Asmongold Reacts to "Blizzard Explains the Entire History of World of Warcraft"

okay so my name is inna people have asked me to watch this it's quite a long video it's the entire history of Wow and is it time is it time to watch the entire history 1 hour dude yeah it is kind of a long time okay all right let's see how it goes camel FES thank you very much to sub I appreciate that I haven't seen it at all I didn't watch it myself and I kind of saved it for this okay Ozzy costa's I'm the game director on World of Warcraft hi my name is Patrick Munro hi my name is Jim Edo I'm the lead gameplay engineer on the World of Warcraft team and I am the supervisor we are here to take you through the history of World of Warcraft okay second something I just want you know that scene right there of the mage that is what made me play a Mitch back in vanilla well that is why I made the first character it's because of that this exact scene right here I saw this so I got to me yeah I joined the team in the summer of 2008 I've been at Blizzard for just shy of 10 years now I've been playing World of Warcraft since day one back in November 2004 full of Warcraft gods players with a vast world to explore to adventure in to meet friends potentially to make enemies it's a place where players to play out the fantasies of being a hero and dousset in case i'm outside millions of other players from around the world it's set in the world of Azeroth the home to the World Cup just a minute is is the sound actually quiet or are people just spamming louder just a second moment let me check well I'm gonna wait for a mod kinna mod tell me yeah I'm if it's not a mod it's fine okay good franchise going all the way back to the RTS games of the mid-90s it places players in the shoes of one of the denizens of this world it's a world of swords and sorcery a world of high fantasy and adventure you begin unassuming beginnings setting off to make your name in a world full of danger and great glory to the errant as you explore as you do things like humble deeds helping farmers with beasts that are attacking their crops to other thing plots that may have touched upon some of the major issues of the day in that world you all gain power you gained renown in many ways it's a classical fantasy role-playing game in a world full of okay other people so as players grow in stature they would take on more powerful foes by the end of that initial journey players were heroes in this world players had toppled some of the great threats facing Azeroth forth ages for new adventures both in terms of the confines of the story but also just as human beings playing the game they wanted to see what was next what great foe wait time out the Spurs that are spamming eat it around the corner okay classic World of Warcraft was the base game before any expansions existed this was just World of Warcraft as a standalone product that came out in North America in November 2004 it came to Europe some months later in the spring of 2005 and the rest of the world to follow it really was this moment that United people who have had the world her 30s franchise sees this excitement for the enemy genre really opening up what had been a relatively niche genre to the broader audience of gamers from all walks of life okay all backgrounds it became something of a cultural moment back at launch at the very start of World of Warcraft there were eight playable races and nine playable classes these races half members of the Horde half members the Alliance the Horde side you could be an orc control a tauren or a member of the undead forsaken on the alliance side you could be human dwarf elf or no and these were the canonical Warcraft races that players have seen there was that actually going back to the realtime strategy routes oh there's thrall character classes were mixed after throwing the frame fantasy archetypes and abilities that have been seen in the realtime strategy games so you have the warrior waiting in two toe-to-toe combat wearing heavy armor wielding mighty weapons or shield the stealthy rogue hunter with an animal companion spellcasters a mage master of the arcane arts or the elements warlocks who are summoning demons and binding them to their will hybrid classes like druids who commune with nature and turn into various animal forms that they're in touch with and then back then there were two classes that were limited to specific factions only horde players could be shamans who are sort of hybrid melee combatants who also could harness the power of the elements as well as totems with a certain ritualistic shamanistic vibe then on the Alliance side Palace Warriors of the light who combined a mighty sword arm with invoking light for healing and support of magic so when nine character classes playable eight available for the Horde eight available for the Alliance which was better between shaman and paladin was a major point of contention no it wasn't out other than who you asked telogen serb address was green on the other side of the fence paladins were better it's just as no one of the pillars for what a world craft was having a largest broad appeal a lot of games were pretty realistic in terms of that aesthetics a lot of MMOs were based off of token fantasy realistic medieval kind of setting and we knew we wanted to develop a style that was different than what was being done we had Warcraft which is the roots of our commando and they had established a style that was very colorful it pushed a lot of exaggerated shapes created heroic characters epic environments to do fast adventures and epic stories and so we knew I came if that's the week of Warcraft we would take that and use that for the aesthetics of World of Warcraft making something that was very memorable for the players from the first moment when it came out back in 2004 there were indications that it was going to be somewhat different game and the ones that had come before there were countless people lining up around the world on release night to get their hands on the very first boxes Blizzard actually found themselves quickly unable to meet the demand just from a server perspective just in terms of the sheer load Blizzard had planned for it was a big wooly what if more people come to play this game than any other past MMO games such as EverQuest and competitors at the time even those expectations and projections weren't enough to meet the initial demands oh wow that's the original worst game it's like alpha 100% what server are you on was everything if you were on mal Ganis you could only interact with people who were on mal Ganis and we realized very quickly that while Maul gannets itself is overloaded that's okay we're gonna get that capacity up and then people are gonna want to do more so we wanted to figure out how to [ __ ] when we enable players to play because World of Warcraft is about playing the game with your friends it's about doing things I gather in a shared world and how could we get that experience moving forward a lot of those first months were spent really just trying to keep up with demand just trying to stabilize the service to get to a point where players could just come home from work login and I'll have to wait or not have their servers be down due to load I was just a player back then I bought the game the very first day it came out I want to say winners Thanksgiving weekend coming up I remember coming home excitedly logging in that first night playing and then could not wait to get back to the game the next day yeah we discovered that my server was offline and was one of five servers that were secretly his face so hopeless still matted they couldn't run with any sort of stability so I had a little enforced initial break from the game once they got up and running again we all jump back in and pick up where we left off in many ways that was the story it was a testament to how magical that experience was back then despite pretty frequent down times long periods of lag and instability poor responsiveness not because of any technical shortcoming of the game but because of the unprecedented player demand and the load that was hitting the servers everyone realized they're a part of something magical that we had never seen before in a game we definitely got bonus points as a game just for those unique social elements whereas now the ability to interact with others and your gaming experiences is taken for granted almost every console PC mobile it's taken away from your gonna have some of those interactive social elements what World of Warcraft has done over the years is add new ways new modes of engaging new places to visit new worlds to explore and has really provided shear is this ongoing engaging gameplay experience that leans on the uniquely social nature of the experience so whether you are joining up with four players 20 friends or making new ones to go take on powerful dragon guy dungeons or test your skills against other players it's a game that's really been able to build itself from the ground up as a fundamentally social game at the same time it's a game for everybody it's a game that from its earliest days was one that could be played alone if you were looking for just meditative peaceful exploration if you didn't want to deal with others you want to come home after a long day of work and explore tranquil elven forests do good deeds there that was the game that it could be for you 13 years ago it's the game that it still can be for you today in many ways that really is the story of classic world of warcraft before any of the expansion the first year was one of stability then the next year was content updates that were more traditional in the sense of modern content updates adding new environments to explore new bosses to defeat new dungeons to conquer and some balancing to the game adding some additional features like fleshing out player versus player combat all of those things came in with a course of the base game that really just set the stage for the expansions to Burning Crusade boys that was a good day first expansion we created was the Burning Crusade and it was pretty challenging from a visual art direction standpoint because it was very different than what was created for classic Wow this was the first major expansion to World of Warcraft players journeyed through the mysterious dark portal to the broken world of outland which was the home of one of the major races that is found in World of Warcraft the orcs this was a whole new world to explore with its own cultures multiple zones and dungeons new enemy massively increased the scope of the game cuz I got 18 months we spent a lot of time thinking about that aesthetics of it we got the story and the design and oftentimes that's kind of first inspiration for the artist and we get a rundown okay what's kind of the gameplay for the expansion the story arc and maybe some of the characters and then once we find out about that our imaginations start going wild we start to imagine how how could these worlds look like it was coming up with like all these brand new worlds literally another planet was really cool or really fun to do it was a lot of opportunity visually to create different experiences it also brought with it new features such as much more formalized structured compliancy air versus player combat new races to play oh god elves in the drew nigh for the horton ii lines respectively acts email addresses that hadn't been around before new abilities in the truest sense a significant expansion of the base game on all vectors along all lines of progression it was good more to do more to earn more to seek more to explore it was good a lot of the initial systems of the game had been fleshed out over the course of the classic World of Warcraft period Burning Crusade really formalized them into permanent structures rating was an activity that involved you know groups of back then 25 players getting together and taking on for the most challenging foes in the game Burning Crusade also introduced ten player raid size so it's somewhat smaller groups could still have that epic experience about needing to get together a full number of 25 people the arena system was added in Burning Crusade which allowed players for the first time a chance to match themselves match their skill to get very angry around their region to determine who was the best truly to hate the games in the process that was actually all so the beginning of all the warcraft eSport champion back then fledgling eSport League started to broadcast while arena tournaments resto druid and keep a few barely alive crazy deep into dampening a crazy ointment or on seeing the best from different countries go head-to-head against each other determine who the best ball of Warcraft players were in the world rewards became more streamlined better tuned and balanced or as it had been the Wild West previously and one subtle addition to the game that really laid a foundation for the next decade to come was a system that the World of Warcraft team called daily quests previously quests had been something to guide players through the game's context a lot of massively multiplayer games prior to World of Warcraft didn't have much structure to them you would go out into his own and be expected to just find enemies and defeat them often repetitively for long stretches of time to get stronger to get items and grow in power well the Warcraft overlaid a thorough network of level up quest lines the noddle have not forgotten it's telling stories state your business giving you purpose to your actions the reckoning is at hand direct uniting you through the world as you explored it in the classic game right those quests pretty much came to an end once you've reached level 60 the master level in the base game Burning Crusade raised that to 70 but it also added this whole new set of daily repeatable quests they were only available at max level that were randomized and varied and will give players a new thing to do many quests to explore and pursue in a regular basis when they were logging in it made outdoor gameplay a staple of the endgame experience in World of Warcraft rather than something that you're that's something that the team has really continued to expand upon and it's now really a core pillar of what makes the franchise what it is introduced for the first time in Burning Crusade was the ability to fly around you could at max level aren't flying nobody flat left players for the first time soar through the sky but around the world that more quickly bit more easily also opened up literally a whole new perspective looking at this expansive world that before had been seen you know from beneath the tree canopies and much closer flying was fun for both of our team oh yeah we had to figure out how to let characters fly one of the new methods of art that we did was introduce sky boxes because in out man you literally saw great dark beyond you saw energies raking through base and creating these nebulous clouds in the sky and it was very fantastic and we had to kind of develop a new technique to sell that and we had done really weirdly awesome visual development on how that stuff could look like now it was time to kind of translate that and actually execute on it so we implemented this new skybox system that we didn't do in class wow that was very exciting come one of the big question was how fast can they fly at the time our servers had a whole lot of interaction limitations how fast a player could go if you fly too slow it feels kind of lame so you wanted to go nice and fast but how fast is too fast well how fast can we fly here's when we make it feel good cuz if you fly too fast you end up and there's nothing below you and then things are loading and it's not a great player experience right and you miss all the cool stuff that we write and all the cool stuff the darts put in until it loads in or whatever and classic wow you know we created a lot of cool cool worlds like different zones biomes each with their own very distinct aesthetic feel and look but we never really had to think too much about transitions when you transition from one zone to the neck there was certain paths that we know players would take to go from one zone to the next and we could control that and make that a very nice blend and transitions like I say a snowy forest two more icy mountains and there were areas where we didn't have to really worry about transitions at all cuz players never were able to get up there unless they were somehow like climb all the way up to the mountains but it's talking about half dozen of fly mounts right now it's a huge it really changed the way we built zones and different landscapes and design visually the landscapes - we now had to actually think about transition zones and how one last gate transitioned into the next one get it to feel right or feel corruption or the fantasy that actually makes a lot of sense all the way down to what the view distance when you're here how do we deal with fog how do deal with lighting all these things suddenly became more of a problem once the player was elevated and able to see from Taric our forests over to Hellfire and see the line and see the between them you go out to these beautiful transitions first before was kind of hidden where my personal story begins as a member of Blizzard as a member of the World of Warcraft team was on the eve of Wow second expansion Wrath of the Lich King oh hi yes dude you shall be good that's the best what is it the best song did it played the game ardently it was an honor to be able to come work on the team to help shape the game that I'd look for so long ruthless King took players yeah the frozen wastes of northrend an area also introduced and with its roots in the lore of the realtime strategy games face off against Arthas the Lich King probably the greatest most notorious villain ever introduced in Warcraft yeah that's right this also introduced an all new character class the death knight as well as systems such as vehicle combat which played out in this massive battleground to the rating game the expansion of daily quests as a system integrated cinematics in some cases having powerful single-player wellness where you could see the world around you and transform there was new technology that the team who invested it around this time called phasing then ah let player's actions in effect influence them all around them so whereas before there was always a pretty heavy element of suspension of disbelief where you would rescue a prisoner from the villains lair and have the prisoner thank you but then because of the conceits of the massively multiplayer world a couple of minutes later the prisoner we back in their cage for someone else to rescue because it was just a shared world whereas now for the first time you could take over an enemy base and have it turn into a friendly one for you yourself you can see the results of your actions played out in the world at large this was used to great effect in storytelling in elements such as the death knight class starting experience and elsewhere throughout raffled out parts of a live game with such a rapid iteration cycle is the ability to come in do something at my desk put something into the game and then literally see players reacting to that thing ten days later in our public host environments or back then our beta servers that's an incredibly rare privilege I didn't realized the time as someone that was sort of new to the industry new to the environment just how rare a privilege that was to have such a tight creative iterative loop and rapid feedback over the course of Wrath village came continue to expand on features and try to create new ways for players to play the game with each other and one of the biggest changes ever introduced to world of warcraft was the dungeon finder feature ah no it was a match Manolis probably pretty routinely found at games today it allowed we find other players interested in doing the same content that you are looking to do rather than standing around town looking to manually form a party of adventurers to go into a dungeon you could just say I'm looking to do a dungeon into yourself into the system and the game would find you you need for other players the right group composition looking to do a dungeon as well and put your right as dual pass between your various character classes in the world of warcraft that occupy different roles we have tanks whose job it is to stand up in the front and front a team yeah healers who keep the tanks the rest of the group alive and then damage dealers who the ones who dish shop of the damage to defeat the enemies that are confronting the players a balanced group requires one tank one healer three damage dealers and putting that group together could often take manually upwards of 30 40 minutes you'd be standing around saying all right this four of us ready to go we just need to find a healer Allah good then maybe someone has to go or someone has their internal out and you're back to square one but the dungeon finder was and what its promise was was automating this process it massively decreased the barriers to entry for this content led to far more players than ever before participating in the dungeon gameplay that is some of what makes it special the field World of Warcraft does it just about the best there is this revolutionized the way people played the game and it remains a linchpin of the game for the past 10 years I'm surely the dungeon finder was added World of Warcraft was integrated into blizzards battlenet platform which is its promise game communications platform allowing players for the first time to chat with their friends who were playing time Starcraft 2 wins the Liberty is just about to come out that would later expand to include Diablo 3 overwatch etc so today players do battlenet can chat with their friends and other servers diablo days on the continuing to expand as people play games over all through the system another feature that we added in Wrath of the Lich King is the dual spec system or a dual talent system that one was born of many folks realizing hey you know this is kind of a pain point because especially the hybrid classes but when you talk about their paladin's in your druids in other classes as well who can play different roles do you want to go to a dungeon and you want to have a good group and to have a good group need to have that balance of the one tank one healer three damage dealers so a player would go hey I'm playing a druid I'm currently a resto druid I'm a healer but we need a tank I'm gonna go switch hold on everybody I'll be back in 15 to 20 minutes that really wasn't fun cuz he had to go back to town and spend a lot of money and suddenly all your spell's are different so you have to change your action bar all over the place my solution for action bars was I had screenshots on my desktop of this is what I look like as holy this is what I look like as pride and this is what I look like as rent I believe this is the 1 2 3 4 key it's all you know wired in my head at the time for playing I don't remember what that spell is I just know the two does what I wanted to do and then I'm like we can do better than that so we eventually envisioned dual spec start it is how do I save action bars and it turned into what it is now has returned so that's the whole game and pretty much ended after Wrath of the Lich King and we killed the Lich King it was great Azeroth was saved this scourge threat was ended and World of Warcraft's you know it came to a close and it was just a great game and it was a great 8 years or so and [Music] Cataclysm was the most ambitious expansion blizzard had ever made up until that point Cataclysm set out with a massive undertaking of actually breaking the world the so told the story of this great dragon Declan who burst forth from within the earth and unleashed chaos and catastrophe across Azeroth areas were flooded areas were broken by huge dick crevice was appeared but what this did what this provided was a vehicle to remake the original world they have been crafted in 2004 only in the mini cases back in 2003 and during the pre-production development of the ruins you embrace some more of the modern conventions and technology and the way that the team had come to build content by 2010 as Cataclysm raised the level cap has it introduced some features new professions interest yeah enough light it also took the unprecedented step of going back and remaking everything that had come before so the entire level 1 through 60 experience all of those zones were fundamentally transformed both visually art wise but also in terms of the stories that were being told there is Heinlein had advanced the new characters occupying those spaces with a truly radical transformation of the world art we had to look at the old zones ok now it's all being destroyed how do we actually make it look cool and chaotic but not too chaotic now that we're going back to some of the classic zones and that was the start of actually uh present some of the aesthetics of the classic areas so we started looking at all the assets that we made on the trees and access sets and we started to slowly update some of the zones and that is kind of like the start of the art in World of Warcraft where he slowly started to something more and more that was when we decided you know it's time to start upgrading all this stuff yeah yeah and engineering has been big on that because they've worked on how to you know streamline the Wow engine so it could run more smoothly more efficiently and allow us to actually and more high-res textures and now we could upgrade the visuals okay when the initial trailer was announced at Blizzcon seeing side-by-side juxtapositions areas like the Thousand Needles dry barren area dotted with tall stone spires turned into essentially a giant lake or the blasted lands that had been utterly ruined by the opening of the Dark Portal the potential that it created in terms of revisiting and re-experiencing content that have been around for years the players may have thought of is something in the past some of the other challenges we faced is one of those things you don't tend to think about as a player but we have all this data for the world as it is in Burning Crusade in Lich King and now we have all this data for the world that is very different in Cataclysm how do you get some of that data to what we call propagate when you make a change here because we're still supporting the live game as we're developing Cataclysm and making changes but that was one of the bigger technical challenges that we faced was how do we manage all of this data I have no idea what he's talking about cuz we literally just changed something like 90% of the world I don't know anything about this numerous NPCs you name it bit changed and kind of I'll be yeah huge most difficult thing with my cousin Billy was revamping and rebuilding the outdoor world there are a bunch of maps where the team went through drew up maps of all of the existing zones that had been the game from its earliest days and they color-coded them green yellow red green zones were okay these are the ones that were they're pretty fine actually we're not gonna do much to them they do some minor tweaks here and there we're gonna leave them as is way to do a more heavy overhaul and red is pretty much complete redo from the ground up including our level design and the stories being told there but once the team embarked on that road and started with the red zones they realized one was that it was very challenging both visually but also storytelling wise to have the old and the new side-by-side and second that once we cracked open that door the team as a whole had an appetite you know perfectionists and suddenly before he knew it some of those green zones were becoming yellow some of those yellow zones were becoming red at the end of the day almost the entire map ended up being completely redone so what's set out to be something more surgical ended up being an almost complete reinvention of the base game outdoor experience that was in July they probably the single largest task yeah Warcraft team is everyone today they're definitely practical challenges the process of actually Sun during the world out from under players missin needed to have two separate versions of the world in parallel how do we sunder the world out from under the players make it believable and not mess everything up in the process because when they logged out they were questioned and when you log in the sec same position is now inside of a mountain court inside of a fire pit or their high up in space because there's now a crater where they were one of the original requests from design was kill all players on login told me hey hey patty we get to kill all the players wait what why don't we just kill everybody move into a graveyard I'm like come on we can do better than that so we did there was a lot of challenge in handling that situation the transmog system purification trans monocle short that was introduced in Cataclysm this is something that has made appearances later on a Diablo 3 specialist has banded upon during our Legion expansion show that what part of the way players experience the game today the basic premise of the system was the ability to take the armor the weapons equipment that you're wearing as a character apply the appearances of other pieces of equipment that you have whereas previously people strove to obtain the most powerful items in the game a limited set of gear that might come from the most challenging dungeons the most challenging raids the long run those layers looked pretty much the same as each other maybe some differences here they're everyone's long-term goal was this fixed state that negated and undermined a lot of the sense of individuality and self-expression that is part of what's most exciting about the MMO genre transmog it's ultimately glorified dress-up but it's awesome now suddenly Robby's the emissive identical-looking clone standing around the city you saw a mix of colors and looks for many players collecting outfits and collecting appearances is one of the major motivating factors to have in playing the game they will go back and do old content they will do things not for the story but for the cosmetic rewards and the appearances that content yields it's just a reminder of how profoundly important the concept of self-expression is to the genre the raid find who are looking for read system those introduced in our 4.3 dragon soul content update that was essentially an expansion of the dungeon finder that have been introduced late in the wrath the Lich King that allowed players to be match made into forming even larger groups to tackle our raid content which let more players than ever before experience some of the game's most epic battles forcing an easier difficulty setting so that they could see the story face the villains that were the ultimate antagonists in the world unlike some past expansions that had only had one raid at the start cataclysm came out with three separate red zones when the expansion first released and now this is the 10 or 25 player large scales actually forehand embarrasses whole operation people proving their skills proving their ability to work together to overcome the challenges in front of them but I think back to the first few months of Cataclysm I think back very fondly to the time that was spent with my friends with my guild mates going through those red zones for my skip this part mister Pandaria was in many ways terrible was a deep breath they got worse following on the heels a series of expansions where there's a great potential threat to the world mists of pandaria was getting back to the original spirit of World of Warcraft a violent exploration and discovery there wasn't any immediate villain or existential threat face in the world was this mysterious new landmass Pandaria shrouded in myths that have been discovered and yes the great forces of Azeroth the horde and alliance both mobilized they wanted to explore it they want to understand its secrets they wanted to lay claim to its treasures they were both embarking upon a journey of discovery mists of pandaria marked an advance in our storytelling weaving months-long in fact years long narrative arcs through our content through the many content updates that mist had we introduced brand new characters develop them into villains introduce new heroes was a time that began with peace and tranquility but ended with all-out war mr. bendy area was one of our strongest expansions in terms of art direction oftentimes there are classic motifs whether it be classical fantasy archetypes or real world archetypes just from the very beginning we knew wanted very heavily influenced on age Natsuki but you know that wasn't enough we raise my foot in the Warcraft flavor in it and just took it to another level so that players could just get immersed in it and craft their own adventures in this new fantastical world first time I saw jade forest I couldn't believe that I was looking at World of Warcraft yes whoa these mountains oh my goodness it was just an animal what a work I've already has a very colorful aesthetic so this one we just pushed it even further we were able to do like these really nice blends and transitions that weren't possible with this new tab you're looking like unlined mountains and such wouldn't look the same to them that's just a position of not just the art style but our technique and our how we work - because with the M diffusion now artists didn't have to paint shadows and fake shadows within our textures we actually allow the engine to do that for us - oh yeah awesome tell them all the mr.pan area had for content updates and in any way is looking back that served as a model for what we've done most recently with Legion and what we'd like to continue to do going forward after initially exploring the confident of Pandaria the first content update and 5/1 took players to the coast of Pandaria as horton Alliance forces had both set up small bases there and were clashing with each other operation the second patch the Thunder King is - this was real of thunder off the coast of Pandaria this is were introduced there's a lot a villain the leader of the Mogu race Thunder King and the Zandalari trolls who were his allies this was a huge chunk of the event with many quests for players to explore guided linear scenarios that were used as a storytelling device that had not previously been done probably the biggest or second biggest raid zone we've ever met was a sheriff's history they've drawn him back to life from there over the course of the next two content updates the story veered backed Ezra to the conflict growing within the horse before fought against the Alliance in the final update of mists of pandaria Garrosh Hellscream the war chief the leader of the horde one of the tender factions in World of Warcraft character the players had first met magic crusade in Outland had taken his pursuit of power in the name of the horror a few steps too far no wittingly or not had turned into a tyrant and now sparked all-out war we're not only the Alliance his own faction worked a mill throw in to pose him to the final rain zone of the expansion the siege of Orgrimmar was an epic 14 boss journey into the depths of before capital lasted for over a year Liggins garish Hellscream himself garish make it worse that was born entirely within World of Warcraft yes the others Billiton the demon lord kil jaeden the lich king arthur's mentor actually all of those had their roots in the realtime strategy games and especially in Warcraft 3 Garrosh Hellscream he was born in Outland in 2007 and that was a poignant and important character arc it marked the first time but a major villain like that had been created within this world and played out the full face when we built a new expansion in World of Warcraft first and foremost we're creating a world the players are store at the story but the co-star is the world it's not about any specific character any hero and villain it's about the setting it's about the mood the atmosphere the environment what comes with that of course are new types of races new allies new cultures and so there's definitely lot of Asian inspiration behind the content of Pandaria players met races like the mischievous monkey like hosing the wives Jinyu and of course the sagacious but occasionally boisterous and art one of the strings one of the unique things about the expansion was that didn't have a villain that actually makes it harder to convey to players in some ways to introduce from the outset it's much easier more approachable to wrap your head around well there's the bad guy who's on the box purpose this expansionist to go kill him or her it's more challenging when it's just go to this place making sure the players didn't feel purposeless without the clear objective in front of them and instead felt encouraged to just explore I actually prefer that I prefer than mr. Pandaria we added an all new gameplay type that we call scenarios previously we know things that didn't words scenarios were meant to be a bit more bite-sized and organized for three players because and didn't have specific role requirements I mentioned earlier it's hang always damage dealers scenarios could be done with any group of people that you had the idea was grab a couple friends jump in have some fun one of the hardest things we can ever do in World of Warcraft is pioneering an all new type of content I think once we have gotten experienced making a sort of we learn lessons we learned from experience we build upon that we refine we try some new things within the confines of a structure that we know but when we're setting out to break those rules and try something all new there's a lot of challenges that took a lot of iteration and they really a process in many ways that continues to this day that began back then to nail the right game play for this scenario game remember people who were turned off by the theme by the motif of the expansion they saw yeah and this is dumb and Dharan race but though in fact they did I don't like three they looked at it and said this isn't the Warcraft I know the Warcraft I know it was about orcs and humans and right and this feels like a different game this feels almost childish many of those players would say those who passed on the expansion for that reason made a mistake players who gave it a chance we got into the story quickly discovered that it actually was one of the most complex narratives and beautiful environments that World of Warcraft has ever presented to this day as players today discuss what was your favorite expansion was the best expect no mister Pandaria tends to figure prominently in those discussions what an expansion no is more of everything that you like but also something new a new angle a new approach a new way to spend your time in Azeroth new zones to explore any questions to complete new dungeons to conquer but for a long time we had had these little companion packs critters scattered around the world and in many cases Clara's couldn't collect them and you could summon your pets we got the idea of making a fully fleshed-out making them kill each other perforated those companions that's a great idea maybe something to do with them and that something was training them raising them battling them against each other battling them against your friends pets and bounding them against ones in the underworld it was this whole separate meta progression that really gave some legs and some depth to the collection game that had just been purely superficial up until that time and it's something that now is that big hit mists and it'll continue to expand upon to this day like a hit and miss one of the challenges that the engineering team has been working towards solving for years as removing barriers between players we started with cross-server powder grounds we move forward with what's called cr-z cross chromosomes instead of being on only your home server you could potentially end up on another server and if you invited a player to your party suddenly bang you're in the same group together cross realm dungeons with the introduction of the looking for raid looking for dungeon to we realized it didn't make a lot of sense to limit those only to your server we want you to be able to be pulled from the region populace so that your queue isn't as long especially if you're out on the highest population server you might be waiting a while for that tank to show up or that extra DPS to show up what this was so good warlords of draenor it came out in the fall of 2014 it was technically visiting the same space as we visited in Burning Crusade just in a different time period in a different timeline this marked the beginning of story arcs that weave from one expansion into the next at the end of mists of pandaria we the heroes toppled Garrosh Hellscream leader of the Horde but we didn't kill him he was imprisoned was going to stand trial instead he managed to escape with these stinking powerful allies opened this portal back to drown on the origins of his race to the origins of the orcish people who later become the backbone of the Horde he was disgusted by what he'd seen around him and was resolved to take a different path this time to achieve the destiny that he felt he deserved as I mentioned earlier the star of an expansionist is the world this was a case where the story was an excuse for us to get players into this world we wanted to share with them this is the world of drama the homeland of the orcs as described in his joy he looked amazing at Chris Metzen 23 24 years ago and an awesome place that was at the heart of Warcraft lore look the maze I've been able to show him it did the orcish race that they now know in Azeroth originated in this world scattered across a harsh climate mix of desert frozen tundra lush jungles if they didn't explain you went back in Sciences have a conflicts and a whole new host of enemies and allies Clara's worth plunged into the heart of this world as they had to navigate its dangers be the heroes that they're always meant to be the major feature of world of Draenor was what we call the garrison system no the conceit here was that players at this point are not just regular heroes they're actually commanders they've known the world of Azeroth the point that they're actually in a position to set up a fort set up a defensive emplacement and band others lead a literal army in pursuit of their shared goals one of the first things players did when they arrived and was claimed a plot of land and begin to construct a few buildings and recruit a few followers a garrison was a persistent space of your own in the world that you could customize as you saw fit it also introduced some asynchronous has been so good where you would have an army of followers that you would send off to complete missions you would choose Tolkien customize and level up your followers and pick the best ones to counter the threats posed by certain missions to maximize your likelihood of success you might send to explore a cave what a missile means by that is download the add-on and that would take 12 or 18 hours real time you might go to work come in come back home log in at the end of the day and your followers would have returned from the mission you could see the results for the first time there was a way of having events in the game unfold while you were away from the game it was used to further both the story time that was in a been player's fantasy as not just a hero when their own right but a commander of other heroes late in warlords of draenor this is really tied to a specific expansion introduced something called the route token the while token is it's a way for players Blizzard to make more machines with each other time for in-game currency what is open is real-life asset the body purchased and listed on the auction house in within our game you sell it to another player the player gives you gold that player can consume the token and add a month of game time to their account now the reason why this exists the purpose that this serves is just make themself with the popularity of World of Warcraft over the years there was a lot of interest in in-game assets in-game currency there was real world of value to the time the players had invested in making their characters wealthier more powerful in the game world there was no literal elicit black markets selling in-game currency for what real-life currency the one clock guys got this in-game currency was by hacking accounts compromising accounts and a bunch of activities that were really negatively impacting the game for all players we recognized that there is this demand there are players who want to buy gold they want to buy in game currency but the only options available for them to do it were harming the game so the while token effectively killed two birds with one stone it gives players who want to spend money to get some in-game gold a way to do it by transacting securely in safe thing with other players I never want to get lets players who have a lot of gold effectively playing the game for free they can subsidize their game time by spending gold and watch oaken's and what is ordinarily a subscription-based game they can effectively earn their to play it for free at least for some get the right to play I go listen well the largest feature of warlords has been mentioned was Garrison's it was also one of the most significant technical challenges because up until then in the server technology side we had a thing called an instant server which is where you would go to run your dungeon they were set up to handle five person ten person 25 first and forty person it had an overhead for that suddenly the design realized we were going to need millions of Garrison's at the same time that's a big technological challenge that we number what embraced and I think we succeeded at but it really laid the groundwork actually for the future sharding technology they came in in Legion sharding legends launch we have been successfully driving the technology so that players never feel like they're waiting for the world to catch up and never waiting for the world to populate there's always people in the world yet we can launch a massive success like Legion with its millions of players on day one and it doesn't feel overpopulated we just split them apart [Music] leejohn passion came out in end of August 2016 Legion is a head-to-head confrontation with one of the core enemies in the Warcraft franchise the Burning Legion there's their demons we bought them in the burning [ __ ] or suspension over 10 years prior they've been a primary villain throughout the realtime strategy games so Legion saw them assaulting our world as opposed to us going elsewhere rifts opened and powerful demons came through and we were fighting for survival across Azeroth to do this I have a chance of even standing up to them we needed to seek out new aid that we'd never got our hands on before in the form first and foremost of artifact weapons which all players began their journey through Legion by seeking out and claiming now these were 36 fabled weapons with unique backstories unique arc and a deep progression system the players could seek out and claim as the special weapon for their class and it would be you know their source of aid and strength in the face of the Legion the artifact weapon serve two main purposes in our minds first off it's incredible fantasy these are some iconic weapons in the Warcraft universe that we wanted to get into player hands there's a reason why when you look at legends you think about the sword Excalibur and the number of fantasies and stories that have been told around mighty weapons is something that resonates only King Arthur had ass calibers feature in some ways reflective xx Arthas decayed past dozen years making all the world crafts prior to them we build artifact weapons as a feature that was going to be tied for the Legion expansion players will not carry the artifact Rafi's forward into battle for Azeroth and expansions beyond what that meant was we could really double down on the amount of depth and complexity and power that could be earned in this system in a way that we never would be able to if we were signing up to continue to support this for further expansions and the concern there isn't effort on our part it's more about the complexity of the game the game's balance just how overall bloated it might get with years of layering new systems upon new systems upon new systems we've decided to make more of our mega features limited to specific expansions like the garrison that you built up and wallow to drown or that's still back in general you can go visit it whenever you want but it's not something that you brought forward with you we're not updating garrison as we release new content updates your artifact button was your trusted companion throughout Legion now of course we're always looking to learn less interest and so has elements of those features and carry them forward in the design of the thing that comes next just as the garrisons from Draenor heavily informed the design of the class order halls in Legion these were shared spaces these are currently club houses for members of a given class all the Warriors would go hang out together the robes would scheme and plot in their secret lair beneath the city streets together to overcome Legion threat Legion was an expansion that doubled down on class identity like never before we on the visual aesthetic side revamped a lot of mechanics of her Indian combat to make them just feel more dynamic punching more visceral we of course introduced a brand new hero class the demon hunter if you're never gonna make this class in world of warcraft this was the time to do it no purpose in life is to fight demons they're elves who sacrificed great things they've sacrificed everything in order to cross every Thurman's they try their own powers against them the most dynamic highly mobile almost action gameplay class that well the Warcraft has to offer they attack by dashing through the battlefield leaving blazing trails in their way offer in some ways an all-new way to play the game playing a new class like that the demon hunter that was one that was paying off really 15 years have build up going back to Warcraft 3 and seminal moments in World of Warcraft's history like our Burning Crusade expansion we first introduced or they've not man arrived of juniors that players could see and fight against one of the significant additions to Legion was a legion companion app it was one of the first times that the world Warcraft team had made an app for iOS and Android it allows you to play your order hall while not playing wow we thought this is a very reasonable but awesome extension to the game itself back in 2004 it was perfectly normal for a person playing an MMO to sit down for four hours that was kind of expected these days a lot of folks don't necessarily have as much time they got families they got kids sometimes they want a more bite-sized play explore World of Warcraft has so many ways to play you can play everything from these short bite-sized experiences to those long it's still a video game how you want to play it one of the most stunning visual aspects I before ours is the significant improvement we've made to the draw distance and what I mean by that is how far you can see this is any player of World of Warcraft playing Legion you stand in dollar on or you fly over dollar on now and you look out tour high mountain and you see all of sirum are beneath you as you look towards their that distance is really far and all that stuff that you're seeing that would not have been possible in an earlier version of World of Warcraft there's just too much stuff there it was through some significant engineering effort and significant art if to make that possible and I think really sells some of the most fantastic vistas I've ever seen that's trailer craft and it's flying in from the north over high mountain yeah see the Turin city down there that valley surrounded with the river yeah that just goes to show like this a constant evolution of just like that the tech in the art now that you could see far like you know two zones away it really changed the way we design zones and just aesthetically how we come up with visuals for for the different zones we emphasize more time and effort into just art direction and visual design for our landscapes now cuz we knew as players they can actually see into the distance and see we could compose shots better because I each one you could actually see literally the transition from the zone you're in to the next zone that's right next to it to the zone that's next to that one so that was one of the big challenges for that just be able to come up aesthetically designs that work in tandem légion effectively had citrus content updates patched up one set of five seven two seven three with dot fives in between alternating between major content releases that took players to new outdoor zones given the new raid to tackle a new dungeon smaller releases added rewards and more evergreen background ways of playing the game with systems such as micro holidays garage is that happened throughout the calendar year that if players unique ways of engaging with the game or an expansion of our time today revisit old content for current rewards both the number of dungeons or raids that you might have available to do in a given week we were able to deliver content updates in a pretty regular cadence throughout the lifetime of Legion with the goal of yes always having something new to do or something just oh yeah look forward to that was forward to storm out we took on Wow but I couldn't be more proud of the team's effort in delivering on those goals who paid the price for sharing this world and we have forgotten extra-strong [Music] battle froth is the upcoming next chapter in world of warcraft coming out summer and if legion wasn't expansion in many ways about character classes battle for Azeroth is a return to the roots of the franchise it's an expansion about factions it's an expansion about horde and alliance this binary identity that's been at the heart of the franchise going back to the RTS games in the 90s players are going to venture to new continents of coal Terrace and zandale are in search of aid and new allies as Azeroth as a whole is plunged into war Gordan Alliance are at each other's throats therefore for control of the planet I've still look at him and they're at a stalemate they've reached an impasse players were at the forefront of this conflict Weaver can get the upper hand will control the fate of Azeroth the same time there are florets that aren't necessarily in the foreground right now they threaten to destroy the One God even as we're fighting over just say as players ventured to these new lands buddy no allies but also going to begin to go along threats and secrets that will need to be explored and understood otherwise we risk losing the earth beneath us even as we're fighting to claim control of it one of the things in the new expansion they're working on is the islands expeditions I think they're gonna be a truly remarkable new experience for the World of Warcraft player and for the player who hasn't played World of Warcraft before - one of the things that I'm super excited about is the new artificial intelligence we're adding when you start up an island expedition it will be with you and to other people harkening back to the mists and area 3 person scenarios where role doesn't matter whether you sign up you get on your island exposition and it'll be you three against three cunning smart well depends on how smart you want them you actually can choose artificial intelligence bots that are trying to beat you to the same objective you're trying to get to the other thing that's truly exciting about them is it's in randomized at content and we've worked very closely with the art team using assets that we have developed over the entirety of World of Warcraft to make these islands be populated by buildings and creatures that will feel familiar but not will always be the same they'll be different every time one of the really exciting things we're doing for this one is going back to what is the foundation of Warcraft and that is essentially Alliance and horde coming together and purple items go back to the just the foundations of what makes Warcraft but also updating it so how does old Warcraft look now with you know the new stuff designs in the new art direction yeah it's definitely about the Horde comes in and they're establishing a base in the Alliance doesn't know you're not establishing that base we're gonna burn it down or court says we're gonna build a base here Alliance get the heck out then we go back and forth like that it's all about the war and let's get the heck now a players and you and 19 other people get together and go take out the other faction we're putting the war in local there you go oh ho world warping guys has been an incredible journey me personally it's been the last 13 and a half 14 years of my life first supplier in recently as a developer and could not be more excited as a team you to push the boundaries of what we can do in the MMORPG genre to create worlds to explore new adventures to have we have incredible stories left to tell each new expansion we add to the game we're looking to expand the core of the game the players have come to know and love over all these years but also a brand new ways of playing the game new features Oh Twitter and play yeah under tape and a fresh look at you know game that seeks to reinvent itself every couple of years as we update the game that was the standard right there so did I see what I thought I just saw did I see classic Wow and the launcher here's my putting the war in this is a second you turn this down did I see classic Wow it's been an incredible journey me phone's been blasts just a second off 14 years of my life for a supply a second reason Oh oh wow oh wow you know what if ian is actually just playing on Northdale like he actually he just knows it's between a private server I don't know about that dude that'd be [ __ ] hilarious man that's crazy as a team Wow I guess that what is that there I guess that must be like under some extra Mineski area oh is that the garrison I don't know I don't know what the hell that is yeah the old garrison stronger Oh is it strong and how think it's strong guard either I don't know what the hell it is so I I feel like this was pretty good uh what did you guys think I'm impressed I I actually like this wad Loggins it wasn't the wad login screen I know what it is so it was not the wad login screen let me see if I can click on it and show you that is not the wad login screen because the Dark Portal was faced from the other direction I can guarantee it's not the wad login screen also it was much more read there's no way that one was what you see green on the right no you can't there's no green on the right at all here this was this is the classic while login screen I'll bet a million dollars on it it was yeah it was classic man I can guarantee it I mentioned decays but didn't mention monks at all yeah I was really happy about that I was glad they didn't talk about them at all there was just no reason Legion alpha used that login well the thing is though is that this they used it here and that means that classic is going to come out next week probably next Wednesday I'm assuming I'm not 100% sure but yeah there you go check out super super you're just spamming that over and over and it makes me not want to if somebody spams the same [ __ ] thing were you guys English too long streaming through master posters No More war behind WOD portal that's true too yeah you're just asking the same thing over and over it's a default login screen for builds no Braille it's classic no that's classic Wow right there that's classic why I know it okay I know it would you agree that Legion was a step in the right direction no I would not I would not I think that Legion had a lot of good things Weejun had a lot of amazing things but I I don't think that it was actually a step in the right direction I think it was like so here here's a way to look at it right is like let's say you're on a mountain and you jump off the mountain and you die and that's wide and you take one step out of the the the one step up the mountain is that like really a good step like yeah obviously Legion might have been a step but it was from such a low point to also still a low point if anything it was one step forward two steps back right whereas they added in a million different types of content but all the content is unrewarding because the acquisition method for all the rewards is completely random so players have no control over their success so people don't get any fulfillment or satisfaction out of achieving anything because nothing that they do is because of them it's because of some sort of orangey mechanic so yeah that that's how I feel I mean really wait what i'v voice or don't wait I don't even know what the hell you're saying with the [ __ ] turd nom I'm being serious man how am i yeah how is how is it true or how's it not true

Channel: Assertonsin [Asmongold Stream Reactions]

Views: 487,243

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, reaction, asmongold highlights, asmongold watches, twitch chat, WoW, BFA, world of warcraft, mists of pandaria, wotlk, the burning crusade, cataclysm, ion hazzikostas, warlords of draenor, WoD, battle for azeroth, blizzard, vanilla WoW, legion

Id: yswb-VYbgE0

Length: 56min 44sec (3404 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 01 2018