Classic+ Evidence & Warcraft III Legacy — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] wild news, but first, ladies and gentlemen, something is afoot. I say that because a combination of data mining, creator teasing, and one very pointed Blizzard fakeout has got people excited again, and there's a lot to talk

[00:15] about. So, let's get into the news. After all these fakeout announcement at the state of Warcraft, we thought it would be classic plus in September, which felt like a bit of a long time to wait, and maybe Blizzard agreed because

[00:27] stack of creators went for a trip back to the orc side to in Irvine. Asvan has been posting about the dark portal never opening, and basically every classic something. Now, naturally, that's kicked off the usual round of Reddit leaks,

[00:40] fake leaks, maybe real leaks, and people pinning little bits of string to the wall trying to work it all out. So, rather than get lost in whatever somebody's uncle apparently heard from a friend, let's just talk about what's

[00:53] actually there and what's actually concrete. So, back when patch 12.0.5 hit concrete. So, back when patch 12.0.5 hit the PTR, data miners found a bunch of the PTR, data miners found a bunch of odd things. Skyborn housing decor.

[01:05] There's a wind well, wind chimes, a banner, curtains, a pillow. They're light blue, they're wind themed, they're a very elven-looking items, and they've got file names such as 12 PH shop Skyborn. So, on its own, that's not

[01:19] really proof of much. It could just be a shop bundle, a trading post thing. It could be an ordinary bit of housing decor with a name that just sounds more thing can happen. But what happened afterwards was more weird because

[01:33] mentions of the Skyborn items actually vanished. They vanished from Wowhead and MMO-Champion. Public pages or posts that had referenced them became unavailable or just disappeared from normal view. Then, the related model and texture

[01:48] files appeared to have been encrypted. Now, that is not normal behavior. That's what we call a cover-up Because data mined items appearing is completely normal. Data mined items getting attention is normal, but then them

[02:03] becoming unavailable and encrypted is just a lot more interesting. But it's not just the file name, because there's also the file ID placement. The Skyborn Windwell appears right beside the expansion pre-order style decor wells

[02:17] that we got with Midnight. Some of the texture paths actually seem to predate Midnight, while the actual decor showed up in 12 05. There's a bunch of little clues. So, the cautious take on all of this is Blizzard have the Skyborn

[02:32] housing assets. They were shop tagged, they sat near pre-order style reward assets. People noticed them and then they just got hidden away. You know, clear up some confusion. Now to be clear, none of this confirms Classic

[02:45] Plus, Skyborn elves, playable high elves, Alliance shamans, Northrend, or any of that really spicy stuff. Though, I would not be surprised if a bunch of that does end up being real. Now to be clear, this is still us on a big

[03:00] evidence corkboard trying to work out what's going on with all of these clues. What I will say is it does make the theory a lot less silly. And that's that truly makes sense. So, let me explain. The idea people keep coming

[03:14] back to is Northrend. A region where we get high elves, dwarves, gryphons, wind themed stuff, and maybe some Alliance shaman flavor if Blizzard wanted to go in that direction. Now, any one of those little things is a

[03:29] little thin. A data mined gryphon doesn't mean that we're going to declare Skyborn elves are really a thing. But, if you put enough of these things beside people are leaning into it, because it all does sit in the same, roughly

[03:44] speaking, fantastical space, the same theme. And then, that all brings us back to Classic Plus. So, Mr. Pandaria Classic still has a bit of runway. So, this is unlikely to be some sort of normal, you know, Warlords of Draenor

[03:58] classic beat. You know, these assets and all the talk. I mean, the dark portal not opening is why people think Blizzard are preparing to almost fork the timeline, right? What if Azeroth continued or there was just more time

[04:11] before the Burning Crusade happens and that during that time we could just explore post Warcraft 3 Azeroth a hell of a lot more. Now, if classic plus is exploring different old world ideas

[04:25] instead of just marching through the same old expansion treadmill, then Northrend and old faction fantasy fit that pitch honestly pretty damn neatly, pretty perfectly. So, I think a fair read of this is this. Some of this stuff

[04:39] is circumstantial, some of it is community cope or community hope. Some of it, a lot of it actually, is genuinely art. Especially those shop tagged Skyborn assets becoming unavailable and encrypted while classic

[04:52] creators were going back to Blizzard to do some sort of creator summit. Now, classic plus is not confirmed. I'd say at this stage though, it is all but confirmed. Blizzard have been as clear as they can be without pretty much just

[05:06] hand, the creator stuff could be Blizzard soliciting feedback, having a chat and it could be BlizzCon where we actually see the thing get announced. But also, it is looking like it could be shown off perhaps even sooner than

[05:21] BlizzCon. That may seem like a totally insane thing, but thinking about BlizzCon, there's going to be quite a few things that Blizzard will need to about say that new Starcraft open world game, right? So, with all that in mind,

[05:37] bit. Now, there is one extra wrinkle to this though, because if Skyborn is real, then the question is also how Blizzard would sell it to people. And the read here is that these assets are shop tagged, they're sitting near pre-order

[05:51] style rewards, and may be decrypted soon. Now, that doesn't tell us what the product is, but I think it does tell us the overall shape Blizzard will be housing actually changes up the mats a bit. If players care about wells,

[06:05] banners, rugs, pillows, themed bundles, just stuff for their house, then Blizzard has a lot more things to hand out and a lot more things to sell. And that's why the Skyborn tag matters, I would say. Cuz if this ends up being

[06:18] normal shop decor, that's fine. If it's tied to a classic plus pre-order thing or deluxe style bonus, then the first proper classic plus bait may arrive with

[06:30] a price tag attached. Maybe it'll be a pre-order. Maybe the news of BlizzCon will be that it'll finally go live. Hard to say exactly, and none of us can predict the future, but it is looking fairly certain that there will be

[06:42] classic plus news soon. But oddly enough, that's not the only classic Warcraft news, because in a seemingly random act of grace, Blizzard finally undid some of the damage that they inflicted in Warcraft 3 6 years ago. And

[06:56] yes, it really has been that long. You can now play Warcraft 3 through Battle.net properly via Warcraft 3 Legacy. You see, before if you wanted the old version of the game, you'd have to use a separate installer. So, in

[07:08] thing that people have been asking for. Basically, easy access to the original gunk. You'll be able to do LAN and offline play, old maps and campaigns.

[07:20] Basically, less friction for people who never really wanted Reforged in the first place. This is good. More things like this, please, Blizzard. Fantastic. that's the Blizzard somehow found a way to make this easy win a little bit

[07:33] weird. You see, Warcraft 3 Legacy is on patch 1.29, rather than patch 1.31. So, it's missing some of the final pre-Reforged changes that were made to support online play, which is disappointing, but at least it is a

[07:48] little understandable. You can see Blizzard not wanting to run like another live branch of a game. But the worst bit is that at launch, um playing Warcraft III wasn't really in the supported list of features for this

[08:01] version of Warcraft III. It's very silly, but what happened is they shipped it with the wrong folder structure. So, the maps and the cinematics were there across a load of languages, but they were just in the wrong place. And that

[08:13] just boot you right back to the main menu. The install was also twice as large as it needed to be because of all of the redundant language data. Now, the issue quickly. Forum posters were talking about diagnoses and workarounds,

[08:28] and Blizzard's official fix did actually come. It just took 9 days. 9 days to fix effectively identified for them. Cool. No real harm done in the end, of course, original Warcraft III back into the

[08:43] should have been an easy win. I think it's just a bit mad, a bit crazy that even this somehow launched in a broken, barely explained way, and then took longer than it really should have to be fixed. I guess that's the annoying part.

[08:57] Even a nice gesture of goodwill just, you know, didn't really go right. That's a shame. So, the idea was good. The follow-through has felt a little bit oddly hands-off. But let's think about things for a second. If Classic Plus is

[09:10] going to be a big thing, then maybe they want a version of the game that came out before Classic, um you know, Warcraft III in its original state, so people can play the campaigns just like basically the rest of us did when we were much

[09:23] younger. Okay. This is a lot of classicy stuff, a lot of old stuff. Let's talk about live because Blizzard are fixing some problems in the immediate. It took a while, but the fabled light touch balance stuff is is actually here, and

[09:35] true to Paul Cubitt's word, they are bringing up the underperforming tanks without knocking down Brewmaster. So, Blood DK, Vengeance DH, Prot Paladin, and Protection Warrior are all getting decently substantial durability buffs.

[09:49] Blood DK gets more stamina, more uh Death Strike healing, and stronger Dancing Rune Weapon support. Vengeance gets better baseline damage reduction, armor, and stamina. Prot Warrior gets more damage reduction across the places

[10:02] where well, they would tend to be a bit more squishy. And Prot Paladin, well, you guys are really getting a pretty big package of changes because god damn, you really did need it. There's longer Sentinel uptime, more stamina, stronger

[10:15] low health protection, and a fairly huge improvement to Ardent Defender. And that last bunch of changes really matters because Prot Paladins were feeling the pain majorly. I mean, god damn, I raided with one for uh for half of the first

[10:29] season before he ended up swapping over to Death Knight because Prot was in just such a weak state. And if you've been tanking on Prot, this is exactly the sort of pain that you would that you would have noticed. So, more duration

[10:43] for things and more damage reduction on your basic, you know, please don't let that's good. Blizzard clearly knows where the pain is. Changes are welcome, and if you're tanking keys on one of these specs, the rest of the season

[10:56] still some pain points with healers. There's still work to be done, but there's also an obvious question hanging over all this stuff, which is why did it take this long? Because by now, a lot of players have already adapted. Some have

[11:08] rerolled. Some have geared the safer option. That happened in my guild. Some have just stopped volunteering to be the person who, you know, by being a tank, sideways. And really, this is where the

[11:21] tank stuff becomes bigger than just the numbers. Tanks know the route, control the pull. They eat the panic whenever something goes wrong. And if the tank role feels under-tuned, people will just stop queuing. And that's obviously been

[11:35] tank shortage. And I think this is the bit that matters beyond just the patch notes. The sturdier tanks are, the more people will be willing to play them. The shakier tanks are, and the more people will just quietly stop queuing. And

[11:49] basically, the more tanks that queue, the more Mythic Plus groups you're probably going to get. So, every tank basically ends up enabling four other people to go and do a dungeon. Now, Blizzard already seemed to know that the

[12:02] role is under pressure, and that's because of Lindormi's glow. It was added in 12.0.5 as an option to attempt to make routing easier. That definitely helps. But I just do not think the tank shortage is something that a small boost

[12:15] on its own will be able to fix. Tanks being sturdier is good. It gives them more room to think about their routing, threat, mob control, stops, positioning, and all of the other team captain things that they're already expected to do. And

[12:28] of course, it'll give healers a bit more room to handle group damage instead of just having to baby sit the tank through every pull. So, better late than ever, season smoother, and hopefully Blizzard

[12:40] takes a bigger lesson into the next season. If they want more tanks, the and less miserable to play whenever things go wrong. And absolutely, if major changes are needed for tuning, they need to make those changes earlier.

[12:55] Though of course, that's not all that's going on with the game. 12.0.7 is on the seem like a really cool patch, and we're going to have videos on really cool the leveling changes and heroic world tour fairly soon. Beyond that though,

[13:10] we're actually seeing the first little rumors and hints and uh I guess some Blizzard server activity uh stuff suggesting that patch 12.1 is on its way to uh at the very least internal test servers at Blizzard. So, whenever 12.0.7

[13:25] hits live, probably in like, well, four or five, six weeks, expect to either already have had the announcement for 12.1 or for it to absolutely be imminent. So, retail's moving, tanks are getting help, Warcraft III Legacy is

[13:39] easier to access, classic creators have went to the HQ, and all this skyborn stuff seems really weird. There is a lot of classic plus smelling smoke, and I classic plus fire. I think we'll probably get some news quite soon. But

[13:55] future of the game and where we could be headed, right? So, we did this video about Azshara. Um it was like the last video that went up on the channel, and I should watch. After that though, and after I read through some of the

[14:08] comments, for me the penny dropped that basically what if Azshara is being kept for after the last titan? What if we are seeing fragments of her gathering power,

[14:20] knowing that basically the Zalatath stuff, the titan stuff, the Uldir stuff, of us will be left weak, and she'll be ready for the future. So, if you want to check out the Azshara video next, and it is literally the link that just replaced

[14:35] my face. So, have a click. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you over there.