Hello, how's everybody doing? What is up guys? Welcome. We're here for a classic cast with Oh, I got stay-saving tips mixed out on there on their panels. I gotta get that figured out in a second Oh, no, I'm actually stay safe. We've been keeping it secret for a long time, but So here was stay safe we were tips and of course our guest our friend Kevin Jordan Original vanilla wow class designer Kevin was in charge of designing all the classes been with us on classic cast before It's been with us here on classic cast before and He's also playing the wow classic beta. So we wanted to have him on and have him talk about kind of what his beta experience is Right. He's obviously seen the game through Several different lenses at this point, right? You've got your you know, designing the game You've looked at the game kind of like in in retrospect and then now you're playing the game It's like a regular player slash streamer actually Kevin also just started streaming recently in the last few months So you guys should definitely go follow him at Kevin Jordan and ask him wow and general game design questions because he has a wealth of knowledge So Kevin, would you kind of introduce yourself a little bit more for people who might not be familiar with you? Yeah, my name is Kevin Jordan. I was one of the original three game designers on the wow project back in the beginning I've seen the game through lenses nine lenses warrior rogue But yeah, I helped to set the foundations for a lot of the core elements of the games design and then as each individual Sort of element needed more Specific care and love and we added more people and My focus became working on the character classes talents system have talents themselves and That's what I did largely until I left a few months before cataclysm So long story short that means if anyone thinks There is a vanilla class that's overpowered it's your fault or under Yeah Or underpowered it's also my fault or perfect.  Yeah, I still have a I saw the feeling that they probably made you play a rep paladin in Order for you to use that as an excuse for for whenever people complained about it Well, the guy who made the class plays a It's all very political Yeah, of course of course so so yeah Kevin you've even playing beta for some time and we all have been playing the beta for some time What is what is the way you're approaching the game this time you I think you I saw you're playing a warlock Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what I've noticed those goddamn harvest golems Can't be taunted or feared or drained my feared or You got you got no one to blame with yourself. You got no one to blame with yourself Kevin That actually was me believe it or not. Yeah, I didn't do a lot of it the the creature abilities You know after a certain point in the games development, but I do remember Making those things soulless and not you know mindless and that was a different thing, but man, it's fighting me in the ass now true so good Yeah, that's one of the things that like especially those of us who And and like I think I think we've all been pretty vocal about this like talking about how like private servers are different than classic And there's a lot of things that like there's a lot of things that we know is wrong And there's a lot of things that it's probably wrong, but we don't know There's some things that are right to right about about private, but that's one of the big things that I think I've noticed is Even more so than I remember just kind of off the cuff like I didn't realize it until actually getting back into the game it seems like every day I'm finding something more and more that is not part of the That they just kind of like it there's more RPG elements to the game And that's one of the things that when you guys made the original game like it seems that as wow has gone on Even throughout the course of vanilla you could say it kind of moves away More and more from like role-play elements right you could talk about like Torren's not having mounts initially because they were like too Heavy or whatever I was like, okay Well, we got to give them mounts and this and that but it seems like all the initial decisions for the game that you Guys made was based around role play. Is that right? Right Yeah, and mostly just about players colliding with each other and having experiences like this is one of the things that I've seen I've watched a fair number of videos on my stream of Various youtubers and twitch people playing classic and they come from the full spectrum There's the guys who think it's going to be amazing and there's the guys who think it's going to be awful And so here's the experience. I've seen that's connected all of them One is pretty much everyone is excited about classic Even the guys who thought it was going to be terrible. They're like They're stuck. They're almost instantly stuck the other the other very very specific thing that I've noticed is that the game is hard enough and Puts people together You know, there's enough collision that Every single one of those videos I've watched is someone going into one of those early caves In the game that's heavily spawned and is really tough and a lot of people die And they've run into someone else and they've formed a duo and they've ended up like grouping with that person for hours after that It's like going to a cave and loot a friend, right? And it's it's kind of an unbelievable difference between That to me is like the one of the key examples of the difference between classic and bfa In bfa that does not happen, right? As you destroy everything the game is not difficult The guy that's there is in your way in terms of progress If there's a guy there at all he has him in charge of the way or whatever So it's it's crazy how many times that specific experience happened And that's what classic is all about.  Like I don't think the human nature has changed between 2004 2005 and 2019 I I think it's like you said the game facilitates and also necessitates this interaction and teamwork and cooperation Otherwise you just you find out at level three or four Like it's gonna you're gonna have a hard time if you're unwilling to cooperate with other people I think I think that's one of those beautiful things about vanilla flower classic. Wow. Yeah, you might be able to get to max level, but You're not gonna have any of those shiny things you might want, you know, like all the real stuff is group oriented And the other thing is like I I want to I want to highlight that thing you said that human nature hasn't changed I agree Like I think a lot of people assume that the modern gamer has somehow is somehow different Or wants different things Based on the way they've been conditioned And some of that is true But I also think a lot of it is Because they haven't been given an opportunity to play a game like classic and classic is gonna grab them In the same way you see people like the streamers and the youtubers like They're pessimistic about the game, right? And they go in and before they know it within two hours. They're like They find themselves playing for another 10 And like having to force themselves to stop to go do things, right? So I think for a lot of people they're going to be grabbed by this experience just like it grabbed us back in the day Right. Yeah, I think it's it's kind of been uh, it's been interesting Like you look at my friends list now like whenever I'm playing the beta I have I mean I have some people that You know, I've played within the past that I'm running back into on the beta, which is kind of cool But I've made friends with a lot of people that uh, like I didn't know who they were or you know, they were just Just different people right that I've had the pleasure of coming across and having like an Authentic like in-game experience with and making friends when I talk to them all the time like Uh, just whether it's about like, you know, oh, hey, I figured this thing out with paladins, right?  Um, right But yeah having having those experiences. I think has been It's been a really really cool and really special because playing BFA For the last uh, I'm playing like Legion and BFA for the last like a month and a half or a year and a half really It's been pretty It it's just lacking right it's lacking in those experiences and and that's one of the things that I think You remember the most about going back and playing World of Warcraft like you you know, you oh, okay, you're not Think about it like this. It's like, okay, like I got Gladiator this season or like I had this rating or we killed this boss, whatever and that's fine Those are cool accomplishments. Those are cool achievements to to have but I think what makes those achievements and accomplishments, whatever uh, so special is the people that you do it with and That's really what it all kind of comes back to it kind of comes full circle and it's like it's it's about community It's about people and yeah, absolutely. Yeah, even like what's what's cooler, right? getting gladiator rank one in whatever expansion or Well, yeah, I was like, what's the cooler? Is it cooler to do that or is it cooler to do? Um, I don't do like a really hard quest to like like for example We did skull at monastery, right? We did skull at monastery cathedral armory like we were level 30 and we did both of them or uh, like I tanked old man as a prop paladin Last last night. Yeah, I tanked old man as a prop paladin and did the whole thing and I and I did the last boss And it was super exciting and it felt really good whenever we completed it because it's like I didn't expect to be able to do that You know, let alone the other the other stuff that we've done um, but it's been cool, right and obviously Gladied and stuff is like cooler or whatever But it's I remember the people that I played with and like getting through that together and that's the most special thing So, I mean, let me ask you this is something I run on my stream It's a quiz I run on my stream all the time I want all three of you guys to tell me your answer your opinion What is the best content in world of warcraft? Is it pvp? Is it arena? Is it? Uh dungeons is it raids is it soloing? You know, what is the best? What is the best content? It's the social aspect. It's it's just Or yeah, are you talking about content or just anything? Yeah, just what what's the best content like what do you enjoy doing the most in terms of the content? The things that allow you to group up with the most people. I think Okay, generally speaking, right hanging out through it. So like Like if I think back on like my rating experience and stuff like that and even like versus vanilla rating experience like vanilla private server rating experience Like probably my most notable kills happen in like, you know, tier like, you know during wrath lich king and tier 11 That's when I was like pushing my hardest rating And like I remember those kills and they were great and they were fantastic, but You know the amount I like remember that fondly versus how I remember just like 40 man's and molten core like even just recently right on certain private servers It doesn't even compare like I can recall specific jokes Like very very specific incidents or as you know The other more I guess prestigious rating accomplishments. You kind of just you know forget about them a little bit and um I don't think it's the content that drives. Wow. Like it's just the content is there and it's great and it creates, you know experiences But it's really just a vessel for, you know, a certain amount of people to get together and experience something There's like I was just gonna say there's uh, there's this new there's this new website I'm not sure what it's called But I'm pretty sure you can do this on twitch now where you can like watch a movie together Like on twitch with your chats or something like that. I don't know like it's rolling out recently But basically like the movie is one thing But the experience of watching something with people is really what drives people to like, you know Pursuit these types of experiences. So yeah, that's basically Okay, what do you what about tuesday save? What's your favorite? Yeah, like I I essentially agree with what tips I said is the community aspect And I I think of as soon as tips was talking I think of this argument or discussion Which game is harder classic wow or bfa and it's like I definitely think that bfa has more mechanically challenging aspects But they're not as fun and I think the fun is what matters I think of this I was watching a really really good arena multi gladiator streamer the other day and he was saying like It doesn't feel good to be the best in a game that no one cares about And that's how people feel in bfa and so yeah It feels good to be a badass and accomplished and and have these epic adventures in a game that everyone knows and loves and cares about And know that other people are enjoying um Yeah, you you and and knowing other people care about your journey and this the success of this game like That motivates you to Push for a higher level yourself. So that's I agree. I think it's a community thing. Um, I'm totally on board with it Pretty much what tip said there So I'm thinking back on it and this is just kind of like how I am On my personality is I really like to I really like problem solving and I like to lead So Being in a position where like I'm leading a gilder leading a raid and like Trying to figure out like, okay, like this is our raid. It's it's it is what it is. We have whatever classes we have Let's figure out what we like. These are the tools that we have. Let's go solve this problem Uh, I I really like doing that and just kind of like, okay, like let's have this guy do this This guy do that and it's like sure you could min max it and and have like a more optimized group or whatever But that's the kind of stuff that's really fun for me is trying to figure out Uh, like as a team as a group Hey guys, what do you guys think we should do here? Hey So-and-so like hunter can we trust you to go kite this around and do this like again? Let's let's recall the SM armory kill right where It was it was me stay safe asman There's a hunter there the mechanic. So so the hunter He ended up getting aggro because hunters don't have any They don't have any glancing blows, right? So because hunters don't have any glancing blows They can hit higher level mobs and not have to worry about doing less damage So he was basically taking all the threat from herod And Whenever he took all the threat boom he sprints all the way up there and it's like, okay So now you got a drop right you got a drop and then you got to cut him back down And this is basically going to go on over and over again You have to find a way to to separate from him He's going to blades of light and then you're going to have to get away and then having to put your trust in those people Like you guys come up with a plan and then you putting your trust in specific people to be able to like accomplish the task I think it's so fun. I think that's so cool Absolutely Whatever all three of those are pretty involved dancers, right? Like I asked this question a lot and everyone throws in well, I like ppp. I like Uh, I like dungeons. I like rating. I like leveling or soloing And my answer is always like well, I tricked you all you're all wrong, you know The greatest content in World of Warcraft is you right you the players, right? It's the content is just a reason for you to show up and tips alluded to this, right? Perfectly The content is just there to get everyone to show up and start interacting with each other And that's where all of the stories come from The stories from you know other games that I've heard are yeah, I camp this pause for six hours And I finally got the Titan Forge perfect You know thing that I wanted and it's like that's not a story, right? That's just a thing that happened, you know But that's not nobody's interested in that story. In fact, they're probably this because you got it and they haven't been able to The real stories are well, we got together in this group and so and so did this crazy thing And then I made this joke and then you know all this stuff, you know Like those interpersonal in react interactions that everyone's having right so the best content in the game is Just the people that showed up and started interacting in all the ways that we do as human beings And again the content is just there as an excuse to pull you in and we used to say this about MMO design You know and for wow long term You know they come for the game and they stay for the social right they stay for the community And that's still so true for a lot of people because Games that are aged and have gotten to the point where they can't add new content anymore There's a lot of old MMOs that are still running That haven't added new content in open years and there's still people jamming out those games because They they're connected to those communities and the things they do and the fun they have every time they log in is still there because of the people so Well to add to that I think that is the reason for the high replayability of vanilla wild private servers, right? You know every couple months there's a new vanilla wild private server and people are super eagle Eager there's the fresh meme to replay and restart and it's because it's all it's all about that social aspect And there's going to be a new social hierarchy and which gill is going to gank who and the drama and the friendships and the rivalries You're totally Absolutely, it's absolutely replayable right pvp in all its forms whether it's you know arguing You know, it's it's dream or drama Whatever it is right that stuff is ultimately replayable It'll go on forever You know, we just need an excuse to be in the same place at the same time and interact and then everything just flows from there so Absolutely The content is far less important when it comes to it. So that was our philosophy You know setting up wow was let's make sure That we allow We create collision that we allow for these you know Things to happen good and bad And in a non utopian way And then let's just watch as people generate stories and get hooked and Start, you know having a blast It's it's crazy that you see that kevin because like It seems like that the entire genre has departed from that so quickly like within like a five year span or even less I would say like that just completely went out the window as a design philosophy Why do you think that happened? Why did this just get abandoned by you know the entire genre and also to some extent by By some of the later wow expansion developers. Why do you think that happened? um So yeah, we talked about this aspect a lot on my on my stream Um And there's a few ideas one is that the market right now is really tight. It's it's sort of risk averse No one wants to take risks. And so you do what the guy next to you is doing that's already been successful Hey loot shooters are very successful about the royales are very successful. Let's do that. Let's not take risks um MMOs are very risky mmo's are one of the most risky Propositions for any company You know, you think about blizzard having this giant war chest back in the day and it did but if wow would fail That company wouldn't be around anymore um, that's that's the bottom line, right? So Um, they're very risky people don't want to take risks. So And then also I think as as the developers have aged They've wanted to spend less of their time Living in world of warcraft as just the you know byproduct of they've they've been doing it for so long And so they saw ways to streamline the experience So that they can jump in do their brave run You know log off for the week and do other things with their lives, right? but one of the key components of an mmo is You don't just play this game. You live in this world. This is this is a big part of your life And anyone can go make a a loot shooter, right? It doesn't take much of your life and everything is streamlined for the content But that's not what an mmo is mmo's are about being a life, you know experience and so I can see that it was an attractive concept that oh, I'd like to play wow and Have it not take up a lot of my time And so they tried to steer the game towards that but Ultimately, that's counter to mmo philosophy, right mmo's are very different from every other genre out there because They require a high level of investment from players And it rewards you for that investment that deeper investment. So That's one of the keys to Making an mmo and mmo, right? Yeah, I think I think whenever you move away from the aspect of time investment Like You don't have the same sort of and it doesn't have to be perfectly linear, right? But having the aspect of time investment goes up like your character's progress your character gets stronger all that stuff It's it's all it's at least a positive correlation, right? Whereas a lot of times it just you don't uh, you at least don't feel it as much One of you spend a lot of time like it might be a lot Right off the bat and then once you get somewhere just like plateaus in retail. Wow And you feel like you're not really getting anywhere and it's just it's too fast, right for you to really appreciate Like how how much your character is developing I'm sitting I just want to say i'm sitting you're thinking about what are like the top vanilla videos from actually back in the day The most famous vanilla videos the first one obviously is like the theroy jankins thing, right? And this is a perfect example of it. This is not this is a group of people that are screwing up and just like they fail But it's such like a group You know, it's totally a community thing, right? It's the failed too, right the funeral raid the the enixio white video. Yeah, this is this is people not being successful There's people that because of people screwing up or a community event Uh, everything's falling apart and this is the stuff we remember from back then Uh as being the most notable videos Yeah, and when I say investment to reward like Um, I'm actually not talking about the items you gain and you know the raid accomplishments I'm just talking about participating in the world where all these events occur And you were there, right? Right? You were there when these things happened, you know I was like yeah, every time I read a story about eve online. It's like Man, how crazy would that have been to have been able to be part of that, right? But then you realize well, I'd have to be a no life or eve player in order to achieve that, right? so I can't do it but That's what all the guys that are there are feeling they're feeling like yeah I was a part of that and it was amazing and it's because I put in all that time And that's just a requirement to these kind of things you want to be part of the the wow experience You got to be present. You got to be online. You got to be playing and it's not to get the items It's to hopefully have Tons and tons of those, you know stories and experiences That you've you know enjoyed over the years watching people's videos Yeah Go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, this is like kind of unrelated but like in the same kind of realm like even in real life A friend of mine a while back he went He went on a vacation with his wife and he was talking to me about it and they went to There's this village in Italy or this town in Italy. It's it's really famous. It's like the blue and white town That I think it's like a really big like kind of romantic couple spot. I think it's called Santorini or something like that Um, he was talking to me about it and like there's all these destinations in that area and there's a lot of different things you can do And you know jet skiing whatever it may be. It's like it's a really beautiful place. I'm sorry. It's in Greece. I'm sorry Greece My bad. It's Greece anyways But he was telling me the most enjoyable part of their entire trip was when they went to this lobster restaurant and it was like all you can eat lobster buffet or something like that and um Something ended up happening where the butter like that they were serving got spilled on his wife And then like they had to clean it up and it was a big thing And so like the restaurant brought out a bunch of like extra like lobster and crazy dishes and stuff like that The whole point what I'm trying to say is it was it was a trip to a restaurant And they were in basically paradise on earth where they could do whatever they wanted So many different act like activities to do and stuff like that But the most memorable thing was when they had the entire restaurant kind of come together and fix this issue Where all this butter like got spilled and everything like that and it was just like this big like Atmospheric social experience that happened. Yeah, so like yeah, like even expanding beyond just you know gameplay and stuff like that people like experiencing things with other people and Especially when they're things that are outside the norm. I feel Right.  Whatever something unexpected happens. That's one of you remember it Well, now I expect lobster. Can we go get some lobster real quick? That was the whole point of the story. Let's go Oh another really good example the guy who who ninja lutes on gar and the and the guild is on comms and the girl's freaking out And that's another really perfect example, right? Everything goes wrong Well, and and like this this is kind of Fixed all those problems How dare we have that Well, also another thing like when it comes to like the the social aspect of it and you know, you could say uh back then Right, I can say back and like doesn't forward doesn't find whatever Like you're playing wow and like what is the image of a wow player?  He's I'm just describing asmr goal at this point, but So, I mean basically like you have this image of like the wow player and It's like one of you hear a girl's voice on comms and then she's freaking out It just makes it that much funnier like nowadays.   That's it. I think that um I think that there's definitely been like a little bit of a drop in height Maybe as far as like viewership goes because there's probably a lot of people who came in I'm gonna poke their head and like what's this? What's this all about right? Oh, yeah, for sure Yeah, and it's it's not the full release of the game and like you're capped at level 30 you're capped at level 40 there's a It's funny. There's a limited amount of content you can do because it's not nearly as wide open as there is Level 60 however without being said Uh, it still seems like there's so much to do that. It's still really really fun So Maybe it's like a lot of times people look at it's like, oh, it's only this level. Oh, it's only that level but I'm having a lot more fun than I was playing Most any other game, you know, I would say over the last year and a half I don't think I've played like gtrp was really fun. But for the same reasons that we talked about classic being fun It's about the community, right? Yeah, so other than that like I haven't I haven't played another game where I was just like No, Dark Souls really fun. But like like that's kind of like a different kind of thing. That's like an experience So If if classic was capped at level 40 forever if level 40 was the highest level and this is all it was ever going to be I would still play every day. I would just keep playing and and I would just play it every day. Yeah Yeah, I I think uh You know and you mentioned gta rps fan like I feel like classic. Wow To some extent is very similar to gtrp, but it's content driven a little bit like and that's really what it comes down to and You know stay safe mentioned earlier about, uh, you know, the nature of gamers hasn't changed, you know, the like 15 years hasn't changed the way we we, you know consume games and stuff like that and I completely agree And I think gta rp is like one of the biggest testaments to that here's this game also Relatively old. I think gta 5 is like what four or five years old something like that five six years old Yeah, something like that it's old But it comes out with this, you know, kind of sandboxy You know game mode where you can interact with other people and all of a sudden It's in the top three games on twitch and the generation filled with battle royales mobas looter shooters Fast paced, you know endorphin driven content This game somehow makes it to the top of twitch and it's been there for a while now and it seems to be staying there And I feel like classic wow is very similar in that regard. It's a 15 year old game It doesn't have the same, you know endorphin hitting, you know reward systems and stuff like that But it's got a great social Aspect to it an incentivized social interaction And we're saying the same thing a beta for a 15 year old game is constantly in the top five games on twitch I I mean that speaks for itself Yeah, and don't forget the experience of looting like a war to get some vestments and somebody tries to gank you There's all kinds of brand chemistry going on then You talk about that kidding me, I'm looting All depends on context but yeah, that's uh That's the thing about that It's probably one of the saddest elements of this whole class revival is that the industry has lost its desire to make these kinds of games that I hope that You know the work that we did on wow could have been the blueprint You know for young designers in the next wave And other companies, you know Trying to step forward and You know do the next thing evolve the ideas that we put forward Forward and expand on the the industry. So let me we have to rely on going back to a 15 year old game Let me ask you this Do you think classic wow is going to create like a gaming design renaissance or whatever you want to call it? Where people will see the the success of classic wow I think it's already started like I think I think companies have already taken notice of you know the build-up to classic I think a lot of the old school guys we look at pantheon you look at Kind of a lot unchanged. They saw the market. They saw the market and that there's a need and a desire For a large group of people that are sick of bfa And sick of loot shooters and battle royales and they want another Classic like experience and they're trying to create it how much money they'll have I wish those guys the absolute best I worry a little bit about the quality of the games because they have to get money to make the best things They have to have time. They have to have great people on the project All those things take money and I don't know how much people are willing to risk to give them the money right but I think eventually it would be ridiculous for someone not to notice that a lot of people Are wanting to play a 15 year old game with no new content And pay a lot of money for the privilege to do that Because of the game design philosophy, right? So that's an untapped market that people you know at some point are going to figure out Yeah, we can make a lot of money if we do if we do right by it and they make a good thing Right, I gotta tell you guys it'll be someone else, but it's I think there's a lot of reason to be hopeful I don't know if you guys have gotten this. I've had people DMing me trying to buy beta keys for me.   I don't have any like third if I did no Like but it it it lends to your point like yeah people really want Yeah, because they can sell for a thousand Oh No, well, what's even worse than that is stay safe left that last part where you just started telling people to ask S fan It's like Yeah, that's true. Did I have I I literally got an email from somebody. It was like a Dissertation. I swear, dude. This is the longest email. I was like I was looking through the thing I'm like he was explaining why he deserves to get a beta key and like To give him a beta. I'm like, dude, I don't have beta keys. Like you gotta be kidding me like I say for you like it The assumption there is that The account's gonna come The beta key is gonna come with a max level warlock because you just can't help yourself Right, so that's you know, that's part of the $500 Yeah Yeah, so something else you talked about is like Kevin you're Like what your your hope was and I'm sure plenty of others as well Is like one of you guys had wow But you guys made wow the game comes out and it's like, okay This kind of like is a game that can maybe set the standard for other games to come in the future, right? Yeah, people can build on it make better games one of the things that I always remember throughout the years is There was always a new game coming out That was supposed to be like the wow killer, right? And you said that like you you would hope that that's kind of what had happened But you feel like it didn't happen from my perspective I would say that it kind of did happen But the problem was is that these other games would come out and they try to be wow clones And whatever you keep trying to make wow clones like you're not going to beat a game That does the exact same thing that the other game that's already established has been doing right I mean, but you can look at other games like even look at legal legends Like the original like runes and masteries and stuff like that Like I think it was called the mastery system was it was literally the wow talent trees Like it was like the same exact thing same exact idea where I was like, okay And you're doing like, you know five percent more credit chances It's it's so so similar to the original talent trees, which is cool doesn't really work in that game, right? But they had to do it Right. Um, but uh, yeah, they weren't even Go ahead. They weren't even wow clones. They were wrath. They were wow clones, but they were the wrong version of wow clones Yeah, it was too late. Exactly. Well, they were like, so the biggest I think like the biggest kind of Generation generational gap of like wow clones came out. I would say I mean you had before you had like age of Conan and and and like ion That was that's one of her like rift Yeah Yeah, like when rift came out that was like, I think a new era of wow clone like just like A two to three year block where there was like a bunch of wow clones that came out right after each other Yep And the problem with rift was it was it was pretty much a wrath of the lich king clone It like some of the abilities were pulled directly from wow. That's how I felt. Yeah Yeah, it was like they had a new talent system where you had like, you know You could pick three different trees from three different classes and stuff But the base game was pretty much a wrath of the lich king clone And then after that you had games like star wars the old republic which Again was like basically a wrath of the lich king clone cataclysm clone And and they all kind of cloned the the later later versions of wow and I think ultimately that's why they fail I don't know too much about aeon. I do know With star wars the old republic They the mythic actually made that game and I was really excited about that because It was mythic and they made dark age of camon and camon was talking about dark age of camon before And I felt like in some ways that that game tried to I think it tried to take wow And dark age of camon try and meet it in the middle But then it also had this weird like single player like for the players who played like, you know, the the nice deal republic games Like I tried to like mix too many things in at once and on top of all that I remember the game being so like so taxing on your computer. Like I I couldn't I couldn't play it Yeah, like I don't know if there's something wrong on my computer or what But I had no problems playing like any other game and then for some reason old old republic I somebody would whip out a lightsaber and computer would just like it's like zero fps. Legos is terrible Yeah, yeah, I mean, obviously I love class design and that's why I went that direction when I you know had to focus in on something So every time I jump in a new game, I want to see What are the class designers that other companies doing, you know, what are they trying and what's new and innovative and You know, what ideas have the wow classes inspired or other games in the you know industry inspired And when I went to sweater, it was like I really wanted to like that game because it was oh star wars. I love star wars, you know, like let's get into this but All the abilities felt like just jumbled around versions of The wow abilities and I like I pushed all these buttons a million times because I worked on them Um, and I just couldn't play, you know the game because it didn't offer me anything In terms of something new or class design And so I fell off it really quickly, but And that's always the thing you hope is that You know your counterparts essentially in the rest of the industry are doing Fun taking fun risks and being innovative and you know, sometimes they're gonna Fail sometimes they're gonna succeed, but they're at least trying new things And when the MMO genre was still kind of fresh, that's where everyone was because we were all sort of working on our games simultaneously But then once wow came out and sort of set the standard And also expanded the market so much That's and then that's when people started the process of making an MMO that was going to replace wow And they would come out four or five years later And that's when you got that second wave that were all basically wow clones Because they weren't trying to do something new they were trying to do the exact same thing but feel the market thinking everyone's going to be sick a while by then but Again, wow was pretty timeless in its philosophies because Here we are 15 years later. We're like, yeah, let's jump back in Let's do this right I think that uh I think one of the big things that the people are seeing now too is uh kind of kind of reeling it back a little bit I mean the game has obviously changed a lot and people always talk about like class balance and Design and stuff and this is only we talked about this on the last episode or not the last episode The last time you came to join us on here Uh, actually you joined us right before blizzcon, didn't you? Is it right after or right before? I think it was right before Yeah, I think it was right before blizzcon Um, but we talked about like balance in the game and it seems like every day And I don't know if you guys get this in your streams as much but like it seems like every single day Somebody's like, oh, well, what if they balance this? What if they change this class or what if they made boomkins this or what if they made rat palette and prop palette and Taunt like whatever like I think one of the things that people are I think that people are kind of starting to get it Is that the game is a little bit different Then it was back in the day I mean look at how much each class changed every single patch leading up to 1.12 And how classic is going to be a different experience than vanilla was even from that standpoint, right? Let's let's take out like the social and this and that and you have streamers now and you have You know just just more access to Social things like discord is way more powerful than ICQ or vent was right So You you have all these different things that have come into the game I think people Have you guys noticed this where people are starting to notice some differences Or maybe maybe it's just that there's people who weren't around back then and they just it's all here safe from stories, right? Like we know how much warlocks change for example warlocks change a ton from warlocks are terrible One of the game came out and they were like Super strong by the end and like really strong and like you end up burning crusade that you could argue that they're probably one Of the best classes if not the best In tbc yeah, but yeah in tbc Yeah, yeah I I have had people ask about the balance thing. I'm like, yeah, like to your point. It's like yeah This is the balance version. You should see you should see really vanilla. Yeah, it was crazy And I think too much balance like it's sorry. Oh, that's fine. Yeah, and that's one of the things like Uh Just kind of like balance balance is just boring really like whenever it comes down to it whenever you have something That ends up being too balanced. That's one of you have like the the current version of the game You know, well, yeah, I mean oftentimes like the lazy way to balance the game is to homogenize all the classes You know, let's say there was only one class and everyone played the same thing that would be a perfectly balanced game That doesn't mean it would fun every like that would not be fun at all if everybody says the exact same toolkit There's no variety between classes So you I think that in an attempt to make everything one and we talked about this before But in an attempt to make everything one to one to one balanced like they're sort of done with bfa Or working in that direction you end up with a lot of ability overlaps and skill overlaps I mean, how many people have battle res is now in bfa? How many people have bloodlust?  Yeah, like yeah Whereas in vanilla. Wow, you have it to where I think almost every class has something that's just seemingly broken, right?  But every class has that and it's so different from what every other class has that in a in a weird way The the imbalance almost makes it feels like there is balance and uh, yeah, it's very strange when classes have everything, right? When they have one of everything and it's purely mathematical, which is the best class Um, your your job of balancing the classes becomes so much harder Because in the old days, it's like, you know, I even just saw everyone spamming in chat about boomkins, right? It's like, yeah, boomkins had trouble, but they had three percent spelt crits So guess what show them in a group of mages And everyone's happy, right? uh And it's like because he offers that one thing he can rely on that when his numbers aren't panning out his math isn't supporting his You know Need to be in the group, right? But when everyone has everything the math has got to be perfect Yeah, or else you just toss them because it's like, yeah, well this guy over here does everything you do. He just does it three percent better Yeah, so it's it's it's such a weird trap for them to fall into Yeah, no, it is it is it is pretty cool to see like how, uh You know, sure there's people who want to min max everything and that's fine I think like I think the different ways of playing the game are like in my opinion, they're respectable I think it's like for example, it's like a rep paladin player or as a boomkin player Anybody who plays a hybrid, right? It's weird because you're in this weird Between a rock and a hard place where you have to play the game at a level Which like the guys who were like the the hardcore min max speed run guys play it In order to make your class like I guess serviceable for like a more like Maybe a little bit more like of a progression style of guild or even like a casual guild Like you have to pop everything you can in order to compete with some of those those types of players So now you're like this type of player In this sort of environment and then you have this like it's just like an interesting dichotomy there But that's just like what you have to do in order to Uh in order to want to play that class and I think that's fine because your class has other things about them That makes them special or interesting, right? Like as a paladin great. Okay. I can still like off you like and Uh, I can tank dungeons and stuff if I wanted to like there's different things I can do Um, and that's just kind of like a costly play Are you having fun? Right. Yeah, exactly here. If you respect that's not the ultimate spec for rating, you know The specific boss that we're progressing through at this moment. Are you still having fun? Like do you and your buddies still cruise around and do whatever and Have a good time.  It's like we all have to be progression Spec viability minded, you know in order to get joy out of this game And that's just not for everyone. Yeah, and it should it should be for a very select group of people Yeah, and I think that's cool like like different types of people want to play the game different types of ways so that's uh That's one of the things I think is is really important to kind of try and um Be very honest about I think I think that's the point So um So yeah, I think with uh As far as like let's talk a little bit more about your your beta experience so far Have you noticed anything? Let's say like have you noticed any like glaring like differences or Not necessarily bugs but little things that just feel different or things that you didn't remember Maybe from back in the day and you got in there and you're like, oh like I know you mentioned how like the harvest columns you couldn't Drain life them, right? But like anything like anything else along those lines Uh, I don't think like specifically like I've sent in a few bug reports here and there but uh most of them are just little environmental things that they're not like big game design issues But but it's felt very authentic.  It feels like the vanilla experience. So um In terms of you know people that aren't playing and and worry about that kind of thing You shouldn't because for the most part it is Very authentic feeling So yeah, I mean that's cool. Like I think that's good to hear Have you One of one of the big things that I know for me that I felt is like The the spell bashing and this is something we we actually talked about this on classic cast after Spell bashing was announced. So it's something we had talked about prior to it too um And one of my concerns was that like the spell bashing just because of how like networks work and How how everything works on the back end that they might try and implement spell bashing like simulate it in a way That makes it actually feel like Not right. Maybe even worse I know a lot of people who have been like Complaining about maybe the batch window being even too big. Do you notice anything like that? Like it just sometimes like the game feels laggier because of it Um, I haven't felt it though, you know to be fair. I haven't played enough of modern wow to really know Yeah, to be able to compare side by side spell bashing versus not so Spell bashing was after my time Yeah But I can again I can say like the feel of it feels pretty good. I haven't gotten into a lot of pvp So, you know, that's where I think that most people are noticing spell bashing. Is it in their various pvp interactions? So again, like I don't I I'm not informed enough to be able to say it's working It's not working feels weird. It feels perfect right Yeah, and maybe it's like it's also a product of maybe like people haven't played on private servers more recently Feeling like things are a little bit off It just feels to me like the the window And and states of tips you guys can can maybe give some thoughts on this It feels to me like the the window for the the batch window It's just maybe a little bit too big whether that's because People maybe have like better internet now and like the batch window is exactly what it was in the past But because people just typically have faster internet It feels much bigger. You know, it's it's maybe it's just one of those things too. So absolutely like again It's hard to say because we haven't played vanilla since it was out technically and like you said us and like the internet You know in our expectations as players dealing with modern wow and like on private servers It's it's got its own kind of spell bashing loop. So It's hard to say what it was. But I I mean in terms of like gameplay like strictly design It just it's really frustrating when you clearly interrupt A shaman who's healing or a mages polymorphine You clearly interrupt them and then like 0.3 0.4 seconds later, you know, the cast still goes off and it's like You know, like I understand spell batching wasn't the game and obviously because it was in the game It should be in the game today, but it's the difficulty with spell batching is you have no control to measure it against And we have no idea really how blizzard is implementing it. I mean to my knowledge Maybe the implementation is off. It could be off. I don't know, but It does not feel good like it creates counterplay, but it also creates a lot of negative experiences as it is right now Yeah versus how it is on private servers. Well, that doesn't sound like a spell batch experience Um The interrupt thing I mean our interrupts were timed or tuned pretty well Yeah that feeling I push this button at the right time. It's gonna work because it was it was so Um, you know, some of your windows for interruption were so small that we had to make sure it was extremely responsive. So Yeah That's an interesting, you know thing that you're feeling Well, I mean, I don't know how the technical side of it But it sounds like and people in the chat if they're like server engineers or whatever They might be able to help with this But it sounds like the way blizzard implemented it was they said they let the server run on like an extra loop or something like that That's how they described in the in the blue post and that's how they're like kind of You know implementing the batching. It's kind of like a simulated version of batching But what I what I think is happening. Maybe I'm wrong. What I think is happening is like you have Uh, you basically have all the events that are occurring, right? Like, no, no, no All the events are occurring and it's like on one timeline and then there's like a second timeline That basically takes everything that happens in this block of time and makes it occur at this exact moment So it makes everything go through. Exactly. Everything go through it once everything go through once Interrupt should be outside of that loop Interrupt shouldn't be like it's it's one thing to like double polymark each other, right? But uh interrupt should be You know, it should just check to see if the if the command comes in before the result then cancel the result Yeah, and that's that's my fear right now. My fear. I think they put too many things in that same. Yeah So like because the same thing happened with uh, like we've noticed the same thing with like worse on goal is flag pickups Where it's like So-and-so has returned the flag to the base and then like a horde an alliance player Click the flag at the same time in the same batch window and then it says they returned it and then it says they picked it up It's it gives you both messages and then it makes the uh, like alliance player pick it back up or the horde player pick it back up Yeah, there's that I think that probably like the number one way that this is manifesting on the beta is when people are looting monsters Who here has been playing the beta and you'll right click loot a monster and you might have auto loot on the window We'll just like you won't even see it.  Um, I think that's because the loot you're catching Dilute under on the front of the back end of the batch window, right? I think that's like the most common way to manifesting of course a pvp thing I feel like the window is a little bit big like I know if I'm pvp against another warlock There is a very high chance. We are going to fear each other at the same time Like if it feels like it happens all the time. Yeah, it feels like it happens all the time for the mage I'm gonna get this mage in a fear and I'll be pollied also Yeah, it happens. It happens too often like uh, it's less of a You know people and I said this before like people act like it's a huge skill thing Right where it's like, oh man. I'm like rank 14 You know I I held rank 14 for like seven months in vanilla like and they just act like there's some kind of like crazy player and they're like that good at the game but It's sometimes some of this stuff just kind of happens like out of luck Like it's not supposed to be that often where you see a A rogue couch somebody's blink. That's the example that people use a lot of times because of a pvp video, you know People people use certain examples over and over again because they see it in like a very popular old school pvp video What do you guys think there's they continue trying to polish spell batching or should I think they should polish it? That's that's my big thing I think they should polish it like I don't think they should just get rid of it all together Um, I do think it's something that was part of the game of vanilla Even if it was used to kind of like make up for I was under the assumption that it was initially used to to make up for people having like varying I guess Levels of internet speed right back in the day like there was a pretty big like Not everybody has the best internet in the world nowadays But I would say that typically people's internet now is much better than it was back in the day Or I would say like the range of like really bad internet to go to internet is smaller than back then All right Well and kevin you raised an interesting idea should certain things be off the batch or worth certain things off the batch like You know maybe looting or maybe you know kicking a spell, right? Should I I don't know. I just don't know. That's maybe that's something that they should check Yeah, like is is definitely things they can tune, you know, because I mean interrupts are Their mechanic their purpose is so specific that it has to be Polished to the point where it's really responsive, right? Because every time you push the button and it's like tips was saying it's it's pretty obvious You push the button during the cast bar and it doesn't result. It's just going to feel like a buck every time Yep, and it's just going to be this annoying thing We have to live with that there's a 50 chance that my interrupts when skillfully applied don't work, you know And that's just seems like an unacceptable environment, right, right? Yeah stuff like that has to be polished, but Yeah, yeah, it is an interesting question because they are trying to fabricate a thing that doesn't come to the servers naturally So, you know, it's it's this artificial thing that they're having to build from scratch I would almost like to see it without it takes some polishing I was just like simple spell bashing out for like three or four days. Let's see what happens. Just test drive it Yeah, I just test it. I still think it should be in there. That's it. Yeah, but I think that would be a good idea Give everyone an actual, you know, classic experience with those spell batching and see if people prefer Yeah Now another one is No, no you go ahead. I was gonna say, you know how you're having problems with judgment Yeah, I was talking about damage being on the batch, but that's what I was actually gonna say Like do you do you remember if if damage and healing was batched? I don't um, I remember judgment was a very heavily scripted thing and so Anything that we did that was scripted had the potential to be slightly delayed was my feeling Not always, but it had that potential, right? Because it wasn't in, you know, the core code base, right? But uh, you know processors are so fast now that it's like there really shouldn't be any difference in terms of you know Like running a script or running code, right so Even back then it was like I still don't understand why there's a delay here It's just a few lines of code. So yeah, because I've noticed that uh, Yeah, I've noticed I remember there was a minor delay on judgment Very minor like almost almost like you couldn't even see it and I watched videos to like double check this Uh, because I I didn't even remember it. I watched videos And then to just double check it and it looks like there was a very very minor delay It seems so much longer in the beta like it's it's insanely longer. It seems it feels like to me It feels like an eternity the same thing with like seal of righteousness Seal of righteousness whenever you attack melee seal of righteousness damage would come in In the next batch every single time on the beta, but I don't know. I don't I don't remember or know if that was the case In Dude, I'm actually going to make a uh melee warlock pvp video. I'm really excited. I'm gonna set it all up The whole thing I'm going to do it's going to be badass. Yeah The stacks of Sam that's I needed that spellstone today against those defies pillagers. Holy cow, right Can't wait can't wait to get that go back and show those pillagers what's up? Yeah, I think um Yeah, I think all this stuff is just like very interesting to to think about and look at like I would like to see them like, uh I feel like they've been pretty active with like making Making little fixes here and there and one of the things whenever we talk to Uh, I got a chance to talk to brian. No, I talked to omar about this actually Uh and omar was saying that like the It's it's not like it was back in the day where They the servers bring everything down. Okay guys, it's Tuesday morning We're not going to play for like eight hours and then we're going to get everything uploaded, right? Uh now they can push stuff out like a lot more easily So they don't even have to take the servers down or whatever like sometimes the servers might like restart and then we're good like the We have different levels of that back in the day too. Yeah, you can do live hotfixes and restart server hotfixes and We're just like shut it down. We got a whole Yeah, so it's been it has been good like just noticing like them like fixing things like progressively so um So yeah guys real quick, um Again, just just in case you guys didn't know who kevin is kevin is uh, he is one of the original vinaloa class designers Uh, who he worked on wow from from vinala brennan crusade and rathalich king And he's been streaming on twitch. So you guys should definitely go follow kevin kevin jordan And uh, of course follow tips follow stay safe. Everybody's handles and all that stuff is on the screen right there um also real quick. We are uh, We just signed a deal and we just signed a sponsorship with display So if you guys are interested in display type stuff, they do like metal posters We'll be doing like custom We're probably making like a custom class cast display at some point, but they got metal posters like this. So very exciting Um So yeah, if you guys are interested in that yeah explanation of display you guys can check that whole thing here Yeah, yeah, yeah pre nerf jana. Yeah pre nerf jana as you guys can see A lot of people are very excited about pre nerf jana. Yeah, she's great. Um, yeah That right there. Yeah, anyway so Yeah, uh, that's that's kind of what we have going on and yeah, we'll be doing we'll be doing q and a as well We'll be doing a q and a q and a as well in a little bit. Um Yeah, of course, so what else, um Do you have any do you have any other goals? You're what level are you right now kevin? I think you're 17 18 right now 17 yeah 17 18 my goal is to have enough money to buy all my good spells. We'll see how that goes. I've been uh Wasting money on curse of weakness Yes, that is a waste. That's not part of the leveling package for me Well, I'm see there's a couple things i'm saving for the first time a rogue jumps me at curse of weakness And I got my wax candle. That's gonna verify. I'm right. So nice You do not want to jump me because I'm ready. I'm ready for the level 40 rogues and less fall The other thing I haven't seen enough of is I haven't been beaten to death with the staff of jordan yet Yeah, um, rick has one. So a lot of people are going. Yeah, I'm really jealous Yeah Yeah, we're in pendulum of doom dropped yet. I wasn't on today has pendulum I don't think so. I got a dazzling longsword while I was farming old man, but I don't have a pendulum of doom So, yeah, I did send you a gift today. Yes, I did get that the mall I did I was gonna say you sent me a level four great two-handed mace Yeah, yeah, very good. Is it a big upgrade for me? I couldn't send it cod otherwise I would have so you owe me. Yeah, yeah Maybe like five or six gold for that is probably uh, the right value So Yeah No, it's it's been pretty cool to see like how how It well, that's what I think has been really really fun about this beta is you know at first it was level 30 now it's level 40 seeing how Like this meta has kind of evolved out of these level caps where like everybody's focused on like doing certain things level 30 Doing certain level 40. It's been really cool Like it's something nobody has ever experienced before and I would say the closest is actually back in the day whenever battlegrounds Were initially released The level caps were like 30 40 so on. Yeah, the original twins.  I think it was like Like zealot blades or something like zealot blade and whatever Yeah, like I just gotten those so it was uh I was like so pissed because I like did you have a kidding me like I just gotten this That's exactly why we changed it. Just because you got that sword and we knew Yeah better No, well and it's like in shirt was it was a level 29 sword But my character was already level 30 and I had already equipped it and that was like one of those things like somebody said yeah So it was so I I guess uh speaking of meta tips had a dual tournament the other day And it actually was badass. Um, there were some griefers. There were some people sitting on totems And this brought up this whole debate of what is griefing or what is in game harassment? What qualifies that if it does qualify what should blizzard do should should there be different rule sets on pve servers and pvp servers? right Kevin you're you're aware of the situation for anyone that doesn't know what happened There were some level one torrens that were sitting on people's totems and jumping and sitting on the dualists themselves How would this have been handled? in vanilla well back in the day uh, so We actually the game designers myself included set a lot of policy for the gms to enact in fact It was so funny because one of my viewers friends got their name changed and They that the gm designed or the gm explained the policy as had been laid down by some of the original game designers So he sort of threw my words Or tried to as to the justification of why The name was changed. Of course. He totally missed the point of it And changed the name when he shouldn't have but I thought it was funny that they were still sort of trying to adhere to Original philosophies that we had put it forward back in the day Um because I had I had some background in customer service, right because I was tech support before And so they would ping me about you know, how do we handle these situations? How do we? Deal with people, you know misbehaving or whatever in the game Um, and my policy was always do is very the absolute minimum when it comes to interacting with players interacting with each other We created the game not to be a utopia, right? We made it so Bad things could happen and good things could happen In order to create a rich social, you know tapestry, right? Let people be themselves for the most part So because that's part of the human experience, right the human experiences Just like in real life, there's people you can't stand and there's people that you love, right? So we wanted all those things to happen and so Don't let the game stand in the way of creating these powerful social experiences and and also do the least possible because um A lot of times it's up to the judgment of a gm on what type of action to take And once you get you find yourself in that position And because gms are human beings they're going to make all kinds of crazy decisions So it's going to come it's going to be really inconsistent If you just kind of leave it up to people, right? And consistency is really important when it comes to this kind of thing, right? So we always cautioned, you know, if if it ever possible Don't do anything essentially And only do things when you absolutely have to right so the things we always felt what is griefing what has to be You know addressed are people using exploits, you know teleport hacks. They're cheating in some way You know things like that That's of course a big one But a lot of the other stuff that just makes for feel bad moments like I was killing a thing and a guy jumped me and killed me That's part of the game, right?  Right, you know if he's doing it there's going to be rewards for killing him And people are going to want to go hunt him down So just make them aware of it and before you know it you're getting through menothil because You got a million people out there looking for this guy, right? So Yeah The answers are there, right the answers are social Um and let players, you know figure that stuff out. So Yeah, I think like I mostly agree with that like I don't think the player should be banned or anything for that I think that's part of the game like you kind of got to let the kids play But I think that if it gets to the point where if it is a real issue, I wouldn't be opposed to like You know, and I think all this stuff is subjective Like if it gets to the point where like hey, dude, like you got to chill like just just if it's I mean, I'm maybe like In any sort of situation like this and I've seen it before where somebody made their character Really big they did like, you know the elixir of Uh, what's it called elixir of over strength or whatever it was called the the one that makes them bigger Wonderful fire water all that stuff And then they're really big and then they like they sit on the flight master and then nobody can fly out And it's like we're people like okay, dude, like you got to chill you got to move and if they don't move Okay, we're gonna move you right I've seen that like I don't think you should like ban somebody for that like and to be honest Like it's kind of funny if it if you do it for a few minutes It's kind of funny because it's like, okay Like look what I can do But then like I guess the point where it's like, okay, you're doing this for an hour, half an hour or something like that Right, then okay Let's just let's scoot you over and let people like leave the city. I think it's fine Yeah, but you know on the other hand like we allowed those guys to be killed, you know We made it very difficult to kill them, but we allow for those guys to be killed That's a moment too. Someone killed the red ridge, you know And now everyone's kind of stranded. Yeah, that's true. That's kind of a fun moment, right? Yeah Yeah So as an alliance member if I'm raiding a horde horde town crossroads the first thing we do kill the flight master That's the first thing that we do Um, because that's that's the biggest grief we possibly can do. So yeah, that's right. That's in the same vein as Yeah And he'll breathe on large. Yeah, exactly. It's not like you're you're out for a week, right or whatever Five minutes or something. You know again, it's a manageable problem, right? Like, you know, people tend to think And and this is definitely true in BFA that their time is too valuable to allow these kinds of things to occur but To us like that that was part of the experience, you know, you Having to spend time to do these things you having to find, you know ways around Little inconveniences that hit your time. That was part of the experience.  Yeah, that's what I would say.  Like I know there's this big meme going on about like a blacklist or whatever and it's like look Back in the day I can tell you I played on Illidan and then I transferred to Kelthus out at the end of vanilla Like how familiar Kevin how familiar are you with with the Illidan us server? Not very So, so there were a few servers that were high profile back in the day, but I Really know so so Illidan they they literally had a They Illidan had so much drama on it that they made an off like platform like forum They made a website called illidrama.com where people started using illidrama instead of the official wow forms because they didn't have to worry about Blizzard moderation getting in trouble with their like wow counts and stuff So, yeah, so like with illidrama and of course illidan the the Serenity now like the funeral raid like that that whole thing That happened on illidan. You had blood legion team ice.  I mean the like and it was you know was well known like, okay Anybody who associates with like blood legion or this guild or that guild like you're on the blacklist and like gray register guild Like I very specifically remember like this type of stuff happening and and people had illidan still has drama Yeah, probably actually but um, but yeah, like The the idea of a blacklist or like people that you didn't want to group with or didn't want to do stuff with Like that was there and that's like part of the community aspect of the game Those can just be I mean whether or not those systems work or not That's the community trying to police itself trying to put it together tools to manage these situations And for blizzards part I usually took the stance that that's where we should leave these things put You know allow the players to try to figure this out Solve it themselves, you know because people are creative and we're all very social animals, right?  This guy's this or that And like that's their thing, right? I think I think it can get to the point where it's kind of absurd personally But like, you know, you'll see the same design can step in in those cases Like you'll notice that the bankers are behind the bars so that there's no way to block them. You'll know right Uh, the auction house guys are all, you know up on pedestals, you know to help So you will be able to interact with them, you know So there are there are game design solutions to some of this stuff, right and game design can step in but It's it's really difficult to create a policy where GMs are stepping in on this stuff frequently And it's it's even harder to sustain that sort of police enforcement of little things like that Um and because of the way, you know, human nature is The more attention that's brought to it the more people do it actually in a lot of cases Especially if you don't ban them, right? If all you do is a little slap on the wrist You'll see a lot of people, you know testing those limits all the time now because that's part of the game for them Is how far can they grief people, you know, how far can they abuse the system before they get slapped on the wrist? Right. Yeah, I think I think that's certainly part of it is uh So you're saying like in in general if there is like an in-game solution to the problem through some sort of social means that In general just like sort of let it be, you know, like sort of hands off with the gyms. Yeah There's obviously extreme cases. Um, right, you know, like uh in ultima online This this was a huge issue and they couldn't police anything. They didn't have the staff There were a million bugs in the game and a million ways to exploit everything Um, and so people did And so that was one big problem and they were chasing all of that there was duping and you know, that's where their focus is work Um focus was um, but then there were also people just misbehaving, right? Like You would you would not only kill someone in ultima online Then you would emote all of these racist, you know sexual things on top of it Right and that's when it crossed the line, right and it's like, okay Well now a community service person has to step in and you know Deal with this player, right?  Yeah, well, I'll tell you like the experience we had so so this was the second dueling tournament that I hosted I hosted one during the blizzcon demo and both of them had kind of uh I mean, I guess the griefing was basically the same. It was somebody standing on top of the duelers and you know Obviously when you're when you're playing that when you're actually like live and doing and casting, you know You're under the pressure and stuff like that So it gets to you at least did the first time the second time didn't get to me very much The only the only thing that really made it kind of a problem was Was kind of how the the competitors viewed it the competitors were obviously very upset because they were competing and You know, there was a specific case where one of the torrent was sitting on one of the totems Which basically caused the priest to lose that duel because he wasn't able to click down the totem Which meant, you know, that was a tremor totem I think and which meant the shaman was able to uh, you know to get out of the fear really quickly or something like that but I think the bottom line.  It's 10 minutes of ban. Where's the threshold?  How long can I do this? So I think ultimately just the fact that we're speaking about it today and the fact that it's been spoken about You know over the past week or so shows that this is Part of the experience. I mean if this guy hadn't grieved the tournament, we wouldn't be talking about it right now Stay safe when they've debated as many the other day. I think and you know, so department have talked about us So it does create, you know, like you said, kevin that social tapestry and it creates a memory And uh memories aren't always good, but you know looking back on things in hindsight. It's fun to talk about them. So I think specifically when it comes to dueling tournaments, I think blizzard kind of has to make a decision You know does blizzard want to support dueling tournaments? Is this something that Is fun just because it's you know a bunch of streamers getting involved or is there something here potentially for classic? Wow And if they do want to support something like this and they want to turn it into uh like an actual competitive thing Then maybe something like tournament realms, you know, could be a possibility but in terms of in game You know, I I do think the to s should be enforced But again, you don't want to create that situation where somebody Restricts themselves from doing what they normally would have done You know in terms of gameplay because they're scared that you know something might happen to them Yeah, and there's a couple things I would add to those statements one is um from a philosophical standpoint as a game designer um I don't consider you I don't consider your needs over Yep The guy next to you, right? I don't care how many dueling tournaments you've won or how you know how far you've gotten in a tournament Your you know your privileges in terms of playing this game are no different than troll god exes in terms of Like where you can be and where you can stand, right? Kevin. God bless you, dude I think a lot of people I 100% agree, you know, and that of course applies to streamers right streamers don't get special privileges either, right? Like you're just a guy trying to you know play the game have fun organize things, right? Yep There's no there's no special privileges, right? Like you're all just people in this world, right? So we have to sort of step back as players especially for high profile and realize, you know The it's not for us necessarily. It's not just for us. It's for everybody involved The second thing i'll say is It's so great that this stuff has happened, you know people complain about streamers getting keys, you know and getting into the game Over other people, but it's like this is important stuff to test It's important that streamer and events have occurred and have created these situations that blizzard has to look in And it's something that has to be tested and they have to figure out How are they going to deal with this they have to set the tone now So that when retail comes along, you know, and it's actually out for good not retail I don't use that word but classic release is finally out You know that they know how to deal with these things Test the waters now figure out what issues arise and this is important stuff to test so Um, they're having to figure it out just like we're talking about it They're talking about it too and it's really important that they set the stance Now and figure out how it's going to work because they don't want to be scrambling after retail Or after the release You raised a really good point before we went live We were talking about this how blizzard needs to beta test essentially how streamers impact a server So having streamers on the beta playing and having big events and dual tournaments and giant world versus world battles They they lead they like I said they need to beta test how our streamers actually interacting and and organizing players and impacting server I think that's something that I hadn't thought of but that's actually a very good point as well Streamers streamers are a reality whether or not people like it, right? It wasn't a reality back in vanilla So this is a very new thing that and streamer she ain't gonna get getting get up to all kinds of shenanigans, right? So We have to you know, this is a great test bed for what people are gonna do And how blizzard's gonna you know deal with that so Well, I think another thing and I had somebody message me about this right is is you have Like a streamer with x amount of viewers watching them, right? That's So many sets of eyes On the game without actually them playing the game themselves and like And and this could very well be a thing for blizzard is they're worried about like killing hype for the game By by putting too many people in or whatever, right? So now you get the benefit of having so many people look at something while Without having to actually give out so much access to the game I think that I've been pretty vocal about this. I really really want them to add more people like for a number of reasons, right? The the beta itself would be more fun if there was more people playing if you have more people playing you can test more things um I do think that and I've noticed this in chat is like They'll see something that's bugged and oh report report report And it's like I've already reported this and then they complain that streamers don't report anything It's like no like I reported this the first time I saw it like Recently people are like oh like no key ring like s-fan doesn't have a key ring But he had a scar like he I'm like dude like this is like one of the first things I noticed like there was no key ring Uh, you know and I reported it so because I because I mentioned it whenever Uh, whenever we actually went to Irvine and and did like the internal thing, right? Uh, we did yeah stasiv and I did sm library and we literally we're sitting next to each other We're talking about we're like oh look there's no key ring and then I think it was added in 1.11 Uh from what we saw so maybe I'm wrong on that. I think it was 1.11 So it should be in there. Um, so yeah, like hopefully they're going to fix that and they're going to add the key ring soon But maybe they see it as like oh well if they have too many beta invites It's just they're going to have to go through more like dead reports or like reports that they've already like addressed I don't know. I I wish to do the way I had like a thousand more people to the beta I think it would be a lot better. I think another way would be good at least I think they should invite enough people to fill a second server of each type, right? Yeah, the vv server is completely dead Yeah, no one's a lot of streamers won't remake their characters, right? They'll steal they'll keep playing on the server they're on so The second servers might end up being You know streamer lists for the most part And that's another thing that they should be looking at they should be looking at how do How do servers, you know function? How do they?  So I'll tell you this early on when the beta came out was at four weeks or three weeks ago now There were a bunch of people I leveled with and did dungeons with and you know saw running on the world I haven't seen them on weeks like there's a lot of people that got made access early They've not touched it in weeks. They're not testing anything like there's people like I saw multiple people I just went through and I I sorted it by days since they logged in We saw like maybe nine days like 11 days people haven't logged in They're just sitting on like a level 30 hunter or something and it's like dude really like you have beta access like play the beta and like at least Help test some stuff So that that's like frustrating too is like that's pretty common for betas. But yeah, it is frustrating Yeah, there's people here right now like I've got it open 15 days plus That's why people that's why you keep adding, you know, you keep adding to the backfill, you know get new people in But uh, you know, here's the good news like blizzard did send me like a hundred keys I used one for myself and then I sent the others to ask fans. So no false.  Yeah. Yeah, just ask nicely. Yeah No, I wish Yeah, I wish I wish my information is not always accurate. Yeah. Oh, here's the thing How much you bet like if let's say blizzard actually did something like that, right? Oh streamer privilege Why'd they give streamers beta keys to give out to people? It's like, okay, dude Like I like at one point. I was like, come on like at what point like I wish they gave us beta keys I totally give beta keys out to people That's a classic concept, isn't it? It's actually a key Yeah, exactly. I think it's so funny. Um, but yeah, no, I I uh, I really wish that they would add more people and I think it'd be good for for everybody. So I think there's people who Yeah, I think there's people who like they they hold resentment towards people and and here's the thing like let's say like a streamer got in like A lot of people who play wow or a lot of people who stream classic Uh, we've been streaming classic beta or people who had accounts for a very very long time Like my account alone is like that's a I have a week one Like vanilla wow account like it was December 29 2006 is one of my created my account So like there's while it's not guaranteed. It's very likely that like a lot of these people like maybe they got random access They didn't necessarily get like streamer access Um, now did did they go and like purposefully like, okay, like let's try and get Let's try and make sure, you know As my golden soda pop and some of these guys have access like I I would be hard pressed to think that they wouldn't do that You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, you know, of course they do. Yeah, exactly. Like it's just one of those things There's thousands of people that have access and there's like 40 or 50 streamers, right? Right like literally thousand people, you know Yeah, that's my thought and there's just, you know, who do you exclude don't exclude people, right? if you're a hardcore private server player that's gonna hammer for bugs and Be really good at feedback, you know, great get in here, right? Like you're a streamer with lots of views are great get in here Your guy who's just had a 15 year account has been faithful to you know the game through bfa great get in here, right? Like Um, just don't exclude people, you know, like there's already a few people you want to exclude but You don't want to give privilege, but you don't want to exclude others and I don't you know I don't see the privilege right now and you know the streamer case You know, it'd be really cool is uh, if the next uh, the next stress test You know, they they invite like everybody or a bunch more people in and they just They just don't turn off access and like once the the stress test goes down like all those people can just Yeah, play the beta See, I was hoping surprise everyone with that, you know, but they're all gonna have like tune gear because they managed to kill Yeah Yeah, I saw dude somebody Okay, I don't know how this happened So I don't know some rogue gm went on the stress test server and did this to somebody Somebody put in the trade window a hand of rag on the stress test and I was like, how like how do you have this? Like some gm just went to randomly like like dot create item hand of rag and just like gave it to some random Like level four priests to do just thank god. That's what I got I That's the old trick to to beggars, too We used to use I used to use is you leave it open in the trade window like you're about to okay it, you know Yeah, I used to I used to do the same thing I would say oh wait one second be right back and I would leave I just go afk for like Come back and still be there No Because they're just so close Yeah, it was really funny. Yeah, I just had it in the will not be traded box the bottom It was so funny But uh, no, I think um, I think that would be great Like I was under my my initial thoughts on the stress tests that they were doing was I was under the impression that there were okay Everybody played the stress test for two hours And then it was like anybody who got access to the stress test would get access to the main servers for like two Of like two days or whatever it was that's that's what I thought they were going to do Um, but but I guess they decided not to do that because even that would be something that would be cool No, it's been uh, I think I think the the experience is like one of my favorite streams I always talk about like And and whether this was like whether it's more recently or with my old like IRL streams and stuff like that I think that the important thing is uh I think memorable streams things that you're going to remember like for a long time are all like really important and really cool like The the last stress test stream that I had was So incredibly fun Like I want to I honestly what I need to do is I need to go like clip that and post that on my youtube channel Because that was just it's such a memorable stream. It was so like what did we do? We didn't we weren't even doing any game content. We were just like it was a community thing Just hanging out Exactly and like, you know, we're running around We're walking around the bridge and storm wind and we're like, well, we need to summon omar or something Just like having fun with it and then like, you know, coincidentally, he just happens to show up on our layer And he's flying around it's funny, right? And it's like, oh my gosh. So yeah, it just became exactly the perfect You know marketing for classic, right? It's like No one's looking at the fact that you guys found this guy named hered at the bottom of scarlet mare's monastery They're like, whoa, look at this guy. I've never seen him before Right, exactly. Oh, it's the fact that you guys were you created another set of you know stories and experiences And that's what classic is going to be about. That's exactly what we're all going to be doing when we start up the game, you know Once it launches so That's perfect and streamers are the best at You know catapulting that idea to the you know general public, right? Mm-hmm Yeah, I think uh, I think it'll be really uh I think it would be really cool to see what happens. I think a lot of people um There's some people that just they blanket like I hate x Like they just they just want to put whatever in there.    Yeah.  Yeah, you know, I was like, hey Yeah, me too like I'll tell you I'm me too, but But uh, but no, I think that's like that's one of those things I think once you get to like know people and see how people react because I think everybody's different, right? Everybody Everybody kind of likes to put labels on people and think like one person thinks this so everybody thinks this and I know for You know at least on the server that stay safe and I used to play on like you know people people knew us as people Right people on the server knew us as people and for how we interacted with others and how we treated others and I would uh I would I would venture to uh to assume that I don't see that changing for myself And probably for stay safe anytime soon. Um, so yeah, and this kind of goes and that's just from our playing experience from playing together The tips and I are gonna be on the other side. So the way we treat you. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be different We're gonna be jams Yeah, this entire podcast was actually an idea between me and kevin too. I'll make sure blizzard doesn't banish for great Can you guys right exactly so and I know like for one thing like uh and kind of going back on like And and I haven't I haven't like watched the video or whatever But like I know one one big one of the big memes right now is talking about like kind of going back on like the blacklist topic or whatever Uh, where it's like, oh like, you know soda pop and said something about a blacklist or whatever Like I haven't I haven't watched the video of whatever he said on stream or whatever But I I know like I had a conversation with him and we were we were specifically talking about like Uh streamers and other streamers like basically other streamers going and like stream sniping other streamers and like doing things to like basically like um Like how it's not right to go and try and stream to have somebody and you're basically like you're you're cucking the content for back For lack of a better term, right? Stuff like that and I think like if somebody wants to go and they want to have like Within their own personal community like hey, these are the people that I play with this is what I do like Oh, I know that this guild is bad news. We don't group with them, right? Like let's let's let's talk about grizzly a little bit right stay safe. So stay safe was uh, he was one of the bad boys And like this so so so guys like grizzly was like a guild that uh, you know, I have a lot of friends in grizzly, right? And grizzly was like grizzly. That's actually where the rep prio meme came from It was a playoff of grizzly prio where grizzly prio was Basically like we own the server like everything on the server. It's it's grizzly versus everybody on the server That's like what the idea was If you're in a group with somebody who's not in grizzly F them need everything you take everything you ninja everything like that's like what grizzly It was originally like and what ended up happening was a lot of people really hated grizzly because it was like I won't group with those guys, you know, and I think I think people uh, people have the Players have the agency to to know that like, okay Well, like I've learned that you know this type of player or somebody in this guild They act this way. So I don't want to group with these people. I think that's a very Uh, normal way to feel right within your own community. Like I do not want to group with these guys That's fine. I can't wait to be blacklisted. I mean because that just separates from me from people that Yeah, I mean like blacklist me great Yeah, and I think and this is a life thing too is like if you You know play with people you want to play with don't play with people that you don't want to play with and if if people don't want to play with you then then you You don't need to go and try and like force yourself into a situation or anything like that You know that's that's just kind of how it is. I guess For me like I I don't think I've ever had like any any real problems with it outside of like some memes and stuff But that's just how it goes right like different people are different. So that's all part of the experience Well, I'll tell you that guild grizzly as a result of some of the memes that went on You know, they had a huge problem every vanilla guild faces player attrition people drop off They decide they don't want to play anymore. They get lose interest. They get busy in real life Whatever it is people stop playing and you have to recruit more people That's just how every vanilla guild works and if you're operating a guild that way where you're you know, essentially This is how it was.  Um It's very hard to recruit people and so this guild ran into ran into recruitment problems and player attrition problems So that is the ramification of behavior like that. There is that age and then they choose to do that And they have to rebrand, you know the kinder generally exactly Actually is what Yeah, and that's just how it is like, uh Certain type certain type of players acts a certain type of way like us and and it's it's not a it's not a coincidence Whenever you see certain things happen. So No, it's uh, it's it's very cool. It's very cool to see like How things play out and and you can you can kind of predict how things will continue to play out And I think once more people get into the game and once more people get into the experience and kind of get into the atmosphere Instead of just like watching through a lens. That's again I cannot wait for the game to come out because it's gonna be Like gonna be for real this time. Yeah, and I think more people won't understand things that are happening Right because I think I think people watch streams and they're like, oh like what's this? What's that? Uh and and another thing do you like I so so I was tanking old a man, right? I was tanking old a man last night And I'm trying to form for a pendulum of doom and the dazzling longsword drops, which is much more rare You know, you could argue it's much more rare. Uh, well, I mean Is it actually more anyway? I think so probably think about it That's like you can drop in more places, right because the world dropped. So anyway, that's not the point, right? It's an epic right. It's an epic world drop And I'm like frick like you gotta be joking me like it's a good item and it's especially good like as a tanking sword But um To say that like, you know, I get that instead of pendulum of doom like I'm going for the pendulum, but that happens to drop Um Like just kind of like as a like it's not even a big thing like I roll need and then the uh Hunter and the group rolls need right and it's it's because because it's a hunter It turns into old thing and like the guy the guy's a good player Like I was dueling him the other day and like practicing stuff against him.  Like we're just like we're gonna talk about it And uh, I even was like willing to be like, you know, I if I had it I would use it Like if it kind of depends on what the group wants to do whatever and then they were like Yeah, like if you want to take it take it and I take it and I put it on I use it, right? um But uh, yeah, it was just like one of those things where like I don't think it's fair and this is something that is I do think it's on the streamers to do this Like we need to go and we need to like establish an environment of saying like yo like you can't control everybody I know but at least you need to do your due diligence and be like look guys like It's almost like gta rp gta rp had a big problem with metagaming if you were metagaming and telling people like Oh so-and-so is over by the bank, you know, like don't like don't do that in chat like we don't want that I don't want to know where soda poppin is.  Yeah, it's like it's like you guys go gank him go gank him I'm like no like if I come across him and something happens something happens I kind of have like my own way that I handle things like typically like if I'm Typically like if I see somebody that I know Typically if I see somebody that I know I I don't like I don't fight them in like an unfair situation or something like that Like I just I think it's kind of lame and it's like you don't really prove anything by doing it Like if your friends and stuff it's like kind of funny maybe but like I don't I don't do anything to put anybody in a bad situation Um I don't think it's fair. That's kind of my point is like At my point I guess is just in a nutshell I don't think it's fair that like for for people to like Oh, we got to go protect our streamer friends or like who are the streamer that we choose to watch Like sure like that's that's very appreciated like whenever people are willing to stand up for you Very very appreciated But there's a time and a place for that and I don't think harassing other people is is the place Is the way to do it. That's what I'm going to say about that It's really unfortunate like you'll we even though Obviously no streamer wants their chat metagaming or telling them who's where or stream sniping for them It's not going to stop like people will never stop backseat gaming I mean we we have all played and streamed Dark Souls games We all had in our title and some of us had on stream overlays saying no first time play no advice The entire chat the entire stream people give advice. There's like you you cannot get them to stop Miss legendary bow miss legendary There's like Yeah, yeah, well, I mean I didn't have that problem. I'll fire the mind exactly. Oh soda problems here actually Yeah, that's that's exactly how I feel soda pop in series. He's in chat. I didn't even notice. Um, nice Yeah, so yeah, if gtrp if gtrp can do it we can do it. Yeah, exactly like so I don't I haven't watched gtrp. Have they actually stopped it entirely So does it just not happen because I don't know it's it is on it is on the streamers It is a it is a streamer sanction thing where it's like look Make it make it in your title or something like no meta gaming I think you have to put it in the title because it was like it was a hype thing and you had a lot of new viewers I think that's something that needs to be established in classic where it's like no meta gaming like like We we need to do what we can like okay. We're streaming and all this stuff, but like let let's preserve the the Random occurrences and just kind of like preserve the spirit of the game as much as we can right I don't I don't I'm not freaking here sitting at mission control and I have like Thousands of people like okay should pinpoint the location of soda pop in and as in gold and I don't like I don't want that Like I want to play the game and I want to have fun Like I want to I want to enjoy the game the way that I want to enjoy the game And if if something happens and something happens like that's the way that I think should happen So Yeah, I think it's tough to control things man. I think it's just one of those situations where yeah, obviously try to I mean and I think with the beta specifically like we've kind of gotten a Misrepresented form of stream sniping right now on the beta just because there's so few people and there's even less people at level 40 It's really difficult to do what you want to do like if you want a world pvp right now It's really hard to find organic world pvp. It's like damn. You're impossible, especially at night time I've been streaming later at nights Like I'll be like, okay, let's go to duskwood. Nobody's in duskwood. Let's go to stv. Nobody's in stv. Let's go Well, there's this alliance streamer that's playing right now. I've never actually done it I've never actually gone and sniped a streamer doing that, but I've definitely felt the You know, if somebody comes in chat and says, oh, this guy's here, you know, you feel the temptations Not because I want to go stream snipe that person. It's there's no other world pvp going on except here Well, I think you just got to know where to be like like go to duskwood Like there's what level like level like mid 20s and like maybe maybe low 30s Like on their way to the top of strangler and bail like you got to go find the right people Right. Like if the level cap is 40, what are people going to be doing? And like badlands is a good place for that, right? Because people are going to want to go there and like That's a good place to farm like flame sacks good place to farm like Different like there's a few different quests there, right? Like nifty stopwatch quest is there There's some stuff there that you can start to get that are gear That's a little bit higher level than you from some quest So badlands is kind of like a natural place to go in between you've got cargath You've got locked with on I think it's I think it's very accessible for both factions And I've seen a lot of people running around badlands, especially people wanting to do old man for for pendulum of doom So I think like I think you can find the right places, right? It's just that you got to know where to go and you've got to kind of like think Think about how the meta is different, right?  I mean everyone wants the next big fight That's why we're here. So Exactly. Well, I mean like the other night like literally two nights ago We went everywhere when stv dusk would badlands Everywhere and just couldn't find anyone and I mean, I think an a b ended up popping So like we went there but what I'm trying to say is I think what's happening right now a lot of the stream sniping stuff Hopefully is kind of beta specific At least like if there's more people online than a lot of this stuff just doesn't need to happen All right, but um, but regardless, I mean stream sniping is is just not cool Yeah, I mean I'm trying to think from a streamer perspective. What do we just have a certain people out that are doing it Like I guess that's all we can do Metagaming that you're getting timed out. Well, here's the thing. It's like Specifically stream sniping right it's it's like streams streamers sniping other streamers It's just like what we're talking about right streamers sniping other streamers I think it's only natural that you get stream like that is part of the game, right? Naturally, you're going to get stream sniped sometimes And it's going to be both good and it's going to be it's going to be both good and bad Like that's just that is the nature of streaming. That is the way that it happens That's what you signed up for, you know, and I Honestly, I have not had that much of a problem with it and in some days you'll have more problems than others Uh But I would say in the beta so far. I've not had much of a problem with it. Did I have a problem with it? One of our streaming on youtube Yeah, some days I did but like it's it's That's the game and you know, I got to find ways to kind of be adaptable and figure out how to get out of it Sometimes people would come to to my aid, you know, and it's like What people will realize is that it's usually not a good look because if you go and it's like Two or three guys or like let's say you have a five-man group camping one guy It just kind of makes you look bad and then people will see that and they're like, okay, this guy's kind of pathetic Right like the the guys who are camping you However, I think if you're Stream sniping And actually like helping to provide content in a weird way. I don't mind it. I actually think it's funny Like for example, like there's three rogues. There's three troll rogues Dude, they I the first time I saw them. I laughed so hard. It was so funny because like they're literally like Like surrounding you like rp walking like walking around you and it's dude. It was so funny. They're so well coordinated They saw me in stv. What do they do?  I just rezzed. I didn't have full man I healed myself as much as I could but I'm just sitting there and just like blood is just gushing out of me And I just yeah, and they didn't they didn't sit there and camp me forever, right? They didn't do anything to like Kind of like I said earlier like cuck the content if anything they provided it like I I was so entertained by it Because I thought it was genuinely super creative and it was funny So yeah, they they they put a little campfire next to me and they sat down there and they like yeah I was just funny like that's respectable, you know, and I think that's that's not a so bad thing But whenever it comes to streamers sniping other streamers, that's that's kind of a different thing, right? That's that's more so what we're talking about Yeah, I think it's like On the respectable word, right that I'm gonna highlight that like there's two types So I've had a guy that did their day I was leveling and he followed me around for three or four hours and he followed me from zone to zone He was trying to get me at the graveyard and he just would not leave me alone There's that and like that's more of a problem That's when like the respect is lost the uga guys.  They move on they go to something else Now in either situation I don't think anyone should be punished or banned like that's just what it is at the end of the day as a streamer You're choosing to broadcast your location. Is it annoying? Is it is is in some cases? Is it not very respectable true? But should anyone get in trouble like have Blizzard stepping absolutely not absolutely not right And here's the thing like I'll say about you know, all of these good experiences all these bad experiences, right? Like we've all had them. We've all had great experiences. We've all had really terrible experiences But when you add them all up at the end of the day, we're coming back to a 15 year old game because in total We want to do it again. We want to run it back because in total We had way more positive and amazing experiences and we did negative experiences If that were shifted we wouldn't be coming back We'd just be like man Do you guys remember wow how hard that game was to play because you literally couldn't take five steps without being Ooged by somebody, right? It's just like we wouldn't be here wouldn't be excited about the next wave of this game because we're excited because Man at the end of the day we had so many more positive experiences And we appreciated them because the possibility is that we could have negative experience, which we also had Yeah, so stream snipers you're actually doing us a favor you're making us appreciate the good times even more Right bring it on so keep doing it, please I so badly I so badly want somebody to get a staff of Jordan and just hand it to you. I think it would be so funny I bet you're like, yeah, of course. I'd love it too But I think it'd be so good It'd be so good if you had a staff of Jordan. Show me. That's a hunter weapon. Come on and raptor strike You know what dude? I I bet that thing's actually awesome for shaman I can enhance shaman because what is it? It's 3.7 speed, isn't it? Check right now. I was actually going to check this All right, that's a that's a nice nice one for it is three seven 180 top end damage like that's a big boy for wind fury And then you got the bonus damage for one of you want to shock people like that'd be Dude that's better than whirlwind axe, dude Yeah Yeah, that's a that's a big boy I'm gonna use that that's best in slot forever What are you doing next here? I got my I got my staff My own personal staff So no, no, I think it's uh, I I think it's cool, right like like the the concept of like Uh, and I do think it's different like stream streamers sniping other streamers versus like a viewer or whatever stream sniping like I don't really have uh I'm not like particularly surprised by anything. I kind of have my own way that I play the game and uh People people everybody plays a game different. That's kind of how I feel about it Uh, I don't know if tips that turn off his camera or something for a second. Maybe they restart. There he is. Um, so, yeah Um, let's talk a little bit about like and and here's the thing So so we've had kevin on before guys if you want to see like any previous episodes of the classic cast you can Uh exclamation point youtube you can check out my youtube channel. Uh, every classic cast is on there Uh, I I do want to whenever, you know, we can finally take some time off the beta. I do apologize. It's been pretty pretty, uh It's been a while since we did the last episode of classic cast It's just because with beta stuff going on and everybody has different schedules tips was moving. I moved as well Um, so yeah, a lot of stuff has been going on. So we've had a hard time. I'm going to I'm going to dream hack next week Uh dream hack in sweden. So we're we're trying to get some stuff figured out there. Um Yeah, so like that that whole thing has been going on But we did have kevin on in the past and we talked a lot about class design stuff And uh, I would like to talk about some stuff then because we have a lot of people who are watching this who probably didn't see that episode Or uh, it is a very different audience. Um, we can we can talk a little bit about some of that stuff But uh, if you guys want to see that last episode that we had with kevin, that is again on my youtube channel. So So kevin, um When it comes to A lot of the different like you you designed everything like you were in charge of designing literally every single class um, right The big things and and we talked a little bit about this at the very beginning of the podcast We talked about like balance and stuff like that Did you guys have and this is something I think we I believe we even talked about this I know we've talked about this at some point. I believe it was on the podcast It might have been off the podcast, but we were talking about like hybrid tax, right? It seems like there's a lot of people that are new to classic And they say well, what is so bad about balancing everything like what is so wrong with balancing? Uh boom kins or whatever like could could you explain like why you guys approached? Uh, why why you approached hybrids the way that you did? In back whenever you were designing, uh, been a while uh, okay, so The core problem with designing a hybrid is if he's if if like the ultimate hybrid is the druid When I think about hybrids, that's really the only class. I think of in terms of fitting the hybrid Uh, because he can do it all at the same time, right? Whereas most classes have to pick a spec and then they go down one and all particularly hard What about paladins? Are you saying paladins can't tank? Uh, paladins can tank But yeah, so The druid is the shape-shifting guy. He's the you know, the swiss army knife He can do all the rules at all times, right? It was kind of the concept Um behind him, uh, but he couldn't be the best at In all of those things because then he's the only class that anyone would want to play, right? If you can do all things at all times and you can equally balance, right? Uh, so the idea was to make a Hybrid that you know could do everything at once would be shape-shifting constantly These are the very early concepts But would not be as good in any particular one thing Uh, but that doesn't actually work in the high-end scene, right? That just means you're excluded eventually because everything is mid-max everything is Uh specialized to be a specific role. So That doesn't actually work in practice So we had to go more the traditional You pick a spec you go down one role and you can do those other things a little better Than other people but you still have a specific role in your job is to do that one thing. So Um, but that that was sort of the original concept behind the druid Why is um, why is everything not balanced everything being balanced is actually not very fun? It's it's actually very easy to balance the game. Um, you have nine classes They do three damage and they have three health there everything's talent Um, they have one button, right? Push the button. Oh, it's a draw. Everybody ties again, right? Like Um, that's it, you know, balanced, right and not fun, obviously And I think people's desire for balance is is one of the reasons it'd be a phase in the state It's saying like the classes because everyone kind of has all the mechanics You know that they've been searching for perfect balance So that you know No one's complaining But it's like but no one's having any fun either, right? So the imbalances are actually a part of um, what makes a game fun, believe it or not and What you do is the designers just kind of rotate through You know, these are the bad specs. Let's boost them. Oh, now there's new bad specs. Okay. Let's boost them Well, there's new bad specs. Let's let's boost them around and around around And so you don't really ever want to achieve perfect balance. You want to achieve Um, fun at all times and you want to achieve People feeling like they have their moments, right? So everyone gets their day to shine, right? And that's also why you have different, you know, raid content or different dungeon content Or even specifically like outdoor content some some classes are very good inside of caves Some classes are less so, right? So even in the soloing kind of leveling experience, there's places where people shine and there's places where they don't So that's the idea is you know, don't Don't try to balance everything perfectly. Just make sure it's fun and that everyone feels their moment to shine Mm-hmm for sure. Yeah, we like it is one of those things like um, like I mentioned before It almost seemed like everybody has like that that one thing, right?   Yeah, you can vanish. I can bubble Now the real the real meme is paladin is the only duel once an hour. All right, that's me That's me at our duel. I blew my hands. Oh, I gotta pay for that. That's me. That's me That's me. That's right Yeah, never question was the 24 hour cool down. So it was even worse. Oh, really You know one duel for 24 hours. Wow. That is cool downtime That is what I gotta say Sorry, go ahead What are your thoughts Kevin on those like long one hour 30 minute cooldowns? What do you think about those like now in retrospect? Um, so they were they were way Like I bring up eq specifically because they were way better than the competition right in terms of like Making players wait to use their buttons Um, and the play on hands is a classic. It's from dengston dragons It's super powerful, but it can't be something we allow people to use all the time, right? So Um, and that was always the you know, difficult thing with long cool down abilities.  I suggested it. Yeah, I was like, maybe we should wait as a game designer.  We'll wait 10 You know, we'll wait 15 maybe, you know, and it's just like So, you know, we always had to gauge when is where is that time where people are willing to Wait because you can you can very underestimate that so I think you're totally right. And I mean, you know in retail wow with rating All your cooldowns are reset every attempt on the boss, right? You have everything up every boss attempt And I think that that decreases The importance of the cooldowns like it doesn't feel like oh man I just popped a big cooldown like if we don't get at this attempt, we're screwed for the next half hour Right. Um, so I think that feeling is important.  I think one hour is probably too long, but every every reset of the pole I think it's that's too frequent. I think Yeah, and it creates a decision-making process. You know, that's that's right. Right now. It's like Okay, well, even if I use it here, we're still gonna wipe so I'm not gonna use it I'll say or for the next exactly right, right. Yeah, this could actually push us over, you know, but Well, so yeah, it's just the the choice is more meaningful. I talk about this all the time Uh specifically with like lay on hands, right? It's a one hour cooldown I I don't have that big of a problem on it Like if it was 30 minutes, would that be nice? Sure. If it was 10 minutes, would that be nice? Great, right? But like the the reality of it is Almost any situation It's very rare that I come across a situation where I'm like, dude I need to use lay on hands here and it's not up Like that's just how it is for me because like and I think a lot of other players I know there's other players who feel this way too Like of course you have like to a shatter people like oh, but he used lay on hands But it was like, yeah, I did They got I'm probably not going to need to use it for another hour like I might I might but it's not likely that I'm coming into situations where I need to use lay on hands to get out of a problem Or like there's times where like I die And it's like, oh, but he had lay on hands up and I'm like, yeah, I did But I chose not to use it because I thought, you know what I might lay on hands and I might still lose You know, I might still die here. So I had so never end up using it, you know And it's like it may as well not even be on your bar because you're so worried about the time after now That's right Dude, I was doing a duel I was doing a duel earlier today and I had to health stone and some guys like oh, it doesn't calculate a health stone I can't believe you had to health stone that it's like dude It's one of your possibilities like it's one of my possibilities And I put two talent points in it to improve the health stone is like come on Like it's one of like the primary things that a warlock does is make health stones That's what there's another health stone right around the corner. Yeah.  We have kevin here and we do want to go to q&a here in a little bit If you guys have questions for us Feel free to tweet at us. I usually look at twitter first I usually look at twitter first So if you guys want to tweet at us with hashtag classicast At sfan tv at tips out baby at stay safe warlock. You can you can tweet at us And I'll go ahead and look at twitter in a little bit We'll also probably take a few questions from chat as well. So We'll do that if you guys have any questions for kevin if you have any questions for us We we do have kevin here. So if if you guys do have questions about like game design classic whatever Like we'd love to take those but also you should definitely go follow kevin jordan And go ask him those questions yourself in case we can't get to them right now So, uh, yeah, let's keep going from there and then I'll I'll check that in a second. Um, I don't know that sweet hex love in the chat. Thank you so much guys. I was a bug in the word There you go. Um But yeah, like kind of I kind of want to clarify a little bit one of us I've had like hour-long cooldowns and stuff like it's it's not that like I'm sitting in the city all day Right, but it's just the amount of time it takes you to do things in classic Like you might be traveling you might be in the city for a little bit you might come across like Like the likelihood of coming across like a player who like you might think is like good enough for a class That's like, oh man, like this is really tough for me like a shaman right shaman's are like really hard for me Uh at max level just because of how they're designed right, but you know, they've got they're more offensive They have purges and they have stuff to get rid of buffs. They have the grounding totem So I just have to be like more on my toes whenever I'm finding a shaman. That's just the way it is, right? They're playing checkers. You're playing chess. Totally different game. Right exactly. So, uh, that's just that's just kind of how it goes But um, but yeah Okay, okay, and Kevin Kevin will probably agree with me on this Whenever you don't have as many buttons to press, right?  So you have to auto attacks. Well, my god, well says the thing it's like it seems like you're just Warlocks. Yeah, like hard counter. Well, they do a hard counter warlocks. Yes. They do do that Yeah, okay, those are the things you have to call upon sometimes when you're not pushing buttons just Yeah, I'm attacking warlocks down Right, like it's like timing your autos and like, okay For example, it's like, okay, if I want to auto auto at the right time to bubble right after I auto So then I get another auto in before the the attack speed time. You're saying boom Yeah Exactly There's a whole thing. Yeah, it's the whole thing.  Absolutely. Yeah to talk about that just a little bit We actually didn't pressure the paladin's global because he's a support character that answers a lot of questions Yeah, he answers a lot of problems and so his global has to be kind of free to be reactive to those problems, right? So More than many he's a support class, right? Whereas other healers might have been seen as You know spamming their heels constantly Because that's their core role the paladin was intent was to be up there mailing a little bit and having a lot of free globals to answer problems Obviously didn't work out that way because flash of light spam was the thing and a lot of red paladins were like I really wish I had more buttons to press when I was fighting but That was that that was the design purpose behind Him not having constant but like the rogue is free to just spam buttons all the time because his he doesn't have to support anyone He doesn't have to think about anyone but himself and the dps. He's thrown down so We can fill his global cooldown with you know constant pressure With a paladin a little more relaxed.  Yeah, exactly. You have a lot of open globals and you gotta spend those for the right things Yeah, exactly. Exactly So that's just how it goes Let's let's go ahead and Surely only for supreme intellectuals. Yes, indubitably. Individually. Yes. Yes quite So, um, let's go ahead and get to the q&a There is There's some questions here Kind of more specific to classic Just to clarify Kevin Kevin is not a part of The the like new wow classic Release but but he made the original or he was involved in class actually was the lead on class design For like the original game, right that it's based off of so there's some questions that are like specific to that We're not really going to get to those but um But yeah, we'll get to some other stuff, um We've talked about this before Plenty of times. This is always comes up, but let's go ahead and Kevin answer this one. This is from braxer Uh, what do what do you think will come at the end of classic? Like how do you how do you foresee classic playing out? Like will they go to burning crusade and wrath and uh, like Where do you see it going? Uh, okay, so I I have three dream scenarios. Um And they're all they're all great and I'm hoping I'm I'm hoping as many of these come true as possible One is The philosophy of classic influences current the current wow team To start moving retail towards back towards, you know, the philosophies in the game That we all fell in love with 15 years ago, right? Uh, that's one dream scenario and slowly but surely current wow starts to get better and better and better Two is the sort of the classic plus, you know scenario Where the game gets expanded either no new levels or content, you know Extra tiers of raids and things like that that's brand new to the wow universe in classic Utilizing all the philosophies of You know classic etc Or some form of tbc, you know, again that we can somehow magically all agree on that we want Um, but they expand the game in some way Uh, the third dream scenario is that classic influences the rest of the industry to make us a brand new mmo That's super high quality has tons and tons of Great stuff to do and we can all play a brand new game in a new universe That's you know new to everyone but has the philosophy of old school classic, right? So it's it's possible all three of those things occur, but Those are my dreams and I think all of them are actually reasonably likely So you don't you don't care so much about tbc then Uh, well, here's the thing like I just don't know how they can do tbc in a way that satisfies any more than say 15 20 percent of the of the populace, right? Because we're so split on what we want from tbc Some will say no changes some will say How could you know use the old school philosophy so tbc with Like a tbc, but with classic philosophies others will say don't touch it ever. I just want to play classic vanilla classic forever You know and then there's you know everyone sort of wants their own version of tbc or what to do with classic plus So well at this at the same point move forward without at the same point Some ever everyone's wanted different versions of vanilla as well There have been people that haven't wanted achievements added to vanilla to classic There have been people that have wanted I've heard people that want pet battles in classic and it's like, okay You know Let's just play the game as it was and so you know, I think vanilla is better than tbc By a pretty big margin. I don't like flying because a lot of things that I think they messed up on but There are a lot of people that that they love that they love tbc and they're just sort of You know, maybe they're not as interested in classic. They're just sort of waiting for tbc So I don't know and as an extension of that I'll say this like I think wad more the draenor is terrible. I I hated it I think it's it's the antithesis of what I love about wow, right But in eight nine years if people are pushing for classic wad if there's a demographic of people that want to play classic wad I will I will help them push for that because I don't want to be the guy that says hey, I got mine Uh, if you like wad go screw yourself, right? So what happens to vanilla because there's going to be a lot of people that if we do push tbc Even a tbc no changes out the door, which is probably the best version they could The most crowd-pleasing version um What what then with vanilla do we allow vanilla to continue to exist and half the population moves on? Oh, yeah stays behind, right? Oh, yeah, so each each subsequent version after vanilla will draw an audience um Maybe they're not playing right right now. Maybe they're unsubs like it'll draw it'll draw people back So it'll bring new people and I think of course there will be a split in fractures people Like there are people that want to play classic now that will move on a tbc and never play classic again If they had tbc or wrath or whatever um The thing with a lot of these early versions of wow, uh, vanilla tbc and wrath specifically the server communities are so insular That all you really need are a couple popular servers to have a healthy ecosystem You know with tbc you need to have a couple servers for arena queues for rats similar thing for vanilla I mean worst case You really only need one popular server that like if all it was if all if there was only enough Interest in classic wow for one healthy server that would be perfectly fine as far as like gameplay goes, right? So in 10 years where we're uh, let's say three expansions further along in retail Are we gonna be at the place where we want classic bfa? I mean, isn't that why we're at classic is because we don't want to walk down there I imagine there will be a demographic that wants that 12 years or whatever somebody. I know a lot of people I I don't like mop I I didn't like mop, but I know that a lot of people loved mop I think I think there would be people that want to play replay mop again or kata personally Would I play it? Hell no, but if that movement starts up, I would be like, yeah, hey, you should make it blizzard go ahead and make it I think I think it would be very very Uh, hypocritical if people seven years from now wanted Wanted kata or something classic cataclysm I think it would be very hypocritical for Like someone like me who has wanted classic for a long time people like us To to speak against it, right now. I just people can play it if they want I probably will not play it. I I don't really like cataclysm. I did not like cataclysm very much, right? Um, but I think it would be very hypocritical to to be speaking out against An older version of the game that other people would like to play and I don't Sure, so I think you kn