 Awesome happy 51. Okay, let me mute this All right chat. Can you hear us? Yes, good awesome. Okay So let's move this here boom boom We'll do that and We'll be good. Hello. Okay chat. Can you guys see everything? Yes, all right Eris this you by the way, I haven't seen you in I think like three years Okay, guys, so we are here today with we are here today with Brian Birmingham lead for for a while classic He's been I mean since since the beginning You've been on the team since since 2005 it was like halfway through vanilla 2006 Yeah, so if you're an old frog if you've been here for a while, you know Brian Brian's been on our stream a couple times before so we're very excited to have Brian back and We have a lot to talk about we got wrath Lich King in four days. I know it's so exciting. It's coming up like right now Yeah, it's it's something that is very very I think this is for a lot of people for a lot of classic fans that this is like the It's like the pinnacle of classic wow, right? It's like the end of the trilogy for a lot of people It's like they want the original and then you know cataclysm and What all cataclysm brought changing the whole world everything like that that still exists in the retail version of the game So it's a very like definitive moment, you know with with the Arthur storyline kind of come into a close kind of And all that so yeah people are excited. I'm glad you got a chance to come join us. Yeah, me too. Yeah I know that we don't have a whole lot of time today So I have a whole bunch of notes and questions that I want to ask it I know we're not gonna get through all of them, but let's jam it. I think we just get right to it. So yeah Let's do it. Yeah, so I Know this is something we talked about a lot in the past Talking about like no changes and you know some changes and this and that was there like a definitive moment that you guys were like, okay, like we need to account for the times and Make some changes in order to make the Playing experience better for for people playing the game like now in current year I don't know if there was a definitive moment. It was more like a gradual evolution Like we started very much like we wanted to make sure that we were building trust and we knew that a lot of people Asking for like we want you to make sure that you bring back everything about classic that was cool about it You know get rid of the dungeon finder get rid of flying get rid of everything really bring it back to original You know vanilla if you want to call it that right the original version of the game And so we really wanted to try to make sure we met that commitment partly to make sure that we weren't you know Putting on blinders right we wanted to remember like what are really all of the differences between modern world of Warcraft and classic World of Warcraft and then once we got all the way back there including like you know Reimplementing some bugs and putting things back in broken states and on purpose There was a kind of a recognition that like okay Well, this would really it technically was there but people didn't know about it And if people knew about it today or knew about it then it would have really ruined things and they know about it today So it will ruin things so it was things like The ectoplasmic resonator is one that sticks in my mind right where it was like I don't know if you remember this but it was from the tier 0.5 quest chain, but you were it was a quest Objective right you're supposed to like get this item and turn it into somebody right? You're not really supposed to like keep it in your bag It's not a word But it turned out that you could have it in your bags and use it to generate a ton of thread And we said okay like technically this existed some people so very few knew about it and actually remember using it at the time But it became like a this would become the way to play the way to play right right start the tier 0.5 quest line Stop in the middle carry this thing in your bags forever, and you're the best tank right? And you have to have this right and we said okay This is this is clearly not was intended clearly we need to break this And from there it was kind of a gradual progression like is this really broken? Is there you know something else? The the drums effect in Bernie Crusade was something a lot of people asked us to do something about they said Can you bring forward the wrath of the Lich King? Tinnitus debuff right to make sure that you know not everybody feels right use drums drums are still good And so it's all those kinds of things where we were hearing from people No, we don't really want it to be exactly as it was we wanted to be like really close really really close But like could you fix this problem? Could you fix that problem? That's what we've been trying to do. Yeah, and I think it's gone great I think I think the overall Sentiment has been has been positive like people are always gonna have their own opinions on individual things right? But I think it all started with the the chrono boon in vanilla at the end of vanilla Oh, yeah, because that's something I think was a huge positive change for the game And I think there's more that could have been done but I think that kind of like okay now the doors open and then slowly like little things were added like the Paladins having seal of blood and burning Crusade and getting rid of batching and and getting rid of batching but then Keeping seal twisting in the game because you're adding like the manual thing like we talked about that Before launch, so yeah, that was tricky. We had to like actually put work in to put it back And I appreciate it Yeah, I mean there's a lot of stuff like that that I think that I think has gone really well and One thing that a lot of people are wondering about is talking about changes and stuff the the auction house So I think a lot of people really like how the classic auction house looks and how it how it Feels when it's working But I think a lot of people also have a problem with just it's just so laggy because the volume right like this There's so many more people on a server There's so many more people using the auction house constantly than there were back then has there been any discussion or thought about like overhauling the auction house in any way to Basically just make it run smoother run better Right, we do we are very keenly aware of the problems that people have on the auction house especially on the larger realms and Kind of in the way that people use the auction house a lot of the contributing factors And so we are looking at that like currently we have people trying to deploy new optimizations to it to try to see if They can fix the problems with the current auction house But you're right that like the modern game has moved on to a different auction house back end a different auction house Front-ends and even like the commodities market and like all three of those things are different between modern and classic And so we decided to read like a long time ago to bring back the classic auction house And we were kind of happy about it, but you're right it does kind of contribute to some of those Negative player behaviors that end up resulting in a lot of lag It's a lot of that like posting of single stacks and things like that Like so the the sheer volume of the number of options you have to parse through in order to provide like a sorted list is Enormous and that's part of where that you know that latency and and chugginess comes from so we're trying to find ways to optimize those search results And trying to pay attention to like the way people use it to add some optimizations we developed during burning crusade that we can you know kind of kept at a float and They were kind of focused around the idea that most of them that most of the time was spent people doing scans of the whole list And we were like how can we make those scans more efficient? And so we did that we've been proven stare and then more recently we were like oh, it's it's being slow again What's the problem and it turns out that there's a difference in behavior recently where there's like more people like posting and canceling frequently like okay Well now we need to make posting and canceling you know faster But we also have like recently with Wrath of the Lich King Included the ability to throttle add-ons separately from the the primary interface So okay all them so we know that a lot of this activity comes from People who are using auction house add-ons to you know Do large batch posts and then large batch cancels and things like that So we can make sure that they don't take up all the time for people who are using the default UI But we are talking also about like should we improve the default UI? We think one of the reasons that contributes to people posting those single stacks is it's not sorted by buyout or sorted by Like unit price. Yeah, you know what I mean like like if you used to have a stack of 20 It's always gonna cost 20 times the stack of one right and so it's always gonna sort to the bottom, right? But if it's slightly cheaper per item you probably want it to sort to the top Right and so if we had that a way for you to sort like that in the default UI It wouldn't encourage so many people to go to mods And so we're talking about what we can do to clean up unit the user interface Yeah, that's that's great to hear like trying to find a way to kind of keep it have the same feel But then like the sorting and like the other stuff like that where exactly and it's gonna be huge I think and every now and then yet people will say things like Why don't you just do the modern accesses? Well anytime you say just you like be careful Think about like knock on a pegs like, you know, it's not it's not trivial, right? There's a lot of work involved and there's not always all the effects that you imagine. Yeah, for sure Well, the next thing I want to talk about, you know, we're talking about You know some some of these changes and stuff that have gone through some things that you guys are looking at And and like I said, I think the way that it's being approached is is for the most part really good In terms of accounting for the times and looking like hey, how do we make this better for playing now based on like player behavior? Yeah, no, I actually I actually think it's it's gone really well One of those things is been there's been a lot of talk about the dungeon finder I think that's a very like divisive topic It is and I think it's interesting because Originally, I think a lot of the people that wanted Classic wow where that was one of the things that people would bring up pretty regularly is like this is not something that we want You know, we don't like LFR. We don't like dungeon finder But then now you have this thing where three years later We're we're here looking at wrath and then you have new players coming in players who I mean 15 years ago Three years ago was not 15 years ago now, you know, so then you have people that started playing in wrath They're like, well, I always had this. What do you mean? So now you have this sort of weird thing has there been any thought of Maybe not having the dungeon finder for max level but having it for lower levels like doing up to level 60 content or maybe up to level 70 content to where People can have a much easier time finding groups in the world as opposed to Like at max level you can sit and you can sit in like down around or shatrath You can sit in trade chat and you can look for people, you know There's the there's the group finder system that you've added and that's that's great but When you're a lower level, it's harder to just sit in one place and actively look to do a dungeon as opposed to queuing up And especially now that the game has kind of like moved on past vanilla past burning crusade Is there been any consideration of that of just having a dungeon finder system for lower levels? We talk about lots of ways that we might make changes and one of the things that we're worried about is a lot of times If you do that for like one one segment of the the population Yeah, there's like well, how come I don't get it, right? Like we know you have the technology like well, of course and really of course we have the technology, right? We could we could do this and we're deciding not to and it's really because we feel like those conversations and that you know Community engagement really is important like we really agree with that original classic thought philosophy But I will say there are voices on the team that you know don't always agree We have a conversation from diverse viewpoints where some people say like they actually want us to go all the way to dungeon finder and other people who say like oh no, I actually want just this one little feature and it's a Conversation an ongoing conversation about like what is the most appropriate way To go forward. I think one of the things that That has made us want to stay with not doing any of these things Is because we want to make sure that the players who want that experience have a place where they can get it And you know, we sometimes hear that from people who want us to do a random dungeon finder You know, if they don't want it, why don't they just not use it? And it's like, you know that that's not really gonna work it's like If you if you have it available So many people will be using it because it's so convenient and and you know trivializing right that that uh, There won't be uh, it'll shrink the pool of people who aren't using it And so you really need to have a protected ecosystem, right where this is the place where it doesn't exist So there are people to find groups with and make organic groups with in order to make an Organic group space you have to not have the option to just quick hit a button and just group with randoms Right, and so that's that's one of the things that's really kind of holding us Uh, you know making us want to have that that uh efficiency And I will say like I personally had the experience leveling up Where I was happy because we had a conversation because we weren't an automatic group finder That I invited a warrior who in his mind He was like I'm joining this group as a dps, right? And as we were like, you know forming the rest of the group was like, hey, would you mind tanking? He's like, I don't know. I haven't tanked in years man. I don't yeah But you know, like we were all encouraging we're like, it's fine Like, you know, we don't want to keep waiting and trying to find someone who's you know Like, why don't you just switch and he's like, well, okay? If everybody wants me to and it kind of like gave him that safe space to say like I don't feel like I have to like, you know be at the top level and honestly, he was great Right, but it just shows you that like sometimes there's this intimidation factor If you're going into a random group You don't know who these four people are going to be and it might make you feel like I can't tank for this group because I'm going to get judged But if you have a chance to talk to them first, you know, you can kind of establish An idea of like, okay, what do we whatever all of our expectations and how can I make this work? Yeah, no, I love that actually. I'm a big fan of the Basically any sort of like player interaction and social interaction The only concern is because I I personally was super against any sort of dungeon finder raid finder all that kind of stuff But I you know just from streaming kind of like listening to chat and kind of hearing other people's viewpoints That's the one thing that kept coming up is like we don't want it at this level But we wanted it lower level Because it's just so hard to find people for groups or you even have this problem now where I don't agree with this at all People people it is the way it is People look at the game and they're like I play this class or this person plays this class. They're not good for x y and z Which isn't even true I mean going into burning crusade the amount of streams and videos and guides that I saw talking about how Rogues aren't good warriors aren't good and all the burning crusade Our top dps was A warrior a rogue A mage myself just rotated, you know, based on whatever the fight was hunter at times like it's just It's it's way more balanced than people think the game is but I think at lower levels they're being something to where where People don't feel like they're oh, I can't get into a group because I play a rogue or you know I'm just use rogue as an example, but Um, I don't know. I don't know what the best solution for that would be I know what you mean that there there is that kind of like sometimes stigma that comes from this kind of like cultural Zitgeist around like what is the best class and then people saying like everything else is garbage And I I don't know what to do about that like in terms of changing everybody's opinion But I agree with you that the classes are a lot more balanced and there's a lot of like, you know The class might not be the top, but they're still pretty close Especially rattle witch king balance. They did a pretty good job rattle witch king Getting things pretty balanced. And so I feel like it's it's uh, it's worth everybody taking a second look and I hope they do Yeah, for sure. Um, I'm going to let's see. I think I want to Um I'll try and make these ones quick. Has there been any discussion about like, uh Cross server grouping for arenas To to kind of it's okay It's it's the same thing as the other one where it's like, okay Well, if we did cross server grouping for arenas, how would we make that work? And then like where would the line be that it doesn't go go too far Right, like of course you get the pushback from like if you can do that for arenas Why can't you do it for dungeons but more than just like the why not me? There's also the like, okay But how would you facilitate making the invitation in the first place? Do you say you could only invite your friends? If you did that does that cause people to start to put people on their friends lists That aren't really their friends and like corrupt the friends list If you could you know if you could do that like like we did see this happen like back when we first allowed allowed Battleline group finding or excuse me. Yeah Well, that's what it turned into yeah battle net friends lists, right? And then people would write mods that would like put people on your battle net friends list So that they could like group with you and like use that as a group finding tool And so we're really nervous about any kind of those, you know unintended consequences really So that's what's kind of making us not want to do that right now and uh and instead try to focus on like Locking the the larger realms so that we can't have new people coming in So that if you really want to play with a different group, you know The people who are on those larger realms have to move off and join the new people coming in on some other realm And so we're trying to do that where we say there's a there's a point where Like the realm size we want to let people play where they want to play But at a certain point it goes beyond the point where it feels like classic It goes beyond the point where our hardware can eventually handle it and or software algorithms too, right? Where there's just so many people that it does things like clog up the auction house or you know Pollute chat and things like that make chat too spammy So there's there's a balance point where we want to try to pull things back And and we've reached that point on some of these realms where we say, okay We have to lock character creation. We have to lock transfers in we have to let people come out And one of the kind of like, uh, I'm used by this, uh, I don't know if I want to bring it up But I will uh is one thing I like about having these character character creation and PCTs Locked into these realms is that it does mean that when we find the bots we ban them and they can't come back So we are excited about that too. We've been able to be really effective with some recent new Bot banning techniques and they're extra effective on places where people can't make new characters So we're excited about that. Well, that's good at least yeah Um, yeah, and really that question comes from like the the pressure and like the pvp community to Uh, I mean specifically it's like alliance benediction horde feralina and you can see it in the team So, uh, there's definitely like some pressure there. Um, I get it So One thing I wanted to talk about as well is uh So joyous journeys has been a huge success people people absolutely love it I don't know how many people have said this is how the game it feels like this is how the game is supposed to feel Like just leave it. Just leave this the whole time, uh, which I think is great But um in in I mean, I actually agree with that to be to be fair, but the uh, the heirlooms are added in wrath That's right. You have you have heirlooms and stuff added in wrath and in Wrath, I know one of the one of the big things in I think in the history of wow a lot of people see wrath is like You know the beginning of the end a lot of people say it like you know at the end of like classic wow And you start seeing some little things added like the just the the gear design like how optimized the gear is or heirlooms achievements are added some stuff like that um One of the problems I think with heirlooms that takes away from like that lower level experience even if you're like leveling alts is The the feeling of like going to do a dungeon and getting new gear and how special that feels right because if you call Back and you think of legion Right People hated artifact weapons because it's the most exciting thing that you can possibly do in wow is get a new weapon Like loot-wise when you get a new weapon. It's like boom. It's a good day. No matter what it's a good day if you got a new weapon so um Is there any consideration of maybe changing heirlooms from Armor pieces to something that's cosmetic like a shirt or a tabard and and maybe finding a way to Have players still have that experience of i'm gearing up my character. I'm getting stronger. I'm developing my character and Still getting that xp bonus and not feeling like you're you're gimping you're leveling while you're Still having like that, you know that good feeling of getting new gear I know exactly what you mean And we did talk about that like heirlooms is one of those things that causes exactly that behavior that you're talking about of like Feeling like oh, I'm just gonna equip this heirloom and now I'm done that whole slot It's gonna scale with me as I level and I know never need to pay attention to it the heirlooms always going to be better and We talked about whether or not we wanted to change that and we were toying around with the idea of Doing something there and decided not too partly because we were getting somebody to push back About some of our ideas for for fixing some of these problems and we said, you know There's going to be people who really counted on heirlooms really are looking forward to heirlooms And don't want us to mess with things and if we mess with things here Is that gonna like, you know cause us to lose trust lose the the sense of what was cool about You know getting heirlooms people thinking about like they're chasing heirlooms But you're right that I think that they they could cause some problems. So I wouldn't say that we're not open to it I think we're waiting to see if that's something that the community really demands and if you know, you feel like it would be really popular And other people are I'd be interested and talking about that some more and trying to figure out like Is there something we could do that would change these in a way that people would feel was positive? Yeah, I think I think that would be fantastic. Um I'll just throw out one idea that someone had someone was like What if we just took literally all the stats off of them and they were just the xp bonus and then you're like Oh, I want to wear like an xp bonus on my my gloves And you know my my boots are gonna like extra straight. I'm just that's just one idea I think I think people would just feel like frustrated because they have to make a decision that they don't want to make there I think if it if heirlooms are changed to a cosmetic item like a tabard or a shirt And then they they still have the feeling of gearing up. I think that would be a home run I like your idea there. Yeah, like that's another another way like then there's not that choice It's a question of like what you're trying to capture because like in some ways like that choice of like I want this thing or this thing is one of the things that makes the game interesting in terms of like lute that you're wearing But I get your point that like the I want to go fast versus I want to have any power at all is not quite the same thing But I think it's it's it's interesting I like your idea too about like what if they were in different slots where you know, then they Are just an xp bonus and then I it doesn't take away from that year selection like the upgrade feeling. Yeah, I think that'd be great. Thanks Um, yeah, we'll talk about it more. Yeah. No for sure. I'd love that um There is I'm I have so many things that I want to talk about I'm so sorry. I don't have more time for you. It is all good. It is all good. Um, so there's heirlooms So there's Okay, this is kind of moving on a little bit beyond rathalich king um I can talk less there, but we can try you can ask if you want. Yeah. Well, um It's kind of beyond and before I guess because I'm a I'm a big proponent of the provision of classic wow I I think that They're like having the opportunity to play That always have the opportunity to play vanilla and always having the opportunity to play burning crusade and always having the opportunity to Play rathalich king like those three expansions Is really important and and I know that there's like a big audience of people that want to do that And I think the popularity of fresh as we've seen with you know, the the fresher was just being completely flooded with With people wanting to play that new just they want to reset and they want to try again They want to play again and this this behavior is something that has been repeated for years prior to Classic launching on private servers, you know new fresh comes out. Boom. Everybody's playing the fresh And you know, it's you have the big hype and then it dies down. That's just that's the nature of the games now That's how it is but um Is there is there any sort of of plan? I guess going forward or is it a consideration that This is something that we want to do whether it's through blizzard or I know with um Holly was with with was working on ever quest at the time that project 99 became a thing and having like a third party like Not for profit managing it or anything like that like that might be something that's like a whole another discussion but Is there any consideration for having some way of having classic wow provided in in each one of those three forms like all the time It is one of the things we're talking about because we do recognize that there are people who want that And we definitely wanted to deliver that with classic era because that was what our original promise was right We want to bring classic bag. We're going to have it for you Uh, and then looking at it. We said, okay. Well, if we're going to go to bernie crusade We definitely can't take away the thing we promised So we were careful when we were announcing bernie crusade and maybe we could have been a little more explicit about saying It will move on if we move on and so we are moving all of bernie crusade to rathlands lich king We have at this point is it right sure everybody knows right But we are cognizant of the fact that people are you know nostalgic now for bernie crusade. They're like Yeah, I just had I really liked it bernie crusade was still cool, right? Like could it ever come back again? And so we're aware of that and we're talking about it and trying to figure out what the best options are We don't feel like the idea of like splitting everybody and cloning everything into two places worked out particularly well But we'd like the opportunity of having like oh you could come back into bernie crusade again in the future Yeah, like any fresh or something Yeah, we'll keep it in mind and part of the the trick about that is also like making sure that we You know juggle the number of on ramps appropriately for players, right? Like there's a a glut of choice right now. How do I want to play world of warcraft? I want to play modern do I want to play rafting wishing to play classic era do I want to play season of mastery? You know and then so we want to make sure that we have enough of like a Understandable suite of things for people to choose from they don't feel like they're burdened by the choice And actually they're excited by it and so that's part of one of our considerations as well And I mean honestly, it's also it's convenient for us to not have so many things to juggle in our minds too No, I I totally get it. Yeah, because it's I mean for for new players too. It can definitely be something That's that's tough to be like which one do I play? Yeah, like what am I going to do? So I mean like yeah Yeah, exactly. You just want to make sure that that that is something that is uh that we improve from making Easier for players to pick the one that they want Yeah, for sure. Uh, I have I guess, uh, I think we have time for one more Uh, I think last one. Yeah, I got to run pretty quick though. Okay, so, um I guess talking about the uh the future I guess after wrath Uh, it's pretty much everything on the table now like the the opportunity to do cataclysm for maybe like a Changing the game wrath plus kind of similar to to what you know old school rune sip does with their polling system Is is pretty much just completely wide open now or uh, is there any sort of? Uh, I guess like specific direction that you see it going in I think what we really want to do is we want to hear from people It's reasonably wide open I think at this point as you know, you know, we released the survey But we want to make sure that uh that we get that feedback early So while we're still focused on making sure that we deliver like the next expansion packs like uh, or should be the next Uh content drops like old war and try the crusader and ice crown citadel, right? That we want to be having that conversation about like well, what's going to come after that? And so we want that conversation to start so we have to have that Feeling from the community that we know that we're delivering something that people want So what no matter what it is at least we're appealing to some audience that is asking for something for us. Yeah, that makes up Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think that's uh, that's a good way of looking at it trying to find out what people want the most But um, but yeah, I brian, I really appreciate you coming on. Uh, I think this is really cool Yeah, I think I think the the chat love that I think people are gonna love this Again to see this on youtube or whatever after the fact um I like I said, I wish we could talk some more. I know you gotta go but uh, I do yeah, I will um I mean, I have your I have your twitter. I can DM you about stuff or whatever if you have some time I don't pay that much to do it all the time. But uh, I try to reply when I can I'm the exact same way. But uh, but yeah, I'll let you know if I uh, a little bit more about some of this other stuff So again, appreciate you so much coming on and uh, we'll see you later Awesome. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, for sure. We'll see you later Bye All right dude Uh, I think that was great chat. What did you guys think? He said don't message me bitch No, dude, I uh, yeah I think you just wasn't trying to promise uh, trying to promise like quick response on stuff because uh, yeah I think that was really really good summary recap for those of us tuning in Uh, I wasn't listening Okay, so here's here's what we talked about uh, we talked about let me go through my my kind of notes here And uh, kind of what we talked about um again That was brine birmingham lead for classic And uh, he is he's he's been on the team since 2006 He uh, him and omar were kind of like the two guys heading up classic whenever whenever classic vanilla was coming out And uh, you know, he's still on a team huge You know, these guys are spending a huge amount of time trying to make this thing, right? And uh, I do think that overall they've they've uh started doing like a better and better job as time's gone on to like Adjust the game properly and make it work for uh the the time. So Uh, yeah, no, it wasn't distracted by discord message. I was looking at my notes. So here's what we talked about um, actually i'm gonna go ahead and Stop recording because i'm i'll post this on youtube guys if you guys like this I do all kinds of things all the time make sure to subscribe like the video chat say bye youtube and um We'll see you guys next time