Gamesight Podcast #7 - We 💙 World of Warcraft

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We sat down with World of Warcraft veteran and Gamesight Site Reliability Engineer Anthony Snider to talk about his 17-year-old career as one of the millions of gamers who take the call of the legendary MMO game.

For anyone new to the Blizzard universe, there's a lot to learn from its powerhouse IP -- they've made a lot of creative, genius moves in their nearly 20 years of content -- like focusing on the end-game rather than grinding levels, or reintroducing WoW Classic to the delight of its loyal oldheads. Whether you're a passionate gamer, a researching industry professional, or just wondering why there's so much hype surrounding this fantasy epic, sit down with our sage druid guide and learn more about this social haven of legendary lore and battles: World of Warcraft!

Anthony Snider: [00:00:00] WoW, the way it seems like they designed these expansions is they focus on the end game content first and then backfill with like stories and quests and stuff like that to like get you to that point where you can enjoy the end game content.

and with like challenging end game content, it gets more people to grind honestly. Kill the big boss, get the big loot. Look at your item level increase and be happy.

Yane An:

All right. Welcome to the April end of April, we have here with us Anthony Snider. He is our Site Reliability Engineer, and he is also a huge video game player. Let's go. Anthony. Woo.

Anthony Snider: Whoa.

Let's go.

Yane An: What he's really here for, we all wanna hear about is World of Warcraft.

Anthony Snider: Heck yes.

Yane An: From Daddy Blizzard. Can you give us a little bit of an [00:01:00] introduction of yourself? Yeah. Welcome to the podcast. How are you feelin?

Anthony Snider: Hi. Great. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be on here. So hi, I'm Anthony. Like she said, I am a site reliability engineer at Gamesight. I'm responsible for maintaining and improving our cloud infrastructure that both all of our, like our console runs on, all of our backend stuff runs on. And also all of our customer's stuff runs on.

It's super fun. It's a lot of, it's all kind of backend work back, like in the shadows.

Yane An: You're that guy. Like if the server's actually down, it's like, oh

Anthony Snider: I'm the guy freaking out.

Yane An: to, yeah,

Anthony Snider: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's my phone that is actually exploding and I'm there to fix it. So that's that's my job.

Yane An: Did you always wanna work in the gaming industry or like how do you think your gaming background

Anthony Snider: I've played games literally my entire life. Started, I was probably like three or four years old, honestly. My uncle was in computer science and built me a computer [00:02:00] when I was really young and I started out playing like Freddie the Fish and freddie Fish was the goat

absolute top five games of all time.

Yane An: That is a goated deep cut.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, Freddie the Fish, Putt Putt, Pajama

Sam, stuff like that.

I started playing super, super young and I think I was like six or seven years old.

It was like 98 or 99. I'm old by the way. It was like 98 or 99. And I walked into my uncle's room and he was playing StarCraft Brood War. And I was like, oh my God, this looks so dope. Like I want to play this like sci-fi type game. What is this? So he let me play it and that was my introduction into the blizzard ecosystem and more serious computer game playing.

So that's, that's kind of where my gaming started. And from there just spiraled into I guess what it is today. I mean, Since I started playing Blizzard games, I was like, oh wow, this is super, super dope. I want to be a game developer one day. But I'm not like artistically creative and I don't think I'm creative enough to apply my technical [00:03:00] skills to like actually developing a game.

So I was like, what if I focus on server management and infrastructure and building that kind of stuff for games that are online? Because even back in 2011 when I started college online games, like they were around, they existed. But compared to today, like every single game is a cloud game, every single game that comes out. Honestly, legitimately, if you wanna work in the gaming industry, look into DevOps because DevOps isn't going away anytime soon. Cloud infrastructure is not going away anytime soon. So I, I guess I called it early and I picked a good path.

So yeah, that's, that's what led me here. I, I love Gamesight. Like being able to get a pulse on the entire, like eSports, content creators, all of the video game companies. What's trending on Twitch? What's on Twitter?

Yane An: Influencer. What are the crazy influencers doing today?

Anthony Snider: Yeah.

exactly. Plus like that, like my team, the other part of my team, [00:04:00] the data team literally works with that information every single day. So it's, it's really cool to like be able to see all of that.

Yane An: You have the, sauce,

Anthony Snider: Yeah. Have the sauce.

Have the sauce in beautiful sequel tables.

Half of my love for gaming is just the nostalgia impact of it, which I just wanna point out right now: WoW hits the nail on the head on, like, it's still a very nostalgic game, but it's also like updated. And I think that's probably why I've played it for 17 years.

Yane An: Dang, 17 years.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, I, yeah.

Yane An: Your WoW career could-- is applying to colleges. Is it going to college soon? Yeah.

Like that.

Anthony Snider: it actually is, It's actually like it can get a driver's license

Yane An: Yeah, yeah.

Anthony Snider: and live on its own. That's terrifying to think about. I was gonna, before we started recording this, I was gonna log in and do a slash played to see how many hours I've put in on just like my main character, not even all of my alts and stuff like that.

And I was like, I actually don't want to know, because last time I checked, I think just on [00:05:00] one character, I had 750 days worth of playtime on. On one character.

Yane An: Oh my god. That like hurts my brain a little bit to think about.

Anthony Snider: I know.

Yane An: like over three years.

Anthony Snider: And if you think about like, that's 17 years worth of a subscription fee every single month too.

Yane An: Okay.

Anthony Snider: investment.

Yane An: just talk about, wow, we're already talking about World of

Anthony Snider: Warcraft.

You, you, we could

Yane An: so let, let, let's plunge into this. So full disclosure, I have never played WoW in my life.

Anthony Snider: Terrible. I mean, I don't blame you. I see. Whenever somebody says they haven't played well, I don't blame them because it is, it is a deep, deep, deep dive.

Yane An: So you're like Yoda right now. And I'm like,

Anthony Snider: Luke

Yane An: I'm,

Anthony Snider: or Ray or

Yane An: I'm the six year old you that saw StarCraft. That's like where I'm at. I like StarCraft. So like, I think I was a little bit too young to really have been aware of what was going on. So it was like Blizzard released StarCraft, [00:06:00] and then they released World of Warcraft, right?

Anthony Snider: Yeah. So the timeline goes like, I think there's a few other random games, but then like The Lost Vikings was their first like, actual IP that they released, and then they did Diablo and StarCraft around the same time.

And then Diablo II, World of Warcraft or, well, there's also Warcraft games.

So before World of Warcraft even started, I guess we can start there. There was Warcraft. There was Warcraft one, two, and three which were RTS games, kind of like StarCraft but said in the Warcraft universe, which is this new thing that Blizzard created out of thin air. As popular as StarCraft and Diablo were Warcraft like, brought a whole new genre of people into it. Because Diablo it's kind of dark, it's kind of horror-

based

Yane An: It's like devil demons.

Anthony Snider: and StarCraft is

obviously sci-fi aliens. Exactly. so I think Warcraft pulled in a lot fantasy

Yane An: A [00:07:00] greater mainstream.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, exactly. And then funny enough, obviously once those players got a taste, they kind of moved into StarCraft and Diabo cuz StarCraft was really Blizzard's first, like eSport type thing.

And that took off, especially over in Asia. StarCraft is still so insanely popular in like South Korea especially, I

Yane An: Right. yeah.

Anthony Snider: it's so dope. It's so

Yane An: feel like.

Anthony Snider: The scene over there is insane.

Yane An: Okay. As a, as a South Korean, like if we were ever not number one in StarCraft, it would be like a devastating blow to like the ego. Yeah,

Anthony Snider: Exactly.

It's like, it's like an all-American baseball team going to Japan and losing,

which has happened actually, now that I think about it. Maybe I shouldn't have said that, but

Yane An: It happens. It's okay. Yeah,

Anthony Snider: it happens. It's fine.

But yeah. So Blizzard's footprint just exploded with those three games

Yane An: So people were really excited for

World of

Warcraft because they're excited, excited after the release of 1, 2, 3, and then like they're like, yo, World of Warcraft is coming out. I can just like, I'm like, I'm trying to visualize [00:08:00] the

Anthony Snider: The hype. Yeah. exactly. And the hype back then is so muted too because obviously there was no social media. And there were other, like, there were MMOs that were already out. There was Runescape, obviously there was Eve, Eve came out before.

Yane An: EVE 2003.

Anthony Snider: Yeah. So yeah, EVE had just come out just before World Warcraft. But I, I think Blizzard two had kind of like a -- like they were relatively pioneering on like online connectivity. Because like StarCraft and Diablo had chat rooms,

Yane An: Oh,

Anthony Snider: they had Jane like custom games that you could join and

Yane An: I forgot about that. Yeah, that was a big part of it, right?

Anthony Snider: yeah. That's, that's where the battle.net like brand came from. And now it's just like synchronous with Blizzard. It's their launcher for all of their games, and that's kind of like where their whole online presence started. So yeah, it came out in 2004.

I was 11, 12 maybe when it came out.

Yane An: Small, small bb,

Anthony Snider: Small little baby, and I had a crappy Gateway computer.[00:09:00] Gateway still had their like, cow pattern logo. That was really weird.

Yane An: Yeah. That's another deep cut.

Anthony Snider: it was another deep cut. Super cut.

Yane An: Somebody will get Yeah, somebody will get it.

Anthony Snider: Lots of deep cuts. I hope so.

But yeah, so I was playing on my crappy Gateway computer that my uncle had upgraded the graphics card in for me.

And I was just doing like a trial. So you could get like up to level 10 or something like that. And I enjoyed it. My family wasn't in a financial spot at the time to like pay for a subscription each month. But I did get the game as a Christmas gift, and that came with 30 days of Playtime.

So that was like my first like, real deep dive into it. And I was just a dumb little kid. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I died a lot. There's a lot of death, especially in Classic WoW, there's a lot of dying. Everything hit so freaking hard. But yeah, so

Yane An: you loved it.

Anthony Snider: I I absolutely loved it and I haven't looked back since.

Yane An: And that was the first time any game like that had been released. Right? It's like a completely new

Anthony Snider: People would like [00:10:00] compare to Runescape, obviously and Runescape is a web-based mmo, there's only so much you can get with graphics. So like, looking back now, the graphics in WoW Classic were absolutely freaking terrible. But like back then it was insane. Like there was no other game that I can think of at the time that also had online play that looked that good. And so I think that drew a lot of eyes to it. And early wow, I think had some of its biggest subscriber numbers too. I know--

Even compared to today?

I think probably equivalent with today, which is insane. I, I'm pretty sure their peak, like Wows peak was, oh God, they passed the 10 million mark in like 2010

Yane An: Jesus.

Anthony Snider: which is absolutely insane. That's 10 million people paying $15 a month or whatever it converts to in whatever region you're in.

Yane An: Does that mean that the fan base is like the same people who found the game when they're like in middle school probably.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, I would [00:11:00] say so. I mean like my, my current guild, a lot of us started playing when we were younger and like people take breaks, obviously people leave, come back, they don't like an expansion, they'll take that expansion off and they'll come back for a new expansion.

So World Warcraft they just have the formula figured out and they have for a very long time. I think one of the biggest strengths, so like with MMOs, you need to make leveling fun, but you also need to make it so there's actually stuff to do at the end of the game.

Like so many MMOs that have come out recently try to copy the formula and they like, make really compelling stories. And then there was just nothing to do at the end of the

Yane An: Mm.

Anthony Snider: And WoW, the way it seems like they designed these expansions is they focus on the end game content first and then backfill with like stories and quests and daily quests and stuff like that to like get you to that point where you can enjoy the end game content.[00:12:00] and with like challenging end game content, it gets more people to grind honestly. Yeah.

If you're like, oh wow, I'm really excited for this raid that's coming out, or for this dungeon that's coming out, then you're more inclined to level, get through the leveling process.

Yane An: Is that usually what the end game content is?

Anthony Snider: Yes. Yeah. So basically there's different content patches that get released throughout an expansion's lifetime. So like you have the first raid that's normally seven to 10, sometimes 11 bosses, and then a pool of Yes.

Um,

Yane An: like a three hour long fight.

Anthony Snider: My guild for example, we raid two nights a week for three hours a night. So that's six hours. And typically we can get, if we're on mythic, which is the highest difficulty, we can probably get two or three bosses done in one night and then come back the next day and work on the rest. But that's, that's kind of the fun of it.

It's all progression. if you don't get sort [00:13:00] of any joy out of progressing and hitting a goal, I don't think you would like it, but I also don't think the entire MMO genre would be for you.

Yane An: So there's a lot of different aspects of WoW that could appeal to people. So I think if I was integrated into a guild like you are, that I probably would be down to play, right.

Anthony Snider: Yeah. So like, obviously the social aspect is awesome. I am lifelong friends with probably like 10 or 15 people that I met when I was super young, and we're all relatively the same age. And like, we've met up, we meet up sometimes once a year. Well, COVID kind of screwed all that up, but we tend to meet up once a year and just chill with each other in person cause we all live in different parts of the states. And like they've become really, really dope friends. So like, the social aspect of WoW is super, super important. Most of my interactions outside of work recently have been with my WoW friends.

It's super easy to do. You just log into Discord, they're there, they're chilling out, or you log into the game and they're in Guild and you could just talk. [00:14:00] And that also made Covid way easier. I think because that was kind of already like my expectation for what a lot of my social life was when I was younger.

Cause I, I would get sick a lot when I was younger, so I didn't like go out and do a whole lot of stuff. I think since that was my expectation of my social life, COVID was a breeze because of it, because I was like, oh, they're all Yeah. Pog introverts.

Yane An: Gamer life!

Anthony Snider: Gamer life!

Yane An: Let's go. Discord gang.

Anthony Snider: Um,

Discord gang.

But yeah, the social aspect is super, super dope.

And I think that's another thing that Wow does really well. And they're constantly trying to improve it too. Like, so there's two factions in WoW there's the alliance in the hoard. I will not turn my hat around, even though people that play WoW can probably assume from the colors. The Alliance tends to get ragged on a lot, but I've always been an Alliance player.

Yane An: Is the Alliance like the people and then the horde is like the aliens or, I don't know the

Anthony Snider: So Alliance, Alliance is like humans, elves, gnomes, dwarves, and then the Horde is like orcs, [00:15:00] trolls, tauren, stuff like that. And there's always just been a rivalry and so many more people play the horde

Yane An: Yeah. Horde gang. I'm, I'm gonna choose already.

Anthony Snider: I, I, that doesn't surprise me. That's fine. So many more people play the Horde, but honestly, I, I always play the Alliance because my first character was a druid, which can only, at the

Yane An: Oh, druids.

Anthony Snider: could only be either night elf or a tauren.. So back when it first came out, leveling was super, super grindy. Being able to do the raids was super, super grind-y. You had to do a bunch of quests, you had to buy stuff, you had to make stuff.

You had to get attuned into these dungeons in order to actually be able to access some of these dungeons and some of these raids but they got rid of that because as we got older and also as the new generation of players started coming in, we were all like, bro, our attention span is not

Yane An: shorter.

Anthony Snider: So like leveling right now, like if you were to start playing today, you could probably level for like eight hours total of game time and be [00:16:00] at max level. Whereas before it would literally take like a month of playing to hit max level.

Yane An: wait, sorry. So it takes eight days is what you said?

Eight hours.

Anthony Snider: It's so fast now. It is so, so fast now.

Yane An: So the point of WoW isn't even leveling. It's about the endgame content unless

Anthony Snider: Now it

Yane An: account,

Anthony Snider: It's, kind of evolved. Yeah.

And I think that's one reason why WoW is still such a giant is because they, they do like evolve with players' expectations. Like if they had kept it grindy hell, for the last 10 years, nobody would be playing

Yane An: Yeah. One person will be like, level 10,000

Anthony Snider: Yeah, exactly. And everybody else would be like level 20, but that's not the case anymore. They realize that like the biggest thing, the biggest advantage that they have in this space is, the endgame content.

Yane An: The game itself.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, exactly. And they, they don't want leveling to be a barrier for that.

Yane An: Damn, that's so real. Cause [00:17:00] MMOs, the problem is that they're a leveling game. Like the focus in MMOs is the leveling --how fast you can grind.

Anthony Snider: Yep.

Yane An: It's not about the actual game.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, exactly.

Yane An: When people play MMOs, they just skip through, like when there's a cut scene, you just skip it as fast as possible.

Anthony Snider: They just skip it Yeah, a hundred percent.

Yane An: which is so sad because someone worked on that.

Anthony Snider: Yeah. Exactly.

And

that's If you're a solo player, if you don't wanna do any group content, you don't have to, you can just go off in your own little world and do whatever you want.

If you like the lore, there's plenty of lore and there's plenty of Easter eggs. Like you can pick up books and scrolls that have like extra backstory to stuff. So There's even an achievement called lore master for completing every single quest in the game.

then obviously there's PVP: player versus player. So people that like fighting other players, they can do that. They can be either open world or in battlegrounds, which are like 10 V 10 or 20 V 20 or even some 40 V 40 Battlegrounds.

Yane An: Do you lose stuff permanently or

Anthony Snider: Uh, [00:18:00] no, thank God.

Yane An: Okay. It doesn't matter.

Anthony Snider: You used to be able to be pickpocketed by a rogue and you'd lose like a few silver.

But I think they even stopped that. I think like the rogue gets gold if they pickpocket you, but you don't actually lose anything. but yeah, there's no, yeah,

it's just anarchy.

Yane An: consequences anarchy.

Anthony Snider: no no consequences other than a repair bill. Cuz you do have to pay to repair your gear, which is still a very tilting mechanic.

But I guess I, I guess I get it. But, and then they have like, just like the open world, world quests and daily quests and stuff that people who don't want to do raids or PVP can do. And then they have, which is what I do the most now. I used to be really big into pvp, but now I mostly just do dungeons and raids.

And every season there's like a pool of dungeons, so there's normal dungeons, heroic mythic, and then beyond mythic, there's mythic plus where like you can keep progressing through these dungeons and leveling up your keystone and it gets harder and [00:19:00] harder and harder.

I think the highest I've done with a group is a 27, like a plus 27. So that's 27 times higher basically, than a regular mythic dungeon.

Yane An: That's fun. You guys went hard.

Anthony Snider: All the top people run like thirties, 32s, 33s..

Wow. Has a lot of stuff. And then outside of the dungeons, there's obviously the raids and the raids take a while. It's a lot of progression.

Yane An: Another issue for me in getting into MMOs is that there's too much stuff actually, so I get overwhelmed because there's too many things that I feel like I have to do.

Anthony Snider: Yeah. That's totally understandable. It's very likely to happen when you first start playing WoW if you just go into it solo. But if you have friends or like a

Yane An: That'll help you out.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, they can, they can like point you in the right direction. Like, Hey, what do you wanna do? Oh, I wanna do this. Oh, well you can just completely ignore this aspect of the game 100%. Never touch it, don't worry about it. And just focus on what you want to do.

Which [00:20:00] I also think is huge.

Yane An: Yeah. Practice mindfulness with your MMO choices.

Anthony Snider: Yeah.

Yane An: Yeah. Yeah.

What do you think sets What do you think sets Wow apart in the gaming market? Do you think because it's such a powerful legacy game with a huge player base, since they set the standard for games as a service, they can just continue to pioneer this model?

Anthony Snider: Yeah, I think so. Like I touched on earlier, the adaptability of the game is huge. Being able to like kind of section off the game to appeal to different types of players is absolutely massive. Plus it's cozy. It's, it's a comfortable game. You can just log in and waste a few hours and feel like you actually did something and not like, feel terrible about it.

And then you can just log off and you don't have to touch it for another week if you don't want to. But also, yeah, the, the pioneering of the games as a service model I [00:21:00] think was huge. They found a really good price point back in 2004 at $15 a month, and they have kept it at $15 a month this entire time. It has never increased.

Obviously they make probably more money off of expansion releases, but even then their expansions are like 40 bucks. Yeah, for essentially a full new game. And that happens once every two to three years.

You know, like they can keep the price on the expansion launch low because it's yeah, it's subsidized with the subscriptions.

Yane An: You said you've played a lot of different PC games as well, so what are some things you, you think that we can learn from the example of Wow in terms of the gaming market?

Anthony Snider: I think consistency and adaptability is the biggest thing. Wow is consistent. It is the same game that reinvents itself every couple of years, but in great ways. Recently, specifically, the developers have been super open, super transparent.

They listen to [00:22:00] community feedback. They do what's called Blue posts, which is a Blizzard employee post on the forum explaining like their thought process behind things, explaining like what they took from the feedback that players gave them and how they applied it to the game, stuff like that which is absolutely amazing.

And it's rare to see a company as big as Blizzard do that. Normally like you get that with indie devs, but I think every developer on the WoW team feels like they're an indie dev because they know that the community is the lifeblood of the game and

they're so invested in the community now that I think it just, it feels like a safer, a safer place to be.

Yane An: That whole culture, like that nostalgic gaming culture back when like, man,

Anthony Snider: when, like you were playing Minecraft and you were in the Minecraft forums with Notch and Notch was replying to you

like Yeah. Those, those

old

Yane An: kind of vibe. Yeah.

Anthony Snider: Communicating directly with the developer type of days

Yane An: Yeah. By gamers for gamers

Anthony Snider: by gamers for gamers. And I think another thing about why their model is so good and going back to games as a [00:23:00] service a bit too, is it's not pay to win.

Yane An: Mm.

Anthony Snider: Um, there are some games as a service, video games that are out, that are pay to win and then it makes other players feel terrible.

I think the invention of the Battle Pass also blew up games as a service.

Yane An: right.

Anthony Snider: That's kind of the direction that they're going, but I, I don't know if that would apply very well to games like MMO games.

I think the monthly subscription that you can turn off whenever you want, I think is is super good. Yeah. Cuz I've, I turned it off countless times where I'm like, eh, I don't have money this month. Or like, I'm kind of bored right now, or like, for this, for this past month. Because my guild, like we prog until like a month or two before the next--

Yane An: What is Proggy?

Anthony Snider: progression.

We progress and raid. Yes. So we, we, work on killing all of the bosses in the raid until like a month before the new season comes out. And then the new season is announced, we get a date and then we [00:24:00] take a break from raiding. And during that time, a lot of our guildies just deactivate the subscriptions cuz they're like, we might as well save the $15

until the new, patch comes out because like, we're not really gonna be doing anything

anyway. So I think it's just smart.

Yane An: Wow is so unique. There are so few companies that can claim they have a such a loyal audience that'll turn off their subscription and actually resubscribe--

Canceling with the intent to return.

Anthony Snider: Yeah.

Yane An: Other interesting things I've definitely noticed is like the re-release of Wow Classic, right? You wrote about this in a blog article, which I highly recommend you guys all read.

Definitely like a, a gold nugget. Very interesting look at the wow community. Yeah. Can you tell me more about the, the big plays Blizzard is making here to re-engage y'all?

Anthony Snider: Yeah, so World of Warcraft vanilla, which is the original game, and Burning Crusade, which is the first expansion for the game, were like [00:25:00] super difficult, super grindy.

That's when you still had to attune to everything to get into all of the raids. Everything hit really hard. It took forever to get gear and like you had to put a lot of work in, you had to put a lot of effort in.

And then in 2008, wrath of Lich King was released. And that's when people who played Classic like me me referred to all of these new players as Wrath babies.

That's when they kind of started reducing the amount of time it takes to level ,increasing the accessibility for people

Yane An: you're like, they don't know how hard was for us --

Anthony Snider: of attunements, literally, literally that,

Yane An: Yeah. They're so spoiled.

Anthony Snider: People were complaining about Wrath, about Wrath babies. So I think some developers started making things called private servers where you could play Vanilla Wow again, where you could play Burning Crusade again that was like fan hosted, fan made, stuff like that.

And obviously just looking at it at face value, that's straight up somebody [00:26:00] ripping IP from a company to make their own version of a game that a ton of people were playing. , there was tit for tat for a lot of years going back and forth. And the private servers just never went away. And I think Blizzard was like, at this point, this is just too much. This has been going on for like 10 years. So they were like, we're gonna take legal action to cease and desist these private servers. They hired a group of developers to work at Blizzard and help remake WoW classic. Now you have an official Blizzard hosted, Blizzard patched, Blizzard maintained version of Vanilla WoW, Burning Crusade, and now most recently, Wrath of the Lich King.

If you have an active Wow subscription, you can just play it

Yane An: I see, I see. So that's free. Yeah. Okay.

Anthony Snider: Yeah. That's, that part's free. They're not like double charging for a game that came out 14 years ago.

But it's, it's a really good model especially pvp. A lot of people love old player versus player content.

And that [00:27:00] tends to be what a lot of like the streaming community comes back to is like, oh, let's do a classic PVP tournament and let's watch all of our favorite PvPers from way back in the day. Even Sodapoppin

Yane An: Sodapoppin~

Anthony Snider: in on it Like, even Soda gets in on it. And he hasn't really been a dedicated WoW streamer in probably 10, 12 years.

Yane An: I'm not even gonna lie. I didn't know he was a wow streamer did not know he started as a wow streamer.

Anthony Snider: If there is a large streamer that's around our age that has been on Twitch since Twitch started, they probably, started in WoW.

Yane An: Asmongold and Esfand

Anthony Snider: LIRIK started streaming in,

WoW,

Yane An: like these huge

streamers that have been around. I mean, that means they've been creating content for like 15 plus years

Anthony Snider: Since it was justin.Tv, which is where I first started streaming back in college. I also remember using Fraps to freaking stream, but like I was a college student so I didn't wanna pay for it so I had like the little [00:28:00] watercolor of Fraps up in the upper red of my screen. This is really just a nostalgic cast. This, what we're doing

Yane An: now.

That's what

is. I mean, talk about, wow, it's fun. I mean, Talk about, Gamesight. about marketing. Talk

about the gaming industry. What's not to love. Opa!

Anthony Snider: True actual facts, Opa! But yeah, I think WoW Classic is a great business model. Obviously they make a ton of money off of people buying expansions when they come out, but like if you get a hundred thousand people to come back even for a month or two, to play Classic when Classic comes back, it's a good boon. It's like releasing a mini expansion in between the actual like retail expansions. And that's, I'd say that's probably the longevity for like, especially Twitch viewership and stuff like that with Classic era is it's like two months because what used to take you forever to do back in the day, like, you've got better computers, you're older, you know the strats better. The race to world first for classic legitimately ended in 45 minutes

last time. Yeah. [00:29:00] Like they, they cleared the raid in like 45 minutes and that was like a 10 hour long raid back in the day.

Yane An: that's crazy. Oh my God. Society is advancing too quickly

Anthony Snider: I know, right?

Yane An: We're in a book club together at work, right? And we're reading the book. It's a little bit dated, but, um, what is called, again, like reality is Broken or

Anthony Snider: reality is

broken.

Yane An: like, if you gamify life in society, it's like, basically, if you stick a bunch of World of Warcraft players on any problem, they would just

Anthony Snider: they will get it solved.

Yane An: Like, yeah.

Theoretically they could just devour it and like optimize it. Yeah. Let's go gamers.

Anthony Snider: And that, that book has a lot of World of Warcraft references. And I think, I think that just shows that like World of Warcraft doesn't really have to be worried. It, I don't think it's going anywhere because I mean, if freaking authors, like psych authors are talking about like the effects of World of Warcraft and how like gamifying stuff based on statistics [00:30:00] from WoW can improve your life, improve your work, improve your career. Like, that's just insane. That's so crazy.

Yane An: Like it's good for your social life, especially for like more introverted people.

Anthony Snider: Yep. It's good for multitasking. It's good for time management.

Yane An: Yeah. Like guild leadership, etc.

Anthony Snider: I've been a raid leader since I was 15 and I've also held a lot of management positions in my career and various fields, and I legitimately think being a raid leader, like corralling 20 to 40 people to work together. I think that actually legitimately helped me in like my management skills and management styles.

Oh, I did. I I have before.

Yane An: You put that on your resume.

Anthony Snider: Yeah, I have before.

Yane An: Yeah. That's crazy that so many people play World of Warcraft. Like I still can't get around the scale of that. It is literally one of the original giants of the gaming industry.

Anthony Snider: Price only matters [00:31:00] so much if you continue to release content. Going back again to what sets it apart.

Their game mechanics just work really well. Combat is super, super smooth. Fights are super engaging, like it super enticing, like it's exciting enough that like you want to grind to get to that point and it, it's like beating an end game boss in like a normal rpg, but you get to do it every single week and every single week you get a different chance of different types of loot and stuff like that.

It's super, super satisfying and they, they put so much focus on the end game that I think it kind of gets rid of the mundane or even makes the mundane that does exist less mundane because you can just do what you want at the end and get the kill. Kill the big boss, get the big loot. Look at your item level increase and be happy.

Yane An: Number go up,

hang out with friends.

Anthony Snider: As Ludwig likes to say, bigger number, better person.

Yane An: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe let's try to come up with some sort of big brain conclusion here. Whether [00:32:00] you're a consumer, you're a fellow gamer, or whether you're like a developer, I think there's definitely a lot to look at when it comes to World Warcraft and there's a lot to learn. Whether it's like the business model or how to create good content, have good marketing beats, good event beats. I've definitely learned a lot today about World of Warcraft. Thanks to Anthony.

Anthony Snider: I'm glad I could be your sage.

Yane An: Yeah. And, you know, uh, just goes to show if you ever wanna run a campaign with us at Gamesight, know MMOs.

Yeah. We know gaming.

Anthony Snider: We know MMOs like the

back of our hand

Yane An: Games as a service. We grew up with us stuff. So, or if you're like a Freddie Fish fan just like us, right?

Yeah.

Anthony Snider: Games as a service and software as a service. Just, they just mesh really well and we're software as a service, so like

Yane An: Exactly. Damn. Bars. Bars, Anthony. But yeah, thank you so much .

Anthony Snider: Thank you for having me.

[00:33:00]

Anthony Snider: