WoW's Future Hints — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] lot to talk about today, starting with this quote from Ian Hazzikostas. Nothing definitely discussing some potential improvements there for The Last Titan. Okay, improvements in a new expansion hardly a surprise, [music] but in this

[00:16] case that was Ian being asked about secondary professions. As in other words, there we have it. I believe Blizzard are actually trying to get archaeology back in The Last Titan. And I know that may not seem like much

[00:29] proof, but people like Ian always have a tell. There's a very well-known trick when interviewing developers, especially developers with media training, and that goes double for whenever they're on a PR tour. You see, they want to talk about

[00:43] things, but it's up to you to find those things. And when Blizzard themselves are Wowcast, [music] they already know. Now, in this case, Varya, the Blizzard person handling the Q&A, knew to poke on archaeology. And I'm glad she did,

[00:57] because naturally Ian caught the ball and ran with it. At the very least, he's proved that archaeology is on Blizzard's mind. In short, he sung archaeology's no secret that actually doing archaeology was boring at its very best.

[01:11] So, to hopefully improve things, Ian said they'd love to quote, "Look at ways of delivering that fantasy in a way that is quote, maybe more fun in a moment-to-moment sense." And it really was a great fantasy. In Cataclysm alone,

[01:23] you could dig up over 170 unique items that painted a picture of one of the game's ancient races, the trolls. Items like Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds, this epic sword from way back in the day when epics still really did mean something.

[01:37] It was a frustrating massive time sink for some, but to those who actually read the item descriptions, well, the likes of Zin'rokh was a hint at a return to Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub. And then there's the puzzle box of Yogg-Saron, an ancient

[01:50] legendary source of Old God whispers that kept us lore heads, I mean, eating for literally years. Done right, then, archaeology could turbocharge how players actually engage with the lore of Warcraft. Because right now, what ends

[02:04] up happening is Blizzard puts tons of lore and tons of detail into the world, like via every zone, but it's just overlooked because we're other things. Archaeology would fix that. Give us the look at this cool lore

[02:19] whatever, like Blizzard did with say lore walking. And I think you can bet the official line being there's nothing to announce, I think we can almost certainly [music] expect another crack at archaeology in The Last Titan and in

[02:32] a way that respects the fantasy of, quote, "researching and uncovering relics from lost civilizations." Cuz I mean, come on, that's the core premise of archaeology. That's like profession description. That's what we

[02:44] want. But I have a warning for the game team. Please keep this a secondary [music] profession. Now, I know what might be tempting you. You want to turn it into a full gameplay feature [music] of the expansion, something like Prey,

[02:56] where you fly to waypoints, clicking a bunch of items, do a bunch of things, maybe a digging animation, and then fight some ancient construct of a of an sound half bad as a piece of invasion-adjacent content. But I don't

[03:11] think it's what people actually want archaeology to be. I think people want archaeology to be an actual real profession, limited combat, relaxing [music] content, done all across the world.

[03:23] And remind, of course, all the ways you could hook it into player housing. So, Blizzard, you've got an opportunity to make what feels like an actually new and to do [music] that without worrying about how it would hit player power and

[03:37] the WoW economy. Use that opportunity and try something that will last more than just a patch or maybe a trio of patches across a season. Okay, all that stuff about archaeology was only one part of a large, dense

[03:51] say? Well, I'll start with the most important bit, and that is the 8-week patch cadence. And surprisingly, Ion revealed some kind of staggering data in this. As expected, he said it's, quote, "working for the majority of players."

[04:06] Yeah, they would say a line like that, but maybe not in the way that you or I might imagine. You see, according to player surveys that Blizzard carries out, it actually divides us all pretty damn badly. 25% of players feel it's too

[04:19] fast. 25% of players say it's still too slow. I wonder what drugs they're on. And the last 50% say it's about right. >> [music] >> 50% looks like a lot of people really

[04:33] happy with it, but it does also mean that half of the player base isn't really happy with it. Now, if you put yourself in Ion's shoes, you can see why it kind of looks like the right call, though. Especially since 12.0.7 does

[04:46] suggest that Blizzard have gotten more of a handle on their pretty long history of rather broken patch [music] days. If you slow down, you make 25% of players happier then, but maybe that would hurt the other 75%. And the same

[04:59] would piss off all the other people. Now, in the interview, he says it's hard to make a big pivot based on that data. Though, he did also say that the data [music] isn't iron clouds, and that if it starts to swing, they will change

[05:13] things accordingly. Now, there's plenty to break down here. First, Ion, I do respect that that is offhand in an interview, and there's almost certainly way more to this, and loads of context that you couldn't just say sitting

[05:25] in mind, I think it's beginning to [music] sound like you guys are caught in a fairly common type of execution trap. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, basically, isolating and cherry-picking data that supports your hypothesis, and

[05:38] worse yet, and I think this is the case in this, by the time people are telling you they're unhappy, you've already made them unhappy. Now, that's valid data. That's good. You can use it. But, it

[05:52] also means that you are learning too late. So, I sincerely hope that the executive team of wow are maybe looking at some other things. Like if certain player types have unusually few logins or maybe shorter session times at the

[06:06] same point in previous seasons. Those things that are more based on actual player behavior, not just people sharing an opinion. Though, of course, in a game with incentives, even that data can't be fully trusted. And that is part of what

[06:20] makes the job the Warcraft team has genuinely challenging. But, if there's leading indicators rather than lagging ones. Those will start to tell you things ahead of time, maybe if you need an injection of excitement. Or, you

[06:34] could just look at the game and know it needs sometimes a bit more sauce. And you know what? We already know that Ion thinks that. You see, a while ago Ion told Cyber that they are thinking about basically changing things up more and

[06:48] doing change because change itself can actually be a good thing whenever a game just feels too stuck in a schedule. Now, of course, we're expecting to find out more about Last Titan at this coming BlizzCon. And you know what?

[07:00] That BlizzCon's actually shaping up to be pretty damn huge. And that's the next thing we need to talk about. Okay, we've been banging on about this leak for a bit of a while now. And basically, we discovered how plausible

[07:13] it was and we made a video about it. Now, also in our recent video on how the Xbox changes are impacting Warcraft, we found out that Jez Corden, a journalist for Windows Central, who has a lot of contacts at Xbox, that he has heard

[07:28] about a range of TV and film projects. Those things obviously line up. And what all that does is contribute to an information environment, one that of be paying attention to. And I think we know Ion's paying attention because I

[07:41] purpose. You see at the end of the Q&A, he talked [music] about BlizzCon and he chose his words very carefully. Here's the quote. "Can't wait to share a whole lot more information about all things Warcraft at that point." All things

[07:58] Warcraft, so not just the modern game. And basically what we should think about that is classic plus and maybe something Warcraft that isn't just wow. That has only ever happened three times in history with the movie, with Hearthstone

[08:12] and of course Warcraft Rumble. Only one of those was a major success, that being Hearthstone, which by the way just lost its game director again, which is a massively frustrating sign right when I've gotten

[08:24] Battlegrounds. God damn, there's a lot of design mastery in that game, but I won't dwell on that for now. Let's think about things forward-looking. What did Ian mean by that? Well, to remind you of the slate leak, according to that leak,

[08:37] a Warcraft Chronicles RTS [music] and an animated series are supposed to be a thing as well as an RPG and a live-action project all around Arthas. Apparently that's the plan for Warcraft's future and I think Ian's move

[08:50] more or less confirmed that we'll get to see at least some of that stuff in just a few months from now because all things Warcraft has got to mean more than just [music] World of Warcraft and that means it can't just be classic plus and

[09:03] itself. When asked about Azeroth as a living world, Ian said they were initially scared about rebuilding Silvermoon and Eversong. They were basically worried that people would be bored or just be annoyed at rehashing an

[09:16] existing location that people really like. A fair enough fear, but I mean that most of us prefer, rather massively, [music] playing in the Azeroth that we know instead of just having brand new islands

[09:28] bolted onto the map every 6 months. I think Ian gets that and honestly, he couldn't help himself because almost unprompted, he just starts going off on one. He lists Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Westfall, and the Barrens specifically,

[09:41] [music] and when he does, he says that it would be, quote, "limiting" if they could never go there again. So, what does that mean? Does that just mean a world revamp after the last Titan, just that happening again?

[09:55] Maybe. If true, then thanks for the heads-up, Ion. I'd say you heard it here first, but it's been a pretty popular theory for years. Ion obviously knows that and willingly giving it a whole bunch of oxygen to burn, I think, is a

[10:09] evidence besides that, and we'll be covering it in an upcoming video. Next, the single biggest surprise of the entire interview, by far. PVP. We don't often talk about PVP here, and it's for good reason. No one seems

[10:24] to care that much outside of the PVP-ers, but there's a reason. Because gotten less love from Blizzard, and the community has kind of dwindled into only two types of people, the truly passionate and I guess the people who

[10:39] just grin and bear the pains [music] for just getting Gladiator mounts and But what's good is Ion just took it very seriously and gave us some pretty good news on specifics. Things like a new queue dodger penalty

[10:53] >> and devs focusing on fixing MMR for season 2, plus news and PVP talent updates during the season. Now, I'll mostly skip over the minor details today because there's actually something that's a lot more juicy.

[11:06] And it's that Ion kind of betrayed their entire design philosophy. Here is the relevant quote. "At a high level, we want to serve our PVP community better, but we also need to grow the PVP community in order to justify that."

[11:19] Now, this is a growing trend in most of the games industry, but honestly, most industries. And it's not good for a video game. You see, because there aren't enough PVP-ers, PVP gets ignored. Because of

[11:33] course pvp [music] is underserved, that then means the number of pvpers will get smaller. It is a death spiral and as a long as that's Blizzard's philosophy of having to justify, then we're kind of screwed. You see

[11:47] things like Slayer's Rise and the training grounds are good healthy ideas, but they're so limited. They're only useful if pvp itself is seen as being worth playing. Basically, no one gets into a dead game.

[12:00] Not alone anyway. So for pvp to thrive, they need to abandon that philosophy Blizzard needs to go against the cold hard logic and basically love pvp so much that it roars back to life. That means revamping pvp systems, designing

[12:15] classes for pvp as well as pve and basically screaming from the rooftops that pvp is alive. And I think it needs to be back. It used to be a vital part of wow's identity. I think most people know that that's a bit of wow's identity

[12:28] that it needs back. And if no one at Blizzard is willing to make that call and actually take the risk, then it will just continue to wither. [music] And if that's going to be the MO, I would say just go and kill it. Not literally, but

[12:41] you know, at least let the pvpers stop holding out on false hope because that What they need to do is mark a date in the calendar, the last titan maybe 14.0 and basically say this is the day that pvp will be reborn. They need to spend

[12:57] need to market the out of it as a core feature [music] to the game. That's what I would do anyway, but only if I thought it was worth saving. It's definitely risky. And Blizzard don't seem to be convinced

[13:11] that it's worth saving, at least enough to spend the time and money to simple. Pvpers, it's on you to convince them. The classic and hardcore communities were actually able to pull it off. So if you guys can rally

[13:25] together, you might actually have a chance at making some change. That was a lot, but Ion had far more to say on on some important topics. One is 12.1 story. It's got a lot of flak for being totally unconnected to the rest of

[13:38] Midnight so far. And of course, Ion debunked that by saying basically that Midnight. I mean, if you're a lore head, you already know, right? It's all about [music] C'thaxxi, the C'thaxxi General from the uh you know, some of the troll

[13:51] from the uh you know, some of the troll Akir wars that's buried under Zul'Aman. They connected Under mine using the Darkheart last year. But the thing is, to a lot of people it came off as being technically correct. You see, Blizzard,

[14:05] vibes, aesthetics, [music] and first impressions instead of what's really happening and what you can really play. That does kind of suck, but you guys designing patches. [music] Because to people, this is a troll patch and

[14:20] therefore it feels like a detour, even if it [music] has a valid logical connection that is on some lore that's actually really cool. And that just means that to average Joe, it will feel like a detour. And if it does connect

[14:32] and we know that the lore makes sense for how it will, well, to average Joe feel like the plot's [music] turning on a dime and nothing makes sense because why is the troll patch suddenly now Midnight? What's going on? Because they

[14:45] probably also haven't read the quest text. And that is to say that a degree of vibe and aesthetic continuity and propulsion through the patches is really it's a big one. It's the missing warbound reps. You see, we were promised

[15:00] that more reps would converted to the warbound system [music] being warbound wide, but they have not materialized yet. Now, Ion takes the blame for speaking too soon. Basically, he just didn't tell us how fiddly doing it is.

[15:12] It takes a lot of manual work and doing it would come at the expense of some more important systems. They are currently figuring out how to make their workflow easier on that front. So, he's basically hoping that he's got some news

[15:25] >> [music] >> nothing yet. Now, in one way that could be frustrating, but I think it's good that it's frustrating because it does hell of a lot better than hype and promises. Now, on the housing front, he

[15:39] doesn't say a whole lot that's new, but he does reveal that they're working on a [music] quote housing showcase tool to basically let people browse and search houses instead [music] of having to rely on some external gallery website. Moving

[15:52] Bounty, which is the big event for collectors, and he said it's something they want to do very sparingly. That that bit's a quote. Basically, he's worried about bringing it around too often, and that that would teach people

[16:04] that farming for old rare items would be completely pointless because just wait for the bonus event. And being realistic, I think we can all admit that events in the game. Though, to be clear,

[16:16] point. Really, to me it seems similar to remix. It's the kind of thing they can probably keep doing at the carryover period at the very end of an expansion. whenever remix was mentioned, he didn't hint at what one is coming next. But,

[16:30] disappointing, and maybe it's better to save that being interesting and exciting and can be a proper announcement instead of just slipping something out of a Q&A. of it. [music] Ion said that he wants to do more of this type of community Q&A,

[16:46] and he wants other devs and teams to do it as well. So, here's to hoping we got maybe from class devs, maybe from writers. That kind of thing going Maybe you could even get some Chris Metzen in front of a microphone to maybe

[17:00] tell us about how he helped write the Arthas live-action TV show, if that slate's to be fully believed. Who knows? But, to be honest with you, the slate leak does look shockingly convincing, especially because of the timelines of

[17:13] evidence. And if you want to learn about that, you can watch this video next.