The Relevance of Vanilla Dev Interviews

[Turbosaxophonic]

I know this isn't a precise suggestion, but I humbly propose that our class devs use original developer interviews and first-hand accounts as a resource to guide the direction of future class changes.

I don't doubt that people here are pretty tired of the discourse surrounding Class Changes 2 and Vanilla class design, I feel like I've been on crazy pills trying to defend and explain the design ethos of the base game, why it's something that's worth preserving, and how some of our server's overhauls have failed to stay true to certain ideals. I believe that the wealth of interviews from Blizzard's former lead class designer are more relevant than ever, and I truly hope the insights provided by his perspective can help shape the future of our server's class design for the better.

Too often is original vision and what's considered "vanilla" debated about as though the developer's intents are some lost mystery to be reverse-engineered or interpreted from what was already in the game, when that simply isn't the case. Even though these interviews don't cover the classes as exhaustively as a development bible would, they provide a bounty of insight for what the vision was for a lot of the classes, why certain decisions were made, where exactly some of those ideas failed, and what could have been done differently.

But enough rambling, without further ado I'll present what I've found to be the most relevant interviews timestamped for everyone's benefit here:

• Kevin Jordan on general Class Design (this is by far the longest one, interview ends at 2:00:30)
  
• On Warriors (ends at 1:10:00)
  
• On Shamans (ends at 33:50)
  
• On Hunters (ends at 1:41:10)
  
• On Paladins (ends at 1:53:30)
  
• On Druids (ends at 1:13:40)
  
• On Warlocks (ends at 1:09:25)
  
• On Priests (ends with the video)
  
• On Rogues (ends at 2:05:15)
  
• On Mages (interview goes from 32:45-1:11:40)
  
  Can only seem to find a Spotify link for this one.

I realize how long this can be to go through, I'll be transparent in admitting that I'm still making my way through the bulk of them myself (so far I've listened to general design, warrior, paladin, shaman, and parts of hunter), but I've found these and other retrospectives from the Vanilla team to be a veritable goldmine of knowledge for the game and how its classes fit together. We're lucky to have this much postmortem analysis of the game from its creators, other games' communities would kill for this level of open discussion from their now-retired developers. If the Turtle team is trying to pick up where the original class designer left off, should they not endeavor to understand his vision for the game? Wouldn't his perspective be incredibly relevant to a massive undertaking such as this?

It's already been discussed at length in other threads whether or not certain aspects of CC2 go against the vanilla identity of classes and their specializations, but there's some changes that can be considered controversial by purists that are actually backed up by what Blizzard's team had in mind, namely Holy Paladin as a melee healer, the reason why their heals were so efficient was so they'd have mana left over to spend on attacks. Unfortunately, reality didn't align with that idea.

I'm not going to try and say that every one of Kevin Jordan's ideas are infallible or that his word is law, in fact there's some original plans I myself question (particularly Shamans only being intended to tank up to mid-late game), but it's my sincerest hope that these and the numerous other interviews out there can help inform and provide context to not only the Turtle team but also to future conversations about class design in this community. I earnestly implore our class design team to at the very least consider the contents of these interviews, and to hopefully allow the experiences of their predecessor provide a renewed sense of direction for this daunting challenge the team's bravely decided to take on.

I feel like I'm mostly shouting into the void by this point, so thank you for making it this far, I'm aware this post is kind of a lot. If you've disagreed with my opinions about the direction of CC2 or the importance of vanilla design integrity, then I hope you at least find the interviews provided above interesting and entertaining.

[Neechy]

Great post! +1

[Zvyrhol]

If only everyone working on CC2 could listen to this interview first...
Great post.

[Xudo]

Did any CC2 hater actually listened to to those interviews?

So far it looks like "here is shitton of information that surely prove my point". I have troubles accessing youtube now, so I can't even listen them to discuss them in detail.

[Turbosaxophonic]

Did any CC2 hater actually listened to to those interviews?

So far it looks like "here is shitton of information that surely prove my point". I have troubles accessing youtube now, so I can't even listen them to discuss them in detail.

Are you just arguing for the sake of arguing man? I already said there’s ideas in CC2 backed up by these interviews and that isn’t a bad thing, did you read or listen to anything, or did you just skim through it? The problem is in execution, not (every) idea. Slam and its troubles were specifically mentioned, at no point did he say it was ever put in the wrong specialization or talent tree. He goes out of his way to talk about crossover talents/abilities and their importance in the Shaman interview, something that’s been directly eroded by this patch. Positive change will continue to be an uphill battle as long as you and others keep looking at these issues as a black and white conflict of “haters vs. enjoyers”.

[Xudo]

He goes out of his way to talk about crossover talents/abilities and their importance in the Shaman interview, something that’s been directly eroded by this patch.

This point is actually most interesting. Is there any way to get script of this video regarding it?