitz, mythic plus, mythic raids, stuff like that. So, you have the two offerings for the two different types of people instead of trying to make both into
[42:55] go here. If you want this, go here. Or if you're in the mood to play this, go you'll be in the mood to play that one, right? So, I don't think they I don't You can kind of just say, "This one isn't for this.
[43:09] It's for stuff instead, right?" Instead of trying to please everyone cuz then People have been talking about immersion. That's good. I love to see But as we've learned today, immersion is not even the half of it
[43:25] because presence exists on a foundational layer. >> And if you focus only on immersion in that narrow sense, but not presence, then you'll get something that's cool, but you won't get that secret sauce that
[43:43] WoW exploded onto the world with in 2004. So, there you have it. The road map to fixing up this [music] problem, to getting more presence, is to quite simply look into the science behind presence, look into the ways in which
[43:56] older versions of WoW were able to get that presence, work them into the modern pushing and pushing. >> I really like the whole video, but I sense. Just look at the research and implement it in the modern game isn't
[44:11] really possible based on what what what we just saw looking at the research. Am I Am I tripping here? You can't You can't really actually do that because we're not living in that era. Social media and Discord are at
[44:23] large and retail has competitive aspects of it that you wouldn't want to take out. So, I I I love the video. It really makes you start to think, but I don't I I think it would be easier or probably a
[44:37] just be like, "Okay, retail's not that anymore and that's okay. attempt to be that, but with retail it's just not that." And that's fine, right? >> All to make Azeroth feel like it is another world [music]
[44:52] that really exists that you can access via your computer screen, and not just a game that you can play as a seasonal gaming giga pumper who's just trying to push [music] rating. Because while that is a cool thing you can do in WoW,
[45:06] WoW at its best has always been far more than just that narrow end game progression focus. That's what it has to be again. >> I So, I agree with him, but I don't think they should do that for retail.
[45:22] I agree with Bellular that like that is kind of the issue. Like if As soon as you have something like a Mythic Plus or an arena or pushing this end game as and it's seasonal and you just like just push the end game quit quit push the end
[45:35] game quit, it doesn't feel like a place anymore. I completely agree with that. claim that retail shouldn't be that? Are we should kind of remove all of that from retail, remove logging, remove Mythic
[45:50] Plus, remove arenas, and try to bring it back? There's no way, right? Like I think that would be something for for Classic Plus. I think you just let it be its thing and you work on it from both sides,
[46:03] right? I I think that would be Could you Could you imagine Retail's new patch >> [laughter] >> Yeah, I mean, it would kill Retail, that's really even something to attempt. I don't even
[46:16] Like there's no way. Yeah, that was a really good video. Uh one of you guys Whoops. No, okay. Um
[46:29] Discord, so thank you guys for linking this to me. Very very solid video. Um we were the original Metaverse, then came social media. True.
[46:42] Everything in the middle's not important. True. Do not soak your PC in water. That's the wrong kind of immersion. True.
[46:55] Very cool. You ever see a Burnt Peanut would not You ever see a Burnt Peanut would not want to play WoW with you? Uh no. I think Burnt Peanut said something along the lines of like WoW
[47:07] is a game for nerds or something. There was like a clip of him like a year ago. I mean, he's not wrong, but like that's not a bad thing. Like I Yeah, I don't know what he was trying to say there, but
[47:22] Very interesting. Totally. Zera, stop saying he has two watches. It's a Whoop. Are you sure? >> Continue pushing and pushing and >> That is not a Whoop. That might be an Apple Watch.
[47:36] >> Oh, maybe that is a Whoop. >> into the modern game. pushing all to >> I can't get the right angle on it. I >> I can't get the right angle on it. I think it actually is a Whoop.
[47:52] >> world with in 2004. So, there you have it. The road getting more presents is to quite simply look into the science behind know who said that, Chatter. I think you're right. I totally look like a
[48:06] >> presents. Look into the ways in which >> It is. It is. It is. Now that That's the angle we were looking for, right there. That is a whoop. All right. That is a whoop. All right. I was wrong. Chatter, you were right.
[48:21] ever said that. That's crazy. Um all right.