Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #300 - For Azeroth!

Transcript

#300 - For Azeroth! · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  Hi, Ben. Hello Sean, watching purple
• 0:04
  pixels here. Hey Lex, your friends in Timber
• 0:07
  Mall Tavern here. Hey everyone, this is vitamin P.
• 0:10
  Pickle from Red Eye, You're here.
• 0:11
  It's Chin. This is Marty from Talking Wow.
• 0:15
  Hello for Azeroth Podcast. My name is Tom from another
• 0:19
  World of Warcraft podcast called Talking Wow.
• 0:22
  Congrats on the 300th episode of For Azeroth.
• 0:25
  Congrats on 300 episodes of For Azeroth.
• 0:29
  And happy 300 episode to for Azeroth for the.
• 0:33
  Sindora for the alliance. For the horn for Azeroth.
• 0:41
  Hello and welcome to for Azeroth episode 300.
• 0:47
  I am here with the always amazing other parts of the
• 0:52
  triumphant. We have of course Lex and Sean,
• 0:55
  and when you guys hear this, you will have heard the intro with
• 1:00
  so many people who have like just the great experience that I
• 1:04
  share working with these two great people.
• 1:09
  I honestly at the top of the show wanted to thank you guys so
• 1:13
  much. People who have been long term
• 1:16
  listeners to for Azeroth. Of course we've had faces come
• 1:19
  and go. We have had different phases of
• 1:24
  the show and I think because of you guys, we are in like a new
• 1:29
  golden era and I really that's what I wanted to celebrate.
• 1:33
  You guys have you guys have saved this show?
• 1:37
  You generally have you genuinely have saved this show.
• 1:41
  I don't think I would have kept going without, like, being able
• 1:46
  to sit down with you guys and make this fun and just make this
• 1:50
  like the days I cherish. When we had it on Mondays, I
• 1:54
  Mondays were good. Even when Sean was like, yeah, I
• 1:56
  look forward to Mondays and like, what the hell, Nobody
• 1:58
  looks forward to Mondays. Yeah, I kind of look forward to
• 2:00
  Monday. It's when we were doing it on
• 2:01
  Mondays. We've shifted days, but I still
• 2:04
  look forward to it every single week.
• 2:06
  And you guys are like a highlight of my life.
• 2:10
  So thank you so much. And of course, thank the thank
• 2:14
  you for the fans. We've had a lot of people who
• 2:16
  have been sending in support as we've come back.
• 2:19
  And like even the people who have like, you know, just
• 2:22
  quietly started listening. I see that, I see that I'm a
• 2:24
  numbers guy. I do see that.
• 2:26
  So I really do. I, I really am appreciative for
• 2:29
  everything. And so this is episode 300.
• 2:31
  Their appreciation. Let's introduce you guys because
• 2:36
  I get to control everything. I'm going to introduce.
• 2:39
  Fine, I'll be nice. I'll introduce Lex.
• 2:41
  Hello, Lex. How are you doing?
• 2:43
  I'm doing great, Manny, because I also get to spend today with
• 2:47
  two of my best friends in the entire world.
• 2:50
  I don't know if I ever have expressed this to you the as as
• 2:54
  clearly as I'm going to, but I know I was kind of a, a still
• 2:57
  like relatively newcomer, just time wise to the World of
• 3:02
  Warcraft content creation world. And you have genuinely been one
• 3:06
  of the most consistently kind and supportive people that I
• 3:11
  have met in my life. But especially like within this
• 3:14
  community. I just feel like ever since I
• 3:16
  started with like a silly dinky little podcast with a couple
• 3:19
  friends and like a couple TikTok videos under my belt, you've
• 3:23
  always been so willing to help me grow and to help guide me and
• 3:28
  to give me opportunities and, and to be encouraging and to
• 3:31
  make sure that I feel like my voice is worth hearing.
• 3:34
  And I wouldn't have gotten to this point.
• 3:37
  I wouldn't have continued making content to this point if I
• 3:40
  didn't have you and, and people like you who wanted to hear me
• 3:44
  and wanted to talk with me and wanted to spend these hours
• 3:47
  chatting and rambling and listening to me go off on weird
• 3:50
  tangents. And also just sharing this
• 3:53
  really beautiful. Like the way that you are able
• 3:55
  to think about the World of Warcraft and put things together
• 3:59
  genuinely blows my mind. Like it is actually incredible
• 4:02
  to get all of these opportunities to talk to you and
• 4:05
  hear how your brain works and hear how you think things
• 4:07
  through and see how you just approach this community with so
• 4:11
  much love. So thank you.
• 4:12
  The show also would not exist without you.
• 4:14
  Like by a mile. It would not be here if we
• 4:18
  didn't have Manny. So Manny, thank you so much.
• 4:21
  And also Sean, of course, I'm also so, so, so happy that we
• 4:24
  get to hang out and we get to, you know, I, I like again, just
• 4:28
  the, the, the amount of like kindness and, and care and
• 4:31
  energy and love that you bring into the World of Warcraft
• 4:34
  community. Like it's, it's mind blowing.
• 4:38
  It genuinely like, it's inspiring, if not even the right
• 4:41
  word, because it drives me and it makes me feel so much more
• 4:44
  safe and so much more, so much more like wanted in this
• 4:50
  community. And it means that when I do hit
• 4:52
  walls, I can go back to like, oh, but there's people like
• 4:55
  Sean, right? Like, there's people who are
• 4:56
  going to help me grow and there are people who want me around.
• 5:00
  So I love you, too. So, so, so much.
• 5:02
  And I'm so excited to be on episode 300 with you guys.
• 5:05
  This is the most incredible honor of my life.
• 5:09
  Yeah. And of course, Sean, that's got
• 5:11
  to be an intro. I don't even have to say
• 5:13
  anything. Yeah, I'm sorry you guys cut out
• 5:15
  after everything since man, I said episode 300, so I missed
• 5:18
  all of that. If you can, both.
• 5:20
  It's OK, We got a recording. I'll send it to you.
• 5:23
  No, I'm kidding, I'm still a horse from the illness that Lex
• 5:26
  gave me when we shared germs a couple weeks ago.
• 5:28
  But I I want to say thanks for don't think about it too much.
• 5:34
  Thanks for having me on the show.
• 5:35
  You both welcomed me into your family, your little 4 Azeroth
• 5:39
  family, you're you're only FAZ family and you let me in and
• 5:45
  it's just been an amazing ride since I got here Manny, as far
• 5:48
  as podcasting and like community outreach and just the way you
• 5:52
  are with everyone, no matter who they are, no matter what size,
• 5:56
  if they're content creator big or small, if they're just if
• 5:58
  they're just a regular person, no matter who is.
• 6:00
  You make me want to be a better person on a daily basis with the
• 6:05
  way that you interact with others.
• 6:08
  And if you could just give yourself some of the credit you
• 6:11
  give to all the other people, that will be amazing.
• 6:14
  How you look great today. Nobody's going to see this
• 6:15
  video. Maybe, maybe I put it up, who
• 6:17
  knows? Manny is dressed like an
• 6:19
  accountant, like not like Ben Affleck from some weird movie
• 6:22
  where he's an autistic assassin, but like where he's going to do
• 6:26
  my actual taxes. And he looks great.
• 6:28
  I can't imagine anybody I'd rather give my money to than
• 6:30
  this. Manny right here.
• 6:33
  And Lex. Lex in your dragon hoodie
• 6:37
  onesie, as always, your energy is infectious.
• 6:43
  You are sort of like my moral compass.
• 6:47
  If I say or do something that isn't quite, like, right, I know
• 6:53
  I can count on you to say, hey, maybe rethink how you phrased
• 6:58
  that. But if you're happy that you
• 7:01
  phrased it, you do. You would just just be aware.
• 7:04
  Yeah. And, and just, yeah, the energy,
• 7:07
  it's just, it's crazy. You're I don't know anybody who
• 7:11
  hopefully I get these right, bops, nooms, zooms and zips as
• 7:16
  much as you do. So, yeah, thanks for having me
• 7:21
  here. And thanks for the people that
• 7:22
  sent in those video or those those those recordings.
• 7:25
  I didn't know Jin was in Timbermont Tavern.
• 7:27
  That's crazy. I feel like I was Jin adjacent
• 7:29
  when I ran that that raid with you guys.
• 7:32
  And yeah, to the listeners, episode 300, I think it's like
• 7:35
  episode 22 for me or something. So it feels really disingenuous
• 7:38
  to be celebrating this. But episode 300, it'd be really
• 7:41
  cool if we could cap it off with something extremely special.
• 7:44
  Yeah, if you stick around to the end of this episode, we got to
• 7:48
  sit down with two developers. That was Maria Hamilton and
• 7:53
  Christy Murray who got to reflect on making World of
• 7:56
  Warcraft through all this time that Warcraft has been going,
• 7:59
  because we are now deep into the 30th anniversary of Warcraft in
• 8:04
  general, World of Warcraft celebrating 20 years, 10 years
• 8:09
  for Hearthstone. And of course we've got the new
• 8:11
  rumble game and all of this stuff happening.
• 8:14
  So there's a lot going on with Warcraft.
• 8:18
  One thing that has come with this huge anniversary event has
• 8:25
  been all these class changes. And Lex, you and I sat down last
• 8:29
  week and we were like, wow, I was a couple of these corners
• 8:32
  need to be sanded down, a couple of rough edges here.
• 8:36
  But the team's being hard at work and they've adjusted some
• 8:39
  things. We've already seen some of them.
• 8:41
  The nastiest bugs, bugs and exploits already being quickly
• 8:45
  hot fixed. We've seen other adjustments and
• 8:49
  coming this week with the reset are will be this huge
• 8:55
  adjustments with a number of things.
• 8:58
  One of the big things that everybody's happy about is the
• 9:02
  change to the mythic plus with the peril instead of just the
• 9:12
  the punishment for deaths being tripled to 15 seconds.
• 9:16
  It also comes with a little bit of a kiss, an extra 90 seconds
• 9:20
  added on to that timer. That's pretty sweet.
• 9:24
  I love that they made it a kiss curse thing.
• 9:27
  It's very in. It's very in tune with what
• 9:30
  they've been doing recently and I like that a lot.
• 9:36
  Sean, you've been pushing those hierarchies.
• 9:39
  I know this is like I've I've touched a couple of it, but I
• 9:41
  haven't been doing as much Mythic Plus recently.
• 9:44
  So I'm going to, I'm going to bow to your wisdom on this.
• 9:45
  What's your thoughts on this? Huge.
• 9:48
  This is a huge change. It's an extra 90 seconds on the
• 9:51
  timer, which is 6 deaths. Basically you can have six
• 9:54
  deaths, 6 free deaths that have no penalty.
• 9:57
  So it's not just an advantage like if you don't die.
• 10:04
  If you don't die, you get another, an extra 90 seconds.
• 10:06
  That's 90 seconds more to guarantee a time of a key.
• 10:10
  But also, maybe it's the difference between A2 chest and
• 10:12
  A1 chest on a key, right? So maybe now you're 7 becomes a
• 10:15
  nine, or maybe you're 9 because you're 8 becomes a 10.
• 10:18
  It's huge. And if you don't, if you don't
• 10:19
  die, it's awesome. But it's, it is 6 free deaths.
• 10:22
  You hit level 7 and they're basically saying we under, we
• 10:25
  recognize these keys are harder. You can now die six times on us
• 10:31
  and that's huge. So do you feel like this makes
• 10:36
  the sevens easier than the six? I would I'm going to say that's
• 10:48
  tough. That's a lot of times since I
• 10:50
  ran A7, yes, I think maybe I think by the yeah, I'm going to
• 10:56
  say I actually find keys get easier the higher you go anyway,
• 11:00
  because you're usually pulling from a pool of people with more
• 11:02
  experience that they're a little more difficult in the lower end
• 11:05
  because it's usually people who are trying to learn the
• 11:07
  dungeons. Hopefully there's so there's
• 11:10
  always those like weird break points like A10 would be or an 8
• 11:15
  would be easier than 7 because there's people farming gilded
• 11:20
  crests, not looking at ruined crests, but a nine would be
• 11:23
  harder and A10 would be easier than 11, obviously.
• 11:27
  But ten, yeah, that's that's by example.
• 11:30
  But yeah, 88 would be easier than 7 because there's people
• 11:32
  farming gilded crests. So it's going to be people with
• 11:34
  more experience dropping down there.
• 11:36
  It's the way in season 3 of Dragonfly people were running, I
• 11:41
  think it was. No sorry, season 4 of Dragonfly
• 11:44
  people were running, I think it was eights.
• 11:47
  Eights gave you Max vault slots, so people were running eights
• 11:50
  instead of nines 10s. So eights were.
• 11:54
  And then the eights were easier than sevens because it was
• 11:56
  people who were already fully geared.
• 11:57
  Anyway, that's a meandering answer.
• 12:00
  I don't know that this necessarily makes it easier
• 12:03
  because there is still the jump in mob difficulty, but probably
• 12:08
  this probably makes sevens easier than sixes.
• 12:10
  OK. OK, Of course, along with that,
• 12:15
  there were a slew, an absolute slew of class changes.
• 12:20
  We saw blood decays getting buffs in particular places.
• 12:25
  We saw sand. Lane, I was going to say sand
• 12:28
  lane. Are they are you all this is to
• 12:31
  any death Knights who play sand lane.
• 12:32
  Are you guys doing OK? Because I feel like you're going
• 12:34
  to buff every other week. So so sending love.
• 12:38
  Yeah, it's they're probably still not going to play it if
• 12:41
  I'm being honest. It's it was so far behind
• 12:46
  Deathbringer. It's similar to War Fury.
• 12:49
  Warriors were running Slayer because Mountain Thane was so
• 12:53
  far behind in single target that even after multiple buffs they
• 12:57
  were still like Nope. Bore one out to everyone who's
• 13:02
  excited about Sand Lane. I am so sorry.
• 13:04
  I'm excited. I like Sand Lane, I think it's a
• 13:06
  great build, and I'm also a fan of not adding extra buttons like
• 13:10
  Deathbringer does, so yeah Anyway, yeah.
• 13:14
  I mean in regards to Fury, they gave a very targeted buff to
• 13:18
  mountain thing, increasing that that lightning strike damage by
• 13:22
  30%. We'll see if that even registers
• 13:25
  for a lot of people, but like Warriors in particular after
• 13:28
  waves and waves of nerfs are finally getting some of that
• 13:32
  love back. So are you happy about this?
• 13:35
  Yes and yes. I guess it's hard to not be
• 13:40
  happy about buffs because of the way the well you mentioned waves
• 13:46
  of fury nerves rolled out. The current buffs when they go
• 13:50
  live makes a very clear delineation that in single
• 13:55
  target you should be playing arms and in multi target you
• 13:59
  should be playing fury, which is great if you know how to play
• 14:03
  both. It's also better if you have the
• 14:05
  right secondary stats for both because Arm is prefers written
• 14:11
  haste and Fury prefers haste and mastery.
• 14:15
  So now you're looking at running like two different gear sets and
• 14:18
  then being proficient in both. It is nice to see them bring it
• 14:21
  back up a bit. I yeah, that's what else I'm
• 14:25
  going to say. I'm not going to complain that
• 14:27
  maybe they should have been able to recognize this before driving
• 14:30
  it into the ground for a month, but we're happy we're back.
• 14:36
  OK, I have to say that Lex remains untouched because in all
• 14:42
  of these changes, demon hunters remain conspicuously absent.
• 14:48
  So good. Good for you, Lex.
• 14:49
  You get to enjoy what you're doing.
• 14:51
  Continue to zoom pretty. Little the hunt symbol though,
• 14:54
  they made it weird. They freaked me out I logged in
• 14:57
  that day because I don't read shown not shown.
• 14:59
  I do well. Whatever, but I also don't read.
• 15:03
  Like patch notes, unless I'm going to be doing a show.
• 15:06
  And so I logged in. I'm like, what the hell?
• 15:08
  They took away the hunt. Like why is there?
• 15:10
  And then I looked at it, it was the hunt too, but it's ugly now.
• 15:14
  No offense to the Blizzard art developer.
• 15:17
  For everybody who had and like this is affecting all classes
• 15:21
  because with the patch all classes had the graphics and the
• 15:26
  icon for their covenant abilities that got put into
• 15:31
  their tree shifted to something that more fits their their
• 15:35
  classes theme and such. There is going to be glyphs
• 15:41
  coming. They've already promised this.
• 15:42
  There will be glyphs that will allow you to switch back if you
• 15:45
  so like that. For me it's a shaman.
• 15:48
  The new Primordial Blast is choice.
• 15:52
  I love it, so I'll I'll keep it. But yes, for those of you want
• 15:55
  to go back, help is on the way. Speaking of shaman, of course,
• 15:59
  shamans have been in a very weird place since this patch has
• 16:04
  come out. We've seen elemental shamans
• 16:07
  going all crazy with AOE. We have seen enhancement shaman
• 16:13
  doing quite well as well. We are seeing nerves that are
• 16:17
  going to be hitting both of those.
• 16:21
  Elemental in particular was over performing by a wide margin and
• 16:27
  was therefore getting a lot of nerves.
• 16:29
  Even more nerves were announced after this initial list had been
• 16:33
  put out. The community gave some feedback
• 16:36
  and decided to slow down a little bit and they've reverted
• 16:40
  some of those. So you're going to see these
• 16:42
  changes. I reached out to theory crafter
• 16:47
  guide writer Hawk and he said that these changes are obviously
• 16:54
  going to rein it in for for mythic plus, but elemental will
• 16:59
  still be fine in mythic plus. The question is in single target
• 17:03
  raid if these have been a little too much.
• 17:06
  So we'll we'll see. Hopefully.
• 17:09
  Much like Fury, they might adjust if they feel they've
• 17:14
  they've overstepped. I'm going to ask you, Lex and
• 17:17
  Sean, let's let's go to you first, Sean, because Lex, you
• 17:22
  sort of answered this last episode.
• 17:24
  Where do you feel the tuning is in terms of like 11 point 0.5?
• 17:29
  Do you feel like it it needed more time in the oven to be
• 17:33
  fully baked, or do you feel that they're doing a good enough job
• 17:35
  correcting now? I am firmly in the camp of we
• 17:43
  shouldn't have major class reworks on .5 patches.
• 17:48
  Those should only happen on .1 patches.
• 17:51
  So they have a full 12 months to develop or six months to six, I
• 17:56
  guess 6 month cycle. So they have a full six months
• 17:58
  to develop, to be tested, to be ironed out.
• 18:01
  And that you should only do tuning adjustments on .5 patches
• 18:07
  because with the reworks that happened and the tuning that
• 18:11
  happened and then the bugs on top of it.
• 18:16
  I mean, Elemental is still bugged.
• 18:17
  They reported it was fixed, but it's not the bug that was
• 18:21
  reported is still present and they're tuning based on bugged
• 18:27
  numbers. And this is, I mean, similar to
• 18:31
  what happened with Fury. Fury wasn't a bug, but it was
• 18:33
  tuning in a road week. Yeah anyway I I wish we would
• 18:39
  only do class reworks in .1 patches.
• 18:41
  I feel like any team who's currently progressing the raid,
• 18:46
  whether that's through heroic or through mythic, has basically
• 18:51
  had this whole week thrown out the window.
• 18:54
  Unless they were using their outlaw rogues to one shot
• 18:57
  bosses. Which the record you shouldn't
• 19:00
  have been doing since the next point.
• 19:02
  What? Yeah.
• 19:03
  That's such an exploit. Do you feel like bands should be
• 19:05
  copped? Sorry, I know that's a separate
• 19:07
  question. I feel like that's such an
• 19:09
  exploit that personally, I feel that this is like, I'm going, I
• 19:14
  would say that suspensions are in order if you like, you were
• 19:16
  egregious with that. I would like to see 28 day bans
• 19:19
  and kills rolled back for guilds 20.
• 19:22
  Bands that's bigger than the world First guys got ahead of.
• 19:27
  Yeah, yeah, 28 day ban means they're not eligible to enter
• 19:30
  themselves in any E sports events.
• 19:32
  Wait, I'm curious because not that I would ever not be paying
• 19:35
  attention to what's going on in the World of Warcraft outside of
• 19:39
  the times that we record, but what happened with the Rogues?
• 19:43
  Ola Rogues had a very easily repeatable bug available that
• 19:47
  was letting allowing them to do far more damage than they should
• 19:51
  have been to the point that it was like almost double more than
• 19:57
  double in some cases. The next highest DPS in a raid
• 19:59
  group and a mythic plus some groups used that to their
• 20:05
  advantage to kill bosses. It's like when they use the PvP
• 20:08
  trinkets to kill the sulkin court but some teams had the
• 20:14
  rogue swapped. Outlaw Broad extra rogues
• 20:16
  stacked up on had them use the the.
• 20:20
  The exploit to kill raid bosses that they hadn't been able to
• 20:23
  kill up to that point and then move on further into the raid?
• 20:25
  That's unfair to the teams that aren't cheating to.
• 20:29
  This was addressed by Blizzard, but there was new world best
• 20:33
  levels of keys being done. Teams that were doing like 14,
• 20:38
  pushing into fifteens were easily timing sixteens by
• 20:43
  running two or three outlaw rogues at a time.
• 20:46
  And they shifted the score required to reach title for the
• 20:52
  season by 300 points in two days.
• 20:56
  Blizzard identified this and has said, I think the actions
• 21:00
  already started to be happen. But they took action against
• 21:04
  those people who are doing that. They rolled that's those scores
• 21:06
  back for those teams after those players who were mishandling it.
• 21:10
  And there was some, I believe, suspensions, handout bands
• 21:13
  handed out. Or they're going to be.
• 21:17
  Yeah, I don't egregious exploitation of something like
• 21:21
  that. It's I get PDE is like you're
• 21:24
  just really racing again, you're just competing against yourself.
• 21:26
  But it's egregious and you know it's wrong.
• 21:30
  And I personally would like to see them take a very strong
• 21:35
  stance against this. You just it's I, we famously, we
• 21:40
  as a collective famously said on this show, if you eat just one
• 21:43
  billionaire, the rest will fall in line.
• 21:46
  If you just hand out one wave of 28 day bans, nobody will do this
• 21:51
  again because that removes people's opportunity.
• 21:54
  A 28 day ban, 28 day plus ban means you can no longer enter
• 21:59
  into MDITGP stuff like that AWC. So I think take the action and
• 22:05
  hit them. We are in the midst of the AWC,
• 22:09
  the MDI, all of those events are happening.
• 22:13
  I would be a very strong message.
• 22:15
  There has been talking to community that because the
• 22:19
  actions Blizzard has been taking recently have been so light that
• 22:23
  they are almost encouraging people to take these actions
• 22:27
  when they are discovered. So I would like a kind of
• 22:30
  corrective action. I just dislike that some people
• 22:34
  got off lighter and that now that's encourage things.
• 22:40
  And then these people who are coming in, they just happen to
• 22:43
  be get the get the infraction. But you have to do something now
• 22:48
  or you're going to be dealing with it later.
• 22:50
  They should have done something before.
• 22:52
  However, it's too late to go back.
• 22:55
  Yeah, they need to do the action now.
• 22:56
  Yeah. And just one more note on the
• 22:59
  question of tuning in the class reworks.
• 23:02
  As you mentioned, we are in the middle of AWC and MDI season and
• 23:07
  there are major like team shaping changes happening in the
• 23:12
  middle of this. That's terrible.
• 23:15
  It's like going into the World Series and giving your team a
• 23:19
  whole new roster of pitchers and saying good luck.
• 23:23
  Like it's I want to see the best.
• 23:26
  And when I watch the MDI and I watch NBC, I want to see the
• 23:28
  best of the best compete at their highest level.
• 23:31
  I don't want to see them constantly re rolling and trying
• 23:34
  to figure out a new class that then gets changed a week later.
• 23:37
  I don't. It's not fun for me, but.
• 23:40
  It does. This was something that I was a
• 23:42
  little bit afraid of even early on with like how reactive
• 23:45
  Blizzard was being to the community.
• 23:48
  It feels like we are getting big changes more frequently than
• 23:54
  usual and I I I like the fact that Blizzard is listening but
• 24:00
  it's starting to feel scattered right?
• 24:04
  Like the fact that we're on a point O 5 patch and we're still
• 24:11
  getting changes that I would expect within the first like
• 24:14
  couple weeks after an expansion drops is actually fairly
• 24:19
  concerning to me at this point. And to be fair, I guess I don't
• 24:23
  really know how it feels because demon hunters haven't gotten a
• 24:26
  lot of them, but like it, it feels like every single show
• 24:30
  we're like, oh, and here's a whole list of changes.
• 24:32
  We can't go through them all. So go through them on your own.
• 24:36
  And I, I've said this a few times on the show because I'm
• 24:41
  getting like worried. Like I, I really hope Blizzard
• 24:45
  knows that they, I, I again, as the speaker for all of World of
• 24:48
  Warcraft and all World of Warcraft players, I would so
• 24:52
  much rather that we just get time like longer developmental
• 24:56
  cycles and things come out clean, right?
• 25:00
  Because like, I also, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I just haven't been
• 25:01
  paying attention, but I feel like we're also getting like
• 25:04
  exploitable bugs where people are talking about whether or not
• 25:07
  bans should come out every couple weeks, which I don't, I
• 25:09
  don't think is normal. Like maybe I just wasn't paying
• 25:11
  attention, but I, I don't think that was how it was before.
• 25:15
  So like, yeah, you know, I, I, I, I will say I started to kind
• 25:17
  of hear people like when the, the, the quest that gives the
• 25:21
  chest was popping up repeatedly. I forgot what, but there was one
• 25:24
  in Dornigal that was coming up like constantly.
• 25:26
  And people like, wait, like don't do that a second time
• 25:28
  though, because you don't know, sometimes lizard drops banned.
• 25:30
  So like I do, I'm starting to kind of hear a little bit more
• 25:32
  what you guys are saying, that like if they hit with strong
• 25:34
  action, people actually do back off and get more cautious.
• 25:38
  But the flip side is that there really shouldn't be bugs all the
• 25:40
  time so people can exploit to ruin rain bosses, right?
• 25:43
  Like that's kind of also a better solution.
• 25:48
  I would take this opportunity to say Blizzard hire more QA but
• 25:54
  like. There is that, Manny.
• 25:55
  How can they possibly afford to pay for that?
• 25:59
  Yeah, who knows? If only they could have like
• 26:02
  some company that is above them, that is that like makes billions
• 26:09
  of dollars a year and has a a capitalization like of untold
• 26:14
  sums. Maybe they could afford.
• 26:17
  I was giving you a Segway. No, but I but I I have to say
• 26:23
  that one thing to Blizzard's credit with some of these
• 26:27
  changes that come out is that many of these changes also have
• 26:32
  the the last line not applied to PvP con combat.
• 26:39
  So with the AWC, even with like these list of changes I'm seeing
• 26:46
  like I'm still at the shaman one, I'm seeing Farsi year
• 26:49
  change not applied to PV combat, Farsi year change not applied,
• 26:53
  another Farsi year not applied. It's not until I see a
• 26:57
  behavioral change at 5 lines in that finally something's
• 27:02
  actually affecting PvP combat. And so like, at least they're
• 27:06
  trying to avoid rocking the boat in in some cases.
• 27:11
  But I do agree with you that some, some of these changes need
• 27:17
  need to maybe be put off. But also, I don't think Blizzard
• 27:22
  should be totally afraid of making changes earlier if they
• 27:29
  feel that they are, that they are really warranted, especially
• 27:33
  when we're at the beginning of the season.
• 27:35
  And I think a lot of the shaman changes were stuff that they
• 27:39
  couldn't quite fit in before launch.
• 27:41
  And, and that's the unfortunate situation of of shamans,
• 27:46
  especially, especially with like the way that Totemic was not
• 27:50
  being touched by anybody for enhancement.
• 27:53
  It was ridiculous. If I could find numbers, I, I
• 27:57
  would maybe I'll, maybe you can talk to radar IO and see those
• 28:01
  numbers. But I do not think that there is
• 28:03
  many people who were even touching some of these specs.
• 28:07
  And in that case, I would like to see those specs kind of get
• 28:10
  pushed up a bit less the nerves. You can make those adjustments
• 28:15
  with tuning like you can adjust the numbers that those class
• 28:19
  those specs are doing without doing full class reworks.
• 28:23
  Like if people aren't playing totemic then find ways to buff
• 28:26
  totemic to make it more appealing.
• 28:28
  But to do a full class rework on paladins, on shamans, like
• 28:33
  rogues got redone. Like, it's a lot at a .5 patch
• 28:40
  when you're also launching a 20th anniversary event, when
• 28:42
  you're also trying to run an MDI and an AWC, when you're also
• 28:46
  still doing raid tuning and there are still bosses in the
• 28:49
  raid that are far, far too difficult.
• 28:52
  Different teams, though, like I agree that's a lot.
• 28:55
  And if that was like the three of us either trying to do it or
• 28:59
  even cover it, that is a lot to cover, right.
• 29:02
  But in terms of like the class design versus who's running the
• 29:07
  E sports AWC that those are those are two two different
• 29:12
  teams that are that are not really having much overlap at
• 29:15
  all. I will say that if you're doing
• 29:17
  class balance and ray tuning at the same time and suddenly you
• 29:21
  have one class that gets really strong and one buff the boss
• 29:24
  that gets nerfed in a particular way that can cause chaos.
• 29:27
  So I do agree that there there are like some very nasty
• 29:30
  overlaps there, But I but I also think that like the team can do
• 29:34
  multiple things at once. When will they start doing that
• 29:38
  then? Sorry, I don't mean that I love
• 29:43
  Blizzard. It was just it was a rough week.
• 29:45
  Dang, it was a rough week. Was wasn't was QA one of the I
• 29:50
  know that customer service got depleted in the layoffs?
• 29:54
  Was QA also hit by the layoffs? Do we know?
• 29:59
  They don't say exactly which teams got hit.
• 30:03
  Like I don't know if QA is considered part of the
• 30:07
  development team because the development team that is
• 30:11
  organized as a union, they supposedly didn't get many hits.
• 30:17
  But like also on top of like the quote, quote layoffs that have
• 30:22
  happened. I don't know why I said quote,
• 30:24
  but anyways, the layoffs that have happened repeatedly for
• 30:29
  hundreds of people and near 1000 a thousand people.
• 30:33
  There have also been people who have just left because they
• 30:36
  don't feel stable in their in their job.
• 30:39
  There's also been how many hours that are left because they're
• 30:41
  picking up the pieces of like, hey, we've lost all these
• 30:44
  people. And what was that guy handling?
• 30:45
  What was Frank dealing with? What was Sean dealing with over
• 30:49
  there? And then they have to like
• 30:52
  regroup and move forward only to get their pace going and then
• 30:55
  bam, another hit happened. So when you get some things that
• 31:01
  fall between the cracks, that could be part of it.
• 31:04
  It's not all of it. Obviously they are a, a big AAA
• 31:10
  company. And so like, should it be that
• 31:13
  one person leaves and these these things happen?
• 31:16
  But there is there is some effect on that.
• 31:19
  Regardless though, I think we all want smoother sailing going
• 31:24
  forward with all these major changes in the O5 patch.
• 31:30
  I don't know what in the world we should expect from the .1
• 31:34
  patch, but I would hope that it's mostly smooth sailing from
• 31:43
  here and more new content. Is that I I don't think
• 31:47
  anybody's super unhappy with with their specs now.
• 31:51
  Is there any? Are there any classes that you
• 31:53
  guys know of that are like, oh, we're in a horrible spot and
• 31:55
  Blizzard needs to redesign US? Battle Priests.
• 32:00
  Shadow priests, yeah. Yeah, they're like bottom.
• 32:04
  They're not I. Thought they had gotten the
• 32:06
  buffs that didn't get rolled in and now that they're getting
• 32:09
  them back they were going to be in.
• 32:11
  A They buffed I think psychic link or something like that,
• 32:14
  which is if somebody showed me an image, it was like like like
• 32:18
  buffed second, like nerve second, like buff second, like
• 32:20
  nerd. It's like whatever this,
• 32:21
  whatever the ability. I can't remember give a second
• 32:23
  like, but it's like been adjusted 100 times in the last
• 32:26
  year. But they're like chatter priest
• 32:30
  star bottom. But in Pve, I don't know if
• 32:33
  they're like in PvP, they're not in a great spot.
• 32:35
  They're very unhappy and a lot of progression teams are are not
• 32:41
  bringing them at all. If if they bring any of that,
• 32:44
  it's one maybe. OK.
• 32:48
  So he's like, go ahead. Also heard that holy priests are
• 32:51
  really rough in mythic plus, although that's only from 1
• 32:55
  friend so I don't know if that's universally accepted or just
• 32:58
  that he's not vibing with the build right now, but that's what
• 33:01
  I've been told. OK, so we, we see, we're saying
• 33:06
  priests anecdotally and shadow priest, I did notice that there
• 33:11
  were very little changes to shadow priest.
• 33:13
  That might be that they're like, OK, we can't do much with you
• 33:17
  right now and they are leading into some sort of major
• 33:20
  overhaul, but we'll see. I think that they did a fairly
• 33:25
  decent job with the .5 overhaul when they did it for Paladins in
• 33:31
  Dragonflight, and maybe that gave them sort of a confidence
• 33:35
  that they could do it again, and they pushed a little bit too far
• 33:39
  trying to do it with multiple classes all at once.
• 33:43
  Maybe, I don't know if your class is getting reworked.
• 33:46
  If you see a class getting reworked in a .5 patch, reroll
• 33:49
  to that because it will be overpowered for at least two
• 33:52
  weeks. Bands true.
• 33:57
  Yeah, people were saying that in Dragonflight and it seems to be
• 33:59
  holding true right now. That said, there is another
• 34:05
  target of envy because we got some new mounts and you would
• 34:10
  think new mounts doesn't seem anything crazy.
• 34:13
  Blizzard released 2 new mount packages in the Battle.net
• 34:17
  store. 1 was an entire 30th anniversary mount bundle that
• 34:24
  includes 4 different mounts for World of Warcraft.
• 34:28
  There are modern version and four different mounts for the
• 34:32
  classic version. These are going to be available
• 34:36
  through till January 6th so it's a limited time to celebrate the
• 34:40
  anniversary. They look pretty nice and you
• 34:44
  get 8 mounts for relatively cheap.
• 34:48
  They don't cut the cost that much more than getting a single
• 34:50
  amount would normally cost on the store wherever your your
• 34:55
  store is. So for Canada I would normally
• 34:57
  be paying like what? I think it's 30 bucks for a
• 34:59
  mountain Canada. I don't.
• 35:01
  I get, I don't. 25 plus tax 20 or 32?
• 35:04
  Sorry, 32, you're right. 32 yeah right.
• 35:07
  And then this is 40 bucks Canadian.
• 35:11
  So that's a quite a nice a nice deal.
• 35:14
  The other one is kind of the one that's causing all the chaos
• 35:21
  because Blizzard put out the traitors.
• 35:25
  Gilded brutosaur, my friends, this is the long boy that your
• 35:30
  girl tells you not to worry about.
• 35:33
  But it is tall, it is dark, and it does things that you're a
• 35:40
  brutosaur can't do. Oh my God, man.
• 35:46
  This is the Brutusaur. Much like the original
• 35:50
  Brutusaur, it has an AH, but it also has an NPC that does mail,
• 35:55
  and this mail NPC has zero cool down.
• 35:59
  So you can you use this thing anywhere remotely?
• 36:04
  This is the first time we've seen remote mailboxes have this
• 36:08
  sort of access because before this we've had some toys, we've
• 36:14
  had some pets that you can use to access the mailbox, but they
• 36:19
  have like a four hour cool down on them.
• 36:22
  They and so this is like a little bit of a power creep in
• 36:28
  that way. It's not a complete power creep.
• 36:30
  It's obviously there are places where you can't mount and then
• 36:32
  the pets going to be good or the toys going to be good.
• 36:37
  And people are kind of upset about this because this is not a
• 36:42
  cheap mount. I was all gung ho.
• 36:44
  I was like, oh, wow, OK, they're putting this out.
• 36:46
  And I was, I was ready to convert some gold to to pick
• 36:50
  this up. And then I realized that this
• 36:53
  mount cost more than the entire expansion itself.
• 36:57
  It is an expensive purchase. I don't know who would be so
• 37:03
  tempted to pick this up so quickly.
• 37:06
  I mean, let's go. Let's go to you guys.
• 37:07
  Sean, what would you think about this?
• 37:09
  I took me less than 3 minutes to buy it and then I spent 20
• 37:17
  minutes considering whether or not I should buy it from my EU
• 37:20
  account as well. What was the decision on the EU
• 37:26
  account? Just next please.
• 37:30
  I did not buy it from my EU account yet.
• 37:35
  All right. OK, Lex, what about you?
• 37:39
  So I feel the need to be morally consistent as they say.
• 37:45
  I have said on the show that I get concerned when something is
• 37:54
  purchase only and gives you a perk that you cannot access in
• 37:58
  game, right? But that's always been my line.
• 38:01
  That's why I wasn't worried about the grizzly because it's
• 38:03
  identical to something you could get in game with gold only.
• 38:07
  And the the you know, it's it's basically 1 to one with the
• 38:12
  mammoth. Whatever the brutosaur is not
• 38:17
  one to one with the the the this brutosaur is not one to one with
• 38:20
  the other brutosaurs because it has the little male thing which
• 38:24
  no other mount has, right? That's non existent outside of
• 38:27
  this. And if I the other brutal sword
• 38:31
  isn't available anymore right? Like you couldn't get the 5
• 38:34
  million gold one unless I'm crazy.
• 38:36
  It's available in a black market auction house.
• 38:38
  I forgot that for gold cap so it's now.
• 38:40
  Limitedly available. Now it is 10 million gold
• 38:43
  instead of 5 million gold. Yeah, And like, to be fair
• 38:46
  there, the argument was made and like I think things get sticky,
• 38:50
  but I hear it that because of how gold trading and like Wow
• 38:55
  tokens exist now, it actually is significantly cheaper.
• 38:58
  You can you can buy it with gold and it's only like 1 1/2, I
• 39:02
  think like 1.7 million gold ish, which like I get I and I'm not.
• 39:07
  This is frankly, I think that having early access paid was a
• 39:11
  much more egregious version of paying for something that you
• 39:15
  can't access by playing the game.
• 39:18
  So I'm not like saying everyone should feel horrible and delete
• 39:21
  their brutosaur and it's the worst thing that ever happened.
• 39:23
  Everyone delete their account. The world is terrible.
• 39:25
  This is now pay to win. Nobody can have any fun anymore,
• 39:28
  right? I'm not trying to like, you
• 39:29
  know, fun detected be the person who makes everyone feel bad
• 39:33
  about experiencing joy. If you have your brutosaur and
• 39:35
  you're having fun with it, love it.
• 39:36
  Have such a good time, run around, do your little, whatever
• 39:39
  the fun little animation is, enjoy like, you know, show it
• 39:41
  off all your Guild mates have so much fun just sitting wherever
• 39:44
  you want and doing all your then immediately getting them in the
• 39:46
  mail. And it's so cool.
• 39:47
  Like that's cute, that's exciting.
• 39:48
  And I'm excited for you guys and I'm happy you guys are having
• 39:50
  fun. Like that's amazing.
• 39:51
  That's incredible. My, you know, my hackles are a
• 39:55
  little up. I'm a little anxious, I'm a
• 39:57
  little unhappy. I'm being a little bit snarkier
• 39:59
  with Blizzard than I usually am this week.
• 40:01
  To the developer who we all know listens to the show, we still
• 40:04
  love you. It's OK.
• 40:07
  But so I I'm not in love with it, but AI don't think that any
• 40:11
  of us should go on to the players who buy it.
• 40:13
  Live your dreams, live your truth, have a good time,
• 40:14
  whatever. And BI don't think this is like
• 40:17
  the worst thing Blizzard ever did and we all need to go on
• 40:19
  Twitter and spew hated deaths right?
• 40:22
  I don't love it. It's OK, everyone have fun.
• 40:25
  I mean, yeah, I can. I can see all the points.
• 40:27
  Like there was a big conversation in the FAST Discord
• 40:32
  about it. I think that people do need to
• 40:37
  like make the decision on on their own standards and just let
• 40:42
  the other people make the decisions that they that they
• 40:44
  want to make. That said, there are slippery
• 40:48
  slope arguments. There are kind of ad hominem
• 40:53
  arguments just like evaluate this as what it is, don't like
• 40:58
  push into that. But like clearly Blizzard made a
• 41:01
  lot of money because soon as like I logged in, everybody was
• 41:07
  in Dornigal on their mount. We even had a website that
• 41:13
  popped up which I will not be sending to anybody's significant
• 41:17
  other that says did my husband buy bruto.com and this one will
• 41:24
  you put your character or rather your significant other's
• 41:28
  character name and and realm in and it will tell you if they
• 41:34
  forked out the money and then if they did it will also recommend
• 41:39
  local divorce lawyers near you. Oh man, it's great.
• 41:47
  I like, I love it because it is the exact right about a satire
• 41:51
  for like how the community was going insane with this.
• 41:55
  I think that's got way more of reaction than it should have.
• 41:58
  But I do love when people throw that satire.
• 42:02
  Any final thoughts on this? It is, so I don't.
• 42:06
  I don't think it's pay to win. I know that the term has been
• 42:09
  used to describe it, but there is a clip of Tsaru, I think his
• 42:15
  name is, in a PvP arena, trying to bandage himself, having no
• 42:23
  bandages in his bags, running behind a pillar, mounting his
• 42:26
  bruto, buying bandages, taking them out of the mailbox and
• 42:30
  using them and winning the match.
• 42:33
  No, which he would. Not have been able to do before,
• 42:39
  I don't think unless he could have.
• 42:41
  I guess you could have done the Bruto and then summoned to
• 42:42
  Katie. So same thing.
• 42:44
  But yeah, I don't know. I bought it.
• 42:46
  I'm happy for it as long as you might.
• 42:49
  If if they ever made it, you couldn't buy it with gold,
• 42:51
  that's where my line would be drawn.
• 42:52
  But as long as you can convert your gold the the Blizzard
• 42:56
  balance, then I say go for it. Blizzard specific sell it all
• 43:00
  everything Put traders tenders on the on the market.
• 43:03
  Please let me buy some of those. Oh geez, please know that.
• 43:08
  I think the part of these bundles that concerns me most is
• 43:14
  the fact that they are a limited window right now.
• 43:19
  They go through till January 6th for both bundles.
• 43:22
  I think that's the part that concerns me most.
• 43:24
  If somebody wanted to like make this the big push like the
• 43:28
  original Brutus or and say like, oh, I'm going to like build up
• 43:31
  the money. The original Brutus or lasted
• 43:33
  through to the end of the expansion.
• 43:35
  This one is a matter of months. But it only came out so.
• 43:40
  But that was only along from when it was announced to the end
• 43:43
  of the expansion. Was it announced in 8.3?
• 43:46
  Did the Brutal come out in 8.3? No, the Brutal Sword came out at
• 43:49
  the beginning of the expansion. It was a big money sink, right?
• 43:53
  I didn't realize it came out at the start.
• 43:54
  Yeah. And then they announced that it
• 43:56
  was going to be retired. Yeah.
• 43:58
  At the beginning of the final patch, like ahead of the final
• 44:02
  patch or like, hey, listen, we're going to be we're going to
• 44:05
  be retiring this because they didn't want the inflation from
• 44:08
  the next expansion to then start making people get more get it
• 44:12
  easier. So that that's that situation.
• 44:15
  So I I don't mind if this one disappears or sunsets from the
• 44:19
  the store, but I think that it should have a longer period of
• 44:24
  time that it's I. Know it's awesome.
• 44:26
  I bought it and I still run into the auction house.
• 44:31
  I love that you're supporting small, local businesses.
• 44:33
  That's right, that's right. I still use flight paths.
• 44:37
  I kid you not, it was not until 8.3, or rather rather like the
• 44:45
  last Emeritusil patch of Dragonflight, that I finally
• 44:49
  figured out where the auction house was in Valtracon.
• 44:52
  Do you use? Do you have a bruto?
• 44:54
  I have a bruto. So like my, I was like trying to
• 44:57
  find my friend. I'm like, what are they doing in
• 44:59
  here? I'm like, oh, this is where the
• 45:01
  auction house is. That was my discovery of the
• 45:03
  auction house. It'll it'll come when you get
• 45:05
  used to it. But anyways, that is a big point
• 45:11
  of contention. I hope that everybody, whatever
• 45:14
  side you're on, just be kind to each other.
• 45:16
  With that said Sean, last week we got a new Phaz patron and
• 45:24
  fortunately he. Has dropped the ball.
• 45:27
  Neither Legs nor I are like great storytellers and so we
• 45:31
  needed the return of Sean to do this just soon.
• 45:35
  You don't mad at us. We're going to wait.
• 45:37
  We're. Going.
• 45:38
  To wait for Sean to come back because we know he truly cares.
• 45:42
  We said, we said no. You matter to us so much that we
• 45:45
  want you to have an incredible, beautiful experience and we
• 45:48
  wanna make sure that you have the best time that you can
• 45:50
  because we love you and you deserve that and you're special
• 45:53
  to us and you're special to this community.
• 45:55
  That's what we said. It's.
• 45:56
  Hard to take you seriously with that hoodie.
• 46:01
  It sort of wobbles when you see this keeps.
• 46:03
  Wobbling and it's like up the one bed tooth and you're like, I
• 46:05
  don't know if it's going to bite me but like I feel like I should
• 46:08
  just throw myself. Others going to die on the
• 46:10
  street it looks. Very sad too to your nose.
• 46:12
  It does look very sad. I love it.
• 46:14
  All right, here we go. During the dark days of the
• 46:17
  Legions invasion, Siphon, a night born shadow priest who
• 46:20
  walked a perilous path along Azeroth's shadowed shorelines,
• 46:23
  drawing upon forbidden void magics to push back the demon
• 46:27
  onslaught. With a gaze like embers in the
• 46:30
  night, they wove spells that wrapped around the felfies
• 46:33
  shadows, consuming them in silence.
• 46:35
  As the skies roared with fire, whispers of Siphon's fearless
• 46:39
  defiance spread among those who fought beside them, marking them
• 46:43
  as the enigmatic hero who balanced on the edge of darkness
• 46:46
  to bring Azeroth a glimpse of light.
• 46:50
  Syphon, thank you very much for being a patron, Patron, patron,
• 46:55
  for being a patron. That's how we're going to save,
• 46:57
  you know. Tequila, my man.
• 46:59
  We're being a patron For Azeroth will always be free to all of
• 47:03
  our listeners. However, if you want to support
• 47:05
  the show and have your own story told on For Azeroth, you can
• 47:09
  join us at www.patron.com/baz FA no Faz pod Faz.
• 47:19
  Patreon. You're patron, but you go to
• 47:21
  patreon.com/faz. We could make a very strong
• 47:25
  effort to get sponsored. By.
• 47:29
  Patron I think that would be very funny.
• 47:30
  Let's. Do it, let's do it.
• 47:32
  Where did I just send people What website that I just said I?
• 47:34
  Don't. I don't want to.
• 47:36
  Know nobody go to that site or if you do let us know in the
• 47:39
  discord. You know, OK, all right, it's
• 47:43
  the 300th anniversary, so I'm gonna I'm gonna tell a little
• 47:45
  story from my IRL. I used to work as a executive at
• 47:53
  a company, an award company called.
• 47:55
  Really, guys? And of course we had the
• 47:57
  website. Really, guys?
• 47:58
  Dot com right? How many times I had to tell our
• 48:02
  clients? Really, guys?
• 48:04
  With the S do not miss the S because there was an adult
• 48:07
  entertainer who was named. Really, guys?
• 48:10
  And I'm telling you, it did not go well when people type out.
• 48:18
  Either way, that wouldn't go well in either direction.
• 48:21
  Leave that in. Just bleep out the name of the
• 48:24
  company. Let them.
• 48:26
  Know because it doesn't make sense if you.
• 48:28
  Don't know, let them guess. Just bleed both the name of the
• 48:30
  company and the name of the adult site, but leave the rest
• 48:33
  of it in. I worked for a company name
• 48:35
  Beep. It's done.
• 48:38
  Yeah, OK. With that said, guys, we are
• 48:43
  going to be going into the interview that we had with Maria
• 48:49
  Hamilton and Christy Murray. So I hope you guys enjoy that
• 48:55
  and thank you again so much for all the support you've given us.
• 48:58
  Everybody who leaves us reviews any kind of feedback.
• 49:02
  I do read them and I do appreciate hearing from you,
• 49:07
  whether it's good or bad. Like just knowing that somebody
• 49:10
  listened and said, Manny, what the hell are you doing?
• 49:12
  Are you even playing the same game?
• 49:14
  That, that, that gives a little, it brings a little smile to my
• 49:16
  face. Actual review.
• 49:22
  But we're going to be back next week with Episode 3 O1.
• 49:27
  We have a lot of big plans for for Asroff.
• 49:30
  Some of that you have been seeing like this interview
• 49:33
  that's coming up and the interviews that we've done with
• 49:36
  many community members. So we're going to be doing that.
• 49:39
  And if you guys have any suggestions, join the FAZ
• 49:44
  discord that's bit dot LY slash FAZ discord.
• 49:46
  Let us know. We're just coming to talk with
• 49:48
  us and tell me why in the world you think Fury warriors deserve
• 49:52
  more nerfs. Until the next time, though, may
• 49:55
  all your hits be good. Maria, you have over 20 years of
• 50:04
  design experience in many discipline.
• 50:07
  What are some of the unique challenges in world building for
• 50:09
  World of Warcraft? Well, I think there's just so
• 50:13
  many years of established things that have happened.
• 50:16
  And you have a responsibility when you come into a, a project
• 50:20
  like this to be a good caretaker, you know, to, to make
• 50:23
  sure that you're moving the world forward and you're moving
• 50:25
  the Lord forward. And you're, you're remembering
• 50:28
  what's happened in the past. And, and you know, with a new
• 50:31
  game, working on something new and maybe single player, you
• 50:35
  know, you're making stuff up. You're just freely going
• 50:37
  wherever you want to go. And here we want to be really
• 50:39
  careful to to respect what's gone before.
• 50:43
  I love that. Have you been doing this?
• 50:45
  Have you like, has there ever been any hurdles when you're
• 50:47
  like, I really, I need to really be careful with how I handle
• 50:50
  this piece? I think always we have that.
• 50:54
  I I I can't think of a time when we didn't have to think.
• 50:58
  Hmm. What's, what's the right way to
• 51:00
  go here? Like, like again, we, we, we see
• 51:03
  ourselves as caretakers, right? We're, we're, we're trying very
• 51:05
  hard. This is a shared world.
• 51:08
  We share this with everyone that's ever played it.
• 51:10
  And, and so we want to be very, very thoughtful.
• 51:13
  And so, yeah, we do come across times where we think, oh, this
• 51:16
  didn't go the way we expected it to.
• 51:18
  Maybe on PTR, maybe we should rethink this or oh, I wasn't
• 51:23
  aware of that. Like everyone isn't an expert on
• 51:26
  everything. And sometimes things happen
• 51:29
  where we're like, oh, we thought that was fine, oops.
• 51:32
  You know, And so we really appreciate that feedback.
• 51:35
  Like you're helping us make it better.
• 51:38
  So we listen to that and, and, and, and do think it through a
• 51:41
  lot. It's pretty normal.
• 51:43
  I love it. It's it feels like a very
• 51:45
  synergistic relationship that you have with the history of the
• 51:49
  game and the fans and everybody. It's it's sort of like we're all
• 51:52
  working towards the same goal. It's a nice, it's a warm
• 51:54
  feeling. I like it.
• 51:56
  Yeah, it's all of our homes, right?
• 51:57
  Everywhere. Ezraoth is everyone's home, so
• 52:00
  we want to make sure that it's comfy.
• 52:02
  I like that, yeah. Christy with 30 years of
• 52:05
  history, how does the team tackle the challenge of world
• 52:07
  building into the next decade? So the thing that we like to go
• 52:12
  for is a feeling of nostalgia plus, right?
• 52:16
  So like there's a lot of really cool stuff that Warcraft has
• 52:19
  done over the years and we want to respect that.
• 52:22
  We think it's awesome. We want to build on that and we
• 52:25
  want to make it still feel like as cool as it did when you first
• 52:30
  walked into those, the original raids, you know, 20, some odd
• 52:33
  years ago. And so when we are building
• 52:36
  spaces, especially spaces that build upon maybe older zones,
• 52:40
  cultures that have been established for a while, what
• 52:43
  we're really thinking about is, OK, we already know what this
• 52:47
  culture is kind of distilled down to their most core essence.
• 52:51
  How can we plus that, how can we add to how they've evolved over
• 52:55
  the years? If we're talking about blood
• 52:56
  elves and the fact that they have had such a tumultuous
• 52:59
  history going from being, you know, really into the fell super
• 53:03
  exciting for them. Now they're trying to like come
• 53:05
  off of that and trying to deal with that.
• 53:07
  Like, how does their culture change as we go through and, you
• 53:10
  know, learn more about them and they're just like, all right, So
• 53:13
  are they using different types of magics now?
• 53:15
  Are they focused on different areas of magic?
• 53:18
  How are they, you know, dealing with that in, in their culture?
• 53:21
  And so really it's just about looking back and understanding
• 53:24
  what we we've built on in the past and then, you know,
• 53:27
  respecting that and bringing it forward and, and really trying
• 53:30
  to build upon what we've already, you know, learned and
• 53:33
  done with them. I love that I, I love that you
• 53:36
  mentioned blood Els because going into midnight, I think
• 53:39
  we're all expecting we're going to see a lot of them.
• 53:41
  I don't think I can ask questions about midnight, so I
• 53:42
  won't even bother. But I will ask, has there been a
• 53:47
  piece of content that you've been like you've seen coming up
• 53:50
  on your plate? Like, oh, we get to work with
• 53:51
  this zone and I'm really excited to dig into that.
• 53:53
  Or is there is there one that you maybe are hoping will show
• 53:56
  up that you get to to dive into? It was so fun to work on
• 54:00
  Dragonflight. I think we were all just really
• 54:03
  excited to really embrace that sense of adventure in in
• 54:08
  Dragonflight, the fact that the Dragon Isles were kind of
• 54:12
  unexplored territory and we could really be creative with
• 54:16
  how we built these homes for the Dragons and what embodied each
• 54:21
  of the different flights would look like.
• 54:23
  I think that was really exciting and really, really fun to work
• 54:25
  on. Definitely.
• 54:26
  I think my favorite song that I've worked on was Valdrazos and
• 54:29
  just the the fact that it was like the seat of Valdrakon, the
• 54:33
  home of the Dragons. It had this kick ass rate
• 54:36
  entrance in it. Like there were just so many
• 54:37
  pieces of it that were so exciting and fun to build that
• 54:41
  when I got assigned to that zone, I was like, yes, this is
• 54:44
  going to be awesome. And I just had a really great
• 54:45
  time with it. I love that Dell Jurassis is a
• 54:48
  great zone. You did a fantastic job.
• 54:51
  When So when you're assigned to a zone?
• 54:52
  Sorry, I realize this isn't one of the questions we sent, but
• 54:54
  when you're assigned to a zone, is it like, is it just
• 54:57
  Christie's like tell Jurassis Christie made this or is it the
• 55:00
  team working? Oh, no, yeah, no.
• 55:02
  Every zone in in World of Warcraft is a team effort.
• 55:05
  I had a fantastic group of folks helping me out of Victor Cordis,
• 55:08
  Jacqueline Washington, Michael Eston.
• 55:11
  There's a whole bunch of people that were, you know, pouring
• 55:13
  their souls into this, this, this zone.
• 55:17
  They were working on different pieces of it.
• 55:20
  There were folks who were assigned to, like, work on just
• 55:24
  tear hold and building up that space, making sure that we got
• 55:27
  the overgrown Titan architecture just right, having the
• 55:30
  waterfalls pouring down from it. We had one of our current world
• 55:36
  design leads. He got promoted because he did
• 55:39
  such a good job, right? He worked on the bronze
• 55:41
  dragonfly area where they've got that giant like Hourglass
• 55:44
  Temple, and all the sand is pouring out of it.
• 55:47
  Because sometimes, you know, there's shenanigans that happen
• 55:49
  and, you know, sand explodes. Yeah, it's it's, it's, it's
• 55:52
  dragon stuff. So he did a really cool, like
• 55:56
  sand dune treatment under this awesome building that the
• 55:59
  dungeon team created. So like we're always
• 56:02
  collaborating. And that's actually my favorite
• 56:04
  part of working on Wow is the fact that because I'm working
• 56:07
  with so many other creative awesome people, I'm inspired by
• 56:10
  them. They're inspired by me.
• 56:11
  Like it's this constant feeding of creativity into one another
• 56:16
  that like if someone has an amazing idea, but maybe it
• 56:18
  doesn't work for their particular space or POI the
• 56:21
  point of interest that they're in, maybe someone else can use
• 56:24
  it. And then that just gets really
• 56:25
  exciting. It really gets, you know, people
• 56:27
  pumped to work on what they're doing.
• 56:28
  I. Love that your energy is so
• 56:30
  infectious. I'm so excited you guys are
• 56:33
  working on more. I love.
• 56:36
  Rambling. It's great.
• 56:38
  It's such a so it's so great. You mentioned Tear Hold and the
• 56:42
  bronze dragonfly area, and though they have parts of the
• 56:45
  game that are like very unique to Warcraft and, and, and Wow
• 56:48
  has a very distinct art style that's remained fairly
• 56:52
  consistent over the years. Are there any aspects that the
• 56:55
  team considers like core elements of Wow design wise?
• 56:59
  Yeah, actually, I love this question because this is
• 57:01
  something that I've asked of my art directors too.
• 57:04
  It's something that I think is really important to understand
• 57:07
  as an artist working on. Wow.
• 57:10
  So kind of, to paraphrase my art director, Eli Hannon, something
• 57:12
  that he told me that really resonated with me is that every
• 57:17
  space in Wow is like the iconized version of what this
• 57:21
  thing is. If it's a volcano, it's the most
• 57:23
  volcano. We volcano spewing the most lava
• 57:25
  is lava that you could ever possibly, you know, see it's you
• 57:29
  read it instantly. It's it's iconic.
• 57:31
  The visual of it just hits you immediately.
• 57:34
  I think a really strong element of world building, especially in
• 57:39
  Wow, is show, don't tell. If I can show you what the what
• 57:44
  this culture is all about. Like immediately once you enter
• 57:48
  the zone, that's what we're trying to do.
• 57:50
  That's really what is important and that's something that is
• 57:52
  really, really important. And Wow, I would also say that
• 57:55
  the color palette is actually something that is really
• 57:58
  important. Certainly older zones, more
• 58:00
  classic zones, you can tell that the color palettes are very,
• 58:03
  very almost monochrome in some places.
• 58:05
  But when you do have a spot of just bright contrasting color,
• 58:10
  that's how you know that's where you want to go.
• 58:12
  That's the thing that's going to draw you into there.
• 58:14
  Even in modern zones, we try to maintain fairly limited colour
• 58:18
  palettes. If you think back to something
• 58:19
  like we were working on Ash Cahet, it's it's very like dark
• 58:26
  Blues and purples and pinks. It's pretty subdued.
• 58:29
  When you look over into the city, you, you see like these
• 58:34
  bronze colours and these golds and the, the webs and the, the
• 58:38
  like opening in the ceiling that shows you kind of like this,
• 58:42
  this crazy like star mold that covers the, the ceilings.
• 58:47
  It, it's just like that's the thing that's going to draw your
• 58:49
  eye because it has the, the, the highest amount of color
• 58:52
  contrast, whereas everything else, we kind of keep it a
• 58:54
  fairly limited palette. And I think that really, really
• 58:56
  helps with that kind of iconography.
• 58:59
  I was mentioning earlier in that it is so important that when you
• 59:02
  see something, you know where you're supposed to go.
• 59:04
  You know what it is. It is the thing that most you
• 59:07
  know is most emblematic of that culture or that zone or, you
• 59:10
  know, whatever it is that you're trying to share with the player.
• 59:13
  If I can add something here, even though this isn't my
• 59:15
  specific area, one thing I wanted to call out is sometimes
• 59:18
  there's stuff that's supporting all of this work that the World
• 59:21
  builders is putting in that you don't, you don't realize unless
• 59:23
  you look really carefully. So for example, the Arathi
• 59:28
  culture, all the props that were made have brackets on them.
• 59:31
  And those brackets are there because they arrived in airships
• 59:33
  and all their stuff came off their airship where it was
• 59:35
  bolted down. So it didn't fly off when they
• 59:38
  were flying around. But that's an extra piece that
• 59:41
  most people will never notice, right?
• 59:44
  And so everyone is thinking about this.
• 59:46
  Everyone is thinking about how do we make these cultures real
• 59:49
  and how do we make these things stand out and do the things we
• 59:52
  want to stand out, stand out and are the things that we don't
• 59:55
  need to call attention to. But they're just they're
• 59:56
  reinforcing it. And it's somewhere in the back
• 59:58
  of your mind, you're maybe like, wow, this is really feeling
• 1:00:01
  good. It's like, well, some of that's
• 1:00:02
  because there's a there's a bolted down pedestal thingy on
• 1:00:05
  that because, yeah, that makes sense, right?
• 1:00:08
  So. There's a lot of thought that
• 1:00:10
  goes into zones beyond, beyond the, the, the very obvious
• 1:00:15
  things you see. I also want to call out in
• 1:00:17
  Hollow Fall, the, the fact that, that when, when the world
• 1:00:21
  builders and the artists looked at how they wanted to do the
• 1:00:23
  foliage, they made sure it all pointed, the open blooms all
• 1:00:26
  pointed toward the crystal right, 'cause it would that
• 1:00:31
  makes sense. And you don't notice that, but
• 1:00:33
  you will notice that now when you look 'cause they all are
• 1:00:36
  going to face that all the way around.
• 1:00:39
  So there's, so there's a lot of of, of serious thought that goes
• 1:00:42
  into this. It's not just pretty colors and
• 1:00:44
  beautiful contrast and all those other great ideas.
• 1:00:47
  It's also like, how do we make this real?
• 1:00:49
  How do we make this feel real and real in a fantasy sense, but
• 1:00:53
  real? I love that I am also so ready
• 1:00:57
  for the Christie and Maria Art Design podcast.
• 1:01:00
  When does that stay? That's I never so the brackets.
• 1:01:05
  I had heard you mentioned the brackets before, but I didn't.
• 1:01:07
  That's wow. That's a that's a great.
• 1:01:10
  I'm going to go to Halo fall as soon as we end this call.
• 1:01:14
  I love that. I do want to pull you in for
• 1:01:16
  this question too. So every expansion has a unique
• 1:01:19
  feel. How does the team decide what
• 1:01:21
  the tone of the expansion will be, and do you try to avoid
• 1:01:24
  repeating tone? I don't know that we
• 1:01:28
  specifically say, oh, we did that tone, that theme before, so
• 1:01:31
  we shouldn't do it again. I think what we're looking at is
• 1:01:34
  what is the story we want to tell here?
• 1:01:36
  And what is sort of the theme? What is what is the overarching
• 1:01:39
  theme that we're going for? And so we came out of, you know,
• 1:01:44
  shadow lands and A and a, and a giant worldwide pandemic.
• 1:01:48
  And we wanted, we wanted a little hope, you know, we wanted
• 1:01:51
  a little, a little feeling of exploration and freedom and hope
• 1:01:55
  and discovery and, and, and really a, I, I've said before,
• 1:02:00
  palate cleanser sort of thing. We, you know, it was a tough
• 1:02:04
  time all around the world. We're, we're global, we know it.
• 1:02:08
  Our players come from everywhere.
• 1:02:09
  They've all had rough times, right?
• 1:02:11
  So we wanted it to be joyous. That was, that's what we were
• 1:02:15
  going for. And so that informed a lot of
• 1:02:17
  decisions. So the world building team made
• 1:02:18
  us enormous zones, biggest zones we've ever had, enormous, vast
• 1:02:23
  zones to explore. Lots of cool nooks and crannies.
• 1:02:26
  We we had dragon riding, you know, our first, our first cut
• 1:02:30
  out what happens when you can move with momentum.
• 1:02:32
  And we had these cool opportunities to to take you,
• 1:02:37
  pass you through the story to high places and let let you
• 1:02:41
  plummet off of them, you know, and soar across the landscape
• 1:02:45
  and see what you came across. And, and so we knew that's what
• 1:02:50
  we were after. We knew, hey, we should always
• 1:02:52
  keep that in mind as we plan things out going into the War
• 1:02:56
  within and the world saga. We have some different themes
• 1:02:59
  here. There's an overarching theme for
• 1:03:01
  the whole saga, which I don't think I want to say what that
• 1:03:04
  is, really. And then we have we have the war
• 1:03:07
  within. And and, you know, here we knew
• 1:03:09
  we were going to go darker here. We knew we were going to go
• 1:03:12
  underground here. We knew we were going to deal
• 1:03:14
  with, you know, Nerubians here. We knew we were going to chase
• 1:03:17
  down Xalitas here. We knew it was going to feel
• 1:03:21
  dangerous. And so we wanted to set that
• 1:03:23
  tone early. You know, we wanted to have you
• 1:03:26
  encounter a, a, a, a bad thing that happens at the very
• 1:03:29
  beginning. I mean, my shirt says for
• 1:03:31
  Dalaran, you know, like we wanted to set up the stakes
• 1:03:36
  really early and and this one is about unifying and coming
• 1:03:41
  together and and family and pushing, pushing together
• 1:03:45
  against, against the Vadnais, right?
• 1:03:48
  Not not going to be what midnight's about.
• 1:03:51
  Midnight's Midnight's got a whole different thing going on
• 1:03:53
  there. So, so we don't say, well, we
• 1:03:58
  don't want to repeat, but we also say, hey, what's right for
• 1:04:00
  the story we're telling, what's right for the for the feelings
• 1:04:04
  we want to get across. And the World's Soul Saga is
• 1:04:08
  cool in that we have the opportunity to to play a little
• 1:04:11
  bit with your emotions as we change those themes throughout
• 1:04:14
  the saga. I love that.
• 1:04:16
  I just want to say personally thank you for the uplift out of
• 1:04:21
  the COVID era because it was needed by everyone I think, and
• 1:04:24
  you guys did a masterful job of it.
• 1:04:26
  I'm going to ask one more question before I hand things
• 1:04:28
  over to to Manny and this is open for both of you, but what
• 1:04:31
  is what one thing are you most proud of in the War Within?
• 1:04:35
  Oh, this one, I am super proud of the connectivity between the
• 1:04:39
  zones. I feel like the fact that you
• 1:04:41
  can dive down the core way, take a hard turn now you're in a
• 1:04:45
  hollow fall Crest across you glimpse the crystal and then
• 1:04:49
  dive down into the deep Sebastia head is just so freaking cool.
• 1:04:53
  I really love that we were able to do that.
• 1:04:55
  Like our engineering team really worked hard on the tech that
• 1:04:59
  connects the above and below ground zones so that you could
• 1:05:02
  have that seamless transfer. And we were just really excited
• 1:05:05
  about being able to that. All of that stuff working and
• 1:05:08
  was really fun for me. As recently I was doing a raid
• 1:05:12
  with my Guild and we were flying from the ringing deeps into ash
• 1:05:16
  cahet and there's that big like cavern of glow worms that you
• 1:05:18
  can dive down. And one of my guildies had just
• 1:05:21
  no idea that was there. He was like, Oh my God, there's
• 1:05:24
  a shortcut. This is so.
• 1:05:25
  Helpful. Why didn't?
• 1:05:26
  I know about this and I just love that even though we've been
• 1:05:29
  playing since launch, like there's still things that people
• 1:05:31
  are finding, exploring. It's because they're like so
• 1:05:34
  many like little bits and pieces and nooks and crannies that you
• 1:05:37
  can get lost in and find yourself exploring that there's
• 1:05:40
  still like mystery and, and the fact that everything's connected
• 1:05:43
  together makes it just super easy for you to kind of cruise
• 1:05:45
  through on your mount and just like take it all in it.
• 1:05:48
  It's really awesome. I love it.
• 1:05:51
  What about you, Maria? I have to say that I'm quite
• 1:05:56
  proud of how we managed to deliver some breadth and depth
• 1:06:01
  to the storytelling until the zones with stay a Wiles that let
• 1:06:06
  the people that want to opt into that additional lore and that
• 1:06:08
  additional content, that additional sort of conversation
• 1:06:11
  that helps build those characters, makes you better
• 1:06:15
  understand the situation. Combined with some of our local
• 1:06:18
  stories, what we call those side quests that are part of of
• 1:06:22
  helping you understand the people and the place and the the
• 1:06:27
  problems and challenges that are being faced by them.
• 1:06:29
  They give you a glimpse into everyday lives of, of, of Ursin
• 1:06:33
  and Arasi and, and, and even Neribians.
• 1:06:37
  I was really proud of how we managed to, to, to pull those
• 1:06:40
  off. I think there were some
• 1:06:43
  fantastic and amazing stories amongst those in addition to our
• 1:06:48
  obviously epic main story main campaign.
• 1:06:51
  And I, and I was really proud of the team.
• 1:06:53
  I mean, the team really dug in for some some some very
• 1:06:56
  meaningful stories there because ideally, from from my
• 1:07:01
  perspective anyway, people engage with that as much as they
• 1:07:04
  want to, right? I don't want to force people to
• 1:07:06
  do things they don't like. I mean, why would we do that?
• 1:07:08
  That's silly. But for those that really crave
• 1:07:11
  that stuff, I want to provide them that opportunity.
• 1:07:14
  And and I think we did AI think we did a good job there.
• 1:07:17
  And I'm and I'm so, so proud of the team.
• 1:07:21
  The, the just the heartfelt anecdotes and people commenting
• 1:07:24
  on Twitter and and so forth about their favorites was, was,
• 1:07:28
  was so heart warming, honestly. And, and the team just gets so
• 1:07:32
  excited when they know that work that they've done was, was
• 1:07:35
  appreciated. And so far so I'm I'm very proud
• 1:07:38
  of that. You did an amazing I'm a Quest
• 1:07:42
  plaster normally, and this was the first expansion when it was
• 1:07:45
  like I stopped and consumed everything.
• 1:07:47
  I cried twice. You made me cry twice more.
• 1:07:49
  Yeah. Yep, Yep.
• 1:07:51
  Well, the, and The thing is, the narrative designers and the
• 1:07:54
  quest designers will be very happy to hear that because they
• 1:07:56
  want feels. They want you to feel things
• 1:07:59
  right. So so yay.
• 1:08:01
  Yep, they got them. They got them all right, man.
• 1:08:03
  I hugged so much time. I'm so sorry, man.
• 1:08:05
  And then I turned it over to you.
• 1:08:07
  No, I, I love this because it really shows how everything is
• 1:08:10
  interconnected. We talked about like the world
• 1:08:12
  building and it goes into the way the story goes.
• 1:08:15
  I kind of want to follow up exactly where you left off
• 1:08:17
  there. You guys have had so much
• 1:08:19
  technology that has improved over the course of like a 20
• 1:08:22
  year game. And I want to know, like, how do
• 1:08:27
  you leverage that to change the way that you tell the stories,
• 1:08:30
  to change the way that you build the world?
• 1:08:33
  I guess start with you, Maria. How do you like change the story
• 1:08:37
  with this new technology? Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes,
• 1:08:42
  sometimes it's hard to remember that quests and storytelling we
• 1:08:46
  use every piece anybody gives us.
• 1:08:49
  So if world building does a cool thing, we'll use that.
• 1:08:52
  We'll totally use that, right? If systems build some new thing,
• 1:08:55
  that's awesome, we'll find a way to incorporate that.
• 1:08:58
  So every now and then we innovate and we add new type
• 1:09:00
  questing types like, oh, now we have the ability to use this
• 1:09:05
  kind of tool to to make this kind of data record.
• 1:09:09
  Cool. Now we're going to have
• 1:09:10
  cataloguing quests and you're going to, you know, ride a raft
• 1:09:15
  and take photographs, right? Doesn't seem like a big deal,
• 1:09:18
  but it adds a new kind of of quest for us on the on the
• 1:09:21
  larger scheme of things, stuff like, you know, Dragonflight,
• 1:09:25
  sky riding. It's like, oh, OK, now that very
• 1:09:29
  much changes how we approach quest, how we approach having
• 1:09:32
  you encounter things. What are those objectives?
• 1:09:34
  It used to be, we could say you got to get to this place and
• 1:09:37
  talk to this guy and we know there's going to be a bunch of
• 1:09:39
  stuff for you to fight. Easy peasy.
• 1:09:42
  But now you're just going to fly over those.
• 1:09:44
  So what should our objective be now?
• 1:09:47
  How should we approach it now? So there's that kind of
• 1:09:50
  improvement and then there's improvements like some of the
• 1:09:53
  stuff that probably Christie will want to talk about, but but
• 1:09:55
  in particular things like the work we did to make it possible
• 1:10:00
  for this interconnected non loading connection between these
• 1:10:03
  zones, right? We want you to have that feeling
• 1:10:06
  of just power and flight and, and speed and movement.
• 1:10:11
  And that contributes to our story that that helps us make
• 1:10:15
  the point that like, hey, Nerubians are popping up all
• 1:10:18
  over. Like we got to go all the way
• 1:10:19
  down there. Look at how far that is.
• 1:10:21
  Take that flight all the way from the top, all the way down.
• 1:10:24
  Isn't that amazing? And in the back of your head,
• 1:10:27
  even if that's not a single line of dialogue, you're going, oh,
• 1:10:31
  OK, I get it. I see what's going on.
• 1:10:34
  So it's things like that. It's it's the changing cycle of
• 1:10:38
  of day night, which is done a bit differently with respect to
• 1:10:41
  the crystal. These are all things that we use
• 1:10:44
  to change how we we tell the story.
• 1:10:47
  Recently we got the ability for non cinematics artists to make a
• 1:10:52
  thing called the timeline scene. And that lets us do sort of
• 1:10:58
  those spinning cameras or cameras that the designers are
• 1:11:02
  able to build and make some of the role play moments more
• 1:11:05
  interesting or better. A lot of the stay awhiles are
• 1:11:08
  implemented using that technology and it made it, it
• 1:11:11
  made it so that we could do that.
• 1:11:12
  Our narrative designers could build those, our quest designers
• 1:11:15
  could build those. And we didn't need to send that
• 1:11:17
  off to the cinematics team. So again, not a huge thing, but
• 1:11:21
  it made it possible for us not to spend limited bucks.
• 1:11:25
  The cinematics team has right to be able to expand on that and do
• 1:11:29
  more of those. So it's just, it's just like
• 1:11:33
  quality of life for the team as well in terms of how they can
• 1:11:36
  build and how they can think about spaces and and the world
• 1:11:39
  we're telling the story in. And so, Christy, how does the
• 1:11:45
  new technology work with the world building and what you get
• 1:11:47
  to do when you're building out the World of Warcraft?
• 1:11:50
  Yeah. One of the things that I think
• 1:11:51
  is really distinctive about Wow is that.
• 1:11:55
  Well. Literally every piece of it is
• 1:11:58
  handcrafted. Every Rock You see that gets
• 1:12:00
  sculpted, every, you know, little flower that's placed all
• 1:12:04
  the day for inside of buildings. Somebody hand placed that,
• 1:12:07
  somebody hand sculpted that they hand painted it.
• 1:12:10
  And So what technology allows us to do is to be faster at that.
• 1:12:14
  And the faster we are at doing things like that, the more of it
• 1:12:17
  we can make. One of the things that I think
• 1:12:20
  came in in the last few years is what we call this, it's our
• 1:12:26
  ability to decorate the interiors of buildings was moved
• 1:12:30
  out of sort of a convoluted, very tech heavy process into a
• 1:12:34
  very simple editor that was very visual, very easy for artists to
• 1:12:37
  use. And it makes it so that each
• 1:12:40
  individual interior can have a lot more attention paid to it.
• 1:12:44
  Folks can put little, you know, small cute vignettes that our
• 1:12:47
  peers can use in the cities. We are able to use it to quickly
• 1:12:52
  add additional set dressing to support support our quest
• 1:12:56
  designers when they have really cool stories they wanna tell.
• 1:12:58
  There's this great cave, I believe it's in the morning rise
• 1:13:03
  in the Isle of Dorn that is filled with just a cobalt who
• 1:13:07
  has gone absolutely nuts with treasure is so pumped and so.
• 1:13:12
  One of our our world. World Art leads Steve Ashley
• 1:13:15
  worked on that. It was his very first furniture
• 1:13:16
  set ever in his first interior dressing.
• 1:13:19
  And because the tool's so easy to use, like someone who's never
• 1:13:22
  touched it before can go in there and then just go ham and
• 1:13:24
  make something that's really fun and really creative.
• 1:13:28
  The other thing, you know, like Maria mentioned, the tech that
• 1:13:30
  it allows you to go from the Isle of Dorn down into our
• 1:13:34
  underground zones, I think is something that makes it so that
• 1:13:37
  we have a lot of really neat possibilities there.
• 1:13:40
  It's also what we leverage to make delves work.
• 1:13:42
  And so the fact that you can click on your curtain and just
• 1:13:45
  enter this new area, that's another piece of tech that
• 1:13:48
  allows us to make the world feel larger and more connected
• 1:13:52
  without kind of breaking somebody's PC.
• 1:13:55
  Because again, Wow still needs to run on a potato.
• 1:13:58
  And that's really important to us that as many people as
• 1:14:00
  possible or have access to Wow and can still play it.
• 1:14:03
  So I think those are some of the things that are really neat in
• 1:14:06
  the past few years that we've gotten.
• 1:14:08
  We're always looking for more ways to kind of take our hand
• 1:14:12
  sculpted style and make it easier to propagate things out.
• 1:14:16
  So like if I build a really cool mountain, if I could copy and
• 1:14:19
  paste that mountain around and other people can kind of modify
• 1:14:22
  it as they need, that's a lot faster than if every single
• 1:14:25
  person has to learn how to sculpt to the same mountain over
• 1:14:27
  and over. And so more tech that makes it
• 1:14:30
  easier to do that as well. Because like I said, there's
• 1:14:32
  like four or five people working on each zone, but it should
• 1:14:34
  still look like only one person did it.
• 1:14:36
  And so more tech that allows us to get our our handcraftedness
• 1:14:40
  to kind of maintain that look, I think is is really important and
• 1:14:43
  it's super fun to play with and it allows us again to make even
• 1:14:46
  more content for folks. That is awesome and I it is true
• 1:14:51
  that like the way that the zones are together, they they not only
• 1:14:54
  have to like be uniform in themselves and feel like one
• 1:14:58
  place, but also need to flow into the next place and steam
• 1:15:00
  like it's a natural connection, especially with like the no load
• 1:15:03
  technology. And that's amazing when you're
• 1:15:05
  like building out the cultures that are in there.
• 1:15:07
  You spoke of the Colterians. You've spoken of the Rubens.
• 1:15:10
  We've all come to love the urban.
• 1:15:12
  What are the not so subtle ways that you, or rather, what are
• 1:15:15
  the more subtle ways that you kind of communicate like the
• 1:15:18
  story here? You just keep saying like you
• 1:15:21
  need to show this, not tell. So like, how do you show Urban
• 1:15:25
  when you're building the world and telling the story?
• 1:15:28
  Yeah, this is something that we spend a lot of time developing.
• 1:15:31
  We basically take a look at each culture and we think about, you
• 1:15:36
  know, what are the people of this culture want for
• 1:15:38
  themselves? What are they looking for?
• 1:15:40
  What what do they enjoy in life? What are their goals?
• 1:15:43
  How do they how do they worship a particular pantheon?
• 1:15:47
  Do they eat? Do they, you know, what do they
• 1:15:49
  eat? Do they raise livestock?
• 1:15:51
  You know, if so, what for? There are so many different
• 1:15:54
  questions that we're asking ourselves when we're developing
• 1:15:56
  these cultures. And all of that is to form what
• 1:15:59
  we're actually going to end up set dressing and and building
• 1:16:01
  the world with. As Maria mentioned, you know,
• 1:16:03
  the Arafi are a people who have, you know, by circumstance, ended
• 1:16:08
  up with their massive airship fleet underground.
• 1:16:11
  You know, how are they going to adapt?
• 1:16:12
  They're clearly a, a very militaristic society.
• 1:16:16
  And so they're very ordered. They are very focused on feeding
• 1:16:20
  that army. That's why they have those
• 1:16:21
  massive farms. It's very important, you know,
• 1:16:24
  an army marches on its stomach. So that's very important to
• 1:16:26
  them. They're all crafted.
• 1:16:28
  They, they work really hard at building those airships.
• 1:16:31
  So a large part of their culture is actually those airship yards
• 1:16:34
  where you see a lot of tools and supplies as they're building
• 1:16:37
  that up with the earthen. You know, they have a lot of,
• 1:16:41
  there's a variety in them, like they're, they're a culture
• 1:16:43
  that's been fractured. There's the earthen in the city
• 1:16:45
  who are clearly and strictly following the edicts, but then
• 1:16:49
  there's the earthen that have sort of migrated away from the
• 1:16:51
  city. They're living in the country,
• 1:16:53
  they're living a more pastoral life, which is not necessarily
• 1:16:56
  what the Titans may have envisioned for them.
• 1:16:58
  And they've found their own way in there, but they're still
• 1:17:01
  pieces of that culture that they've maintained.
• 1:17:03
  And so, for example, in the city, you'll see that there are
• 1:17:05
  these beautiful constructed Hot Springs and spas and baths.
• 1:17:09
  But out in the country, they're using natural spas and Hot
• 1:17:12
  Springs and they still maintain that part of their culture, but
• 1:17:15
  they've embraced it from a much less ordered point of view.
• 1:17:19
  And so that's kind of how we were able to tell a lot of
• 1:17:21
  stories. The earthen are struggling.
• 1:17:24
  They they can't reproduce anymore.
• 1:17:25
  That's why you get down into the ringing deep.
• 1:17:28
  You go to places like these giant mines that were overtaken
• 1:17:31
  by Cobalts, and you're like, really?
• 1:17:33
  You guys can't beat that cobalt. Like, wow, your culture is
• 1:17:36
  having a rough time, right? And so those are ways that we
• 1:17:38
  can show what's happening to that culture without having to,
• 1:17:42
  you know, read the quest text, which, you know, some people do,
• 1:17:45
  but we know that a lot of people don't.
• 1:17:47
  And so it is really important that there's a lot of visual
• 1:17:49
  storytelling that takes place. I don't see Lexon so I guess I'm
• 1:17:55
  going to steal one of her questions.
• 1:17:57
  Honestly, one of the great questions I could ask you is
• 1:18:00
  what are some of the moments or memes that the team did not
• 1:18:04
  expect but has just come to cherish?
• 1:18:08
  Kevin the Slime and Mal Draxis. Yeah, Kevin.
• 1:18:11
  Kevin was very popular. Also just any time that they
• 1:18:14
  suddenly decide like poke, poke, poke was, was very popular as
• 1:18:19
  well, where like, like people were making stickers and pins,
• 1:18:23
  you know, of this little knife wielding orb, you know, and, and
• 1:18:27
  yeah, sometimes, sometimes characters, Pepe, for example,
• 1:18:32
  like the artists that made that just thought, oh, this is fun.
• 1:18:35
  I'm going to make this fun little thing.
• 1:18:37
  And then everybody loved it. It was like, Oh, well, I'm going
• 1:18:39
  to keep making Pepes then, like, you know, So yeah, sometimes
• 1:18:43
  we're very surprised by, by reactions to some things.
• 1:18:47
  It's generally all really in good fun though, too.
• 1:18:50
  It's fun to see like when when people go out and apply their
• 1:18:53
  own imagination and come up with an interesting twist on
• 1:18:56
  something. You know, it, it, it feels good
• 1:18:58
  that you, that you interested somebody enough, you know, that
• 1:19:01
  they, that they took the time to do that, that they, that they
• 1:19:04
  actually sat down in some cases and drew something, You know,
• 1:19:07
  that's, that's amazing. I can tell you that cubicles and
• 1:19:10
  workspaces at at work, there's a lot of fan created art on the
• 1:19:14
  walls. You know that the people that
• 1:19:17
  made that character might might have that that whole wall
• 1:19:20
  covered and stuff fans have made of that character, for example,
• 1:19:24
  because it feels really nice, you know, to to know people like
• 1:19:26
  the thing you did. The Wow team is so unique
• 1:19:30
  because so many of you started off as fans of the game and now
• 1:19:33
  you're on the other side making the game.
• 1:19:37
  So how do you bounce ideas coming from new teammates,
• 1:19:41
  coming fresh from the community and like maintaining an
• 1:19:44
  established story that like has these people who have directed
• 1:19:47
  it for so long? I mean, everybody on the team
• 1:19:52
  does play. Like I've worked at a lot of
• 1:19:54
  studios and that's not normal. Like that's that's not normal at
• 1:19:57
  all. Like sometimes you're just
• 1:19:58
  working on a game. You're not that interested in
• 1:20:00
  it. It's it's it's a job, right?
• 1:20:02
  I know, I know it's hard to believe, but it is a job.
• 1:20:04
  And sometimes you get hired to work on something.
• 1:20:06
  You're like, it's not really my kind of game, but.
• 1:20:09
  Hey, I can come up with great features for it and I'm totally,
• 1:20:12
  totally excited about working on it.
• 1:20:13
  I just don't spend all my time. But with wow, the team plays the
• 1:20:17
  game and they play it a lot. So we have some pretty
• 1:20:21
  occasionally spicy conversations, you know about,
• 1:20:25
  you know, hey, my vault sucked this week and I'm frustrated and
• 1:20:29
  you know, so forth right with those conversations absolutely
• 1:20:32
  happen. Oh, I did this delve and this
• 1:20:35
  mechanic didn't feel good and I'm unhappy.
• 1:20:37
  But then we also have the Oh my God, I had the best time last
• 1:20:40
  night doing this thing. So we're respectful to each
• 1:20:44
  other. We recognize that, you know,
• 1:20:47
  everybody's trying to make the best possible game we can.
• 1:20:50
  And we don't always agree with each other's decisions.
• 1:20:53
  And we have to put our designer hat on or our artist hat on and
• 1:20:56
  take off our fan hat from time to time.
• 1:20:58
  And, and remember that, you know, everybody's, everybody's
• 1:21:01
  trying real hard to be good caretakers.
• 1:21:05
  At the same time, obviously we have the community loud and
• 1:21:08
  clear. Like we're, we're hearing that
• 1:21:09
  loud and clear. We're, we're always keeping an
• 1:21:12
  eye on how that's going. Our community team does a
• 1:21:14
  fantastic job of keeping us informed as well, making sure we
• 1:21:18
  know what's going on. Most, most people on the team
• 1:21:21
  also watch a variety of streamers.
• 1:21:24
  That's pretty normal. So they're hearing what
• 1:21:26
  streamers think about stuff and we do talk a lot about about
• 1:21:29
  what would be, what would be a good, a good, you know, movement
• 1:21:33
  in One Direction or another. The story itself, I've said this
• 1:21:36
  before for the World Soul Saga. I mean, we know what the story
• 1:21:40
  is. We know where we start, we know
• 1:21:42
  where we end. We know what's going to happen.
• 1:21:44
  We know what's going to happen in each of the the expansions.
• 1:21:47
  There's some wiggle room though. Absolutely.
• 1:21:50
  You know, if we're like, oh, we've introduced this character,
• 1:21:53
  but people don't like this character as much as we thought,
• 1:21:56
  we can start thinking about, OK, well, should we, you know, what
• 1:22:00
  should we do to change that? Like how do we, we change that
• 1:22:02
  perception? Or alternatively, do we do we
• 1:22:05
  fall back to a different solution because we're still
• 1:22:07
  going to arrive at the same place?
• 1:22:09
  I, I can't foresee that we wouldn't because, because we
• 1:22:13
  have a pretty epic story to tell.
• 1:22:16
  So we're going to get there eventually one way or the other.
• 1:22:20
  And we might, we might be like, Oh dear.
• 1:22:22
  Like like we, we thought Dagger and was pretty interesting.
• 1:22:26
  You know, if people don't like Dagger and that might cause us
• 1:22:28
  trouble for say, the earthen portions of the story, like if
• 1:22:32
  they find him annoying, that would suck.
• 1:22:35
  Maybe we would look at like, how do we make him more likeable?
• 1:22:37
  How do we make people make it easier for people to relate to
• 1:22:41
  him? So we do make changes, but we
• 1:22:44
  don't make big ones because because big ones pretty hard to
• 1:22:47
  make at this point when we know, you know, we know where we're
• 1:22:51
  going. Are there times where the
• 1:22:55
  community feedback and the enthusiasm has like, really
• 1:22:58
  driven the story and design like you were just talking about,
• 1:23:01
  like how you can make some small changes going backwards?
• 1:23:04
  We're not spoiling anything. What are some of the things
• 1:23:06
  where you've been like? OK, here's where we need to
• 1:23:08
  workshop a character. I mean, certainly at times when
• 1:23:12
  we are on PTR or something and somebody has called out
• 1:23:15
  something as whoa, this is not at all, this doesn't seem to
• 1:23:19
  work like that. Those those times.
• 1:23:22
  Absolutely. Like absolutely we'll go, oh,
• 1:23:24
  weird, we didn't consider this or oh, I never looked at it from
• 1:23:28
  that perspective. Because again, we're all, we're
• 1:23:30
  all fans, we're all people and everybody looks at things
• 1:23:33
  differently. So absolutely we're looking for
• 1:23:36
  feedback in PTR along those kinds of lines.
• 1:23:40
  As far as like storytelling specifically, you know, we've
• 1:23:44
  had cases where where we thought, hey, this is cool,
• 1:23:49
  people are going to like this. And then it didn't get the
• 1:23:51
  response that we wanted. And we've had to, to, to think
• 1:23:54
  through, OK, well, you know, how do we, how do we make this feel
• 1:23:58
  better? At the same time, sometimes
• 1:24:01
  we're setting something up in the future and we, we don't want
• 1:24:04
  to change it because even though there's an outcry, we have
• 1:24:08
  reasons that we did it this way. And what that does is it informs
• 1:24:13
  our decision making for the future about, hey, when I want
• 1:24:15
  to set something up like this the next time I shouldn't do it
• 1:24:19
  this way because this way didn't work.
• 1:24:21
  So I should do it a different way.
• 1:24:24
  So it, it does have an impact. You know, our, I can tell you
• 1:24:29
  anytime we release anything to PTR or, or live, all of our, our
• 1:24:34
  narrative designers and quest designers and probably many
• 1:24:37
  other members of the team are watching people play there.
• 1:24:41
  That's something you couldn't do in the old days, like back, back
• 1:24:43
  when I was first starting to make games.
• 1:24:45
  It's not like you could, you know, watch somebody play what
• 1:24:48
  you made and, and get that immediate in the moment feedback
• 1:24:52
  that you can now. Now you can watch someone play
• 1:24:54
  and they're talking to a group of people about what they think.
• 1:24:58
  And that is, that is unbelievably invaluable.
• 1:25:01
  Like that's just amazing to to, to know that.
• 1:25:05
  And if that happens early enough in like APTR or something, then
• 1:25:08
  then I guarantee those designers go, oh, I'm going to change this
• 1:25:12
  and I'm going to change this. And I saw a bug and I'm going to
• 1:25:14
  fix that. And oh, that line didn't land
• 1:25:15
  the way I wanted. OK, I'm going to change that
• 1:25:17
  line. So, yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a
• 1:25:20
  thing for sure that, that, that we do.
• 1:25:23
  So the community does have, you know, the ability to to kind of
• 1:25:27
  let us know what they think and, and we do make adjustments.
• 1:25:31
  But in something like this, where where we have a big, long
• 1:25:35
  mapped out thing that we've announced as this epic, amazing
• 1:25:39
  story, there's not a lot of wiggle room for big things.
• 1:25:44
  I just had an image of Maria showing up in my house when I
• 1:25:46
  was a teenager, asking to watch me play her games.
• 1:25:48
  Anyway, that's not the end. That's nothing close, but.
• 1:25:53
  Why do I let you close? Keep going.
• 1:25:55
  I don't know why, Maria Christie, thank you both so much
• 1:25:59
  for all of your work in the past, in the game, for your time
• 1:26:01
  today, and for the journey you're going to take us on in
• 1:26:04
  the future. This has been a real honor for
• 1:26:06
  us. Thank you so much.
• 1:26:09
  Yeah, thank you so much. I love, love talking about the
• 1:26:12
  game. It's my favorite thing.
• 1:26:14
  Perfect. And for all the listeners, thank
• 1:26:16
  you for spending your time with us.
• 1:26:17
  Hopefully you've enjoyed episode 300 for Azeroth.
• 1:26:20
  May all your hits be crits.