[00:00] Classic Plus might be wow to you in disguise, slash, my blizcon expectations. This is a preach video. Give it to me, preach. What's going on?
[00:12] Holy ballers, and a pro-fist to you all, because Blizzcon is shaping up to be far more than we anticipated. I just got back from the race to world first. It was obviously a sad ending for Echo, but a dramatic ending, full of memories and all that kind of stuff.
[00:27] so you can check the CDP channel for discussions on those things. But let's talk about BlizzCon, because we've got to set the scene here, because the drama around this is rising very quickly,
[00:40] and I'm really hoping that we're not going to end up massively disappointed. But all the clues are there that we shouldn't be. I need to give you the backstory a little bit.
[00:53] A lot of my friends were not going to BlizzCon this year. like the last BlizzCon which announced obviously the whole trilogy that was coming out we got found out about all three expansions all the way up to the last Titan and it was a monumental announcement
[01:06] Metzen came out he was like okay look this is what we're doing we're doing this world soul saga there's three expansions the story has been laid out we know everything that's going to happen we're putting all this effort into it
[01:18] there are going to be clues that you find out in the war within which are going to make sense later and now we've got this big antagonist in Zaltath who is going to be with us for this journey probably not dealing with Zaltath next year, but we'll see
[01:32] and it's going to lead all the way to this, there's this message that Anduin received all the way back when, it's something bad is coming, something really bad is coming real note on that, I haven't felt it
[01:44] yet, right, we dealt with the Sunwell like really quickly, now we've done some troll stuff, I will admit though I have not done the story of the latest patch because I re-rolled late into the patch
[01:56] and needed to catch up for gear so I could go raiding and stuff so I'll have another video on that because I'm playing Elemental Shaman right now which has been a bell heart but nobody was really going to BlizzCon like we were talking about it
[02:08] and it was like eh what are they really going to show like in terms of wow like as much as I like enjoy Diablo rarely Starcraft is in the wind we'll come back
[02:20] to that shortly Oh, that's an interesting point, because normally at BlizzCon, I'm such a classic Andy, I'm like classic TunnelVision, and it's like, this is like the most excited I've been for a BlizzCon like maybe ever or something.
[02:32] But I guess if you're a retail player, which is like a lot of people, then you're like, well, we already know the next expansion, because you talked about it in 2023.
[02:45] So, what the heck? I actually didn't even think about that. That's how tunnel visioned I am, I guess. I didn't even think about that. They probably were just going to show some little previews of Last Titan.
[02:58] And is it worth, you know, certainly for me living in the UK, is it really worth me flying over to, you know, America, to California, to the far side of America, and maybe taking the team with me
[03:10] like we did for the last BlizzCon? It cost, you know, tens of thousands of pounds to do that. Is that really worth it for that? Not really. So we kind of like dismissed BlizzCon. This was January-ish.
[03:23] Okay, I will put out a funny side story here. At the Undermine Race to World First, we were obviously balled deep into the race. I was in Germany with the Echo Team and got a message from Blizzard saying,
[03:36] we really need you and Roger Brown on a phone call at a certain time. And they're like, are you joking? We're in the middle of the race. Like, there's important things happening here. and they were like we really need you for like 45 minutes
[03:48] and we were like oh god and it needs to be private it can't be public it needs just you and Roger Brown in this call and so we got pulled into this room where me and Roger Brown were on my call
[04:00] we just made it together so we were sharing headphones I wish I had footage of it but me and Roger were like this listening to Blizzard chatting away where they announced they were doing BlizzCon and it was a weird one
[04:12] because we were like well yeah we would have seen some but I think Blizzard We were trying to address the message that people thought there might not be another BlizzCon, which we didn't get. We were like, oh, okay. Yeah, I fully... From, like, me as, like, an OG PvP enjoyer,
[04:29] this is, like, in a sense, the first BlizzCon in seven years. Because 2023's BlizzCon had no AWC, and, like, to me, one of the big parts of BlizzCon is the AWC finals. I know a lot of you might not care about that,
[04:41] but me as a PvPer, it was every year. watching the AWC finals was essentially BlizzCon. Who is going to win this year? Is it going to be Europe or NA? You know, who's going to take it?
[04:54] Like, I was just so infested. So, like, this, in a sense, is the first one in seven years. And, like, I can't wait, right? I can't wait. So, like, it's been a while, boys. AWC is your Super Bowl?
[05:06] Yeah. Yeah. I grew up watching the BlizzCon finals each year as my Super Bowl. Absolutely. Right? and we haven't had it in seven years. So it's like, holy crap.
[05:19] We expected there to be another BlizzCon, and they were like, yeah, so we're announcing it, it's going to be fine, all this. We need to go. Not to be rude, like, we're really happy there's going to be a BlizzCon. And then they said, we're inviting, this is the first inkling of a message,
[05:31] which I'll admit, I did not pick up as a, like, signal. At the time, it was, we're inviting a lot of WoW content creators, including you guys, to this.
[05:44] And we were like, huh. Okay, sure. Like, I know it sounds egotistical, but, like, we've been invited before, right? Like, Echo usually does the MDI and the AWC, so they get to go.
[05:56] I've been invited several times to meet and greets and things. So we were like, oh, cool. That's great. Can we get back to the race? And then we were like, yeah, okay. All right, so the call finished and we went on our way. And then we were like, not bothering, right?
[06:08] And we were like, not bothering, because that was, what, whenever Undermine was, a long time ago now. and so it gets to like March this year and suddenly all these messages are flying around
[06:20] Blizzard's in contact with me they're in contact with and I'm seeing things on Twitter pop up a lot of WoW content creators being invited to BlizzCon not everybody but a lot of people are being
[06:32] invited to BlizzCon and I'm like that's weird hmm there seems to be actually a kind of laser focus on getting WoW content creators there and I'm like that's odd And then there was the meeting that took place where people, certain people were invited to Blizzard who were very big in the classic WoW community to go and do something at Blizzard.
[06:51] And we were like, hmm, interesting. Now, usually what those things are, and I'm not revealing anything. I'm under no NBA, so I can talk about whatever. But usually those things are kind of like a think tank type situation.
[07:04] I did the one for the WoW housing. I got invited to Boston. I got to be told we're doing WoW housing. I was like, oh, sick. got to do a very early build of it and then generally what they do is have a think tank where you all sit in like a big circle and you just throw a ton of ideas out
[07:17] with the devs about what potential problems there might be good things what's missing blah blah blah so it's usually that kind of situation and then nothing really came out of it and more and more content creators
[07:30] being added then we got the schedule interesting which has a lot of what's next panels more than usual usually there's the opening ceremony in terms of WoW and even a new expansion coming.
[07:43] Then they do the What's Next, which is a little bit more focused on World of Warcraft itself. And then they do a deep dive where they'll look at everything from the maps of the zones to the new transmog options and maybe some previews of new talents or whatever it might be.
[07:59] This year has more than that. Because I'm not sweating. I'm not sweating. It's the lighting. It's making me look like I'm sweating. It's the lights.
[08:12] My room is, like, crazy hot today, too, which is weird because, like, I can turn my fan actually up a little higher. Yeah, there we go. That's better. And I'm just watching the video and chilling.
[08:24] You guys are, like, crazy right now. Everybody needs to just relax. You have more than that going on. So what are we expecting? Here's the thing. What we're expecting is very obvious, but I think it's going to be a broader implication.
[08:39] This is my theory, by the way. I'm not under NDA. I have not been left behind the curtain on this one. I'm free to talk about what my speculations are. Usually I can't because I've been told stuff, and therefore I can't even make a video on it.
[08:53] I can't talk about this because I know the answer, right? And there's no way something is going to come out. But this time I'm all free, baby. We can talk about whatever we want. All right, all right, let's get on with it. Obviously, all five points to Classic Plus.
[09:08] Right? Classic Plus. There's evidence along the way that it's Classic Plus. However, I think it's more than that. And the growing speculation is, and this may be just full-on copium, but I actually think it makes a lot of sense,
[09:20] given the timeline, is that this is essentially going to be WoW 2. Mixed together. Now, we've talked about WoW 2 in the past. It'll look a lot like Current World of Warcraft, and I fully expect that to stay the same.
[09:32] But what do we mean by that? I think it is classic plus, but they're going to start from classic, which clearly, clearly, given the response and the active community in classic,
[09:47] is nothing but a good thing. Nothing but a good thing, for several reasons. It's way simpler and cozier and a lot more fun for a wider generation of people. I think it's fair to say, and I have some backup on this,
[10:01] retail at the levels that retail has gone to is frankly just too hard for a lot of people and that's why a lot of retail's main bulk content is very very simple solo stuff because the actual
[10:17] metagame the multiplayer side especially if you think about raiding and mythic plus past your basics is just far too difficult the game is too fast there's far too many variables and now you've
[10:29] in retail world of walkouts, they suffer from a major problem, is that the delta, the difference between the very good and the very new, is so enormous that it's practically just a vanishing point
[10:42] to reach through the crowd. Some players do ascend through, but for the most part, it's way too difficult. The very clear example I have of this, at least in the current... Well, like, it's like, the thing that I think about is,
[10:56] so, like, I'm a streamer, And if I can pug groups and play with a bunch of people and do the content, like, to me, that's a really awesome difficulty level because I can just play and have fun.
[11:10] And, you know, if you're pugging a group, you know, three to five wipes is pretty normal. Kind of like Archimonde yesterday. Like, Archimonde is puggable. It's not easy. You might have to take a while to find a group, but it's puggable.
[11:24] And when I think about a Season of Discovery, Season of Discovery was perfect, puggable content. Level 25 BFD, dust to dust, right? You go in, you probably won't one-shot it,
[11:36] especially those first few weeks, right? You'll probably wipe a few times, but you probably will kill the boss after a couple pulls. It feels good. You get your loot, and you can do it again on alt. And, like, that's what people like and enjoy,
[11:48] and it's fun, right? Not everyone, though. There's this sweaty player base that really enjoys the high-end keys, the high-end mythic rating and stuff like that, but with retail, it becomes a massive problem, right?
[12:02] Because most people can't do that. And you can't just have fun with your friends and it creates this gap and this divide. I can no longer play with my friends because they not good enough Or maybe you the friend who just isn good enough or you can put enough time in and your friends can play with you and that sucks right So yeah I actually think that one of the reasons people love
[12:24] Classic WoW. It reduces this gap, everyone's good enough, right, because the buttons are, it's like more of one-button rotation stuff, and you can kind of just play with your friends and have fun. That's why only things could exist on Classic WoW. That's why Season of
[12:39] Discovery Phase 1 BFD was so successful. And I think at some point along the line, raiding just kind of gets really hard. When is that exactly? Cataheroics?
[12:52] Maybe? Like, ICC and Ulduar are, like, hard, but, yeah, maybe Ulduar. Maybe Ulduar, actually. Yeah, maybe it's Ulduar. Like, and the Wrath.
[13:05] But, like, in Classic WoW, like, you can tug, like, a Molten Core. like, pugging an axe is actually pretty darn hard. But, like, the content's easy enough to, like, get into, right? Anyway, that was kind of a tangent, but I totally agree with him.
[13:18] Here is, I'm doing viewer raid heroic venomous abyss, and I'm playing with some very good players. A lot of my community are ex, like, WoW players who played at a very high level. It's really hard.
[13:31] Like, surprisingly hard. Like, we did coiled altar heroic, and that needs very precise damage pushes, stop DPS, manage a debuff timer,
[13:43] and you have to do that multiple times throughout that fight with very strict movements, a lot of coordination of people moving orbs, every single individual managing ghosts. That's a lot that's going on in a heroic raid,
[13:56] which for the last few years has been kind of puggable. Like, typically your last heroic boss is on par with early mythic bosses, that's fair to say that's been out for a while having now done some heroic
[14:08] Ullatech it's more than that it's way more than that it's a very very complicated fight that is needs a lot of micromanagement and they've really got to a point now where even the heroic raids are
[14:20] really tough even for good season players that require things of the team that are just not it's just true they're not common things they're not standard things and certainly if you
[14:32] were going from say LFR even normal mode to go into heroic, you're going to have a rough time by the time you get to the end of it, because you need to not only output kind of what your class is capable of, and also manage that for target switching and things like that,
[14:46] ignore things, it's a lot of work. And for a lot of people, that's rough. And I always come back to the example of my brother, not to, like, trap on my brother or anything, but my brother has played WoW since before me, he was in the base before me,
[14:58] and he's played it all the way through. What does he do now? He just plays classic. All the time. He loves classic. Why? simpler, slower, more effective. Even if you're not being like actual super min-max with
[15:10] add-on tech and cooldown managers and all those kinds of things, if you're playing like a mage, you can smash Frostbolt on Classic WoW and do pretty much what your class is capable of. It's more gear-based than skill-based. The easiest
[15:22] way to say it for Classic is a Classic player expects if you prepare, you will perform well. With preparation, you will perform well.
[15:35] You get your world buffs, you get your gear checks, you get your hit chance, you get your itemization, you get your spec, you show up to raid you will perform well. Which is one button besides that. The work
[15:48] is the preparation. Right? Retail is not that way. It's not about preparation as much. You can just go and pile your consumes there's no world buffs. You just kind of like you can kind of just send your character and just have an add-on
[16:01] get everything ready for you. Right? you to sim it all and like equip what it says you don't have to think much but when you're in the raid it's very mechanically demanding right it's tough right there are it's like you can't just
[16:15] expect to perform well if you prepare that is not the case in retail a lot of environments you've got to move a bit away from a certain boss or run run a little bit nothing too complicated right and we see that in classic all the time is many many many guilds are just clearing things and tugging
[16:31] things and getting things done, versus what's currently in retail. So it makes sense if you're doing WoW 2, and I think there is a craving for this, is to go back to
[16:43] a simpler time. But we want to expand on that without while learning the lessons that WoW has learned over the last 20 years and where they are now, and actually go in a different direction where we keep the gameplay
[16:55] pretty simple. Because frankly, that net that is cast is far larger and a lot more people can come on in with three or four buttons that are actively using
[17:07] and a bunch of spells that they might never need to use but generally to perform well which people have huge anxiety about right now and that's been for the last sort of seven or eight years. The anxiety that World of Warcraft
[17:19] causes in so many players is monstrous. Like Mythic Plus the biggest complaint is the fact that there's a timer. Even if that timer is easy to beat I thought about this years ago is just so stressful.
[17:31] Being on a damage meter, which is now in the game, is so stressful. Performing, people judging you, people inspecting you, checking you out, what are your times, are you enchanted, are you gemmed? All these things. There's a lot of pressure for a lot of people
[17:44] who are just looking to play a video game, right? And so returning to a simpler time makes sense. So I've had the copium take, and people have just laughed me out of the room on this one every time I say it. And I've been saying this for, what, like a year?
[17:58] maybe two, is that I believe Classic Plus, if done right, okay, that's the key word, if done right, could be bigger than retail.
[18:12] Because of what Preach just said, it casts a much larger net of who the game could be played by than retail. Because it's simple, it's simple to understand, it's simple to get into, it's, there's more
[18:27] x WoW players that have played classic WoW, TBC, Wrath, like Kata, than current players that understand retail? That was a confusing sentence, let me say it again. There's a certain
[18:39] amount of people in the world that can process and understand the game of retail. Let's call that like 5 to 10 million worldwide players that you can even like market to, because
[18:51] everyone else in the world is going to be like, what is this? But for classic World of Warcraft, that number is much larger. There's 100 million plus people in the world that are like X-WOW
[19:03] players, and if you show them Classic-WOW, they'll fundamentally understand the game because it's just simple to look at and understand, right? So the net is just much larger for that reason
[19:15] as well. So for the simplicity reason, and for the reason that there's just more people to market to, I think Classic-WOW could be much larger than retail.
[19:27] someday. I don't know. And that's hinging on Blizzard doesn't mess it up. So, Blizzard doesn't mess it up and maybe five years down the road, taking time to build a core audience and stuff like that. So, time plus
[19:42] no huge mess ups, I think it could. I've been saying that for a year or two, so maybe I'm completely wrong, but it seems to make sense to me.
[19:54] what's that so what is classic plus in theory this is where it gets messy because obviously the hashtag no changes things have been around since classic relaunch all the way
[20:06] back when and some people are like it should just kind of stay as it is I enjoy that again that comfortable blanket which definitely is appealing to a lot of MMO players especially older
[20:18] players which as Holly and Nina talked about the player base of World of Warcraft is far older but I think they've recognized that it's also inaccessible to a lot of players. If I look at my kids
[20:30] who are now approaching teenagers, what are they playing? They're playing very simple games that are pick up and play. They like the red versus blue style. They'll play a ton of like Rocket League. They'll play a ton of Rainbow Six. Shooty shooty, kill enemy,
[20:43] pretty good. And then once they've got that very easy entry into the game, pick up gun and shoot enemy, then they'll start watching some videos and things like that, tips and If you put this mine here or whatever, it does things like that.
[20:55] But they need that very basic entry into a game. World of Walker, I always quote this Counter-Strike quote that I am misquoting every time, but it's like a tweet. Maybe someone has the tweet.
[21:07] I'm going to botch it, but it's like, Counter-Strike, a game that is, that you can, like, jump in right away and understand the rules, but take the lifetime to master.
[21:19] Counter-Strike. Oh, man, I bought that so bad. But the idea is, yeah, the whole idea of a game is you're supposed to be able to understand how to play it very quick, but take a lifetime to master that game.
[21:31] Like chess, you can learn the rules in, what, 20 minutes or something? Maybe quicker or whatever, but then you can play chess forever, right? Like Counter-Strike's a great example. If you just watch a game, you can understand the basic fundamental rules very quickly.
[21:46] But you can play it forever and get better, right? It's such a good, good, good thing for a game. So this is my claim I've made many years in WoW PvP. I come from the PvP side of things,
[21:58] so it's a lot easier for me to conceptualize. For WoW PvP, the game has to be able to be understood very rapidly. It is no mistake that WoW PvP peaked when it was like PvC, Wrath, maybe Catamounts,
[22:11] and then kind of declined after when the game got overly complicated, because PvP fundamentally has to be able to be understood quickly for it to be able to grasp new players. And if you don't have that, new players won't join,
[22:24] and if new players don't join, the game will inevitably have fall-offs, and if the game has fall-offs and no new players join, the game will die. Right? Not rocket science here. So, if you want good PvP,
[22:38] the claim is if you want good PvP in any PvP game, whether it's Counter-Strike, League. Like, League has six buttons. Counter-Strike has, you have, like, what, shoot with two weapons and some mazes, right?
[22:50] A couple buttons. Like, the idea is if you get in, you can understand how to play the game. It means you might suck, but you can at least pick it up quickly. With WoW, you have to level, gear, macros. Like, there's no way, right?
[23:02] But in my TVC, let's be honest, most classes are, like, one or two buttons a lot of the time. And that's what makes it easier to hop into, like, classic loud PVP duels or TVC arenas or maybe Rav, but not as easy
[23:15] to hop into, like, retail. Oh, someone found the tweet. No way. Yay. I actually have this tweet that you linked. Wait, where is it?
[23:27] That's not the tweet. I have the tweet that you linked bookmarked and favorited, so I should be able to find it easily again. But this is the actual quote that I always quote and misquote is from Counter-Strike.
[23:40] Because it takes minutes to master. Wait, sorry. I said it wrong again. Because it takes minutes to understand and a lifetime to master. And the more you invest, the greater your returns. The feeling when everything comes together and never gets old.
[23:52] Whether it's a one tap, a perfect spray, a new piece of util, an ace, or a clutch, it's Counter-Strike. So obviously I misquoted this a lot. Like the general concept, right? Minutes to understand and a lifetime to master.
[24:04] I love that philosophy for any PvP game. This is like the central piece that needs to be in place. And WoW lost that around, I mean, you could say around like Wrath, right?
[24:18] WoW lost that for PvP, right? So, it's a big one. I think about this all the time Soccer great example Basketball great example right You can learn the rules quickly It not complicated but it could take a lifetime to master Chess great example
[24:35] Counter-strike, great example, right? Most major sports or all major sports are great examples. They've been around a long time. They're good games. They're not overly complex, but they're hard, right? This is why WOWPVP is better with simplicity, right? Anyway, that's a big tangent.
[24:53] I've been saying this stuff for years, but I feel like we're finally like, this video is really hitting on these points. Doesn't really have that anymore. I recently watched my 11-year-old do the Star Trek experience as well, and he got moved
[25:09] to Dragonflight and got stuck immediately because the quest that gave him was go and choose your mount, and he was unable to mount. I was like, oh, they must give you a mount, right? No. No.
[25:21] And he was like, I'm just stuck there. I did the starter island he did that and then he gets the dragon flight and he's like I've just got this quest saying I need to choose one of my mounts I don't have a mount and I don't know what to do and I checked the quest
[25:33] and I'm like oh yeah you totally don't have that and he was just stuck and he gave up there were other quests for him to do but by then he was like I've been stuck on this for like 20 minutes trying to figure it out and yeah frankly I don't know what's going on and there's examples
[25:45] of that throughout the game of like this is just immediately fast forwarding me to a time when a base knowledge is kind of required and I do not have it. So let's reverse, let's rewind this to a much more basic,
[25:57] simpler time. Okay. So Classic Plus for me, one thing I'm really hoping for with this and why I think it's WoW 2 is I think this is going to branch off in its own complete direction. I think what they're going to announce is there are now going to be
[26:10] two versions of WoW. There's going to be the resale WoW that we're all used to, but Classic can't realistically keep recycling every single time. There will be a bunch of players who want to do that, But we're now approaching like Warlords of Draenor, where things started to go off the rails, right?
[26:26] Like, sure, people are cheering for like Legion, but Warlords of Draenor, far better in a remixed format. Chris here is a big proponent of that. There's going to be a lot of remixed, like there's stuff they want out there, but that's
[26:38] suitable for more remixed than a classic experience. I agree, I agree. That's pretty good. People like that. But then you've got like, you know, BFA and Shadowlands. like we're starting to go off the rails a little bit certainly in the minds
[26:50] of classic players I would imagine I don't speak for everybody but that's what I imagine so I think what I'm hoping to see from Classic Plus is actually borrowing from Guild Wars here which WoW has done a lot of recently is to go in a
[27:03] horizontal pathway yeah I think they might even intentionally keep you at level 60 forever if you're playing this and in fact the world will just widen rather than progress forward
[27:15] a classic problem with a warcraft has had for a long time, I addressed about 10 years ago, is that every time they release a new piece of content, they frankly cannibalize everything they've done before and make it useless. Outside of transmog farming
[27:27] and collecting, it's just pointless to you. One of the things that was actually kind of cool about old school wallet classic and PBC and even a bit of RAS is that this was still true,
[27:41] but less true. And what I mean by that is if you're a new player and you come into Classic World of Warcraft, you can't really just go to Max. I mean, you can't. Unless you get carried, you don't have the gear.
[27:53] So you kind of have to start by getting your pre-raid BIS. Like, say, Shiba. Shiba can't really just go to Max. Unless he gets carried, he has to get his pre-raid BIS and do Molten Core. Molten Core is still relevant,
[28:05] even if you're on Aera, and Max has been out for years and years and years. Right? Then you go to BWL and get better gear, and then if you work work with a guild to slowly progress through this stuff, right?
[28:17] That's cool. I'm playing TBC right now, right? And in TBC, I just got disconnected, but in TBC, like, Black Temple just came out, and Heichel just came out, and, like, Berets are pretty hard
[28:30] if you're just going with a pug, so you need to have gear. So if you're coming into TBC, you can't just go to BT. You have to go to Kara. So Kara's still relevant. Now, contrast this with retail.
[28:42] in retail the way it's been for a very long time I don't know when this exactly started but when the new tier comes out every other piece of content is now old content like you have catch up gear
[28:55] that gets you past the item level of the old stuff and the new content the new raid the newest raid is the only raid that you will actually do or care about when did this start?
[29:07] when exactly did this start? I mean mob pretty mop, right? Kata? Was it mop? Maybe it was mop. Wrath? Maybe Wrath?
[29:20] Maybe Kata? It's been going on like a long time. But in PBC, you'll still be seeing Karazhan groups pop up the whole expansion. In Era, you're going to see Molten
[29:32] Core groups pop up the whole expansion. That is awesome. I love that. In Classic Plus, my hope is that they continue to develop content for years to come, but Molten Core groups are still being spun up.
[29:47] People are still hitting 60 and want to run Molten Core, right? They still want to get that Thunder Fury. They still want that Enclot girdle. Like, they still want something girdle.
[30:04] I did the same mistake yesterday. Is it Enclot? Anyway, you still want to go back and get these items that are important, or if you're a new player, you still need the gear from those raids to progress to the newer stuff.
[30:16] Teams around Discovery get it okay. Classic Lab does it okay. CBC does it okay. Not as good as, like, RuneScape, but that's fine. As long as it's... If you start a new character, the litmus test is this. If you start a new character, you cannot progress to the absolute newest content without getting carried,
[30:33] without first going through and gearing up through some of the old raids. Like, that's the idea that is really important, right? The old stuff doesn't get cast out. It continues to be relevant for years and years to come.
[30:47] Very important. Except as a gear grind. And so when a new season launches with new gear, every single piece of content, including current expansion, becomes completely irrelevant immediately. Immediately.
[30:59] They're dead. Right? You might have something weird like the Omnium Folio, that you kind of want to get, but it's just dead. It's all gone. There's nothing there. You look at the vastness and the breadth and scope of Azeroth itself
[31:12] and all its corresponding islands, it's just useless to you. Unless you're a collector, it's completely pointless. These are just massive landmasses that are untouched by step, right? By actual personage.
[31:25] Unless you're going back and collecting something or maybe you chose that as your leveling path. But other than that, it's all dead. And that includes Midnight. We've had the new season come out. The old stuff is dead.
[31:37] So how do you fix that? By keeping that world very relevant. What is horizontal progression? I imagine a lot of you listeners haven't even played Guild Wars. The way this works is actually kind of interesting,
[31:50] and I found it very, very fun. If you hit a level cap, there's still a leveling experience to be had, but once you hit that level, that's it for character levels. That doesn't go up. When they release new content,
[32:02] your character level doesn't come up. When the expansion comes out, there's no new character level. Instead, what they do is they add more to the world. And that doesn't mean there's nothing to invest in.
[32:14] RPG players and MMO players love putting points and stuff. So what they added into Guild Wars 2, and I'm not sure if Valve goes this way, is what they call Masteries. When they release a new expansion, it probably comes with some cool tech. And here's the important thing.
[32:26] You don't necessarily need it, but what it does is it modifies how your character works with, say, the new mount system, so they'll introduce, like, dragon riding, right, which came in a while ago. And then you'll get some masteries that go with dragon riding
[32:39] that allow you to do some cool stuff, like attach to the side of the wall, all this kind of stuff, but you don't need it. But it's cool if you have it, and it's a good way of growing your character. Then they will introduce, like, six or seven masteries that are tied to that expansion
[32:52] that allow you to do very cool stuff in that world, and your character grows that way. But more importantly, they've added new raids, new content, all new stuff, but you don't need a new level cap.
[33:04] And in fact, gear, which I think is where World of Warcraft will differ, isn't a big deal there. If anything, you're chasing legendary stuff, which does have some perks, but it's not more powerful than what you can get outside of that,
[33:17] and it involves you generally going out and collecting masteries and stuff. I think they're going to take a lot of inspiration now, I've said all that, from the way Classic WoW actually works with the .5 tier sets. Raiding, even Molten Core, was too much for a lot of people in vanilla.
[33:29] so they had the .5 tier sets which you could get from dungeons. I thought it was useless. As a raider, they announced the system, I'm like, why would you bother doing that? Just go to Mortal Kombat, lol. And it turned out that a huge proportion of the player base
[33:41] had never set foot in a raid in their entire lives, certainly not to the point of collecting items from there. And for them, this was phenomenal. Phenomenal. They massively invested into this system. It was hugely popular
[33:53] of people going and getting these .5 sets. It gave them things to target in dungeons, they had other materials to collect. huge, huge success. Massive win. As Dell's have been in the retail, right? Nice solo can collect my gear
[34:05] and I can play the game and have fun, but I'm not bothered by the stress of the big stuff. So I think they're going to go down that route, because WoW is still a gear game. So I mean, this is a complex conversation. You have new content
[34:17] that is put at the end game that's supposed to be a new raid experience, and then you have stuff like this, this new content that's put in the mid-game or the early end game that's used as a catch-up experience. These are two different
[34:35] things. In RuneScape, if you've played, like, what's it called, Barrows, I believe, is more of that, like, or Moons, I guess is a better example. Moons was added as a mid-game experience
[34:48] to smooth over the mid-game experience as new content to get players through that mid-game a little bit smoother. It's not new endgame stuff, right? Endgame experience in Season of Discovery is a good example of you have, like,
[35:02] Charlotte Enclave come out, but gear from Naxx is still relevant because of set bonuses. Gear from AQ40 is still relevant in Charlotte Enclave because of set bonuses.
[35:14] So Charlotte Enclave doesn't kill AQ40, it doesn't kill Naxx, but it adds new gear that you can use in Charlotte Enclave, But presumably in Season of Discovery, if there was a Phase 9 and they, say, launched Karazhan,
[35:30] Karazhan would come on with some new set bonuses that would be great in Karazhan, but you might not use if you went back to A240 and wanted those set bonuses. So what does this mean?
[35:42] This means that you would have lots of different gear sets for different parts of the game, and you would collect a bunch of gear that would all be very valuable. We talked about this about an hour ago, and it brings up a very big problem.
[35:57] Bag space. You need a lot of gear. You don't just delete it when the new tier comes out, but you mix and match these gear components depending on what content you're taking on.
[36:09] So you need to hold on to, you know, hundreds of pieces of items like RuneScape, and maybe Guild Wars is similar. So you need much, much, much, much, much more storage, right?
[36:21] Um, yeah. I think Season of Discovery kind of solved it. They did a horizontal progression okay. They could have probably done even better They did it with set bonuses and through the damage amp system that they used in Max and Scarlet Enclave Maybe even a Q they used there a little It was like a damage amp if you use the raid from that tier or whatever Sanctified I think they called it for Scarlet Enclave which was pretty cool
[36:52] So a system like that kind of works, where you bring in new endgame content, but it doesn't devalue or make the rest of the game feel worthless. The midgame stuff that you add to smooth the progression to get to the endgame is a lot easier.
[37:08] right you do something like the .5 question so I just wanted to differentiate between these because this is a pretty complex conversation right and I wonder if they're going to chance having linear progression again
[37:20] because that would be really interesting to see how that is received by a modern I wonder if they're going to chance that and by that I mean if you play classic you had a very linear progression path that still kept all the previous
[37:33] content accessible and useful and relevant if you're a raider you don't have to pull Fluff and Lair, Anchorage, and then it's National Armoury, right? And you have that progression path. Then they can extend on that.
[37:46] Provide sideways. So if you had Zul'Gurub and Anchorage 20, the next expansion might come with another 20-man raid. It might come with a 10-man. It's still level 60, but it's now providing you alternates,
[37:59] different stats, different procs, different builds. They might return to elemental resistances. Really old-school RPG stuff. And I know some of you are going to be like, that sounds horrible. On the face of it, I can see where you're coming from. I'm used to the modern style thing.
[38:12] I will say, when I was playing Classic, it actually made total sense to me. It made total sense. And there's always that fear of like, oh, you mean they're going to do linear progression so that you have guild hoppers and the higher guilds
[38:24] cannibalize the older guilds to boost their teams. That still happens to this day, is what I would say. That still happens to this day. Usually now it's just based on progress, because gear is not the big deal. but progress first, filling out deals that are moving faster than you,
[38:41] that still happens to this day and isn't that big of a deal. But I think if they provide a linear, simplistic path for people, I think there's opportunity there for them to do that and have fun with it
[38:54] and provide people a nice journey to go on and they can expand on that for a while. They can keep that going and keep other things relevant. there are a lot of people who are probably listening to this
[39:06] and you might not be one of them, who are like oh, I want to jump in my alt and do Blackwing Lair so I can go and do the temple of whatever that came out in the latest expansion because I need something from here, I need
[39:18] something from there, and I can mix and match all these things, especially the different set bonuses and provide all sorts of stuff and it also means there's another reason for this if you keep it at level 60
[39:30] you stop the inflation that actually turns players away from your game. It's a big problem that happens, and certainly in the big three MMOs, right? If you talk to any of the directors of
[39:42] these games, is they will tell you the problem with adding like five levels or ten levels every expansion is rather quickly you end up with a number that's really large. Despite the fact that if you're a knower of the game, you know that like you can cap very, very quickly, you could even buy
[39:58] a boost for an alt and you can be done in two days, or there's a speedrunning way of doing it. To the uneducated in these matters, if you say the level cap is 100 and you know
[40:12] something of RPGs and leveling, or you're basing it off a different game, maybe you played The Witcher, where levels took a while to get, and you're like, dude, I'm not doing that. That's a very natural response. Keeping things at level 60, keeping that classic style
[40:27] and the gameplay that comes with that, and just providing ever more content, and even maybe modifiers. We know the private server, I believe it's called Ascendance, has actually done very, very well in providing offshoots of specs and talents.
[40:39] So the priest has, like, four or five different builds it can go with, or whatever. I haven't played it, so cut me a little rope on that one, but they provided, like, the Oracle, or whatever it might be, which is a slightly different variation, but the gameplay remains roughly, you know, the same,
[40:52] providing some new and interesting pathways to go on. And then they can do sort of Path of Exile style, which is like, oh, is this working in PoE 2? We can put that in PoE 1 and vice versa. And there'll be things that could join resale and things that did work in resale coming back.
[41:06] So it provides that accessibility option for those people. So that's my thinking on it. I think this is probably going to be wild too. I will say if it's not... I think staying at level 60 is a no-brainer prerequisite
[41:21] for Classic Plus to be Classic Plus. right? I mean, if you launch expansions to Classic Plus, now it's just another expansion.
[41:35] Then you lost that it's Classic Plus. It just immediately isn't the thing that you tried to build now. So yeah, it has to stay 60. There can't be expansions. It's content patches forever. And you stay 60 forever, right?
[41:48] Like, you can't really do it any other way or else it's not the thing that you're trying to build. The thing? it's a big nothing burger I'll be like laughing but like in sadness and tears I'll be like oh god
[42:00] it's just like the last titan and we're really going in depth on the last titan and they're like oh but the time feels right if you think about when Holly joined the team and took the leadership of the ship obviously she came in as the classic director
[42:13] and now is the director of Warcraft it makes sense and my gut feeling is and you do have to go with your gut on these things my gut feeling is there are people who yearn for a simpler style of gameplay
[42:27] that is not as rapid and is something they're familiar with on a patch-to-patch basis that does not super require them reading a ton of guide... Guys, am I the only one here who's thinking...
[42:42] Who the heck cares what they name it? It's just semantics. whether it's Classic Plus, WoW Forever, WoW 2,
[42:54] it's the same thing we're all talking about here. When someone is like, oh, bro, it's going to be this or that, it's like, it's a name, man. Like, I don't even know. If I'm Blizzard, I'd probably just call it Classic Plus.
[43:07] But it's literally just semantics, and we're all talking about the same thing. I don't know. It's like, yeah, it's min-maxing procs and all these things to get a good percentage of their performance out.
[43:22] And there's people who yearn for that gameplay. And they just want new things to do with that gameplay because they've done classic now several times, right? It's repeated over and over again. They're looking for something new and keeping that stability, that foundation,
[43:36] and say, this is classic. We've done Season of Discovery. We saw what worked there. We saw what didn't. And keep it that way. And keep it relatively rigid so you know that your raid size here
[43:48] and the smaller raid size is what it's going to be maybe for four or five years time without having to make dramatic modifications because the player base has changed it keeps things stable. So Season of Discovery comes up a lot and for me the thing that killed that for me
[44:01] I played the hell out of Season of Discovery was when they changed the raid sizes because it just meant I had to reorganize and restructure it as did everybody else into a new system which we haven't built we haven't built the team around.
[44:14] and people just lost interest immediately. They're like, eh, I don't want to do that. Like, I was really happy with what we had. That was it. I'm really hoping they actually go with smaller raid sizes. Ten Man. This is a great opportunity for Ten Man.
[44:27] Can't do Ten Man in retail. Too many class variations. Too much power in the individual to create class stacking. Like we saw happen in Cacicles in the Ten Man is the Ten Man guilds were dramatically over the top
[44:39] because an individual's unique presence created a really imbalanced raid situation. If you start it from classic, though, you don't have that problem yet.
[44:51] You don't have it. And therefore, you can make some things happen. Works in season discovery. So I'm hoping to see that there. I'll be flying out to the... I actually really enjoy 10-man raids, but I'm, like, biased,
[45:03] and I understand people that disagree with it, because it's, like, it's not epic, it's not, like, a huge 40-man experience. But, like, I love being able to just, like, all right, let's grab a tank, two healers, DPS, and go. Like, in DfD and Sod, it was awesome.
[45:17] Or Nomadon. Like, let's get 10 people and go. It's so accessible and easy. And to just be able to play, it feels nice. It isn't as epic. Like, there is something cool about a 40-man raid. I nod to that. But I kind of like 25-man, 20-man, and 10-man, like, the most.
[45:34] 40 for me is, like, it's epic, but it's, like, the tradeoff is brutal to try to build a group, unless you're anti, and you can, like, manage all the spreadsheets and buffs and this and that,
[45:46] which I guess I'm playing, like, devil's advocate, right? I'm building up, like, a, what's it called, like a steelman. It's like, well, that's the point. That's classic WoW. It's like that's the difficulty of Naxxramas
[45:58] is getting 40 players to show up that are world buffs that are standing in the right spot, right? It's not that it's that crazy mechanically intensive, but it's like the difficulty of the structure of the group itself.
[46:10] So I guess I get that point, but I think I still like 20 man for the accessibility man. Or like in SOD, the way they did it is it was 20 to 40 flex. So like you could, it was tuned for 20,
[46:24] but you could bring up to 40. So what that practically meant is that a lot of people would raid with like 30 players or like 32 players or 28 players. So we were cheering for 20, so extra players made it easier.
[46:38] But then you had to distribute the loot. So the sweatiest of guilds just did 20 right away, but it was pretty darn hard if you have no gear. But if you're a little less sweaty of a guild, like the way we did it, is week one we did it with 30,
[46:50] and then one of our players couldn't make it one week, so we went with 29, and we did it anyway, and that was great. And then a couple weeks went by, and a couple more players didn't show up, so we went with 27, and that was fine, since we had more gear.
[47:02] And then eventually we worked down to a 20-man raid, And the 20 to 40 flex seemed to work in sod from my experience. Let's talk on Thursday. So, fingers crossed.
[47:14] I think that's what we're going to see. I know there'll be a mixed opinion bag on this, but I know for one, if as long as this doesn't turn out to be a microtransaction swap, we'll use the word,
[47:27] where they're just trying to cash in on you buying mounts and transmogs and things like that and, like, please give us the monies, and they're actually making a concerted effort to say, okay, let's start from fresh, learn from what we did over the years and now cater to that kind of play style,
[47:42] I will be in fully. And I will say this, it's the first time I've been excited about a big WoW announcement in a while. Because I think I'm not the only one here who's like, oh, there's a new WoW expansion.
[47:55] Well, yeah. It's got new raids, it's got new dungeons, it's got a new landmass. Yeah. All right. we kind of expect it, right? For this time, I actually feel a little giddy, like I haven't felt in a long time.
[48:08] So, fingers crossed it's going to pay off. All right, guys. Thank you very much. All right. Bye. All right. Very, very, very, very, very, very solid video. I feel like I agree with a lot of what Preach has to say. So many of these things in this video,
[48:21] I was just like, oh, yeah, I've been saying that for years. Oh, yeah, I've been saying that for years. Oh, yeah. Over and over and over. Guys, I'm pretty darn excited, man. excited excited um just like for each this is probably the most excited i've been since
[48:39] classic era um announcement and i was what blue time was that 2017 2017 is that right um where they announced it and then it came out in 2019 was it 2016 something like that
[48:51] anyway um yeah it's excited i'm excited i'm excited i'm very very excited should be good