it's illegal. For another web show it has been six months since we've done a proper web show. Hello film fans it's been a little while hasn't it?  We didn't get the pleasure to meet him in person for life after the navigate but we did manage to interview him over the phone digitally. Thanks COVID. Edward Ice is today's guest on the web show. Tell us some of his credits. You may or may not know the name but you will know his work. He is production designer, illustrator, conceptual artist, storyboard artist for films such as Back to the Future 2, Hook, Flight of the Navigator, Ragnophobia, Captain EO with Michael Jackson. And some of the directors he's worked with, Spielberg for what? Zemeckis, Francis Ford Coppola, he's worked with George Lucas. So I mean you will know his work. You'll see some of his work in the interview so we won't dilly-dally. So excited to get the web show back and running. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Edward I. You've worked according to IMDB as production artist, conceptual artist, production illustrator. If I have that right, for someone who isn't familiar with those roles what does that mean that you do? Well yeah I had a very sort of wide range of titles in the film industry because number one the union often controls the titles under certain titles you can have. The other thing is I just sort of worked in a different function for a variety of different projects. So production designer obviously is sort of the overseer of the film fulfilling their director's grand vision I guess you could say. But the production designer controls the imagery for the film, the sets.  The biggest title you could have in the art department of a film. I've done concept design which is probably my favorite and most fulfilling role because you're just hired to sort of come up with ideas for the visuals for the film. Production designer has the overview. He'll often have several concept designers working particularly on a science fiction film.  If the director needs a spaceship he doesn't know what he wants it to look like. He gets well what if it looked like this and what if it looked like that and what if and it's to me that's where the real creativity happens because you're just sort of speculating about what could happen and trying to come up with something unique and original. I know when I worked in entertainment the big catchphrase was we need to do something that's never been seen before and even a flight of the navigator when I met Randall and he looked at my portfolio book you know I had done some sketches that were sort of star wars like and some typical sci-fi spaceships and his remark was yeah this is great and it showed him that I could draw and he said but we want to do something different and what can we do with a reflective spaceship and so it became this sculptural exercise and what if it looked like this and what if it looked like that. So that's a lot of what concept design is just filling in those what ifs. So I've done concept design I've done production illustrator which can be I mean that's a union coin term which back when I worked in the film industry met that you were hired to sometimes do storyboards sometimes do set illustrations but for me you know I'm a designer I have a design degree and it meant designing so it was kind of a misnomer because an illustrator is a person that sort of puts other person's ideas on paper and when you're a more of a designer you're actually coming up with ideas and creating the visuals. So there's all sorts of overlaps with those and then storyboards was probably that's what I did sort of like a filler when I couldn't get those design positions and it was still fun and it was still an education and I learned a lot about filmmaking working with some great directors doing storyboards I think that encompasses all the things on IMDB that I'm listed for. So you said that you did a design degree? I did yeah I studied industrial design in college and I was gearing to be a product designer basically you know the person who designs the phones and the luggage and you know anything so I was geared to design for mass production but my last couple semesters in school I saw what was going on in film with you know Star Wars and Joe Johnson who I'm sure you're familiar with who designed most of the Star Wars spaceships and then there's another great designer by the name of Sid Mead who just passed away last year who did designs for Blade Runner and you know so here I am with all my product portfolio thinking how fun would it be to work and entertainment to design you know aliens and spaceships and other planets and other technologies and so yeah I put together a sketchbook with hopes of getting in the industry and by a string of convenient chance meetings I ended up working in film about three months after I graduated. Was there one moment that was the turning point of a certain meeting or someone that you met that allowed you to get into the industry? So I had assembled this sci-fi sketch portfolio to supplement my product work and one of my professors knew the effects house that did the Star Wars, the first Star Wars films that was called Apogee they were in California. He connected me with them and I dropped my sketchbook off a few days later Randall came in discussing the options for them to do the effects for Flight and Navigator and they showed him my sketchbook and we met after that and sort of snowballed after that I was able to quit my full-time job at an industrial design firm and work in film which was really you know my dream. What did you design what were you responsible for on Flight and Navigator? I was initially hired to work on the spaceship and then it became the spaceship the creatures I did some storyboards with Randall, Max the main character of course so yeah pretty much all of the hardware and the robotic vehicle that Joey escapes in Ralph yeah Ralph you know I'm so designed Ralph so yeah all the hardware and characters and it was just a blast Randall's such a great guy to work with I couldn't have picked a better film or a better director to work with my first experience in Hollywood so and there were a few few characters that were I didn't design that were designed by either the effects house that did them or a there was another guy that worked on the film called Lane Liska who has also passed away he was an amazing sculptor so he did some of the characters too. So with movies it always feels like everyone's like trying to hit the schedule and the budget and do you feel any kind of pressure with maybe not just Flight and Navigator but other films you've worked on if you have tight deadlines how do you stay creative and inspired? Well I had the good fortune you know I worked on some pretty high-end films they had pretty decent budgets and the directors were well known so in that case there's still pressure and you still have to meet deadlines and you still have to come up with ideas the creative team or the director approves of so I think the lower budget projects I worked on and the projects that weren't quite as high profile are usually the ones that just required the long days sleep was a luxury and you're putting in long days and long hours so yeah the higher budget films it seems like there's enough padding and they create enough room in the pre-production schedule to enable you to get things done and then towards the end of pre-production you are sort of scrambling and sometimes you get called back in because I was usually the guy that got hired one of the first people and I'd sit down with the director who would just start hammering out the visuals for the film and then often the production designer came in after that after you know some of these elements were already designed and so when pre-production was done unless I was doing storyboards with the director there really was no need for me to hang around during production so I'd typically go on to the next project and you know there's very rare occasions when I was along for shooting or on the set when things were happening so what were those occasions oh let's see I did storyboards on the movie hook and I got called back a few times for that so I remember going to the sets and delivering storyboards the second project I worked on actually I was working on it simultaneously with Flight of Navigator was Captain EO the Michael Jackson theme park ride I would work on Navigator from I'd go to the studio early in the morning like 6 a.m. and I'd work to about three in the afternoon then I'd go home drive across town in LA and eat dinner and then I'd work from like six at night to about 11 doing storyboards for Captain EO and in that case I'd drive to the studio the next morning which is the same studio where they were shooting Navigator and I'd hand over the storyboards and usually the line producer was sitting there in his BMW waiting for me I'd drive in and hand him a stack of storyboards and he'd go right to Michael Jackson's house to review the storyboards so that one was great because they were shooting it while I was still working on Navigator and I was able to walk onto the set and see this amazing set Francis Ford Coppola directing Michael Jackson starring George Lucas producing you know it was a Disney project so you know the fact that I even got to work on it at all is just miraculous to me but it was a great project fun time and just being on the set and watching the dance routines and just watching the rehearsals and things I was working my butt off but it was joy I mean there's not a day that went by that I just just super excited to sit down and you know I was always excited to do that work and it was just you know dream come true Is there one role where you have more input than others presumably with a storyboard you have to work more closely with people or can you be left to your own devices what's your kind of collaboration process Different directors have different approaches so the best example is when I did storyboards with Steven Spielberg on a hook I'd sit down at a meeting with him for often you know sometimes these meetings were going for hours and he would sit down with a stack of eight and a half by eleven paper in front of him and he'd stare at it for a while with his he had this habit of sticking his pinky in his mouth and just stare at the paper and you could tell that the film was playing in his head and that it had already been shot in his head so he was just sort of adapting what was going on in his head and putting on paper so he'd draw a little smiley faces and stick figures that were basically saying okay we start with a close-up on hook and then we move to a wide shot here and then we go to a close-up here and then two shot here and just shot by shot in very crude little sketches showing me what was happening and I would just be sitting there feverishly taking notes and then I'd walk away with a stack of these drawings that he had done and I'd go back and clean them up and just make them more presentable so he was interesting because he knew down to the frame what he wanted on that screen the surprise for me is when I got hired to work on Captain EO I did some design work on that with the effects guys for a spaceship and things but I was primarily hired to do storyboards I was so excited because I thought you know when they told me we need you to do storyboards I thought oh my gosh working with Coppola what an education you know I can just understand how he thinks and how he directs the film and everything and it turns out the line producer handed me the script and said uh so go board it and I said well I don't need to meet him you know the the contrast is Steven seemed to know exactly everything he wanted and occasionally if I had a suggestion I could put it in there but it was you know and justifiably so I mean when you have a storyteller that caliber I'm not too inclined to say hey why don't you just change this shot right here but with Coppola you could tell that he used his storyboards more for like a springboard for ideas I'm in the position where I'm a very visual person obviously so if I read a script and it's written well it will sort of play in my head like a film and I can sort of the shots sort of happen the way they wouldn't have filmed so that's just what I did I sat down and um sketched out the shots the way I thought they'd be done if he liked the shot it was a shot that he thought would tell the story well he'd use it and if he didn't he just shoot it the way he wanted to or whatever the set parameters demanded same thing with design there are some directors like the George Lucas's and the um James Cameron's who just James Cameron's has a background as an illustrator Joe Johnson has a background as an industrial designer and they know pretty much visually you know they're very astute and they have a very clear preconceived notion of how they want to tell the story and what the imagery should be like and then there are um others who have a vague idea I mean the Randall was just chrome you know reflective on the inside reflective on the outside and it just wide you know it leaves a wide open for your own contribution and your own sort of ego investment in the film so that was a lot of fun too but um yeah it's just interesting to watch the way different directors directors work and the contrast between their their methods well for someone that wanted to start out designing luggage and and items of everyday life and then suddenly you're not even really too many years into your career and suddenly you've got Coppola and Randall and Zemeckis and I mean that's kind of amazingly intimidating and amazing and wonderful very much so and very mind-blowing for me because you know three months out of college when you're standing on a set with um Michael Jackson Coppola and George Lucas I'm thinking to myself I guess I must have done something right yeah and I can own the fact I worked really hard in college I put myself through school so I valued every day I was there and I just worked my butt off but the fact is I have one of those fortunate people that always knew from an early age that I wanted to be an artist I wanted to be in the visual arts in some way you know it began as wanting to be a disney animator like so many people in entertainment and then that gradually it just evolved and and there I was working on some great films but but interestingly enough I only worked in entertainment in Hollywood for about uh five years five really solid years and then I moved to New York ended up working for the Jim Henson company which is definitely a career highlighted a creative direction there for nine years almost 10 years well that was actually going to be my next question about Jim Henson what was that whole experience like what was your kind of day-to-day month-to-month role there I've always admired the guys work I mean I grew up on the Muppet show and just thought he was so brilliant the impact he had on our culture I know there was one year when he was always in the top hundred most influential people in our culture it was a time magazine list it would be impossible to estimate the impact he had with you know the Muppet show and Sesame Street and yeah it was a treat to work there but to answer your question what was my day like on a day-to-day basis that's what made it fascinating for me and that's why I stayed there so long is because every day was different like one day I'm designing a puppet the next day I'm designing a set the next day I'm designing a product there were so many companies that wanted to license the Muppet characters to put them on everything from lamps to key chains to underwear you know so you had to control the you know the quality of the puppets and make sure there's integrity to the designs and the things got translated into products at a you know a level that Jim would have approved and appreciated about I felt bad I never got to work with him because I started working there five years after he passed away it was just tragic because he was I mean you can't fill shoes like that that's the guy who he grew up with television I mean he started working in television when television was born he was doing puppet shows for a local news station in DC I think so yeah but to have some part in maintaining that legacy excuse me was just again privileged career highlight and loved every day of it obviously I mean you're just renowned for what you've worked on in film but when you were growing up what films do you remember having a really big influence on you I was an animation guy pretty much love cartoons I'm growing up on the old school cartoons like Popeye and Mighty Mouse and the Warner Brothers cartoons Disney movies just opened the door for me and then someone in high school my girlfriend bought me a art of Disney book I would pay for that book on a daily basis I was just so entranced and thought to myself God to make to sit around all day and make art like this you know these beautiful painting backgrounds and you know animating characters and things like that I just thought that just has to be a dream so that's sort of what got me going but in terms of films that's the odd part I worked in entertainment I got to work in these top films and I don't want to tell you I I'm not uh in fact I felt inadequate a lot of the times but I'm not a hardcore film guy I'm a designer and you know I get in these films and a lot of the other people in the art department will be talking about this director back in the 30s and this film and this shot in this film and most of those films I hadn't even seen I didn't know who the directors they were talking about and I just thought God should I be in this business because I'm really you know it's not about it's about creating really good design and so yeah that's why and that's how I got in those films I came to the table with a designer mentality and an ability to to take ideas from someone else's head and put them on paper or my head and put them on paper where a team could understand what was going on because you can have the best idea in your head you can be the the top director with the most clear vision in your head but if you can't relate it to the crew and the cameraman and the lighting guy and everybody else you're stuck so I made a career out of basically being a a visual translator I guess you call it and when it was my ideas and coming up an idea for a spaceship whatever it was sort of the purist in the sense of design were doing the what is and then communicating them and then when it was taking an idea from a director's head it was more like I often felt like a police sketch artist like so the alien he has a big head or he has a small sort of taking this descriptive aspects of this visual and creating a so you're taking something really abstract and you're making it something more concrete when I found out you worked on a rachnophobia I was very excited so what was your role on a rachnophobia and that was directed by Frank Marshall who is Steven Spielberg's producer as you may know and this is his first opportunity to direct the film himself not only did I do storyboards but I did a lot of design work too I helped design the spider talk about the star of the show and had to be designed did a lot of what ifs on what this spider could look like some of them are pretty fanciful and sort of fantasy they weren't real spiders and some of them are based on real spiders and the final spider design was more the work of Chris Wailas who's an amazing effects guy so that and then some set design I got to work with Jim Bissell who worked with him on several films including The Rocketeer and he was production designer and it became so can you design barn that was a sort of a main set in the film and so some of the set work some of the props and then when it came to storyboards it was just sort of often orchestrating like the basement where the big finale scene happens how do we put that set together and how can we leave room for the camera and choreograph this and so there's a whole lot of work just calculating how the film could be shot and again Frank Marshall became sort of the Coppola style where here's the script goes storyboard it and sometimes he had feedback and I'd changed the the boards but it was kind of fun because he was more open to what do you think you know how do you think this should be shot you mentioned Rocketeer you did some pretty iconic designs on that and that film was interesting because it was one of those films where you know when you're working on any project it's a crapshoot like any film I worked on you know when you're working with a director like Spielberg or Zemeckis you're pretty confident it's going to be a hit but you never know so when Rocketeer came up I read the script and I just thought oh my god this is going to be the next Indiana Jones this is such a cool film and it was based on a graphic novel by Dave Stevens a beautiful graphic novel so richly he wrote it and illustrated it and Disney optioned it to make this film and I just thought this is probably going to be the biggest film on my resume because it just had all the excitement and all the things that would make a good project but in this case it had modest box office success for a number of reasons I think was up against some tough pictures at the time when it was released but it's got this cult following now where there are just hundreds of people out there who are building the rocket packs and doing the costume and the film holds up it's you know it's old school effects not a whole lot of computer generated imagery in it it's sort of one of those films that it didn't have that peak box office hundred million dollar weekend of opening weekend but it's just sustained and it continues and there's always rumors of a a sequel so I worked on the rocket pack mostly because that was the star of the film the heart of the story in terms of it motivated all the characters performances in terms of everybody wanted the rocket pack so it had to be a convincing prop so I and probably did 50 iterations before we finally narrowed it down and it wasn't just me there was a another great legendary concept designer Ron Cobb and Joe Johnson of course had played a crucial part you know it's one of the props I'm most proud of in terms of it filled the role supposed to is convincing as a prop and it also reasonably accurate we had to do something that was accurate for the period which is late 30s but still look prototypical and innovative and cutting edge so I think ultimately it did all those things and that's probably why the film continues to maintain its audience out there you mentioned Zemeckis you worked on back to the future too that was interesting I've worked on back to the future too and oddly enough I never met him I always worked with the production designer it was me and about four or five other guys locked in a trailer we're in a trailer in the universal back lot and our assignment was just just to speculate about what life would be like in the far off distant future of 2015 and that for me was what I was born to do because I'm a geek about futuristic concepts and innovative materials pretty much having just graduated I knew what the advanced technologies were and what was speculated for a lot of the future technology and I was tasked with designing Marty McFly's condo in the future and some of the electronics and the props and we spent a lot of time designing communication devices for people in the future because we were speculating that everyone would have like a the equivalent of a smartwatch production designer thought well wouldn't it be great if everybody personalizes there so women might have like bangles and feathers and things hanging from theirs and men might be you know more stylized and things so I did a lot of a lot of time spent designing these wrist devices which you know if you look really closely you might see one in the film there's a scene where George McFly is in that upside down back brace device that I also designed and he's got one of the watch communicators on you can see it's got a little screen and so yeah that was back the future but never met Zemeckis um I think I was on the set once in uh town square in hill valley so I got to see that but did you get into 2015 and be solely disappointed or pleasantly surprised it's interesting because 2015 rolled around and I get an email from Newsweek magazine saying hey you worked on this film right they wanted to talk to me about the film but we got most of it right I mean the one thing that's pointed out most often is the fax machine where Marty McFly gets fired which I also designed that made it more futuristic but there's a scene in the kitchen and they're wearing these glasses that were you know hinted towards like a VR headset or augmented reality headset or google there was an article online recently about how google glass is so close to what was in back to the future yeah the big screen tv didn't exist back then the big screen tv that Marty gets fired on from his boss just the fact that we got enough right to make it believable and I'm gonna tell you when any filmmaker starts predicting about the future you're taking a big chance and if you ask me to work on like a back to the future for now or I speculated about what life would be like 20 years in the future from 2021 it would just I can't imagine because the way things are changing now it's just exponentially more dramatic than it was back in the 80s so I'm sure that two or three years from now there'd be a technology that no one saw coming that might change the whole face of everything all your sketches design storyboards do you keep everything are they in museums yeah with the exception of a few studios I made a point of having something in my deal memo that said I kept the originals because I had the good the good sense to know that there might be some value to them and I just wanted to keep them for my own personal archives so I did and a few projects like Captain EO the originals were signed off to Disney because you were sort of a work for a higher person when you worked for Disney so yeah but for the most part I've managed to maintain a pretty a pretty good archive of the work I did and over the past few years I've sold most of them most of the portfolios including Navigator and Back to the Future and Hook and the Rocketeer were bought by the Hollywood Art Museum as part of their permanent collection. Was your move to teaching an easy decision to do and is that what you do full-time now? Design is my first passion and teaching has always been my second so when I graduated and they asked me to come back and teach I was I was delighted to although it became hard to schedule it so I ended up teaching on a Saturday but yeah I love teaching and I love the idea of giving back and the most satisfying part is when you see a student's work go from there to there and you know the students that I taught that got jobs not because I taught them everything but because you know they went on to work in entertainment some of them acknowledging the fact that they were inspired by the work I did is that's a big payoff so yeah and teaching right now you know I've got a family and the economy just got sort of weird and the work I was doing between sculpture and consulting work you know when you're single you can tolerate the ups and downs but when you're when you have a family it's sort of compels you to have something more stable and teaching is that but I still you know I only teach half the year and the other half I still do consulting I still do sculpture and I still do my own artwork.  Don't lose touch with your own voice. When you get caught up in the industry and the projects go from one to the next it's easy just to lose touch with your own values and the things that are important to you and if you're not paying attention life takes over and those things kind of fall to the wayside so that's a tough one but I think it really is just important to keep in touch with your own vision. And final question do you feel like teaching and sculpture and your own artwork is your path now?  I'm keeping everything open and when those opportunities come and you know you have to turn down that really great film part of me says boy I'm not sure how long I can turn these things down whether they're good so yeah I'm keeping it open for now I'm very I'm very pleased I'm teaching at a great school and I really enjoy the process and I often wish that just the teaching part is the most fun being in the classroom where the students are teaching virtually is equally as engaging and working with young people is always you know exciting and helping them get to the next level but the part that comes with it the administrative part and the grading and the evaluations and all that stuff it's like any job I mean there's a creative part and then there's a more managerial administrative part that probably takes up more time but it's all it's all good and I feel fortunate that I'm now at that perfect balance where I I do design, I do sculpture, I teach, I still sketch for my own gratification and draw for myself and yeah and I learn which is also a big thing for me so to teach that innovation class I have to stay up on what the latest technologies are and to teach anything these days you better be willing to keep re-educating yourself because there's always some new software program and there's some new implications I'm sure you've seen what's going on with virtual sets and virtual productions which is just you know that's some of the most exciting stuff ever and it really makes me wish you know when I saw the Mandalorian and the capabilities of the imaginative visuals that you can do with virtual sets so affordably and so simply without all the post-production I just wanted to do over like you know let me go back to Hollywood now I would love to you know come up with things that are you know because before it would you design something and then there would be drafted and then they would build it and it would just go on for months and then they'd shoot it and rip it all down and throw it away but now you can come up with an idea build it in the computer the same day and go on a set and have this beautiful landscape or another planet or a set all probably not that fast for some of it but the gratification and the the ability to control the imagery and change things to a point where well I'm sure you don't want to go into all virtual production lecture but it's pretty it's pretty amazing and yeah I'm even more excited for students getting out now because the opportunities for creativity and remarkable visuals is just better than it's ever been. Fingers crossed that you do get to share your talents on the screen once more really appreciate you taking the time this has been a long time coming so I'm so excited that we could finally sit down and do this and I just I'm so inspired by you and your career and your talents and just a talent I wish I had but don't so thank you so much for taking the time today I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure and you've got to get to Savannah we've got to do this live next time.  My stick figures always look like this because I could never draw arms down by the side. Like me after Christmas my stick figure. Well we're excited for 2022 happy new year everybody I don't know when this will go out but around new year. Hope you have a wonderful new year and please subscribe so you can see all the wonderful interviews that will be coming your way in 2022. Until next time!


ow in the spirit of classic Um, I think The idea is we want to create a thing that we can play that we love back in the day and then expand upon that And not make remake the same mistakes moving forward. I think for a lot of us That would be the dream, right? Um, not for everyone, of course, some people are gonna want like you say they're gonna want all the expansions as it was No changes right down the line Um, but I think a lot of people want You know the next steps to be essentially You know new content because it's It's the same content but with new philosophy that has changes the context of what we do so Yeah It's wasn't in a really difficult You know place because they're gonna have a lot of different people saying a lot of different things about how to move forward Yeah, like the problem is a lot of things that we and we're all in the same mindset We're classic boys vanilla guys, right? A lot of people Wouldn't consider the things to be like we consider for example flying or achievements, etc Whatever things that we don't like can consider be mistakes a lot of people that might be their favorite part of wow And they might be they might be eagerly awaiting classic graph because they want to redo the original achievements and stuff like that so I don't know like I I don't want my desires or my gameplay interests to Motivate whether or not other people Get their favorite version of the game because for a long time for six seven years when I was playing private servers And vanilla wow was you couldn't very classic. I couldn't get it and people people were shouting it down There was the wall of no I was told that my interest was illegitimate a waste of time No one cared about it. So I don't want to be that same guy that's shouting out other people's interests, right? It just let him have it like it doesn't and that's why you know classic plus any kind of idea we discuss is difficult because You know, I think any consensus that can be achieved It's it's easiest to to achieve for classic vanilla But every expansion after that is a much bigger ask because a lot of people are going to be like A lot more people than you know Because look look at just the force of the no changes crowd, right? It's like we could do all these things with classic Well, we could have a shiny new interface. We could put in dungeon finder We could let you fly around, you know, and it's like Well, I love flying around. I love dungeon finder, you know, like for all the people that are like those are those are great You know, so put them in you know, and it's like yeah, but there's just been an overpowering voice of no changes because You know that that's kind of the big consensus Generally speaking, but that consensus is going to start to fall apart Right once you start talking about tbc And it's even worse and worse and worse as you progress So it can do a lot of these things, but will they you know, like will they feel it's Worth it, you know, because it's like they're going to have to pick a group that they want to appease and it's going to be You know at best in my mind like a 20 of the population kind of group Yeah, I mean no matter what it's going to be interesting, you know once people Once once it's phase six of classic wow, you know two years from now people are clearing knacks, etc People are are done right with vanilla. Wow. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what do people want Do they want to play it again? Do they want new content for vanilla in this similar development mindset as you mentioned? Do they want do they want tbc? I would guess Yeah, I would guess probably tbc. I think blizzard will probably go with tbc I think that's like already there. It's such an easy. It's such an easy ask for them. I think yeah, it's a layup I think the second you you ask people what you know the design philosophies of classic are That's like your first that's the first point of contention that will arise And I think that's the problem with classic plus content. What are the design philosophies of vanilla? I think a lot of us are starting to understand them more now than we did You know a few years ago and a few years before that But at the end of the day, you know, what is the vanilla experience to each and every individual? That varies whereas tbc and wrath are already there and i'm actually not sure if you saw this kevin, but A couple of weeks ago both gialin brack gialin brack did an interview with forbes magazine a couple of weeks ago Where he kind of indirectly said they're they're already working on it to a certain extent Or at least the conversations are beginning with that and john height the executive producer of world of warcraft I did an interview with him about a month ago and he said they're very open to the idea of working on tbc and wrath So I actually you know you mentioned your three scenarios that you think that you would like to see I would say two of those are probably already in development and the first one is you know tbc and wrath or some continuation of classic And I think the second one Is that you know new mmo's being developed? I actually had a conversation with a pretty A pretty high-ranking person that a pretty prominent developer And I don't want to say his name because i'm not sure if he's okay with it But there's discussions at his studio about creating an mmo and these discussions were not taking place You know three four months ago, so I mean it's just it's one developer. It's a one-off thing Maybe the conversation goes nowhere, but the fact that people are talking about this genre again Is just incredible and I think it it speaks to hopefully what's to come And then the release and the success of classic is going to push that forward even further I have a couple things to say Uh One I do agree. I think I think classic tbc is going to be like a layup I think that's something that is very natural that the people would enjoy That a lot of people do want to see classic tbc. I think that'd be great I do think that like a classic plus Could be something that is really really cool. It could even be amazing But I don't think it should happen over burning crusade I think that burning crusades should be the first thing on the table and then maybe After like a cycle of classic whatever it's like, okay, you know what we're going to do a classic plus And we're going to release grim tol. We're going to release The original 40 man version of kerosene and we're going to open up the caverns of time. We're going to Have hygel in the game somehow. We're going to have gilneas open up Like there's so many things like you can literally open up the wow map and there's so many Yeah places that you can you just can't click on like there's a lot of stuff to do there I just I don't think that you should do that over burning crusade. That's the only thing is I think if they're going to do a classic plus thing It would have to be something that they haven't done in retail well yet So like like grim tol that was a cat a dungeon, right a lot of stuff Well, it would be totally different, right? What that's a that's a whole new design team by the way And now they're suddenly they're running to mmo simultaneously, which is that's true. That is true It's it's a lot of work. I think they specifically said they don't want to do I think there's an energy on bracket blizzcon. Yeah, where he said specifically we don't want to run to mmo's he said that a while back like He said a few things But yeah, I mean things change obviously if classical 10 mil subscribers, they're gonna do some stuff, right? Like They're not gonna go. Yeah, that was cute. Whatever, you know, like that's a lot of that's a lot of people saying a lot of money Well, I I guess let me ask you this Kevin if they're gonna do like if they're gonna do classic plus content, what's the first thing you would like to see in your opinion? Uh, if they're gonna do classic plus, um, I would like to see you do stuff honestly because that's to me like But like is is there is there some dungeon or raid or theme that you would like to see? I guess is what I'm asking Oh, no, I'm pretty I'm pretty open. Okay impartial when it comes to just something new like Cuz because here's the thing I want I want something brand new that I have no expectations on Like people say oh open up carousel and it's like, okay Well, you're you're coming in with expectations on how that's gonna look You know what the interior is right like right the bosses that are in there You know, like well, ultimately I want something brand new to explore That nobody's ever seen that we can all get super pumped and excited Well, I will say this I do think specifically with carousel Uh Because whenever we're talking to john we're talking to john stats He said that I think there was like three different versions of carousel And it was like they had two different versions that that you guys scrapped I guess like during the development of the game Like I think it'd be cool to see the older like the version that's never before been seen Right, or maybe doing something with like the the carousel crips, right? Like I think doing something with that I can't help but think of like directors cuts of movies. Yeah, that's basically yeah Those scenes were actually deleted for a good reason Oh, that doesn't work at all. Let's wrap it Oh, yeah cutting room floor, right? It's like sometimes it belongs there But yeah, ultimately I'd like to see new stuff, you know, that we just have no idea You know, we get to be surprised and go exploring like that's the power to me of a brand new um Is, you know, again something that we can just dive into with no knowledge of and Just, you know, go crazy tear it apart Right. Yeah. And like I said, I think that's something that In my opinion, that should probably be something that comes after a classic tbc or something or at least after that that's in the works and Something else to consider is you are going to have to make classic fresh servers, right? And that that's kind of like a whole another discussion, right? Like otherwise probably just going to go back to play private servers again Yeah, exactly I do want to get to more questions Yeah, like seasons. So, yeah Okay, okay, we got going we got to keep going people talk about like seasons and like a ladder server or stuff like that I I think people are like trying to draw from like Diablo or like kind of poe like those types of games do that kind of stuff um It wouldn't necessarily work the same way with wow, but it would be like Roughly a two-year cycle in which all the patches occur and then there's enough time after the next patch Before and you said a fresh service come out, right? And like fresh is like its own its own meme, right? Like It's like its own thing on its own. It's the whole thing on its own, but um But yeah, I do think that's something that should happen I don't necessarily think like I think whenever people start talking about ladders and seasons and stuff like that I think that it kind of I think that's kind of confusing At least for me anyway, I'm like, well just fresh server just kind of makes the most sense Yeah, it's it's it's interesting that Like I'd be really curious to know what percentage of people like private servers for that kind of season layout Because my initial reaction is the last thing wow needs is more diablo elements, right? Right While being diabolified is why we're in the state you know like But I I understand that that's the way a lot of private server people have been playing And they get a big kick out of it, you know, like racing To see, you know to rerun the world first race essentially Um Because they want a second chance at it, right? So I I definitely understand that audience Um, but I'm curious what percentage of the audience is that mindset because a lot of us Like I think by the time nax comes out There's going to be a lot of people in classic that still aren't through bwl or yep, you know It's just like they might still be leveling. All right, so Um You know again, it's like that they don't care about seasons. They don't you know, that doesn't impact them at all They don't even understand it, right? So But there is an audience that does but I just have no I don't have my finger Also, how many people love that season? Yep, or first servers or whatever Yeah, yeah, there's an interesting line like I Here's here's the thing with like classic wow the second they stop offering classic wow And I think they never should stop offering but if they do People go right back to private servers and now private servers are of a higher quality because they can data mine and pull values from classic Wow and make the private so Blizzard I hope they know they can't they can't ever stop offering classic Otherwise people are back on private servers now if you're doing like on I think classic on a two-year cycle or two and a half your cycle It's probably the way to go if you're offering like a new like seasonal classic server every six months or something I think you run the risk of taking the fun of like you at that point the focus of classic Is the content and speedrunning content rather than the community and I think you will I think for most people That's why people play classic I think you'll turn those people away those community players away from from the seasonal classic servers I I'm very curious like you said I I don't know and I don't think anyone knows right now How successful those like maybe shorter lifespan seasonal servers would be I remember a long time ago when I was playing private servers a lot I thought it would be a really cool idea. I actually had the same idea pretty much It would be like maybe an eight month vanilla server like where the content is being released very very quickly Maybe like one rate each month or something. I think that would be a lot of fun It would be a really fun experiment But at that point the focus is not as much community and more on the content and speedrunning itself And leveling fast. I don't know it would it would be an interesting experiment. I mean speedrunning is You know very different than the wow experience intended, you know, right the way it says nothing Content call it quits. It's about, you know, again about interacting with everyone around you um, so You know serving that community even though there is one it's a very conscious choice to You know separate that group out from the rest of the people that want to experience classic and everything it entails So they can engage in this kind of persistent community based experience. So Um, which I'm not saying they shouldn't do but it shouldn't come at the cost of anything going on You know everyone else playing classic Yeah, I think that um I think that it ends up like you muddy the waters a lot like whenever you you there's like so many different branches of doing this and that Uh, the the hope would be and in states. I mentioned this earlier That you really only need one server, right? You only need one server for it to be like a healthy game environment But the hope would be that enough people would be playing and maybe like getting added into the overall player base that works out so Yeah, because i'm trying to imagine the speedrunner Like you know server, right that just refreshes and gives everyone a new chance. You know, it's like Is there any sense of community? Is there like Is the population so low and so determined to just be saying, you know, but you're like talking I'll just execute it. It's like That doesn't sound like you know that that's fun for people participating, but it doesn't sound like That Right yeah, I think um I think the whole speedrunning thing like it's just different people are into different things So like for me like that's not like the kind of guild that I would want to run But I totally like I totally respect all that, right? Um, so it's just a question of what is blizzard, you know How many different groups does blizzard want to satisfy? Do they want to satisfy an esports group? Do they want to satisfy a speedrunning group? Do they want to satisfy? You know us stay the same way forever group And in classic plus there's a million different versions of that think Yeah, with the whole esports satisfying esports people, you know I think with dual tournaments and I had a dual tournament on the on the demo and I'm planning on having a dual tournament on the beta With dual tournaments that is sort of bringing esports into classic wow And with the whole like dual tournament griefing situation it comes down to is there Is it reasonable to expect to have a dual tournament on a pvp server or pve server really without being griefed? is that a reasonable expectation and Honestly, I think no I think that is that that that's inherent to vanilla wow that can happen other players should not be punished for doing that um Now I personally think it would be cool to have at the end of each phase or so like, you know every couple months to have A tournament server that's brought up for two or three weeks I think that'd be cool where people could do stuff like this They could have their pre-mades they could have They could have their dual tournaments. I think it'd be cool. Are they going to do that? Are they going to try to cater to to a classical esports crowd? I don't know. Is it worth doing? I don't know. I think it'd be cool, but yeah, I'm not sure but Are they going to set it up like minecraft? server Yeah, everyone just jumps in and plays whatever their flavor is Yeah, it's actually really interesting because blizzard heavily invest in the esports a couple of years back They actually purchased the mlg streaming platform And they went all in and it's only recently that they've kind of started to divest a bit Obviously they canceled their heroes of the storm esports support. I think and recently they had some layoffs in their esports departments It's interesting because vanilla wow is not the first game that comes to mind when you think of esports or tournaments or anything like that But dueling in particular. I don't know what it is about it. There's something There's something there and Whether or not they want to decide to support it with like tournament realms every once in a while I don't like the idea of force of forcing esports on everything or anything like that, but I don't know. It's it's just an interesting question to ask people people obviously like watching it, right? And if people there's obviously a Large amount of people who enjoy watching vanilla wow pvp Do they understand it all the time? No, they don't right, but it's at least easy to watch Yeah, but like they like at least people want to watch right and it's it's something that you can look at even as somebody I have a lot of people right I don't have the all the same people who used to watch my channel whenever I was doing iRL and variety stuff But I have a lot of people who are watching my classic streams who They started watching me whenever I was doing more iRL variety just chatting all that sort of stuff, right? And they I don't know anything about wow, but it's a very easy game to watch And they said they've tried watching retail wow before and there's so many just Like huge numbers lasers are flying all over the place There's so much going on the screen and they're like I can't watch this like I literally can't like but I watch your character You attack and I hear tink. Oh he parried it says parry great dodge Like it's easy to watch like it's it's a very like It's a very intuitive viewing experience right even if you don't understand like the nuance of what everybody's doing Each like each button they press each step they take even if you don't understand the nuance to it It's a very good viewing experience So I I don't know I think like I do think that there's obviously like a large amount of people that want to watch it We've seen the numbers right like we've seen like doing tournaments do very well For classic right whether we were doing the level 19 tournaments or whether You know like tips did the horde tournament. We're going to do an alliance tournament coming up sometime soon Yeah, so I don't know I think there's definitely like a a For for lack of a better word like a market of people that want to watch that right There's there's a community of people that want to watch duels and pupae and pre-made versus pre-made battlegrounds Like you see it all the time like the streamers will go in and like they'll they'll have their group and They might queue with like two or three people and then they go up against another group that might have a pre-made Okay, let's get our pre-made together and then they get in voice and then they beat them Okay, now we got to get in voice So people love watching this pre-made versus pre-made go back and forth too. So I don't know. I think it's cool, right? I do let me ask you guys this I want to know what you guys and also chat I guess Is watching a vanilla wow duel tournament sort of like watching a NASCAR race where you hope that a car explodes Where you hope that there is griefing like are people sitting there hoping that something goes wrong And if someone crashes the tournament is that part of Yeah, I think it's a part of everything. I think that might play in a little bit Honestly, you know what it is people want to see their favorite streamers clash I think that's really what it comes down to yeah Like you hear soda pop and an asthma are doing something on stream. They're about to fight each other Dude, I find myself tuning it. You know what I mean On top but but then I think about the first dueling tournaments Stay safe like the first ones we did like I can't remember at the time Did we have any big streamers involved like I don't think I don't think as it was as been evolved or soda or any It was basically just the community and those were still highly watched too. So who knows, you know Yeah, I think it's just fun. It's fun to watch and you know, what's good a lot of people and this is one of those things that Uh, you're starting to see like, okay, these are the list of there's like a long list of things Or maybe let's just say a list of things that maybe like the the retail guys The the guys who were big peepiers and retail wow like oh, I don't I'm not really interested in classic because there's no rating There's no this just know that right like you can't point to a rating and be like, hey check my rating Like I'm the best look at that number, right? So I actually think that not having that And and leaving like who's the best at this who's the best at that up to interpretation Actually makes it so much more interesting because the discussion doesn't end Can it get tired? Can it get can it get boring like just like talking about the same thing This is the worst, you know, it's just like you can't just before dudes talking smack about who's right You know, we can all just go to the find out exactly right exactly exactly so like Right, so like you can it's cool to see like there's discussion. Oh, I think So-and-so is the best warrior because of this. I think so-and-so is the best mage because of this Um, yeah, like I just I think it's interesting, right? I think it's cool because there's discussion there There's there's involvement. There's more people interacting with each other. I like that. I think it's great So I don't have a phone that was that was a problem. Okay.  I mean, he's a professional boxer. Are you to do it honestly? Dude, are you kidding me? And I lost it, okay, but I thought listen man the odds were one to five I could have walked with 250 man. I took the risk. I thought he was gonna win Honestly, it turns out he didn't but anyway, I'll let you can make it Well, I mean, I I think a lot of people knew that it wasn't going to be like the highest form of you know Boxing competition in the sense that one of them is obviously an MMA fighter One of them is a professional boxer So it's not like you're getting, you know, the two best in their primes going at it But it was still the most successful pay-per-view of all time because their personalities Connor obviously very outgoing very eccentric big personality Same goes with floyd in the boxing world and people just wanted to watch them clash Same goes with what are those two youtubers that fought recently logan paul and ksi Right, that's that's sold how many million pay-per-views like it sold millions Dude, neither of them are professionals neither of them are boxers But people want to watch people they like fight sometimes and that's only the highest rated highest most successful Absolutely, which is you because the next one hasn't come out yet. The next one is actually the u.s Marine Corps versus three trillion lion It's going to be one through. Yes. Wow. Yeah, it's going to be pretty impressive Yeah So, I think we should we should get a sweaty jill. What's up? I said, you know what's coming up before the bid ends the s1 versus stacey a free match We're going to hype it up. We're going to plan it out. I have a doctor's appointment Whenever that's going to be scheduled. I'll have one. Oh, actually same. I just remembered same. Yeah. Yeah That's probably what's going to happen Yeah, so guys we're going to take a few more questions We're going to take a few more questions. We'll take some questions out of chat I was taking questions off twitter But we're going to take a few more questions out of chat here before we we call it We've kind of we kind of got stuck on a couple questions because whenever whenever we get together we talk a lot We're we're talkers. This is kind of how it goes so What's Kevin's favorite zone or instance No, you can't Don't or instance You know, I go back to this one a lot. It's not my favorite. I have so many better but From as a game designer I was always really impressed with less fall Because less fall is On paper a super sleepy zone. Okay.  Right next to it is the spooky, you know dust wood and it's just like, okay. That's something I could work right That's gonna automatically awesome. But the job that matt sanders did that sanders the creator of that captain sanders, you know that Uh, you're cutting out a little bit by the way. I don't know. Sorry but uh Westfall to me is one that Really demonstrates the quality of the level designer Uh, because it's on paper. It's such a sleepy zone But in in in practice, it's that zone is amazing It looks amazing. It's super fun to play in It's got all kinds of great elements It's just such a great example of how You know the the level designers on the team took simple concepts and hit them So I love that zone Kevin. I disagree with everything you just said Literally everything you just said I 100% disagree. That's why you're Yeah, you know what that's okay. We can disagree Yeah, I um I'm calling matt sanders.  Yeah Yeah, well very close to zero Mm-hmm. Uh, let's see next question. Uh Let's see guys. Yeah, we are we're still doing q&a for a little bit. So we're taking some questions out of chat Uh Is a good one Did they forget to add simple stuff like a prop paladins taunt? Or other class breaking stuff or was it on purpose? Uh, we've talked about this before do you do you want to do you want to go into it? Kevin I'm sorry. I missed the question. What did they like why did they not add like prop paladin taunt? For example, why did you why did you guys not have a prop paladin? Because we wanted it to be different from the other the other taunt And I didn't have the tech yet to make the taunt I want so word taunt is about Being intimidating insulting the monster's mother or whatever direct Paladins is more about protecting Casted on a friend. I'm gonna protect a friend It's gonna get you know, it's gonna play a different way. So And I didn't have the tech to make all those things work until later on so and I knew that if I gave them just a standard taunt You can't go back On that and give them something else because they're used to that they like that And they're gonna complain. So I held out and uh made sure I you know kept the the Philosophy alive then each class plays different and does things there so So what what was your ideal taunt and what would that have looked like for paladins for prop allies? uh I can't remember what it's called but the one you cast on a friend and If they're if they have aggro On anything then it transfers to you essentially. So it's also a better aoe time Because it's not one round the target. I mean it's grabbing all the things that That friend has aggro and so And again, that feels more like I'm protecting a guy Right my spells on friends Yeah, I certainly think like uh the way that the the paladin taunt that was added in burning crusade I think it was cool and people made macros to where it was like target of target Righteous defense Yeah, which is how it is But like like we talked about earlier like the the original design of the game was there's so many like rpg elements to it Right, uh, there's so many rpg elements to it. There's so much more Uh, it's not as much like I guess like hyper optimized, right? Or everything's just like this is this this is this People know from my stream that I'm big on the thematics, you know, I I love it when thematics and design Caned in hand, you know Yeah, everything just makes it Yeah, I think it's cool like it makes the game like you can get more into the game Like you're it makes the characters more special makes the the class is more special whenever they're different um Where I mean, I feel like again Like I don't like to go like dump on retail.  Everybody has a two minute dps cool down or whatever it is Um, it's just everything is just so similar, right? Um, and you can't justify You know mechanical ideas, right when you go back and try to add the flavor on top of it You can usually find a way but um, I think a lot of those ways end up feeling awkward.  Okay, that doesn't sound So there you go. He's got to heal Right healing shout there we go. There you go. There it is everybody can heal Like I remember I think this was in cataclysm like warriors could heal so much Actually, like every class could heal a ton in cataclysm, but they it would be like, oh, it's a self-heal, right? Everybody was very like heavily self sustained like rogues had recuperate and it was just like dude come on like Like like recuperate vanish and it's like full health and come back and reopen on me.  Somebody keeps mentioning this. Let me see if I can find it. It's about like I just want to clarify should spam sheeping targets to prevent a player from killing something be banable or fun and games Uh, so you can't even do it. They like that's something from private servers Mucho if a target's tapped you can't do that now As a warlock I can banish someone else's elemental or demon that they're killing So I actually have on the beta run around and grief people and done that Uh warriors trying to get their uh, rolandax. I've sat out there before and just banished And I think it's really funny And I'm surprised at the double standard actually that you can't do it with poly, but you can do it with banish It's quite interesting. Um, but hey, that's that's what it is um Yeah, it's funny because like The way the sheep was designed was that not get an initial tick to prevent that behavior from actually being Right, you know, you wouldn't heal until a couple seconds after so all you had to do was hit him And it would break the sheep and you'd be on your way. So it would just be a waste of man age um But things changed over time and they started getting Initial tick ticks started coming fast to heal them up. And so that became a thing we had to worry about but Um, it puts you in this weird case because it's like there are legitimate cases You want a sheep a guy that you know, the guy's running away from Save them You're cutting out again, you're cutting out again, you know Sorry, um The banish thing is the same place. It's like there are legitimate You know times where you're trying to save someone banish And you want to allow for those things to Again, it's like in the in the interest of not creating utopia, you know, allow those Kind of the world is better for right Um, this isn't a good question. Um I'm a game designer myself and I have no doubt that the designers had a vision for each class Uh, which class was the hardest to reconciliate vision in concrete design? Oh, that's an interesting question. Um I can say that you know paladin threaded in specifically failed to Can you try can you try pulling your mic up? Maybe a little bit? I don't know for whatever reason it's too, sorry How's that? Should be good Um, yeah, so rep paladin to make sure everyone Oh, yeah, it's it's like getting worse now.  I am not the game developer. I was reading it out All right, how's that? Uh, yeah, that should be good. All right. Um, yeah, so Uh, the rep paladin I think failed to live up to the class fantasy. So that was difficult Because I didn't expect it was going to fail to live up to as fancy as as much as it did In general I it's so funny like people ask me what's the hardest but I loved working on all of them so much that it was such a you know, uh work of passion, you know that I didn't mind when they had problems. They were all just new puzzles to solve, right? And so every little problem and that and that's all I did over time to see their flaws And so but I was excited to dive back in and try to solve these problems and getting them just a little bit better. So Um, But you know making the druid, you know the original hybrid idea work Uh, we found to be near impossible Uh, ret ret paladins fulfilling the fantasy of hammer swinging healing support guy Didn't work out as well as we thought Uh, the hunter was difficult Time consuming in a time consuming way because every new zone met new beasts, which meant all kinds of new playable Fun unique pets. So he was like doing two classes every time we expanded So there were a lot of little things that were time consuming or tricky, but I just love working on it so much that I didn't mind it Nice This is this is one of those things where A lot of people keep people keep reading this up, right? They're talking about the I've seen this like five or six times people talking about like the torrent hitbox Um, right because it's something I'm like, I guess on private servers They didn't have it where the torrent hitbox was was the Uh, was like I think they said it's like two yards bigger Did this factor into any like design design yeah design decisions When I came to like class design and Oh with torrents right like torrent hunters for example in their dead zone Uh No, it didn't impact Um, the design choices we made but we were trying to make the game feel right to look right to play You know in a way that was consistent with You know the difference in size between gnomes and torrent, you know But a lot of that stuff is Contrary to what you want from like A design experience in terms of fairness like PvP is really difficult to allow You know torrent To have extra range, you know just because of their size It's like you kind of expect that from a realistic point of view, but You don't want everyone going torrent because of it or you know, certain race class combinations being the only thing You can choose because of that, you know kind of thing so It was always a tricky thing to work with trying to solve both realism and feeling good and You know the fairness or design balance of what people expect Okay Well guys, um We're gonna take just maybe just want to do more questions. We've been going for for a good while now Longer longer than we had initially planned Um But yeah, we'll be taking maybe just one or two more questions If you guys have anything else we can we can do that after the stream guys Tips will be going live. I'll be I'll be hosting tips Um Of course, I actually will will not be going live went a little bit over. Um, so I gotta head out So, okay. Okay. So tips will not be going live Um Stays if you're not going live No, I'm gonna take evening off. So I guess it'll be Kevin. You're not going live either. Are you? No, I'm not. Yeah, so promise life All right So but but yeah, we'll we'll figure that out in a second. Um Yeah, either way, we're gonna take a few more questions. Uh, and then and then we'll we'll go from there. So um What is okay, so Kevin, what is your most fond memory as a faceless player? Like whatever you're playing the game like what yeah What was the game experience like for you playing the game? Like did you just did you play with other devs? Did you just kind of like do your own thing and nobody knew who you were? Um, I did both of those. Yeah, I did grade a lot. Um, there were two reasons for that one We had tons of people rating tons of people with rate experience and and most of the office Was especially amongst the game design team. We're all pretty hardcore gamers So those guys were rating constantly those guys were pushing the envelope a fair number of them were in progression gills and other games All right, so that so they just carried on Um, and I felt you know, just as I felt with the red paladin I need to get in there and make sure I understood the day to day experience. I also felt I needed to understand the leveling and the solo sort of experience to make sure that was really helpful healthy in terms of playing So I did that a lot of the time. Also, my kids were starting to be born. So it was Easier for me to you know, not commit to you know, longer experiences, right? So I'd have a half an hour here and you know or or two hours here. And so It was easier for me to solo most of the time. So I did a lot of soloing and But there were a lot of nights early on especially where I would hook up with other devs from the you know team and we'd run through various dungeons But yeah for the most part it was I don't think anybody ever knew who I was So it was very anonymous and it was very fun just to watch people You know experience the game interact with the world And have no idea, you know that I was who I was. Yeah And talk trash about their class or other people's classes or whatever it was, you know anything about the game that they didn't like But it honestly like again most of the experiences were good like most people were just having such a fun time that It was just it was just fun to be next to that to draw inspiration from and get excited about the next day's work and everything going on so Good times night of last Okay, great and here's a here's something else somebody else asked earlier and I and and we'll finish it up with a fun one If you had to say what your favorite ability was to design amongst all the classes, what would you say your favorite ability was? That might be a tough one Yeah, it's bubble heart one ability or that's a good question I I would say bubble hearth Was that intended was? Um No, well Yeah, we knew it would happen right But it wasn't like uh, it's not like we'd set out to make that happen. Right wasn't like on a list somewhere. Make sure the palette So Is gonna have divine shield. We knew we were gonna have our stones, you know, so They go together like chocolate and peanut butter, so Chocolate peanut butter and balance But uh, yeah, some other highlights. I love all the movement powers, especially they're just they feel so good charge Blank, um, you know things like that. Those all felt really good Polymorph, I thought was a great spell in terms of um You know a lot other games that had crowd control But there was no visual representation other than maybe some z's over the head or you remember like the dark age of camel at z's Right. Yeah the mess. Yeah But polymorph was just so perfect at telling everyone. Hey, this is a sheep. Don't hit it, right? It was just so clear. This is not the thing you're supposed to be hitting, right? So Right. I love that about it. Um Stealth I thought, you know, I like I'm a big fan of stealth mechanics and these kinds of games and Obviously, there's a lot of you know variation on that, but it felt really good Uh, we did a lot of tuning on how it felt to sneak around and how dangerous it was times and That one just felt really good. So I like that one a lot too Uh, what else? Um I do love dots. They're very very unique in their feeling Uh, so warlock class, you know having tons of dots was um, I don't have a particular favorite But I just love the dot mechanic that uh, you're already dead and you don't know that type of thing. Um Is really cool What else? The shape-shifting I thought turned out really well on druids You know, we just kind of a lot of a lot of games had you could turn into this one animal, you know once in a while Um with a visual change, but we really went crazy with the different forms and the different roles they could all feel so Um, that one turned out really well too All right, let's say I thought you guys did such a good job with warlocks in particular like like The the infernal spell the enslaved demon spell That requires it actually go out and slave a demon Like I distinctly have memories of that from back in vanilla like enslaving an infernal for the first time Especially coming from warcraft 3 where infernals were kind of It was in the cinematic and it was kind of big part of the game with arkham on something and stuff so it was like In general, I think you guys hit the warlock class in particular like just hit the nail on the head 100% Yeah, yeah, and that's true enslave and mind control are both in that category as well like Every time you give players a tool like that To take the world and the context within the world and be super creative with it is always a good time and then the pvp You know Use as a line control obviously never fail to disappoint. So That's another great one Wasn't wasn't warlock. I don't this is true. I heard this rumor wasn't warlock the last class You guys ended up coming up with or adding to classic wow. It was like the the last classic Yeah, we knew we wanted what I always call the free class Which is like a class that no other games has done in terms of its its look and it's You know thematic and because no one had really done warlock, you know They've done necromancer never quest that was their free class and we were like Well, we can't just do necromancer even though it has a strong warcraft, you know history Um But uh, we can do warlock. Let's do warlock and it'll be it'll be Very different than the other class. So we got to put all our crazy ideas into the warlock, which was really fun to make Yeah, awesome, awesome Guys, it's been a fantastic classic cast again. Kevin. Thank you so much for joining us again I know it was a little bit short notice. Yeah, man. It's it's it's always a great time having you on and You you've been a big part of this game in the development of this game You know even even if it's not like on the classic rerelease. It's the original game So it's it's been really really awesome to see like everything that's come out of it the love for the game and Everybody's just excited to have it back. So it's it's awesome having you on Yeah, right on. Thanks again guys. Yeah, of course guys Please if you haven't already, please go follow kevin jordan on twitch Or y'all says the youtube channel as well kevin jordan on youtube tips out baby stay safe tv go follow these guys um Tips was it was originally on the stream, but he has some stuff to come up that he has to go take care of tonight Uh, I'll keep the stream going for a little bit. Uh, we can we can talk about some stuff do some things Um, I know some people subbed and resubbed. I'll get to those as well Guys, thank you so much for joining us and we will see you guys next time Class cast on youtube as well youtube.com slash s fan tv if you guys missed the beginning part of the class cast This will be there tomorrow sometime. So again, thank you guys so much. We'll see you guys soon Peace take care there boys


Thierry de Montbriere, welcome. You are the president of this organization, the founder, and this is the seventh edition and the first time in Asia. So, what are your conclusions? Positive. Since you are trying to have a global club, global organization, but I also insist on the world club, even though we had a number of people from Asia already, I think it was important to meet for the first time in Asia and Korea, I think is a very relevant country because it fits very well with our criterion of middle power. And my impression is that it was extremely successful. The president was very much involved personally. She gave, I think, an important speech, which is going to be a reference for the diplomats and other observers. And the participation, particularly of Korea, I think was quite a high level and positive in the spirit of the conference. And the points from your point of view which were the most impressive, the most important. Well, in terms of the content, of course, it was that even when we dealt with classical Western subjects, such as the Middle East or Africa or others, we dealt with them in a slightly different perspective as usual, that is, the Asian perspective. Not entirely, of course, but there was in the discussions and often in the presentations a lot of input from Asia. And I think that on the Asian affairs themselves, in my judgment at least, we learned a lot. For instance, in the case of the East Asian potential crisis, I myself learned a few things and I came out of this with a slightly different opinion on some of the subjects, such as Japan-China or Japan-Korea and so forth and so on. Now, I think that in some issues, such as big data, we had in the last day a wonderful session, including two very high level American presentations where the two speakers, both highly competent, had slightly different but constructive opinions. Indeed, sir. Thierry de Montréal, congratulations. I think it was a terrific conference. Thank you. Thank you very much.


I'm Alessandra Marendola with BUTV News at Noon. I'm here at Fenway Park. It's opening day. The weather is beautiful. There's tons of food, energy, so let's go see how the fans are feeling. After the record-breaking snow, Bostonians are a little more than excited to get out into the sunshine and watch their favorite team play some ball. Oh, very excited. Last year was such a disappointment. We're looking forward to this year. This is his first opening day, so he's really excited. How excited are you for today's game? Good. Good? Great. This is great. Opening day is always terrific here. It's always the excitement in the ballpark. People's always got that little bounce in their step. Huge sense of pride because we literally, blood, sweat and tears went into this thing. It's a record-setting winter and we pulled it off before opening day and now everyone's in there enjoying it. Even with the rocky season last year, fans are still looking forward to what the team has to offer this season. The Red Sox offense. I'm really impressed with what they've done in the offseason and this year it looks promising so I'm happy for that. The Red Sox met their fans' expectations and beat the Washington Nationals with a score of 9-4. For BUTV, this is Alessandra Marandola reporting.


Good morning. Hello. I'm kind of sleepy and tired, but welcome to my ideal morning routine. Welcome to my channel. My name is Nika. I am a 29 year old graduate student at Columbia University who is actually doing a year of nothing right now. I'm not taking classes and I'm trying to just really enjoy this time that I have left. Finishing up my program, writing my paper. This is my cat shop and can I just try to figure out what's next? So my ideal morning routine, ideally, I'm laughing because I literally just spent like 20 minutes just scrolling on like Reddit for clinical psychology PhDs and like just getting a little anxious about that. This is my five minute journal that I like to do when I wake up in the mornings. So let's do that and then we will do some other things. Also, look, I keep this huge jug of water next to my bedside so I can drink water when I wake up in the morning. Just finished journaling. I actually really love doing this in the morning because it kind of gives me like a north star for today. So one of the questions of here is like, what are three things you can do that will make today great? And I always kind of make it a minute to-do list. I'm trying to get away for that, but it does kind of help motivate me to like get out of bed. So now I have some stuff that I want to do today. So I'm like, oh, let's go. But before we go, I am doing a meditation challenge right now. I do, if you follow me on Instagram or TikTok, or I'll probably put on YouTube shorts too. I want to do like a mini meditation challenge, but I feared I should probably do one personally first before I tried to craft one to share it with others. So I'm going to just log into Insight Timer right now and start the fourth day of my reset and refresh meditation challenge. I really been enjoying it. And yeah, if you have Insight Timer, if you don't, it's totally free. And this challenge is free. And it's for the new year, but I didn't start it until like, honestly, I'm on day four, but I probably started it last week. Like, I don't think I've been doing it every day, which I want to change. But you know, just taking it one day at a time. So let's start day four of Insight Timer's reset and refresh challenge. Your call to break free from the ordinary, let go of what's been holding you back and step into your life with a fresh perspective. I want to make an in depth video about like, how I cleared my skin routine and my makeup routine. But it's honestly very intuitive. And so I have really very oily skin. And so it truly just depends on how my skin feels in the morning when I wake up. So right now it's not feeling oily or greasy at all. So that makes me feel like we had a really good moisture routine last night. So I'm not going to strip any of the moisture for my skin. And I'm just going to go in with this my sale, my seller cleansing water from Garnier just to refresh. And then I'm going to do this lightweight moisturizer from Ghost Democracy. This was actually a jargon that I got like, a couple of years ago now, I think like last summer. And it's really good. I love it for days when like, I don't need to do a lot to my skin. And then I'm just going to follow up with the Black Girl sunscreen. I use the kids version because it's actually a higher SPF and it's cheaper. So I'm going to do that quickly. And then we're going to start really getting our day going. My skin feels nice and refreshed. I do want to start incorporating like a little bit of makeup back into my daily routine. But because today's Sunday, like I'm not going to wear makeup on Sunday. I just don't see the point. But on Monday, next morning, can I do it will be on a weekday because I just got this yummy skin from Vanessa, my rick's beauty. So I'm really excited to try that. And then I got this walkery pencil, just because it's like the most beautiful pink ever. And then I also got this Nars pencil sharpener because if you use Nars pencils, you know, only their sharpeners fit their pencils, which is the most annoying thing ever, but like a smart marketing move for them. And then I also got the De Nessa, my rick's yummy like blurring powder. I realized like while a lot of people like liquid blushes, I really don't think I do. So I got this because it's like a balm that turns into a powder, which I really love like a nice powdery finish. I also kind of want to get the Nars like orgasm blush. And then I was also, I also ordered a few things online. So coming into 2024, we're going to have a new like little makeup routine that hopefully I will do daily. But right now I haven't really been doing any makeup, especially not on Sundays, but also I like washed my makeup brushes last night. So they're still wet. So I couldn't do it even if I wanted to.  If you didn't know De Nessa, my rick's, I believe that's how you pronounce it.  And I just feel like when I buy black owned foundation, it's just such a better color match for me. Honestly, if I try any of these like popular, not black owned beauty blends, like the browns just like are drowning for me. So with all that being said, makeup morning routine coming at a later date and time. I at this point now, I want to have a little tea. If you didn't watch my vlogmas diaries that might list it by God tea advent calendar.  And let's do this one. It's green tea flowers and red fruit called hanam tea.  Like I'm obsessed. And these are like really fancy teas. Like they come in this little cloth bag. It's insane, but it's a nice little treat to have. And it literally tells you like to have it in the morning to soak it for like three minutes. Like the temperature should even be at. So I usually when I wake up before I even make my bed, I'll put my hot water on because I just know that I like to have tea in the morning. It's a good way to like drink water too as well, but like just with a little flavor. So I'm going to have that and it's Sunday. So I'm going to go over my notion and just make sure that anything I didn't do last week, I move it into this week. I'm also taking this week off at the UN, which is really nice. So I have a lot more time for personal stuff. And I haven't even told you guys yet, but I have a really important interview coming up next week. So we'll not next week. I think I have two weeks to prepare for it, but I want to start prepping for it next week. So I'm really excited. So yeah, I have to update my financial planner too. So I'm going to have some tea and do that. So my little getting my life together this morning took way longer than expected because as I was clearing out my to-do list and everything from last week, I realized I left a lot of like just little things that I just did not want to carry into the next week. So I spent a lot of time just like downloading the statistical software that I need in order to be able to see all the data for my lab because we just moved off of Qualtrics, which is probably really boring if you're not into statistics or clinical psychology. But anyways, so I did that. And then I also had to fill out some forms for therapy appointment. I responded to an email to get things moving on like my piano lessons. So all things really going forward. And I feel really good about that. At this point, my morning routine is when I make breakfast. I am a huge breakfast person. So today I'm thinking we're going to have a little veggie omelet. If you watched my last vlog, you probably saw it. I'm literally just going to make it again. But I don't have as any veggies this time. But I'm just going to, you know, use what I have in the fridge. It is Sunday. So I'm on like my last leg of just about everything. And then I'll probably make a little coffee with it. I typically try to delay my coffee until I have food, because I just learned from personal experience that if I have coffee before I put anything in my stomach, I literally will forget to eat for the rest of the day. It's like the caffeine becomes my fuel. And then like I just, I'm like, what is food? I forget all about it. So this morning we're going to have some hash browns, we're going to have a veggie omelet, and then we'll have a little ice coffee as well. So let's get the ball rolling on that. I also made a bunch of like these banana walnut chocolate chip muffins. They're so good. I ended up freezing like a handful of them just to have for later. But I'm going to have this as a snack because I'm actually really, really hungry. It's like I probably want to put it Sunday. So I usually make like posh posh things on Sunday. Just trying to use like everything in my fridge so nothing goes bad. And it looks pretty cute now. It's like yellow, green, red, all colors now. For sauteing, I'm going to go ahead and eat the omelet. I typically just do two eggs. If I'm really hungry, I'll do three. But two is usually good for me. I used to do like an egg yolk and an egg white. But honestly, I've just gotten kind of lazy. And I don't feel like separating the white from the yolk. And I also think nutritionally it's better to have the egg yolk anyway. I did want to show you guys what I season it with. So like salt, pepper, pouring, but necessary. I also put in a little of the shroom nami seasoning. It is so good. Like honestly, it is just like, it just makes everything like savory. And if you like truffle, then you'll like this. Like I love mushrooms. I love truffle. So like I just kind of like putting that and everything. And then also if you're someone who puts like hot sauce on your omelettes, I highly recommend adding a little bit of cayenne pepper to your egg mixture because it's just gonna give it that spice that you want from the hot sauce, but not be like super saucy. So I'll mix that just like this. You can't see it, but I don't want to like spill the eggs either. It's sweet, which is why I like putting the cayenne in it because I feel like it like takes out the sweetness of the milk. I'll just mix it all up. But sometimes get like little clumps of the seasoning in it. So I just like to mix it until there aren't any clumps in it anymore on the hash browns or they won't be done in 10. Okay, hash browns are in the air fryer. You guys might hear a terrible humming noise. I apologize. I'm going to take the bungees just put them off to the side. And then I think the key to making like the perfect omelette at home is to have a really small saucer. So like this size is perfect because it's going to be the size of the omelette. So I don't have to do too much thinking about it. I'll just take that little egg mixture and pour it on in here. And then I literally just let it cook until it's done all the way through. And you'll kind of see it like it'll be a little soft on the top. But you can kind of smush it around then give it a flip and it'll be good. That's what it looks like. And then I'll come back when it's a little bit more done so you can kind of see the difference. So hopefully you get a little difference but it's a lot more cooked. What I like to do is I like to kind of pull it around so I can get the egg kind of cooked on the sides just like that. And then eventually I'll flip it but not right now. I want to get it as cooked as possible before I even try to flip it. Like I'll even lift up the sides a little bit and then let the egg get kind of around and underneath it so I can cook a little bit more that way. All right the moment of truth now we can try to flip this over. Oh my god I just ripped it. But whatever I'm just going to put the filling in pretty decent. We're gonna cover all the stuff that looks bad with cheese. So it'll be fine. No one is the riser. Maybe she is. That really this heavy coffee was sent to me in a PR gift and I actually really enjoy it. Like it's so tasty. It doesn't need a little flavor so I got a coffee creamer with a french vanilla flavor just to add to it. But it's really good especially if you're trying to boycott Starbucks like right now as I am for the Gaza Israel Hamas conflict. So for an alternative coffee check it out. My discount code is on the screen and then also in the description box below. I hope you enjoyed this like little ideal morning routine. It was a very relaxed one because it's Sunday. The next one I do will probably be like a weekday and maybe we'll have a little bit more structure so make up and having to be somewhere by nine o'clock. Pretty much all I do I don't really work out on the weekends. I do have a question for you though. Is there something that you do that I don't that you think I should know about? If there is let me know in the description box below or maybe what is your favorite aspect of your own morning routine. I love learning about other people's morning routines because it's like ooh like thinking you're going to pick and choose and make your own best like custom morning routine. I was thinking about like including reading in mine but I just knew I had to get moving and I honestly not shown on camera I spent a lot of time doom scrolling about phd applications and then my cat threw up so that kind of you know it happens but it's not ideal so please don't think this is a perfect or accurate representation in the least. Well my breakfast is done and it's Sunday so some of my favorite YouTubers have uploaded so I'm gonna go watch some videos please make sure you leave me a comment and like and a subscribe subscribe a please a and I'll see you guys in the next video love you