Full Transcript for Why WORLD OF WARCRAFT: FOREVER is urging Warcraft fans to slow down and smell the Bruiseweed

progress through. 04:39.298 --> 04:40.620 [Clay Stone]: And those will remain. 04:40.700 --> 04:43.403 [Clay Stone]: We have our classic air and people will be able to visit that air. 04:43.443 --> 04:45.225 [Clay Stone]: We're in Mississippi and Darry as well right now. 04:45.265 --> 04:46.807 [Clay Stone]: Season of Discovery Realms are still going. 04:47.187 --> 04:58.690 [Clay Stone]: There's all these different ways to play, but specifically with Welfarever, we think about the different systems that we've included in there, things like the legacy system or beefing up professions and expanding on that system. 04:59.390 --> 05:07.452 [Clay Stone]: Our campfire system that we added, I think that what we're looking at are different ways that different people approach the game. 05:07.912 --> 05:13.113 [Clay Stone]: And sort of as we've talked about in this journey, there are players who just love that classic leveling journey. 05:13.353 --> 05:21.959 [Clay Stone]: that one to 60 level in journey, which is so core to the classic experience and core to the wild forever experience now as well. 05:22.559 --> 05:28.924 [Clay Stone]: And our expectation is that players are going to be coming to the game for all sorts of different reasons and they're going to find different things to enjoy out of it. 05:29.464 --> 05:30.745 [Clay Stone]: The end game of course is epic. 05:31.225 --> 05:39.894 [Clay Stone]: As you mentioned, there will be rating and things like that, and we love that for players who love that and join the guilds and the new raids that we've developed, we are so excited about. 05:40.214 --> 05:53.708 [Clay Stone]: But we also know there may be some players who are not as interested in that, and are going to find joy in playing the auction house, let's say, as an example, or, or, you know, exploring how far they can push their professions, or maybe some of the other areas that we've got to the game. 05:54.308 --> 06:00.154 [Clay Stone]: So I think that in the same way that the modern game has added a lot of new content and a lot of new features. 06:00.594 --> 06:09.603 [Clay Stone]: We too with Wild Forever are looking at ways to be able to do that to speak to each of the different players who come to our game in different ways and we'll continue to do that over time. 06:10.368 --> 06:14.709 [Seamus Byrne]: Holly, I'd love your sense of how you keep the 10,000 foot view, right? 06:14.729 --> 06:23.411 [Seamus Byrne]: Like of all of this stuff that's going on alongside the Manushe of actually managing all the little choices that are being made day-to-day. 06:23.971 --> 06:25.932 [Holly Longdale]: Bless your heart for recognizing all that. 06:27.552 --> 06:29.973 [Holly Longdale]: Um, I suppose, um, 06:30.615 --> 06:44.886 [Holly Longdale]: I feel fortunate that I, as a dreamer type of personality, I'm always naturally trying to tie all the threads together of everything we're doing from a, you know, from a height, we'll say. 06:45.627 --> 06:51.752 [Holly Longdale]: And also trying to extrapolate how all this contributes to our future, where we're planning to go on the future, because 06:53.385 --> 07:13.300 [Holly Longdale]: One brain, I mean, these friends of mine, Clay, Ian, et cetera, exceptional brains that track all the details within the game, whereas I'm, my job is to support the health of the organization, the health of the business, and making sure we have a really good plan for the future. 07:13.360 --> 07:18.224 [Holly Longdale]: So I will drop in on these guys and say, okay, let's, we're going to talk three 07:21.768 --> 07:24.625 [Holly Longdale]: Um, and yeah, in between times I'm dealing with 07:26.137 --> 07:29.058 [Holly Longdale]: all kinds of minutia on a day-to-day basis. 07:29.098 --> 07:36.739 [Holly Longdale]: But the joy I get the most is making sure that this family of ours and that includes the players that we have a map. 07:36.780 --> 07:45.762 [Holly Longdale]: And that map can always shift and change, but we always want to be intentional and be ambitious, not to the detriment of the team, but for the benefit of the players. 07:45.962 --> 07:49.522 [Holly Longdale]: And it's always about how are we going to dazzle you all? 07:49.623 --> 07:51.123 [Holly Longdale]: How are we going to keep dazzling you? 07:51.183 --> 07:52.643 [Holly Longdale]: How are we setting up the next 20 years? 07:56.324 --> 07:58.607 [Holly Longdale]: Getting research done and planning heads. 07:59.207 --> 08:15.365 [Holly Longdale]: I'm that's the stuff I love and why I love this job is I have the unique opportunity to Set some stakes and bring everybody in to talk about it and that's how we come to things like forever And you know, there's a lot there's a lot more plans to that are coming but 08:17.532 --> 08:32.277 [Holly Longdale]: It is from the day-to-day, very challenging because there's all the other things to that may not sound as fun but are fascinating to me like data and budgeting and making sure we have a healthy team and a healthy business. 08:33.037 --> 08:34.678 [Holly Longdale]: And then getting to the dreaming part. 08:34.798 --> 08:35.018 [Holly Longdale]: It's a... 08:35.842 --> 08:37.403 [Holly Longdale]: It's a job of the lifetime, frankly. 08:37.763 --> 08:39.003 [Seamus Byrne]: And you're mentioning your love of Gira? 08:39.803 --> 08:41.144 [Seamus Byrne]: Oh, and Australian product. 08:42.444 --> 08:46.046 [Holly Longdale]: I'm sorry. 08:46.066 --> 08:47.926 [Holly Longdale]: I mean, it does what it needs to do. 08:48.447 --> 08:51.088 [Holly Longdale]: I've never met a perfect piece of software. 08:51.148 --> 08:52.608 [Holly Longdale]: Unless it was World of Warcraft. 08:52.648 --> 08:53.488 [Holly Longdale]: Hey! 08:53.568 --> 08:53.749 [Holly Longdale]: Ha! 08:53.789 --> 08:54.029 [Holly Longdale]: Ha! 08:54.069 --> 08:54.229 [Holly Longdale]: Ha! 08:54.289 --> 08:54.489 [Holly Longdale]: Ha! 08:54.549 --> 08:54.749 [Holly Longdale]: Ha! 08:54.789

--> 08:54.949 [Clay Stone]: Ha! 08:55.009 --> 08:55.129 [Seamus Byrne]: Ha! 08:55.209 --> 08:55.369 [Clay Stone]: Ha! 08:55.429 --> 08:55.569 [Holly Longdale]: Ha! 08:55.629 --> 08:55.949 [Holly Longdale]: Ha! 08:56.349 --> 08:56.590 [Holly Longdale]: Yeah. 08:59.112 --> 09:04.296 [Seamus Byrne]: Another thing you mention yesterday, you remind me of the old Steve Jobs quote of strong ideas loosely held. 09:04.616 --> 09:09.839 [Seamus Byrne]: You talked a lot about that idea of how you want to have conviction battles to be ready to drop things. 09:09.859 --> 09:11.440 [Seamus Byrne]: So you can talk a little bit about more of that. 09:11.480 --> 09:13.962 [Seamus Byrne]: I thought it's a great position from my perspective. 09:14.909 --> 09:22.212 [Holly Longdale]: it takes a while to get there and I think it's the journey of when you first get into a creative industry. 09:23.272 --> 09:37.918 [Holly Longdale]: You're all passion and full of ideas and you really want to, you know, in some cases prove yourself or just be able to, you know, share your thoughts and ideas and it takes a while for not everyone but some people. 09:39.478 --> 09:55.105 [Holly Longdale]: When you get feedback, which, especially in a game like World of Warcraft, the feedback is frequent and comes from every possible direction you can imagine, and sometimes it can be hard and deflating when you're like, oh somebody doesn't like, you know, my content, that's rough. 09:56.385 --> 10:02.227 [Holly Longdale]: But then you eventually get to a point where you start learning how to have these yes and conversations. 10:02.688 --> 10:03.628 [Holly Longdale]: So it's more like, 10:04.128 --> 10:14.620 [Holly Longdale]: This content could be made so much better if you, you know, we could talk about this and to be able to embrace that and it takes a couple of rounds of experiencing how your content actually did become better. 10:14.640 --> 10:20.867 [Holly Longdale]: To understand the value in that in a team our size and a game our size. 10:33.818 --> 10:36.399 [Holly Longdale]: And that's, you know, the refrain we go through. 10:36.599 --> 10:38.340 [Holly Longdale]: But I think we're lucky. 10:38.480 --> 10:54.786 [Holly Longdale]: We have a lot of really, I mean, if somebody's really passionate about an idea, you know, sometimes that's an indicator that they might be on to something and we definitely hear it out and we have all sorts of incredible talent on the team that express themselves in different ways. 10:55.167 --> 11:00.789 [Holly Longdale]: But I think we recognize that and we leave room for all of it so that we have you found that in the classic community. 11:01.269 --> 11:05.012 [Clay Stone]: I mean, gosh, it's, it's been, there's no shortage of ideas in the class of community. 11:05.552 --> 11:06.453 [Clay Stone]: That's, that's for sure. 11:07.153 --> 11:17.341 [Clay Stone]: I think, gosh, we talked a lot about passion and how small groups of people with passion inside

of the company are, are able to achieve something much greater than, than the some of their parts. 11:17.481 --> 11:20.623 [Clay Stone]: And that's been kind of the classic journey for, for a while. 11:21.064 --> 11:26.107 [Clay Stone]: And, you know, when we look at the community, we, we have been guided by the community from day one. 11:26.448 --> 11:27.368 [Clay Stone]: You look at the, the 11:30.110 --> 11:37.793 [Clay Stone]: releasing it in 2019 in the journey that we've been on since then, every step of the way we have been guided by the community telling us where they want to go next. 11:38.353 --> 11:41.895 [Clay Stone]: And for a while now they've been telling us that they want to go to a place like wild forever. 11:42.075 --> 11:44.136 [Clay Stone]: And so inevitably that's where it led us. 11:44.236 --> 11:55.120 [Clay Stone]: But it's been a small group of passion developers inside of the company that then grows to a very large group of passion developers who are helping to build something like this. 11:56.380 --> 11:58.201 [Clay Stone]: and they bring their own ideas to it for sure. 11:58.521 --> 12:11.565 [Clay Stone]: I think, you know, with with Welfarever, we've been talking a whole lot about how as we built it and as Holly mentioned, it started smaller and then it's grown to something, you know, much bigger that hopefully surprised a lot of players in terms of its scope. 12:12.046 --> 12:14.446 [Clay Stone]: There is still so much more we want to do. 12:14.686 --> 12:18.828 [Clay Stone]: I think I talked about it on the BlizzCon stage, but not just building for today, but for something that lasts. 12:19.629 --> 12:29.879 [Clay Stone]: And we have what we believe is a really strong roadmap and that's represented of a lot of the ideas that the community has fed back to us about a lot of things that they would want to see and a lot of the ideas from the team itself. 12:30.380 --> 12:32.262 [Clay Stone]: That we even got to the point where you said, you know what? 12:32.983 --> 12:34.644 [Clay Stone]: Let's not release that at launch. 12:35.085 --> 12:39.529 [Clay Stone]: I think what we have at launch is really good, but let's save that and let's work on it a little bit more. 12:40.190 --> 12:43.354 [Clay Stone]: and perhaps reading to our players later on down the road. 12:43.514 --> 12:43.734 [Seamus Byrne]: Yeah. 12:44.475 --> 12:49.380 [Seamus Byrne]: So I have a question about Holly, but Realized Holly will probably struggle to answer this herself. 12:49.440 --> 12:56.648 [Seamus Byrne]: So I'm going to put it to you, which is that as a member of the community, I feel like Holly's done an amazing job of like 12:57.368 --> 13:03.732 [Seamus Byrne]: You know, restoring something else over the right word, but really getting play is faith and a confidence in the direction the game is going. 13:05.253 --> 13:11.617 [Seamus Byrne]: You like what's your sense of of that sort of leadership for the team and the way that the community

has responded. 13:11.837 --> 13:13.478 [Clay Stone]: Yeah, I mean to me, it all comes down. 13:13.518 --> 13:14.639 [Seamus Byrne]: You just have to stay there and take it. 13:14.839 --> 13:17.301 [Clay Stone]: I also have to be really careful about how I answer this question. 13:17.701 --> 13:18.581 [Clay Stone]: No, I'm just kidding. 13:18.661 --> 13:19.342 [Clay Stone]: It's it's easy. 13:19.402 --> 13:20.983 [Clay Stone]: It's it's Holly's authenticity. 13:21.163 --> 13:21.884 [Clay Stone]: I mean, it really is. 13:21.964 --> 13:23.284 [Clay Stone]: It's our authenticity. 13:23.304 --> 13:25.606 [Clay Stone]: She is a gamer and a player just like the rest of us. 13:26.206 --> 13:27.887 [Clay Stone]: and she leads from that standpoint. 13:27.907 --> 13:31.649 [Clay Stone]: She's able to speak to player desires and what they would want to see. 13:31.709 --> 13:36.091 [Clay Stone]: She's a member of the community too, and that comes through in the way that she works with us. 13:36.672 --> 13:49.058 [Clay Stone]: I think I mentioned it on stage yesterday as well, but like the faith and the trust that she gives us and the amount of room that she allows us to operate and sometimes, you know, autonomously, when, when, 13:49.398 --> 14:13.214 [Clay Stone]: She's incredibly busy and she can't be there literally every single day and every single conversation but she trusts us and so we feel that trust and then from there it feels like we're able to take risks and more often than not risks end up resulting in wonderful outcomes and I think that that's kind of been the story of wow forever and obviously this classic journey that we've been on too. 14:13.714 --> 14:14.835 [Clay Stone]: But it stems from that leadership. 14:14.875 --> 14:15.115 [Seamus Byrne]: Yeah. 14:15.595 --> 14:33.895 [Seamus Byrne]: okay so now you can speak to this idea like you know again you did a great job of story time talking about your journey as a as a player and now into some development and leadership um yeah like how is it you you I guess keep yourself grounded in that way that means players do connect with the way that you try to speak to them and and lead the game. 14:34.696 --> 14:35.917 [Holly Longdale]: I think I boil 14:37.367 --> 14:44.351 [Holly Longdale]: my role down to the simplest elements possible that it helps keep me focused. 14:44.651 --> 14:53.376 [Holly Longdale]: It's always player first, and the team is a group of players, making sure that they're in every way, everyone's happy, healthy and fed. 14:53.396 --> 14:58.939 [Holly Longdale]: And I do, I trust by default, I trust until I can't. 14:59.699 --> 15:01.060 [Holly Longdale]: And that's part of, 15:01.550 --> 15:07.212 [Holly Longdale]: You know, making sure that you are building and supporting a very talented team so that you can do that. 15:08.012 --> 15:19.936 [Holly Longdale]: Because we're essentially running five different games at any one time, and they have to be able to operate autonomously

or nothing would get done. 15:21.856 --> 15:23.797 [Holly Longdale]: I appreciate the trust and faith. 15:23.877 --> 15:26.718 [Holly Longdale]: I'm the one pillar for me is, 15:27.880 --> 15:28.441 [Holly Longdale]: greater good. 15:29.322 --> 15:31.944 [Holly Longdale]: That's really what in every direction I look in. 15:32.725 --> 15:41.034 [Holly Longdale]: The one that I miss sometimes is if I have any time on my hands, I usually get ideas, which become a real problem for me. 15:42.415 --> 15:45.018 [Holly Longdale]: But that's sort of the joys that we get to 15:45.478 --> 15:53.648 [Holly Longdale]: have creative conversations anywhere at the company, and dream big, and get dream big for the greater good. 15:54.068 --> 15:58.474 [Holly Longdale]: And that's always been my guiding light. 15:58.834 --> 16:01.337 [Holly Longdale]: If nothing else do it for the greater good. 16:02.633 --> 16:17.521 [Seamus Byrne]: Um, one of your thought bubbles yesterday was the idea of spell combos and whether or not people at people in the room sounded kind of excited, but also thought it's an interesting idea to sort of unpack in that idea of how you pro and con a big conceptual sort of thing. 16:17.621 --> 16:28.888 [Seamus Byrne]: It's like I could imagine the idea of, well, if someone somehow puts like, you know, a certain kind of a dot or a or a debuff, then other actions can build on that rather than only that character or that class. 16:28.908 --> 16:29.048 [Seamus Byrne]: So, 16:29.368 --> 16:32.350 [Seamus Byrne]: you know, like talk a bit about that idea of having a big thought bubble like that. 16:32.570 --> 16:39.213 [Seamus Byrne]: And up again, knowing the potential impacts means then you have to carefully explore an idea that big. 16:39.554 --> 16:43.476 [Holly Longdale]: Yeah, and this is when I said I'm a problem for other people here. 16:43.696 --> 16:45.197 [Holly Longdale]: This is a perfect example. 16:45.777 --> 16:50.279 [Holly Longdale]: And I said it to you before, which is why I was kind of having a bit of fun like saying, yeah. 16:52.135 --> 16:59.065 [Holly Longdale]: But that to me, and this is admittedly a cop out, I'm not the system's designer. 16:59.285 --> 17:05.854 [Holly Longdale]: I did spell design and stuff many years ago, so that's where I learned I'm not a system's designer. 17:09.422 --> 17:26.582 [Holly Longdale]: it's hard to explain what a gift it is to love games as much as I do and we do and be able to sit in a room with Ian or anyone on the team like a systems designer and just talk about it and inevitably what are two people in the room will figure it out and that to me 17:28.032 --> 17:43.850 [Holly Longdale]: It is just the everlasting eternal joy of what we do where an idea is a spark and then somebody takes that spark and lights another fire and another fire and then you get like well forever or you get 17:45.071 --> 17:48.114 [Holly Longdale]: combos in real life. 17:48.314 --> 18:07.972 [Holly Longdale]:

Because I do and you know when you can see the thread it's like well that's social gameplay and it makes you think and that's very much an MMO thing and it's very like role play and it's very these are the things I used to go to Ian and justify my ideas and he's always welcome it and like he's 18:09.564 --> 18:10.784 [Holly Longdale]: and the whole team is lovely. 18:10.804 --> 18:16.906 [Holly Longdale]: They entertain me, but when we start seeing things something like there's something there, then there's a greater commitment to it. 18:16.926 --> 18:27.329 [Holly Longdale]: But it all starts from some of these bigger things, like even while forever it's these sparks, you know, and a willingness to create this sort of, you know, 18:29.403 --> 18:34.467 [Holly Longdale]: this effervescent passion I call it and that those are the things you start to defend. 18:34.507 --> 18:35.988 [Holly Longdale]: It's like no, there's something good here. 18:36.008 --> 18:39.651 [Holly Longdale]: So I'm going to keep pushing this one and see if that happens. 18:39.851 --> 18:43.994 [Clay Stone]: Yeah, that was a bond stage was the first time I had heard that. 18:45.475 --> 18:52.879 [Clay Stone]: So my surprise was genuine, but no hollies right even even if it's just that that idea that In sparks and it turns into something else. 18:53.219 --> 19:07.326 [Seamus Byrne]: I mean those are those are important and that's that's where all these great things that we do come from Yeah, I feel like there's a secret flipping of the white board with this like the holly side of the white board Or is that we're working on it and then she left the room flip or at least get back to the real is sure 19:08.880 --> 19:13.745 [Clay Stone]: On that one side, it says top priority that she leaves in the cup of no. 19:14.105 --> 19:18.970 [Holly Longdale]: Yeah, I'm a blessed, eternally blessed to work with these people. 19:19.643 --> 19:33.394 [Seamus Byrne]: Um, one thing that also strikes me about some of this is actually, there's, I feel like there's some advice for young devs lurking in there in the way that you have, you know, you bring the passion to just say, well, I'm going to speak fearlessly about ideas again, things you talked about yesterday. 19:34.094 --> 19:40.759 [Seamus Byrne]: So, you know, for people who are trying to sort of find their way into this industry and their sort of doing things. 19:41.660 --> 19:48.006 [Seamus Byrne]: I can imagine they would be scared early on to really say, but I think this could be better if we did x, y, or z. 19:48.026 --> 19:51.649 [Seamus Byrne]: You know, what would you say to those sorts of folks out there? 19:51.669 --> 19:54.252 [Holly Longdale]: It sounds easy to see people. 19:54.292 --> 19:54.492 [Holly Longdale]: Yes. 19:56.880 --> 20:06.147 [Holly Longdale]: There is no creativity without giving yourself a voice and there is no getting better or improving something or creating something if you don't share your voice. 20:06.588 --> 20:15.514 [Holly Longdale]: And I understand, especially if you're more junior in this industry, it can be intimidating, but I promise you, people wanna hear from you. 20:16.015 --> 20:23.541 [Holly Longdale]: It's not, you know, people have been intimidated by Ian in the past and by me in the past, just by virtue of the role you play. 20:27.879 --> 20:30.281 [Holly Longdale]: But I could just say it out loud. 20:30.541 --> 20:34.585 [Holly Longdale]: There is no harm in that, and that is where your potential gets unlocked. 20:34.845 --> 20:40.290 [Holly Longdale]: So give yourself a little bit of courage and give yourself the permission to just say it out loud. 20:40.571 --> 20:40.771 [Seamus Byrne]: Yeah. 20:41.902 --> 20:51.987 [Seamus Byrne]: clay tell us a bit more about the forever bubble because I love the idea of this year one bubble, but you know, does the bubble last forever? 20:52.007 --> 21:05.975 [Seamus Byrne]: You know, I mean, you know, like how do we play the name against that idea of like exploring this little kind of time capsule and then, you know, where are we in five, ten years when it comes to exploring what's what's in that space? 21:06.235 --> 21:06.515 [Clay Stone]: Sure. 21:06.735 --> 21:12.338 [Clay Stone]: So we've talked about we're starting from a place of can and everything that happened before while forever still happened. 21:12.378 --> 21:14.479 [Clay Stone]: We're not, you know, flipping over the table and anything. 21:15.639 --> 21:17.981 [Clay Stone]: Artists still became lich king, different things like that. 21:18.941 --> 21:25.244 [Clay Stone]: But starting from that point is great for us and it allows us to be able to tell stories that are authentic to that time period. 21:25.384 --> 21:31.107 [Clay Stone]: We've talked about this sort of time bubble existing within a year one of World of Warcraft and really our intention 21:32.047 --> 21:36.856 [Clay Stone]: we don't intend to go through the dark portal and go to the burning crusade expansion. 21:37.377 --> 21:38.619 [Clay Stone]: I'm not saying that we couldn't. 21:38.720 --> 21:40.182 [Clay Stone]: That could one day be in the cards. 21:57.280 --> 21:58.601 [Clay Stone]: We're not going to do anything crazy. 21:58.861 --> 22:01.204 [Clay Stone]: You know, we're not going to say that Jena has been a dreadlord all along. 22:01.384 --> 22:03.666 [Clay Stone]: Or it has never became glitching or something on those lines. 22:04.046 --> 22:11.833 [Clay Stone]: That's what I meant on stage when I said that we're not going to substantially contradict things that happen in the future, those major big moments and things like that. 22:11.853 --> 22:16.037 [Clay Stone]: But at the same time, we have a little bit of creative flexibility to be able to make. 22:16.337 --> 22:24.583 [Clay Stone]: some of our own decisions when we need to, maybe a character is in a different spot and you remember them, being in, but everything should still feel authentic

to that time period. 22:25.143 --> 22:38.393 [Clay Stone]: Now, having said when we talk about time passing, the idea there is that time is still continuing to pass, but we may never end up ultimately meeting in an inevitable, let's say you're two or you're three of World Warcraft as you have experienced it so far. 22:38.833 --> 22:52.488 [Clay Stone]: I like it to let's say a certain popular adult cartoon where it's a family and they have kids and those shows been on for a really, really long time and those kids have never aged but time has has passed and the things that have happened still matter. 22:52.788 --> 22:55.871 [Clay Stone]: That's kind of the space that we're playing in with Waffrever. 22:57.193 --> 23:18.618 [Seamus Byrne]: Yeah, one thing I think back to, so I hadn't spent a lot of time in classic, but in the forever context, you have some of the storylines in calendar, things that I didn't play all that much back in the day, because I was mostly alliance and getting stuck in the 40s in Strangletform Vail, because I ran out of quests, you know, a bit of a classic. 23:19.738 --> 23:26.240 [Seamus Byrne]: But then the storylines have like the king and things like that, you know, where is he, that there's elements there that I do remember 23:27.040 --> 23:31.042 [Seamus Byrne]: sort of running out of, you know, like how you pull that thread a little further. 23:31.062 --> 23:40.087 [Seamus Byrne]: So like are they some of the ideas where these are threads that that sort of stop rather than play out properly and then there's things you can do to explore that further. 23:40.227 --> 23:42.408 [Clay Stone]: I love that you asked this question at the same time. 23:42.488 --> 23:44.169 [Clay Stone]: I don't want to reveal too much. 23:44.409 --> 23:48.851 [Clay Stone]: But what I will say is that yes, a lot of those quest lines that players remember. 23:49.532 --> 23:52.033 [Clay Stone]: The original team effectively just ran out of time. 23:52.553 --> 24:01.181 [Clay Stone]: And so some of those questions just sort of end, and maybe they got picked up a result in later expansions, but certainly not in that vanilla space. 24:01.941 --> 24:08.067 [Clay Stone]: That is something that we were very interested in pursuing when setting out on this project with Welfarever. 24:08.427 --> 24:14.470 [Clay Stone]: And I think that players are going to hopefully be very delightfully surprised to see the way that some of those quest lines expand in the game. 24:14.631 --> 24:15.271 [Seamus Byrne]: Yeah, cool. 24:15.371 --> 24:33.401 [Seamus Byrne]: And can you help people understand legacy system a little bit more because again, I feel like it definitely feeds into that idea of you know, what does it mean to live within the the level 60 cap on the kind of forever basis, but that actually there's lots of ways you can change the experience I guess over time. 24:33.561 --> 24:34.361 [Clay Stone]: Yeah, definitely. 24:34.381 --> 24:37.083 [Clay Stone]: So with the lazy system, we're we're super proud of this one. 24:37.703 --> 24:41.945 [Clay Stone]: and how it fits into that vanilla design philosophy and our core pillars. 24:42.785 --> 24:46.766 [Clay Stone]: We know that there's a lot of players who approach the game for all sorts of different reasons. 24:47.186 --> 24:56.850 [Clay Stone]: And that 1-60 journey, which is so core to the classic vanilla experience that can only be found previous in classic and now and while forever, we want to enhance that as much as possible. 24:56.970 --> 25:03.652 [Clay Stone]: I know that with all the different class changes and updates that we've made, I want to run multiple walls because I want to see how they all feel and play. 25:04.772 --> 25:07.794 [Clay Stone]: and we want to reward players who do that. 25:07.875 --> 25:15.139 [Clay Stone]: We want them to benefit if you just love the leveling journey and you love progressing from one to sixty and you love meeting new players along that journey. 25:15.600 --> 25:21.523 [Clay Stone]: We want to say, you know, here's this extra incentive to do it or or a reason to do it if that is what you love. 25:21.583 --> 25:23.725 [Clay Stone]: It's not required for endgame rating. 25:24.545 --> 25:36.935 [Clay Stone]: But for players who want to do that, the legacy system allows you with each character to overcome certain challenges we've placed for these characters to unlock legacy perks and rewards. 25:37.015 --> 25:43.540 [Clay Stone]: And these legacy perks apply to one of three different trees and those trees and the perks associated with them. 25:43.960 --> 25:47.241 [Clay Stone]: are shared across all of your characters on, on, while forever. 25:47.981 --> 25:54.362 [Clay Stone]: And they basically will help you in your next leveling journey so that your other characters will benefit from these different perks. 25:54.402 --> 25:57.502 [Clay Stone]: Things like improved rested experience. 25:57.862 --> 26:06.304 [Clay Stone]: The ability to be able to, in your farming professions, be able to loot some additional herbs, things like that. 26:07.404 --> 26:12.865 [Clay Stone]: And so really just enhances that overall leveling experience and gives players another reason to want to do the journey. 26:13.265 --> 26:16.188 [Clay Stone]: But in your case, let's say, you've only played alliance. 26:16.228 --> 26:25.756 [Clay Stone]: This gives you a really good reason to perhaps want to do a hard, outside of just getting to do the new quest and things like that is the perks that you receive from the LAC system. 26:25.776 --> 26:26.496 [Clay Stone]: Yeah, cool. 26:27.037 --> 26:28.858 [Seamus Byrne]: All right, last couple of questions. 26:29.719 --> 26:31.481 [Seamus Byrne]: Clay, you mentioned Blueie yesterday. 26:31.501 --> 26:34.363 [Seamus Byrne]: Yeah, a favorite episode. 26:34.663 --> 26:35.324 [Seamus Byrne]: And b. 26:36.845 --> 26:38.847 [Seamus Byrne]: What has Blueie taught you about games? 26:39.007 -->

26:40.088 [Seamus Byrne]: Sure, gosh. 26:40.368 --> 26:40.749 [Clay Stone]: OK. 26:41.829 --> 26:43.930 [Clay Stone]: We can spend an hour time with this. 26:43.990 --> 26:45.891 [Clay Stone]: Favorite episode is Baby Race. 26:46.491 --> 26:47.612 [Clay Stone]: I have two kids at home. 26:47.672 --> 26:48.612 [Clay Stone]: Am I right if I have two kids? 26:49.693 --> 26:55.115 [Clay Stone]: And what I love so much about that episode is the moral of this topic is more tomorrow. 26:55.495 --> 27:00.597 [Clay Stone]: With that one in particular, it's really about everybody does things at their own pace and in their own time. 27:02.438 --> 27:05.039 [Clay Stone]: The race, quote unquote, is superficial. 27:05.680 --> 27:07.680 [Clay Stone]: I don't know if I have to describe the whole episode. 27:07.700 --> 27:08.761 [Clay Stone]: But it's all about everything. 27:09.061 --> 27:11.925 [Clay Stone]: it does their things in their own time and is on their own journey in their life. 27:12.466 --> 27:20.837 [Clay Stone]: And I don't mean to tie this directly to wild forever, but I'm going to so much of what we are designing with wild forever. 27:21.297 --> 27:25.924 [Clay Stone]: We want to create a game where it is never too late to join. 27:26.324 --> 27:34.008 [Clay Stone]: and everybody will find themselves in the game at a different time and will be progressing at their own pace on their own journey. 27:34.048 --> 27:36.449 [Clay Stone]: We see the reddit threads pop up all the time, is it too late to start? 27:36.809 --> 27:41.531 [Clay Stone]: We want the answer for, while forever, to be an emphatic know, it is never too late to start. 27:41.611 --> 27:44.833 [Clay Stone]: And at the same time, we know all these different players are going to be coming to the game. 27:45.213 --> 27:47.574 [Clay Stone]: with different expectations or want to do different things. 27:47.894 --> 27:49.655 [Clay Stone]: And that's okay, that's fine. 27:50.055 --> 27:53.836 [Clay Stone]: We know that there's going to be players who want to race all the way up to a level 60. 27:53.856 --> 27:55.317 [Clay Stone]: And that's the way that they love to play the game. 27:55.597 --> 27:56.337 [Clay Stone]: And that's great. 27:56.437 --> 27:58.458 [Clay Stone]: We just don't want that to be the expectation. 27:59.038 --> 28:10.723 [Clay Stone]: And so that's one of those things that we feel is really going to set while forever apart from our other offerings, which are wonderful as well, from the modern offerings, from the class gothic rings, and hopefully from other and the most out in the landscape, too. 28:10.983 --> 28:11.523 [Clay Stone]: Yeah, cool. 28:11.943 --> 28:19.830 [Seamus Byrne]: Last question, Holly, you have become a fashion icon in the industry with your amazing face on stage at BlizzCon. 28:20.370 --> 28:21.991 [Seamus Byrne]: I just want to point you've come a long way. 28:23.953 --> 28:26.235 [Seamus Byrne]: I'm sure we can we can pop the JPEG. 28:28.937 -->

28:32.339 [Seamus Byrne]: So, yes, I found this, but, you know, bold, adventurous. 28:32.359 --> 28:33.340 [Seamus Byrne]: Yes. 28:33.560 --> 28:35.521 [Seamus Byrne]: You know, yeah, where did the idea to go? 28:35.601 --> 28:40.505 [Seamus Byrne]: Let's, let's create the most amazing jackets possible for our Blizzconic appearances. 28:40.545 --> 28:40.865 [Seamus Byrne]: Come from. 28:41.365 --> 28:47.989 [Holly Longdale]: Um, so for Blizzconne 23, I'd never been to a Blizzconne because I worked in, 28:49.390 --> 29:04.101 [Holly Longdale]: I had a different game and always had conflicting shippers like this and I thought okay super intimidating to be asked to go on stage So I'm gonna do something distracting and create a jacket which I 29:06.709 --> 29:09.350 [Holly Longdale]: I keep pointing to clay every time I say this. 29:09.610 --> 29:13.253 [Holly Longdale]: I don't ever want to go on stage in a t-shirt and jeans ever. 29:13.533 --> 29:25.420 [Holly Longdale]: Hey, I feel like, you know, I just wanted to do something more and pay tribute to the players and to our characters without doing cosplay. 29:25.500 --> 29:33.125 [Holly Longdale]: And I wanted to see, like, wouldn't it be cool if we can explore the tribute to characters and cosplay with fashion and see what we can do? 29:33.905 --> 29:45.152 [Holly Longdale]: So I did that, the Alex draws a sort of nod for 23, and then we went completely, you know, to 11 with this one. 29:45.832 --> 29:46.633 [Holly Longdale]: Because I started, I 29:48.507 --> 29:57.455 [Holly Longdale]: In some small way without overtly seeing it, I want players to know how much I love being a gamer, how much I love them, and how much I love wow. 29:58.236 --> 30:01.238 [Holly Longdale]: And so it just sort of came together from that. 30:01.278 --> 30:04.461 [Holly Longdale]: In my head, I knew the jacket shape that I wanted. 30:04.481 --> 30:06.823 [Holly Longdale]: I really wanted shoulder pieces. 30:07.824 --> 30:11.808 [Holly Longdale]: I worked with the artist Angelina on our team. 30:12.528 --> 30:15.749 [Holly Longdale]: who she created the Skyborne armor. 30:16.269 --> 30:19.870 [Holly Longdale]: And I said, help me with some notes and some of the details. 30:20.630 --> 30:25.632 [Holly Longdale]: And then, you know, connected with a designer who made this absolutely outstanding piece. 30:25.732 --> 30:30.713 [Holly Longdale]: And I do recognize that there's a, some notion of, okay, what's the next one? 30:30.813 --> 30:36.334 [Holly Longdale]: Like, before I'd even sort of sat down, they were like, okay, what's the next one that's coming? 30:38.655 --> 30:39.416 [Holly Longdale]: I already know. 30:39.576 --> 30:45.160 [Holly Longdale]: Yeah, so I'm creating like a monster out of myself But I just love it. 30:45.220 --> 30:50.324 [Seamus Byrne]: I love this idea I do yeah, play you can take this one for future reference. 30:50.404 --> 30:52.385 [Seamus Byrne]: Oh Yeah, thank you. 30:52.626 --> 30:57.409 [Seamus Byrne]: Maybe that's your outfit for next please come My mother brought me that news house. 30:57.429 --> 30:58.690 [Holly Longdale]: She's like don't forget where you come. 30:59.291 --> 31:03.814 [Holly Longdale]: Oh Just send you a go Amazing thank you guys so much. 31:03.974 --> 31:04.755 [Seamus Byrne]: Oh, thank you. 31:04.795 --> 31:05.275 [Seamus Byrne]: This is great. 31:05.295 --> 31:05.615 [Seamus Byrne]: Thank you 31:07.000 --> 31:07.843 [Seamus Byrne]: This has been Lightmap. 31:08.084 --> 31:08.967 [Seamus Byrne]: Thank you for watching. 31:09.128 --> 31:11.758 [Seamus Byrne]: I'm Seamus Byrne for SIFTER and we will catch you again next time.