genuinely interested and watching it, but part 1 is an hour and 30 minutes. Could you pluck out the gist perhaps?
ETA 10 minutes in so no bias: here you go
Preamble: There are clear choices. To experience a death knight, you need to play a death knight. You cant experience it on a mage, for example. 18 minutes in and this is a clear topic so need to pre-empt it from his perspective (so im mangling it - sorry). There is a clear division: Core choices that affect and restrict your later choices (class and spec - skiers right) and abilities and gear and borrowed power etc (skiers left)
10.38: “I agree with ions points (on multiple play styles and drives): but we’re in dangerous territory, very dangerous territory” (ill crypto live stream the points i feel tie into the wider discussion).
18.25: So ion is trying to puts these [covenant choices] over here [skiers right] with the class choices and preach is trying to pretend theyre over here [skiers left… abilities gear etc] . He explicitly said ‘pretend’. So this indicates his position thus far. Covenants are clearly skier right in his head. This may change and he may well side with preach eventually. But right now he’s agreeing with ions central plank.
27-33.21 minutes: Im going to assume that theres one game: the achievement game. Heres the breakdown: The absolute hardcore; underneath them the people trying to break into the hardcore, we’ll call them the ‘meta slaves’ and underneath them the filthy casuals who are playing their own game and doing their own things completely against the ‘achievement game’ experience.
33.24: If you want to move from meta to hardcore, you do what you have to do… but its kinda cool that players want to achieve and also want to be part of the wider mmo experience with all the nonsense from the filthy casuals. [totally agree. Preach never believes he should be playing some independent, stratified wow experience. He wants to play an mmo above all].
The game is ultimately [he seems to have strong reservations on this design philosophy of modern wow] trying to appeal to the meta slave group. [eta; ratios: 1-5% true hardcore, 70% meta slaves; rest filthy casuals]
36.50: The way out of this is to appeal to more than just achievement players. [Basically he reiterates the donut theory. The game should be first and foremost fun - hard to see it as anything but wistfulness for a byegone era with less information at the players fingertips, but im relaying what he said, not necessarily critiquing it].
38.30: What the achievement player really wants is instead far wider access to the true hardcore game. [ratio: 40% true hardcore; 30% chasers; 30% other]. If only the game was less grindier, less cumbersome, less demanding… they’d have the game they want. [im not sure where this going, but im almost certain with the run time and additional typed commentary/updates, im not making my way through this in one sitting, so you’ll have to forgive me if i bail in the next hour or so].
39.40: [gia gunn voice] What they think they want (to do) isnt necessarily what theyre gonna do. Its an ultimately unsatisfying experience. Once the majority can get what you have, it loses its luster.
41.30: His solution is to STRETCH the difficulty curve even further [hey! i made a post about this exact same thing! (the decoupling of the mythic game! - eyes passim)]. He wants to break up the 70% of meta slaves by capping their progression. The upshot is… [well, its back to vanilla (as vanilla, not classic). That is, you have a bunch of guilds doing rag, fewer guilds running bwl, even fewer running aq40, and even fewer running naxx. Im moving ahead, but absolutely get the point And appreciate its far harder with ‘the meta’ but his point is that EVEN WITH ALL THE AVAILABLE INFO tuning would account for this. And when you as a player find yourself at the top of the deeps meters and your guild is stagnant, you start sending out apps to guilds above you.
Every player has a level they want to play, the achievement path is set by the game. Its up to you as a player to opt in to the demands. This sounds super familiar and i reckon most players think theyre playing this exact game, but theyre just not, it has a twist. The GAME sets your levels. You arent entitled to move upwards. The game sets the demands, the commitment level and gives you clear, attainable goals and benchmarks (you know, like a platform game for example), with its clear demands, and you as a player opt in or peace out based on your values and desires.
Maybe you think you deserve a mythic spot and if only the game wasnt so ‘time consuming and involving’ youd hit it with your natural skill and ability. The game tells you, ‘thats PRECISELY why you arent progressing and why youre exactly there! Reprioritise or accept youre in the precise level for your myriad of disclaimers… because someone else doesnt have them and succeeded’. So he wants a mechanism that challenges gamers at multiple levels and locks them out based on a myriad of core mmo skills (not just skill - he includes later examples of players who just cant get along with other people or who cant think strategically as disqualifiers). He wants players to face those challenges in GAME (and likely fail) and therefore be less entitled overall].
45.20: it ultimately comes down to flexing [this is an mmo. Real people are involved. Its not a single player game. The drive is flexing, not accomplishment or personal achievement (secondary goal)].
46.10: In the current game, there are TWO pecking orders: The true hardcore and the “aspiring hardcore” (meta slaves, but i prefer my term). The mass of players want to be in the top end. Theres one and only one incredibly difficult path to break into it. By stratifying these tiers (see 41 minutes post for further elaboration) you establish a clear pecking order and break up the mid (dominant) tier into a clear progression path [reducing issues of both anger and entitlement].
51: Preach has what it takes to be in the “no excuses, do whatever it takes” hardcore group. But when he’s petitioning to ion about not having to do 4 of each class or playing with slappy hands on his DK, that puts him in with the meta players, special pleading to lower the challenge of the hardcore game so he can make it that 50%/30%/20% game he talked about above [38.30]. But that’s not what the modern retail game is about [and he knows this!].
52.30: Ion is actually trying to make covenants a means to stretch this system. You can play around as much as you like. But if you screw up its still on you [honestly though, this sounds like ion isnt stretching things, but reproducing precisely the current model - if you want to be the absolute top of this game, do the work and stop complaining. Sure you can mess around, but just be sure, theres demands awaiting you to keep your spot. Interesting to hear how he develops this point. If im being generous, i think he means that with more of these kinds of choices, players will invariably make mistakes, and thus invariably stratify themselves when they hold fast on them…
but i cant agree with this as a design. I get accomplishments and challenges and difficulty. But this logically impels a meta and research, it wont solve the problems of entitlement and anger because players will just ask: ‘why should i have to play this spec/covenant? isnt it supposed to be balanced? Isnt that the design philosophy? What happened to ‘no wrong choices?’’ If anything, wouldnt it exacerbate the situation? Hence the current massive discussion on the forums]
55.40: Preach is in that hardcore group. But he’s trying to engage that meta slave group to leverage change so he doesnt have to put in as much time {…to retain his position}. But at the end of the day, that hardcore group is for a specific strata of the playerbase who DESERVE [based on their sacrifice and commitment i assume] to flex on everyone else.
Sorry, its 10.45pm. I need to shower and go to sleep for work. We’re coming back to the interview now, and its pretty clear the direction of travel. But if you’d like i’ll happily recap some more. I probably will even if you dont because im kind of that way anyway. 
Lots of interesting branches to discuss further though, regardless. And some deep and interesting perspectives on the design philosophy (and simultaneous demands) of the game.
