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Now, follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Now, follow a hero's journey through World of Warcraft Forever with the development team.
Hello BlizzCon!
How's everybody doing? Good weekend so far?
All right, my name is Clay Stone.
If you didn't meet yesterday, I'm the Associate Production
Director of the WoW Classic and WoW Forever team.
Welcome to the WoW Forever deep dive panel.
I would just like to call out, this is our first of four
WoW Forever panels today.
If you're looking to hear more about WoW Forever lore,
things like our Skyborne elves and how
they fit into classic vanilla lore,
I urge you to make it to the deep dive panel
on this very stage this afternoon.
So far, we've had the chance to very lightly introduce you
to just some of WoW Forever.
It's new zones, dungeons, a couple systems,
and the pillars by which we are building this game.
And for those of you here at BlizzCon,
I hope you've had the chance to try the demo
on the show floor and experience the start of the leveling
journey of the game's new race, the Skyborne,
or taken on our all-new-to-classic Wild Dungeons,
the drowned city with a few friends.
And that's a fine introduction to Wild Forever.
But if you are here at this particular panel
or watching from home,
we know that you don't just want the highlights.
you want to go deep into more of the additions, changes,
and updates, and perhaps the philosophical reasons
why of WoW Forever's massive scope.
Today, we'll take a look at new features, things
like our new camping system, additions to trade skills,
our big improvements to how our realm infrastructure will
work, as well as combat, items, classes, talents,
and more.
Now, to get us started,
please help me welcome to the stage
someone who needs very little introduction to this crowd.
Our senior designer and narrative point of Wow Forever,
Josh Greenfield, or as you know him,
Adgrin.
Hello, BlizzCon. Did you guys have a great day one? Hell yeah, I know I did. Alright,
I don't know about you guys, but I'm super excited to get to talk to you about some of
the fine details on how some of the systems and wow forever are going to work.
So let's jump right into it.
Picture this.
You're adventuring in the wilderness and run into another player on your faction.
This is an encounter you should be happy to have.
Sure, sometimes that other player may beat you to an herb note or mining note or
maybe attack the same mob you're about to attack,
but a core foundation of WoW Forever
is serendipitous interactions.
Serendipitous interactions are the foundations
of making friends in online games.
So how do we make meeting strangers serendipitous?
In WoW Forever, we've reimagined the simple cooking fire
to support these types of interactions.
Your cooking fire has now become the basic campfire.
Placing a campfire creates a camp site
that allows you and other players to rest
and gain benefits such as vendors, repairs,
trade skill workspaces,
and most importantly, buffs that last one hour.
Sometimes it's important to just slow down a bit
and just take it easy.
So in order to gain your buffs,
you'll need to slash sit by the campfire
for a few moments until you're ready for adventure.
A basic campfire allows up to three special crafted objects to be placed at the camp by players.
Each player can place one object, and each trade skill has different objects they can place for a unique buff or utility learned at different skill levels.
For example, blacksmiths can place a sharpening wheel that increases strength,
tailors can place a faction banner that increases spirit,
and herbalists can place an incense candle that increases intellect.
All of these are variants of an exclusive width buffs provided normally by classes,
such as a paladin's Blessing of Might or a mage's arcane intellect.
The first objects are learned at only 20 skill points,
More advanced objects can be learned via blueprint recipes you'll need to find in your adventures.
All of these objects add more depth and purpose to trade skills in WoW Forever.
Overall, we've been having a ton of fun with camping as we've been testing it internally,
and we can't wait to arrive in Elwin Forest or Duratar and see people sitting around the fire getting ready for battle.
So, on the topic of trade skills, this is an area that has been given a massive amount
of love in WoW Forever.
Even outside of what I just described with the camping additions, there are over 600 new
recipes across all professions and level ranges in WoW Forever.
Thank you.
Yeah.
In addition, many existing recipes have been overhauled in some way.
Even at low levels, you will feel the impact of your profession choice in a meaningful
way and you'll be excited to continue to level your professions as you go.
As a complement to camping, cooking and food have also received a substantial overhaul.
Almost all crafted food will give some form of a stat boost as well as a small
XP buff.
means you'll always want to go into battle well prepared and well fed.
Philosophically, we want trade skills to become an important part of your
progression in WoW Forever, and we are planning to continually add new recipes,
materials, and crafted items as the game continues to evolve. So next, let's
talk about transmogrification. As Clay said, not controversial at all.
Trans fog is an important tool for those who want to show off their accomplishments or express their character in a particular way.
However, we recognize that this system is not for everyone.
Many players appreciate seeing their gear progression and others reflected in how they actually appear.
So we've done a lot of work to allow you to engage with the system as little or as much as you'd like.
Thus, we are allowing you to choose to opt out of the system
in a few different ways.
The first is simply speaking to an NPC
and disabling transmog.
Easy enough?
Additionally, when you log into the game for the first time,
you'll be met with a mode selector.
And that has a preset of a handful of settings,
any of which you can reconfigure later.
But if you select the classic mode,
the visibility of other players' transmog
will be disabled as soon as you enter the game.
The goal here is to allow you to play the game as if Transmod
does not exist at all.
And you should be able to do just that.
So while giving you the ability to opt out of the system
is a good first step, we do recognize
that the collection aspect of Transmod
has an impact on the behavior of players as well, right?
So one thing we asked ourselves
when designing this system is,
what happens if I go to Strafholm
and the mask of the unforgiven drops?
It's a sweet looking leather helmet,
it looks like a bandit mask,
anybody would be stoked to have it
in their trans mod collection, right?
Do I have to worry about someone
who doesn't need that as an upgrade
but just wants it for the mod to roll against me?
The short answer is no.
Any bind-on pick-up, uncommon or rare gear that drops in dungeons will grant its appearance
to all eligible looters when it's loaded.
Awesome.
Yeah.
So this means that that rogue who just wants the upgrade should never be worried that that
warrior is just going to roll for the mob.
So there's no need to roll against anybody.
Everybody just gets it.
Everybody walks away happy.
For Epic Drops and Rids, we do expect groups
to have an organized loot system.
That's been the case in WoW for years.
So the appearance for Epic items
will be granted to the person who looted and binds
the item only to preserve the uniqueness and prestige
of Epic appearances.
So for those who do want to fully engage with the system, the basic functionality should
look pretty familiar if you've played WoW Midnight, but with a few slightly more classic
modifications and restrictions.
Firstly, you may only transmog your gear to an item of the same type, so plate to
plate or cloth to cloth.
If you're a healer paladin and you're wearing
like the robes of the exalted,
you'll need another cloth chest to transmog over that.
However, to support this,
we're adding the ability to select different armor appearance
types per slot so you can customize a single saved outfit
to have both say a pair of leather and nail gloves
in that outfit.
In case you get an upgrade out in the field,
that doesn't match what you're currently wearing.
You will not be able to transmog high-level items as a low-level player, either.
We want your silhouette to be relative to your level.
Once you hit max level, however, all level restrictions are removed, and any item in
your collection that is valid to be used on your equipped items will be transmogged.
The primary exception of this rule is the case of items like PvP gear that require
certain conditions to be met, such as rank.
So you will need to have the rank required to transmog that item over your equipped items.
If you have the system itself disabled, you'll still be able to configure and display your
own transmog just in case you want to do something like enable or disable your Helm slot or your
Cloak.
And additionally, if you have the system disabled, Helm and Cloak visibility of other
players is not affected.
This preserves the original wow functionality of being able to hide your helm and cloak
for yourself and others regardless of if either party is opted out of the system or not.
While we love transmog, it was important to us to make sure to be respectful to those
who do not enjoy it and make its inclusion have as minimal impact as possible on the
way they play and see the game.
So there is actually a lot more to Transmog,
and this was just part of an overview of the system.
We'll be talking about this more in the coming days
and weeks, and blog posts, and the other communications
leading up to our launch.
And so with that, I am going to hand it over to Anna
Rezendes to talk about some of our server infrastructure
and how you'll be playing with your friends
in the world forever.
Hi, everyone. I'm so honored to be here with you. I cannot even describe the feeling this
This is a dream for me come true.
Let's start with it.
I am Anna Resendes, lead software engineer
for the Wild Forever team.
And I'm here to talk to you about the new legacy system
and some server updates.
So let's start with the legacy system.
When Hacker came out, we loved the fact
that there were so many people constantly leveling,
going through the journey over and over again.
the team got inspired by how lively the world felt.
I wanted to find new ways to reward you
for going again in the journey,
maybe without facing the consequences of the daily,
like so deadly of it.
So the legacy system was created as a way
to make leveling arts more exciting,
to emphasize the journey over the destination.
With this new system, you get to have new challenges
you can complete to earn points for all of your characters.
Each character can use these points
to unlock new rewards in different and exciting ways,
making each of your characters' journeys more unique.
So let's first talk about the legacy points.
You can earn points by completing legacy challenges
across several categories that you can
see on the screen back here.
So let's look at a couple of examples.
For example, level in a specific class,
You have different milestones from level 25, 45, and 60.
Another example is reaching a particular scale set
like artisan engineering.
So the goal of the earning these points
isn't to force you to do something out of the ordinary.
You know, like killing an enemy player
while singing Happy Birthday or something like that.
Yeah.
The idea is that the system complements your existing
journey and rewards the way that you already
enjoy playing the game?
Well, maybe adding new challenges along the way.
OK, but what do I do with these points?
OK, let me introduce you to the legacy trees.
The starting trees are tree, professions, adventures,
and resourcefulness.
As you earn points, you'll be able to share your journey
through these trees and choose the path that best
fits your play style.
Let's look at an example of each of the different trees
so you can get some idea.
So in the adventure tree, as you can see,
we have well rested.
This increases how quickly you can bring
rested experience and increases the cap
of the rested experience bar.
Excellent for leveling all of your alts.
An example in the professions tree,
you can see the bountiful harvest
that increases how many scarce materials
you get from mining, herbing, or skinning.
And depending on the path you take,
you can unlock some pretty exciting perks.
So as this perk, in the resource ministry,
you can find reagent economy,
where your class ability is no longer required reagents
to make buffing easier.
But stay with me.
Some of the more powerful perks like these ones
are very deep in the trees.
So you're gonna have to make some very tough choices.
What makes this system truly unique
is that the points you earn are shared
across all of your arts.
Each character you have will be able to spend
the same number of points in their own trees.
Whether if you want to create lots of arts
to earn as many points as possible,
or you really want to have dive and maximize
that particular character that you love,
the choice is yours.
So at lunch, the number of points are going to be capped.
So you're only gonna have 16 points to spend on your legacy trees.
We didn't want people to feel pressure to have to do absolutely all of the challenges.
Or for new players to feel like they have a very long way to catch up.
That said, the number of points is capped.
But to begin with, you can earn up to 65 points, even beyond that limit.
But what do you do with those 65 points?
Well, introducing now the legacy reward track.
Where here, after you continue to create and get
all of these challenges, you will
be able to get some rewards.
Like this one, this very cute little bearer.
I really want to get it.
So these rewards are intended to be cosmetic or prestige
space.
I should not provide a competitive gameplay advantage at all.
I do want to add another note about mounts.
In Burning Crusade, the off-rump cost of getting your mount
shifted to the trainer cost.
And in World Forever, we are also making this change.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So in the future, we're going to continue
to add new challenges and new perks you
can spend your points on.
And you can imagine seeing these like maybe new perks
in the existing trees, or maybe completely new trees
in the future.
So we can wait for you to get your hands on this system
and discover all of the different ways to play with it.
I know I already have some idea of cooking,
and I will definitely have an army of alts
to help me shape my journey.
So now moving up to the next topic,
something I'm really, really excited about as an engineer,
especially, server infrastructure.
So I want to start with the story.
Yes, let's go.
You know, you know, passionate.
I want to start with to share the first time
that I play in World of Warcraft.
I was really excited to start playing.
I got this battle chest.
I don't know if anyone also got that battle chest,
but I was so excited.
I come in, yeah.
I come into my house after a mountain of CDs
and just like waiting for all of the updates to finish,
I was finally in and ready to play.
And the first thing I saw logging in was this.
Realm, what realm?
I spent a good amount of time trying to decide
which realm to pick.
I didn't wanna make the wrong choice.
Back then I was like, what's Arthas?
Who's Dalaran?
I know better now, but luckily,
I knew I wanted to play with my friends
and meeting from Mexico,
in our options down pretty quickly
to Dracarri and Ragnaros.
So I called my friends and asked them,
okay, where are we going?
And we decided to roll characters in Dracarri.
I did wanna do a quick shout out
to all of my original Dracarys players, you and the crowd.
I hear you, yes.
Yeah, so anyways, I jumped into the game.
I probably spent like 30 minutes perfecting
my character's appearance.
And it took me less than five minutes to die.
But you know what?
This is a story for a different time.
A few days later, though, I was
talking to another group of friends, IRL,
And I told them, hey, I started playing WoW.
Let's play together.
And they told me they played in Ragnaros.
So that was it.
I created an alt in there, but it was not the same.
So as we approach the development of WoW forever,
we didn't just look at our own experiences.
We look at the experiences of countless
of other players like you.
One of the trends we noticed in classic
was that players naturally gravitated towards the same realms,
creating these massive realms and potentially long queues.
We get it.
In big realms, you always have people
to group up with, a healthy economy, someone
that has the recipe for that item you really
want at any time of the day.
The challenge is that back in 2004,
the game simply couldn't handle enormous numbers of players
all looked into the same realm at the same time.
Since then, thanks to the incredible work
of our engineering teams, we made huge improvements
to the technology.
And today, we can support far more players
on a single realm than ever before.
With that in mind, and living in a world
that is more connected than ever,
we decided to invest even further
into helping players connect and play with each other.
So in a while forever, you won't select our room anymore
because we're going wrongness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yay, technology!
We're doing it!
So, OK, OK.
Let's not get too crazy.
Yeah.
We're not putting everyone in one giant room.
To start, instead of choosing a realm,
you choose from one of the following rule sets.
You know, it's very similar to the current classic offerings.
You might want to choose normal, or PBEs referred to
in classic, or some players call it like that.
In here, you can focus on exploration
and only fight others when you choose to.
So, let's do a live survey.
Any takers for normal?
Yeah?
Let's go. Let's go. Let's do it.
If you're the kind of player who wants every trip into contested territory
to come with a little bit of danger and a lot of excitement,
then player versus player or PvP is for you.
Do we have any PvPers?
There you go.
Or perhaps you really want to dive into the fantasy of the game
and look for other like-minded players, in which case, role-playing might be for you.
Any RP enjoyers in the crowd?
Yes.
Nice.
And finally, once hardcore is available post-launch,
if you're looking for the ultimate challenge,
where every decision matters and that has real consequences, hardcore is your choice.
So, let me hear it.
Who's excited for hardcore?
Yeah, I'm excited for hardcore.
Ugh.
You're so brave.
You're so brave to go into hardcore.
Okay.
So once you made your selection, there's one more thing I want to make sure you understand.
Well, while forever makes it easier than ever to play with your friends,
there's still some restrictions.
Think about each rule set like a mega-roll.
Here's how it works.
Actions are still separate if your core my personal favorites. Yeah
You won't be able to group up with the Alliance players
Alliance to okay, let's give her the Alliance. Okay
So you will only be able to group up the dungeons and raids with the people of your same rule set and
And if you choose hardcore, you will be completely in close ecosystem.
However, if your character dies, you'll be able to transfer to another game rule set.
And now, for the first time, you'll be able to transfer to PvP.
Yeah.
Okay, moving on.
Collections and the system I just talked about, legacy system,
are still account-wide and will be across rulesets,
except hardcore.
The things that you earn in hardcore
will be available in the other game rulesets,
but not the other way around.
Yes.
So, I also wanna add another note.
As part of the server updates,
your characters will not have two names.
So you think about it, you can think about it
like maybe a first name and a last name
here in the US, we refer it to.
And now that names are going to be unique per region,
we wanted you to be able to create original names like Anna
forever.
So now you have the chance of getting two last names,
I have two names instead of just one.
So going back to my personal story,
I have very fond memories of my time on Dracare.
Those are some original screenshots, by the way,
of like back to 2009.
And we recognize that there are certain benefits
and experiences that come from being part of our realm.
While forever is a reflection of seven years of learning
for our WoW team.
As I mentioned before,
players gravitate towards bigger realms.
At the same time, they really care about community
and sense of belonging.
So we ask ourselves,
por qué no los dos?
Why not both?
And there is always something we're incredibly excited about.
We have updated the infrastructure to give you the benefits of large realms with the
goal of capturing the essence of the realm.
So when will you notice this is when you're out in the world leveling, questing or exploring,
you may cross paths with the same players again and again.
Did you help each other complete a quest,
race for the same mining node,
or simply go by this shoulder as you pass by,
maybe throw a buff or something like that.
And the next day, you might see the same player again
and recognize their name.
Over time, strangers become familiar faces
and familiar faces become part of your community.
Or, maybe think about it like
wanted to group up for an elite.
As you're coordinating with your guild,
we want you to encounter your guildmates out in the world,
even before you have grouped up.
So, one crucial thing for me was joining a server
that spoke Spanish like I do,
and for what forever you will get the choice
for your language preference too.
And you will encounter other players
who share that same preference.
I also wanna address faction balance.
It is very important for a PUP rule set.
So we will have mechanisms in place
to shoot for a core and alliance, faction balance,
just as we introduced for Season of Discovery.
So with all these changes,
we don't want you to have to make the choice
between potentially longer queues at launch
or what would not be your forever roam.
So our goal is to give you the best of both worlds,
the benefits of a large room,
what we're saving the sense of community,
We're really excited for new communities to be born
and also for you to bring your own.
So can't wait to see you in Azeroth.
And now to talk about the core of the game,
combat items, classes and talents.
I'll have things over the 21 year veteran
of World of Warcraft, Chris.
Yeah, thank you.
Hello, BlizzCon!
So, it's been two years since we stopped work on Season of Discovery.
What have the class and item designers been up to since then?
We're going to need to move quickly.
I'm going to talk about our combat philosophy,
exciting changes to rivalization,
new racial abilities.
And finally, anyone here play Paladin?
Yeah!
A deep dive look at all of our class and talent changes
for the Paladin class to illustrate all of our class
design across the game.
First, let's talk about how combat works in World of
Warcraft forever.
Our team loves the feel and pacing of combat
in World of Warcraft Classic.
It's important to us that we do not
change how that combat feels.
And that leads to some very important design decisions.
First, keep our classes simple, but with surprising depth.
Keep our classes distinct, with each having
unique strengths and weaknesses.
No homogenization.
Combat pacing is a little slower. It takes you about 15 seconds to kill a creature on your own.
And dungeon gameplay is tactical. That means crowd control matters. You need to polymorph, vanish,
brute, trap, monsters to keep control, to keep your healer from getting killed,
and getting killed can keep the tank from being overrun
from too much damage.
And threat matters.
Our tanks can only do threat on three or four targets at once.
You can't pull a whole dungeon all at once.
Moving on to stats.
One of the things we wanted to do in World of Warcraft
forever was unsolve the game.
We've all been playing classic for 22 years,
and we know everything.
We know what to do.
We know those perfect paths and what items to get.
What if all that changes?
What if you gotta solve it again?
So that end, we made a ton of changes
to itemization throughout the game.
And we love having many different choices
how to gear your character with different stats.
And those choices changing based on which class
you're playing, what comments you're in, where you go.
So we're keeping all of the stats from wild plastic
and with a few changes,
and also adding more that came in
some of the future expansions.
Although I'll say, we're not adding resilience.
First, let's talk about hit chance.
In World of Worker, plastic hit was separate
from melee ranged and spells
and that was kind of awkward
if you're an enhancement shaman or a rep paladin
or even a warrior who wants your taunts to land.
So with unified hit, hit is for all types of attacks at once,
which doesn't just benefit those paladins,
but also rogues landing their poisons,
hunters landing their traps, warriors landing their taunts.
And we've done the exact same thing
with your chance to critical strike.
That is also alberged in the same way.
Now, weapons skill was probably the strongest stack,
especially for melee in World of Warcraft Classic.
But it was a little too easy to get
and a little too strong.
So you may recall in Born and Crusade we removed it.
Well, we want to keep it so we've rebalanced it.
You can't get quite as much on a single item as you used to.
But you can get it.
It still works.
It's still very valuable.
For our healing classes, one of their problems
was you go to next frame.
It's an amazing set of gear.
You go out questing, and you can't kill anything.
So we adopted and changed that all of our healing items,
also come with bonus damage,
so our healers can enjoy the whole game as well.
We're also adding many new stats
that didn't exist in WoW Classic.
You can now reduce the chance to your attacks
to be parried and dodged,
which is really great for tanks as it does double duty.
Spellcaster-oriented weapons now grant
bonus spelled imaging healing
all the way down to level 10.
Spellcasters will now care about their weapons
as much as warriors and rogues who everyone gets to have
a more fun game the whole way along.
One big area to change was trinkets.
We want trinkets to be more variety
and more different ways to solve problems
so they're all much more specialized
and targeted specific situations.
You got a bag full of tricks.
You're pulling out for different encounters
and different situations.
The Wargaming Talisman here being a great example.
We also added two whole new classes of effects on items,
some that only work or work better in certain areas, mountains,
or deserts, or cities, or caverns,
and others that have bonus effects
against different species.
Like Excalibur here does bonus damage against undead
and swine, whatever that is.
We've done a massive re-itemization
across the entire game.
Every single dungeon boss has had their loot re-examined.
Everything is upgraded to rare quality.
Many new items have been added
and old items that maybe weren't up to snuff are better,
but the old favorites,
the really stand-on items are also still there.
Our new quest rewards have been added across the board.
A very famous quest is well-known to Alliance players.
In Duskwood, you get a quest to go kill
of the undead soldier, Morladim.
You're super excited about this.
You get a group together.
They kill him, and maybe you're a mage, or a shaman,
or a priest, whatever.
At the end of the class, you get a two-in-a-sort.
Well, that's great.
If you're a warrior or a paladin,
what about everybody else?
So now Morladim also hands you back
his heirloom family ring, which
is a fantastic spell power ring.
Another great example, when you finish all of Hemid Nessing where he's quest in Stranglethorne,
he would give you a Master Hunter's bow or a Master Hunter's crossbow.
He now also has a Master Hunter's wand and this Master Hunter's spell sword specifically designed for
retpaladins to do his strength and spell damage on it together.
And there's much more atomization for all of those hybrid specs across the game
game than there ever was before.
We've gone through all of our world drop epics,
and they've all been revisited.
When you see an epic drop, it's that exciting moment.
Oh my god, I'm getting an epic.
And they were often really disappointing.
They weren't that great, actually.
So we've gone through them all and made them all much stronger,
much more useful.
So you may see one of these drop.
You'll know you'll want to use it or give it to a friend
or maybe sell it in the auction house.
And even added a few ones like this ranged weapon here,
thrown weapon here.
All right, next up, racial abilities.
One of the things that we like about racial abilities
in Wild Classic is they give you a reason
to make a new character, play a new class,
play a new race, see the game through new eyes.
So we decided to make our racial abilities stronger
and more different than they ever were before.
We also added six new race class combinations, gnome priests, human hunters, dwarf shamans,
work mages and troll warlocks, and of course, the undead power dead.
With more plan to come in future content.
That would be cool.
Each race now has two active abilities and two passive abilities.
Tune to give each race an equal, similar amount of offensive power
and signature utility and survivability.
I'm going to share details of dwarves and undead
because of our new options with shamans and paladins.
Stone form is mostly unchanged, which you might recall of, say,
you were a dwarf priest.
There were a lot of those.
It increased your armor.
And who cares?
You had no armor.
It wasn't doing anything.
So now it reduces physical damage.
It doesn't care how much army you have.
Flying treasure was a useful racial ability,
but it conflicted with finding herbs,
tracking beasts, finding minerals.
So now flying treasure can be active at the same time
as any of the tracking ability.
So you can look for iron nodes
and treasure at the same time.
Inspired by him at nothing, Larry,
dwarves now have big game hunter,
giving 5% increased damage to beasts.
We really like abilities like this,
because they give each different character
in your party a rate, a chance to shine
on a different encounter.
There might be a flight where you're fighting human noise
and the rogue is the best.
You're fighting undead and paladina best,
and you're fighting a beast,
the dwarves are gonna get a chance to shine.
So there's a reason to bring everybody,
everybody gets their moment in the sun.
Finally, main specialization is a good example
of how we've changed weapon skill.
So weapon skill used to be only good for melee,
and a little too strong.
But now, while dwarf has any kind of mace equipped,
they get 1% increased crit chance
to their spells, melee, and ranged abilities.
So those shamans and priests will now care
about having a mace equipped and benefits from this racial.
Let's move on to the undead.
We'll look for a second, but a little bit too strong.
It gave you immunity to these effects.
Now it simply breaks them.
but we've made up for it by giving them a lot of new stuff.
Cannibalized now doesn't just give you health back,
it gives you manna back,
particularly fantastic for those paladins.
Underwater breathing is as it always was,
but remember in wild classic,
that breath was really short.
So that increased amount of time underwater
makes you able to do a lot more.
And finally, the big one,
touch of the grave, this new racial for the undead
gives them the increased damage and survival
that they never had before.
Each of your attacks and spells has a chance
to drain health from the target, doing extra damage,
and also healing you and keeping you alive.
That's just a taste of our visuals.
Go play the demo to see them all.
All right, let's talk about classes.
We're gonna keep diving to talents.
But first I wanna talk about our philosophy on talents.
All classes still have three talentaries.
They still have seven rows.
They still have those one-point talents at 11, 21, 31,
the gold medal talents.
We called them.
We've even added a fourth gold medal talent
at the 16 mark at every single one of the talent trees.
Many talents are exactly the same as they were,
unchanged from 2006.
But many have been updated and improved
and new have been added.
In particular, there were a lot of talents
that gave you better buffs, improved battle shout,
Divine Spirit, Blessing of Kings, and Proofmark of the Wild, they're all gone.
All of those bonuses are now baseline to the entire class.
You don't need to talented them.
And what's great about that is it makes room for more cool new stuff.
Our goal was to make sure that every single one of our 27 talent trees is a viable option
to bring to your dungeon or raid group.
Every class, every spec is worthy to come,
but no class is so strong, respect is so strong
that you want to stack them.
And they're not equal.
They all have different distinct strengths and weaknesses
that they bring to the group.
So we don't have time to look at every class.
So let's take a deep dive look at Paladin.
First, what changed for the whole class?
I don't know how many people here played the 2004 beta.
Probably a few. I did. But Paladin is back then
with an ability called Holy Strike that got cut before the game was shipped.
We brought it back. At level six, all Paladins learned Holy Strike.
Giving a little bit more melee damage, doing holy damage based on their weapon to the target.
The 12 second cooldown. And every one of the three Paladin
of three paladin trees has ways to improve holy strike.
Judgment no longer consumes your seal.
No more seal busywork.
You got better things to do.
We've added a new seal called seal theory
that is our answer to tanking paladins.
And yes, you can tank as a paladin.
It does three things.
First, every time you swing, just like a seal of righteousness,
it does damage to the target, but it
doesn't matter how fast your weapon is.
So the faster the weapon you use, the more damage
it'll do, the more effective.
It creates a small absorb shield to the paladin,
helping them stay alive a little bit.
But most importantly, judgment of fury
is your new taunt.
It taunts the target.
And this is particularly interesting because growl and taunt have a five yard range and
judgment has a ten yard range.
So Paladin's got a little bit more reach to reach out and grab something and bring it
to the fight than the other tanks have.
Finally, we had to make some changes to consecration.
Those of you who play Burning Crusade know that Paladin consecration can dominate damage
tanking runs.
And we want to maintain that tactical combat
I was talking about where you can't just pull the whole dungeon
at once.
So consecration now does light damage
to every target that enters the consecration
and heavy damage to the first four.
So you're going to have enough threat on those first four
targets, but not all the rest.
And everybody has to keep respecting your threat
and your ability to control and not pull the whole room.
All right, let's move on to talents.
starting with holy Paladin talents.
As I mentioned, everybody has improvements.
The holy strike, the very first row of holy
has improved holy strike, reducing its cooldown.
Probably every Paladin is gonna take this one.
Voice of Truth is their new 11-point gold medal talent,
giving some immunity to silence and interrupts.
Reverence, however, is a big change for Paladins.
Yes, Paladins will now care about spirit
and get regen from it while in combat.
In fact, all of our classes that do damage and healing via mana
will have talents or abilities that give the mana back
based on their spirit.
So spirit is worth having on your gear.
That includes especially Holy Paladins and Restless Shamans.
And finally, divine power used to be a little deeper in the tree.
Used to be at 21.
It's moved to 16 to make room for more stuff.
But basically the same as it ever was.
Moving on.
Infusion of light is a new talent that solves a problem
that Holy Palins had across multiple expansions
but either they're casting Flash of Light all the time
and nothing else or Holy Light all the time
and nothing else.
It's how encouraging you to mix those spells together
and use your whole toolkit.
Holy Shock used to be the 31 point talent
and is now at 21 points in the talentry,
which makes it a reach of a lot of hybrid PVP builds
in particular.
And its cool down has been reduced to 10 seconds.
You can use it a lot more often.
It's going to be key for another building
I'm about to talk about.
Consecrated ground plays into the whole shockadun
fantasy of holy.
While targets are standing at your consecration,
they take more holy damage from your attacks.
And finally, lights vigil solves several problems
for palliatives.
The biggest one is they have no way to heal a whole party at once.
Now, we don't want to make them the same as priests and Druids
and how they can do that, or Shalem is a chain heal.
So instead, Light's visual requires setup.
You put Light's visual on a target with one of your friends,
and the next time you Holy Shock them,
the entire target party of that target will be healed,
and Holy Shock's cooldown will be reset.
If you're really smart,
you put Light's visual up on multiple parties,
and then it's Holy Shock, Holy Shock, Holy Shock,
Holy Shock, and your whole raid group is back to a place
where they can survive the big blast to hit them.
Similarly, you can use it on enemies
to do increased damage, and again,
reset the cooldown of Holy Shock
to support that shock it and build.
Moving on to protection palette and talents.
Their new 11-point talent is improved Seal of Fury,
which gives a mana back when Seal of Fury blocks damage,
and shield specialization combines with it
to give them enough mana
to sustain combat for the entire boss.
So every time you block, you're getting manned back,
and the more things you're blocking,
the more manning you're getting.
Swift Judgment solves a problem that all our tanks have.
It's their new 16-point talent.
What do you do when your taunt misses?
If you're a warrior, you hit mocking blow.
You hit challenging shout.
If you're a druid, you hit challenging roar.
If you're a paladin,
Swift Judgment resets the cooldown on judgment
and lets you use it again
to taunt the target again and get a second chance.
or maybe use it creatively on the pole
to get more judgment debuffs up on the target quickly.
Templars' Bulwark is their new 21-point talent
that plays with their system for forbearance.
It triggers forbearance and preventable forbearance,
but it also grants you an absorbed shield
equal to 100% of your health,
making you a lot more survivable,
but it's a hard choice up against things
like the blind shield.
Reckoning is an old favorite, it's not going anywhere,
but it's been improved.
Tanks are supposed to be uncritable, right?
So, reckoning now has a chance to trigger every time you block,
and if you're tanking more things, you're blocking more things,
getting more extra tax.
Finally, Iron Creed is a deep talent in Prott
that when you use your Holy Strike,
reduces the damage you take for a few seconds by 10%.
So, a very careful paladin can help their healers keep them alive
in those critical moments by timing their holy strike.
All right, finally retribution.
Vindication's an old talent that everybody skipped.
What it did was reduce the target's strength and agility,
but in PDE, it had basically no effect.
We've reworked it and now it works like demoralizing shout
and demoralizing roar, reducing the target's attack power.
And by the way, all three of those
are reduced by the same amount.
Sacred Arbiter is a unique Paladin utility.
When Paladins judge a target,
the way they have to maintain it is staying close to judge again or mailing that target.
But now with Sacred Arbiter,
a rep Paladin can keep the judgments up for all of the other Paladins in their party array.
So you can benefit from light and wisdom and crusader at the same time.
Champion of the Light is a new ability deep in the tree
that gives increased spell damage and healing based on your intellect.
So now those items that increase your manifold,
maybe you don't want to skip those.
Maybe you want those combined with strength or attack power
to do the most damage.
Instrument of the law solves two problems.
One, it makes hammer instant retribution pollutants.
And second, now that their damage is as good as everyone else,
they need a little threat reduction.
Finally, twist of light is our answer to seal twisting,
which you know you love.
At least some of you do.
So now each time you replace one of your damaging seals with another seal,
you get an echo of the replaced seal.
And then your swing, your melee swings benefit from both seals at the same time.
If you alternate seal command and seal righteousness,
every swing will benefit from both seals.
But I do know some people do not like seal twisting.
So, using that increased spell power from Champion of Light,
drop this talent,
Go 21 points down holy and use holy shock
for a shock and then build on retribution instead.
So, we gave Paladins some new tools that they were solely lacking,
but we left them with significant holes in their toolkit.
We don't want to homogenize our classes.
Paladins still can't interrupt.
They still can't slow the target down,
but they are very, very strong against demons and undead.
They have limited range capabilities.
They have this unique seal and judgment system
that no other class has with powerful effects.
They can be very effective tanks.
They deal competitive damage.
But as a healer, they have limited ability to heal a party.
They've got to plan ahead, use Light's Vigil.
But they're still the best single target healer in the game,
able to maintain their mana pool longer
than any other class can.
I wasn't able to share with you
all of our changes for every class I raised today.
Please go play the demo.
Check out the beta when it comes out on Thursday.
We will have videos and blogs and question and answer sessions
in the weeks to come.
We'll give you more details and our deeper vision
for all of these classes and specializations.
I've had a great time up here on Stage View today.
Have a great BlizzCon, everybody.
Let's go!
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down to the ulti trade, here it goes, in the spotlight right now.
Because onto the switch-off, doesn't really want to contend anymore with this Cassidy-Cat combination.
Simple going down early, it's France here that are taking the tempo!
They take that first pick, considering that it's simple.
It really means that South Korea have to take a sidebar for a second consecutive fight.
Couple fights now where France find the weaknesses, not scared to get aggressive in their trademark style,
working even against the Koreans for tending well for their future in this match, but a lot of overwatch left the play.
It's been a patient couple of fights between South Korea still holding all those ultimates.
Here, those have enough time to build up more, get another dead on this could be dangerous.
Stalker clasped! Zerio's having a fight in the finish where no one can contest his high ground.
So did you have to go the long way to get up there?
And up in the air, Crocs get potty. Has that fortified?
The Terrasurge comes down, so he shocks in on two.
Jumping, caught out on the point, and France a slow start, but now
Now, they've willing truly caught up on this round.
And every time we come to Kyo's camp,
he has demand and respect on this server
in the company of legends, but perhaps building something,
a new legend for himself.
And with the Sky Nu, this last fight
looks scary now for Korea.
Stalker with an override protocol.
But it was a Sky Nu that opened teams up
for France previously.
This is dangerous for Stalker.
He's got to get out of that line of sight
very hastily, but Kyo's got to chase him.
And Stalker walked into a trap of his own design.
Now a 99% South Korea have to make a big play with the running out of options.
Simple as thought of on the wayside now.
If he got trying to get back to safety but in doing so,
didn't know A-South Korea were an easy pick up.
And Boussade was a slow start for France.
This time, they're up to the races early.
Crucial first round for France.
So many questions circling around this match.
Was it just a fluke in Boussade?
Is there any chance they could do it again?
And with Kroc's signature demon banned out here on Busan,
it really took Kyo going to the next level
in that first round,
stalker a rare negative scoreline for him.
That's a shock to the system for Korea.
One that they'll need to adapt to quickly,
but with Junmin hovering the wrecking ball,
everything could change in the second round.
That Korea wanted that Orisa Mira.
They're ultimately undone by the Cassidy.
Sonjun's got quite a varied hero pool, but sometimes simple is best.
We'll see what the look is now, the Bastien in tow.
Something that looks a little bit more standard, a bit more classic.
France are going to reciprocate a similar look on their comp.
So no tracer for the French squad.
Sonjun though will maintain that on South Korea,
and you can see he's already trying to wrap around them.
Link up with Jun Bin.
Nations from France here.
They know the threat of Jun Bin's wall, but he fights his time.
He's trying to pressure the Bastion.
Oh, that could be a dangerous proposition, but Stalker's having to take it down.
Well, he is entirely obsessed with the idea of getting rid of Junbin.
Good exchange and good target acquisition, I think, for the Korean Bastion player.
That'd be an early South Korea take.
Great punish from Spocker and Chorong.
And the Frenchman, getting cleaned up here, but this is just pressure's second, slipping away from the round.
No possibility for France to bring this fight back.
Every extra seconds out to Rake and By is worth it.
See Jun been there just taking beat before eliminating Xerion.
And again, pushing up.
There's a Malga switch here for Crocs.
A lot of players like the matchup here into the wrecking ball.
Cage fight can be powerful, but with 30% already in the board for Korea,
it's a long way back to get towards these ultimates.
France need to pull something out of their hat here.
H5 can be nuked down pretty quickly by Baxin in tank mode as well.
Here's the artillery strike from Stalker, pepper in that high ground, forcing France to drop down.
And now Sunjin just has to pressure them from that back line.
G.O. Doherty is having a war with the Tracer away. Stalker also under some degree of pressure,
but deep as the trade-outs of both Baxins have been handled.
It then sells Tuzu for Zerian desperation for the carries he tries to stay in the game.
But Sunjin will not be denied.
This pulse bomb might be well apportioned on the bulky frame of the Malgo.
The Crocs is to be respected. South Korea give him some space and after all for
tripping self-width is eventually he's brought down.
Oh Korea just looked different on these Balkans.
The aggression Junbin and Sanjin demanding so much respect that
Stalker is getting all the space in the world and he just keeps finding
dip. I mean constantly the first take on this
battle. Always pressure from Sanjin. Junbin
He might want to try and catch them in the choke.
He's hitting on the right.
Kyo is going to deploy that straight away.
It's Kyo's coming out from his area.
No, but he comes on through the tracer.
Kyo is dealt with.
And that's the disruption of the cast of the already off the table.
It is a one-sided affair.
And South Korea barrel into France as they're trying to get their ducks in a row.
Cage right out coming late in the fight,
but the help just is not there for Crocs.
He is down in his legacy.
The cage will also be broken through.
We're looking at a fortified 100 to zero in our second round.
Korea are wasting no time pulling out the stops, showing the style that has made them a unique foe in this event.
So few players can play the wrecking ball on Junbin's level.
Honestly, nobody can. I mean, this guy is the best in the world.
I'm willing to go on record with that.
that the wrecking ball absurd at this level of play and Saunjan is slotting in so incredibly
well through this team. His tracer was...
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Join the Diablo 4 team for a deep dive into the upcoming season.
Music
Hey, folks.
Welcome to the Diablo 4 What's Next panel.
My name is Ryker. I'm a lifelong Diablo fan.
I've been making Diablo videos for over a decade.
This has been such a huge blizzcon for Diablo announcements.
And so much is coming to Diablo 4.
The triumphant return of the Amazon.
We've got season of Hell's Legacy launching next week.
We have so much to talk about today.
Let's dive right into our introductions here.
Let's get kicked off with Dan.
Yeah, hey everybody. I'm Dan.
I'm the design director for live services on Diablo 4.
Hey.
Woo!
Hey, my name is Owen Leach.
I am the season's lead for Season of Hal's Legacy, as well as the lead and counter designer
on Diablo 4.
And I'm Brett, still riding the high of yesterday, going through all of the things we decided
to launch.
Woo!
couldn't be happier with how things are going and how much content we have coming over the next foreseeable future,
with everything leading to D5, right?
Woo!
But today we're going to start off with talking about season of Hell's Legacy, right?
What does it mean to celebrate 30 years of Diablo?
This season, we felt it would be the right thing to do to make sure we were diving head-first
into everything that made Diablo great.
And so we're going to be going into Diablo's past.
We're going to be facing all three prime evils.
Hell yeah.
The birthday boy is finally showing up to his own party.
And we're going to be reliving this through twisted waking nightmares.
Yeah.
I'm really excited with everything that we have going on.
It's going to be the most nostalgic event we've had in the game today.
That's amazing.
Sound like the season's really bringing some of the most memorable moments from Diablo's
history and maybe some of the nightmares that have haunted us for a couple of decades.
Can't wait to dive in here.
Yeah, we're really excited to be able to share with the crowd something really special.
The whole point of coming to BlizzCon is to be able to see the first hand in
person, the stuff that we have coming up.
And so today, you're going to be seeing for the first time the new trailer for Season of
Hell's Legacy.
Enjoy.
Memories leave a mark on us all, some illuminate our triumphs, others unending nightmares.
Some horrors refuse to stay buried.
To save our future, you must face the past.
Some wounds never heal.
To free them from the prison of their own memories
will be no easy task. Enter the darkest corners of their minds, and purge the evil's weapon.
Beware, Wanderer. Even Echoes contempt the strongest hearts. Contain their corruption. Bend it to your will.
Sphinches of the evil's prisons remain. They are dangerous, but their potential is impressive.
The past leaves behind more than memories. It leaves behind legends.
Or it is within those moments we can find our true strength.
old memories, old power. Embrace them.
Only by confronting the past.
Can you shape the future?
Oh my God, I can never get over the fact that every time I hear that voice, I'm like
teleported a couple decades backwards.
God, I love Deckard's voice.
It's so good.
Yeah, as you can see from that trailer, there is something for every single Diablo player
coming up in this season.
So we've got the Prime evils, including Diablo himself coming out of Diablo 4 and
Deckard came.
treasured voice of the franchise. Dan, want to take us through what's going on in
Sanctuary? Yeah, so you know this is a celebration of 30 years right and we
needed basically a ringmaster for this celebration and who better than Deckard
Cain for this. Now in the season of Death Awakening, the one that's active
right now, the dead are starting to come back to life and we thought this
This is a great opportunity to bring back Deckard Cain, the host this season.
And of course, he's coming back voiced by the one and only Michael Gough.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Now, is this Deckard coming back in the flesh?
Is he a force ghost, a construct?
No, he's not a ghost or a construct.
It is indeed Deckard, but he's coming back as a returned soul.
He's really on borrowed time at this point.
And he comes back thinking it's 1285 when he died.
Yeah, he's old, he's confused, he's Deckard.
Yeah, well, you know, I would be pretty confused, you know, if I came back from the dead as
well.
So, but yeah, he's not the only guy who came back from the dead.
Three Dark Wanderers came back from the dead as well, and Deckard has tasked you with
redeeming their lost souls.
Well, that's amazing.
I think so many of us are happy to hear Deckard Cain's voice again, him coming back.
Now, talking about past Diablo games, what else can we expect?
Yeah, you know, we're really excited about what's going on over the next handful of seasons.
Like, I feel like this one is really special because this is something where we have to look at what has inspired Diablo Generations since Diablo 1.
Yeah, that's right. And so really when we're looking back at what inspired us, I mean, we have to go all the way back to 1996 with Diablo one, and we comb through 30 years of memorable moments to bring back dungeons, bosses, NPCs.
Yeah. Any Leah fans in the crowd? She's coming back.
I know a lot of Diablo 3 players love Leah and she had a tragic ending and we're hoping
we'll ever see her again so how is she back?
So Leah's back as a memory, she's not physically back like Deckard, but you know what, there
are so many NPCs coming back that we're going to get into.
It's just going to be jam-packed.
You mentioned these dark wanderers returning.
What role are they going to play in the season?
So the dark wanderers are still tormented by the prime evils.
Even though they're returned souls, they've returned back with that connection.
And of course, having that connection in sanctuary is a pretty bad thing.
So really what you need to do is defeat each of these three dark wanderers in the season
and then retrieve a splinter of evil from them.
Think of it kind of like an echo of a soul stone.
And then you choose one of those splinters to bear the burden of and become a dark
Wanderer yourself. Okay, so soul stone dark wanderer that's that's never gone poorly ever ever ever ever
ever. So how how is this gonna work mechanically? Mechanically so basically once you collect all
three you're gonna choose one to take the burden of and you're gonna gain some of its power.
And a good example of this let's take the splinter of destruction you choose to bear that you're
going to get Bale's signature power, you're going to be able to upgrade that signature
power. But that's not all. We don't want it just to be focused on power. You're also
going to then be able to upgrade war plans and start modifying your activities so that
each splinter provides you a pretty unique experience throughout the season.
That's awesome. I can't wait to taste the different flavors of evil on offer. So
Apart from the powers, what else do splinters do?
Well, splinters are also, you know,
there's a lot of benefit to them,
but they definitely got some risk associated with them as well.
And so if you choose to bear one of those,
you're also going to have to fend off echoes
of prime evils.
So not only are you delving into the nightmares
to fight the prime evils,
but they may come back and try and attack you
for trying to capitalize on their power.
So on the test server, we had those ambush bosses.
They were just placeholders.
You were hiding the fact that it was the prime evils coming
back to hunt us.
Yeah, sorry about that.
All right, but that's not the only thing
that you're going to have to fight these prime evils.
You're also going to have access to soul splinters.
Now soul splinters are socketable artifacts.
And these are going to be a little similar to D3 soul
shards, if you played that season way back when.
And much like the splinters, they've
got pretty big buffs associated with them,
but they do carry some risk.
I mean, they're demonic after all, right?
And so those also have a chance for you
to be hunted by those prime evils.
That is pretty intense.
Some pretty tough fights, I imagine, coming up there.
Yep.
Yeah, these are not knockovers for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, which?
So I know guys, I'm ready to gush about the Diablo being back in Diablo, Diablo 4, like hell yes, let's go, birthday celebration.
What better way to celebrate and to have the return of Diablo himself.
Oh, it doesn't make noise.
I'm sorry.
That was a problem.
I'm sorry, sorry.
There are also these pop-up dungeons that were happening.
So are we going to be like traveling back in time
to fight the prime evils or?
So yeah, it's not like time travel proper.
Like Doc Brown doesn't roll up in the Velourian
and be like, get in, Marty, it's Diablo, right?
We're not doing that.
That impression, I know, I'm sorry.
But instead, what we're doing is we're entering the nightmares
of the dead who have come back to life.
So we are calling these waking nightmares
and what they are, they're recreations of key moments
from previous Diablo games, but built in D4's art style
with D4's compelling gameplay.
That's amazing.
We've got to try to, I've got to try to demo it,
I don't know if the folks here have as well,
but seeing them remade in the monograph, it's amazing.
What else, apart from the nostalgia, makes these special?
Yeah, so actually there's three different kinds
of waking nightmares, and the first one I want to talk
about are the primeval waking nightmares,
and as you probably guess, these end with you
fighting the primeval. So they are recreations of like the most iconic
moments, the moments that lead up to you killing Bale Mephisto Diablo and you
play through them in the seasonal quest line and I'll just hop right into it and
you'll probably recognize all of these ones. I'll start with the first one. It is
a recreation of Act 5 from Diablo 2 where you start at Ancients Way, fight
your way to area summits, take on the ancients,
go down into world stone keep.
Thank you.
You do that, of course, the wave event in front of bail
that you know from your bail runs,
so you've been doing over the past 20 odd years.
And then through the portal where you take down bail himself,
and you can just see the gorgeous art
that they redid, which is awesome.
So the next one is a recreation of the end of app three,
where you start in Travenpole,
and you assemble Colleen's will,
get the heart, the eye, the brain, the flail,
you smash the compelling orb down into the endurance of hate
and you kill Mephisto, right?
And then the last one and the one I'm probably
the most excited about is actually a recreation
of almost all of Diablo I.
So you start in Tristram Cathedral,
fight your way to the catacombs, down to the caves,
and then of course into hell itself
to take down Big Red, the Dark Lord,
Lord of Terror, Diablo, so.
So like I said, you're going to play through these as part of the main seasonal questline,
but they're also going to be available as capstone dungeons for harder versions.
And we're also introducing a new dungeon type called Pinnacle Capstones, which are actually
the hardest, biggest dungeons we've ever made.
They're actually balanced towards Torment 13, so I'll be surprised if you can beat
them, Breaker.
I'll be sure to publicly embarrass myself.
Now that's crazy.
been speculating what are they going to do and so many of us thought it'd be
really cool if they like redid the Diablo one dungeon in D4 you did that
but not just that but all these other moments too you guys want to bum them
beyond it's so exciting oh man now you said there's other kinds yeah so the
two other kinds the other one was sort of our standard waking nightmares and
what we've done is we've just populated the overland with about ten
different dungeons and they act like regular dungeons you can walk into
them. You can use Niter Dungeon Keys. And again, the recreations of key moments. So this
is Tal Rasha's Tomb from Diablo 2. You assemble the staff, put it in the pedestal, blow up
on the door, and...
Looking for Baal.
Right. Sorry.
Oh, that's good. I remember in the last panel, Joseph Shelley said no voices.
Oh, we're not saying that yet.
We're voices.
Oh, we're the voices.
Oh, sorry. This one is the Scouring of Caldean. That is the end of Act 2 from Diablo 3.
where Leah comes into play. You fight side by side with Leah. You fight through the city,
enter the palace, confront Emperor Khan. Turns out it was reliable time, who would have guessed
it? We saw the Den of Evil from Diablo II, and this is Halls of the Blind from Diablo
I. I can see, but you see not. Division, milky, denies rot. Yeah, classic home, D1,
awesome. And then our last type, right, could you remember the challenge riffs from
PTR, yeah, they're that basically.
So that was our testing ground for our pop-up waking nightmares.
So these are kind of injected into overland combat.
So you're playing through Hell Tide,
you're fighting stuff in the overland,
and whoop, hop opens a portal, you hop through,
and it's a wave event, a boss fight, a short quest,
a key moment from a previous Diablo game.
So we saw a pandemonium from Diablo 3,
fighting Malfils, lieutenants outside the Soul Prison.
That was not cool from Diablo Hellfire.
There's like five people in the world who are losing their mind that he's in the game.
Yes, Hellfire exists. We see you.
That is Zaka the Abyssal Worm from Diablo Mortal and the Realm of Dan-Mation.
And that's only three. I think we did about fifteen of those pop-up rifts.
So about thirty rifts total.
Alright, so we're going to see some familiar bosses. Let's talk more about those.
Yeah, so we actually made twenty new bosses for this season and twenty-five new monsters.
And go and count our team up.
And it's one thing to go back to the recreated environments
that you saw that are gorgeous,
but it's another thing to fight the monsters
from those old games.
It takes it to a whole nother level of nostalgia.
So just to rattle off, I guess there's 20,
but to name a few, Bloodraven, Queen Aranea
from D3, Archbishop Lazarus, the Summoner.
And I think we've got some footage of some other ones.
We have Neelathak from Diablo 2, where you get sort of,
there it is, the D2 footage.
Take him down for what he did to Anya, because he's an SOB.
And that is the maggot layer that is the cold worm,
the burrow, the maggot queen.
And yes, we added the stupid scarabs
that are lightning enchanted and the stupid fly swarms
that steal your resources.
So it's all there here.
20 new bosses in one season.
Just that huge amount of content.
Yeah, honestly, I love listening to you.
We've gone through this discussion so many times.
The passion that this team has isn't just rooted in one game.
It's like scrubbing through the entirety of the history
of Diablo, and the fact that we're
at this point where the team is firing on all cylinders.
And we're able to put this much variety into a season.
This is one of the most major seasons we've had to date.
So, yeah, 20 returning villains, you got some friendly NPCs coming back?
Yes, we got some friendly NPCs of course, we got a few to show off, we have some from Diablo 1,
I think we got some footage of what we can take a look at.
That is Pepin, the hero from D1, obviously Griswold, Blacksmith from D1.
And, uh, yeah, uh, Adria, sorry, I can't believe it, but just say it.
Adria, the witch, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, her.
Um, and then of course my personal favorite is, uh, Tyrael from Diablo II in angelic
form, hell yes.
Uh, he was probably like, I mean, he is my favorite character by like a wide margin.
He like blew 10-year-old Owen's mind that like angels could be that cool and
he sort of turned me from a fan to being obsessed.
I probably watched the act three cinematic from Tetsu where he fights the Dark Wanderer on the bridge like, oh my god, a thousand times.
But anyway, I'm getting carried away.
One of the cooler things that I forgot to mention, yes, we rebuilt their models,
but we actually imported their old voice lines and music from the past games.
So when you hear Tyriel, he'll talk in Tyriel's voice, and it's kind of magical. It sort of sucks you back
to where you were. So like, for example, one of your agents say,
I sense this soul in such a bad sense, right?
Hey, smash cut.
I'm in 1996, I'm on the best friend Jim's house.
We're playing D1.
He's the warrior on the road because the sorghum's trash
and we're getting the butcher stuck in the stairs.
Sorry, truth hurts.
We're getting the butcher stuck in the staircase
because we can't beat him otherwise
or we're duping gold in town
by clicking our potions at the right time
because we're filthy cheaters.
And it's those voice clips.
It has this crazy effect.
And I actually think,
let's see if we can take you back in time a little bit.
We got a voice to conclude up that you might recognize.
And I'll be the death he's saving for me.
Hell yeah.
Yeah, yeah I would.
And like that's what it's all about.
It's honoring those memories that we have
over the past 30 years, 20 years, 10 years,
five years, two years,
and sort of honoring all the stuff
that makes Diablo what it is.
And even if you haven't played the old games,
I guarantee you're going to find something you love,
whether it's the new locales, the items, the powers,
or just like this trip through the history of Diablo,
and you're going to discover that it's a lot weirder
than you might think.
It's just like a dude dressed like a moose for something.
I don't know.
So I guarantee if you haven't played the old games,
you're still going to love it.
Hearing that voice line with the bass rumble,
I got a chill.
Now, on the test server, I recognize several
Uniques coming back from past games, psych to see those. How are they going to work in a new season?
Yeah, so a bunch of new Uniques coming back.
Some you might recognize, Laework's Crown, Mezzer-Schmidt's Reaver, Stone of Jordan.
It wouldn't be the 30th anniversary without SOJ and all the stuff that comes with it.
And these are just going to be added to the Unique Pool.
So they'll be in line with the sort of power of Uniques,
but they'll have the affixes and the attributes of the old items.
So SOJ will do what you remember it did in D2 with some tweaks like, you know,
we don't have like light radius and stuff. Some systems don't quite jive,
but they'll do what you think they'll do. And then on top of that,
you're going to get the transmog.
So like you will actually wield the Measure Smith's Reaver or wear Laorix crown
or carry Henry's Perquisition, a little cat on a string throughout Diablo,
which is awesome.
I could never bring myself to salvage the Henry's.
Wrigley, yes, it's adorable kitty.
I would literally just drop it on the ground to release it into the water.
Now are these items just here for the season or are they permanent?
Oh no, they're permanent.
So they're being introduced obviously in season held legacy, but they're going to be in the game forever.
Ah, there it is.
Now we're good to go.
So yeah, sorry, they will be in both seasonal and eternal realm and for all seasons moving forward.
And they're also going to be available as unique charms.
So if you, let's say your character can't wield
a two-handed weapon, you'll still be able to get the effects
of Messerschmitts by slotting in the charm.
That's awesome.
And this season is also gonna bring
some of the long requested features,
like top of my list has been rebirth.
Yeah.
Can you tell us about that?
Yes, clap for rebirth.
I mean, we've been spending a lot of time
with getting itemization the way that we wanted it.
We spent a lot of time upgrading
all the classes and the skill trees.
But as we get deeper and deeper into systems,
a little bit of quality of life goes a long way, right?
You know, I grew up in an area
surrounded by farming communities,
so the rule is you never want to name the cow,
because at some point you're gonna have to delete the cow.
And, oh yeah, I know, right?
But I've been sitting on Barb the Barb
since the beginning of D4,
and now Barb the Barb can live on,
I can rebirth Barb into eternal,
or into the seasonal content, and I couldn't be more excited
that we're finally getting to the point
where we can get this in game.
I do think the other players know something or a little something
about deleting cows by the hundreds.
Yeah.
It's kind of our thing. Yeah.
But that's so great.
I mean, I've made so many characters,
and then a new season comes around.
I'm out of slots, and it's like, oh no.
Which of my babies do I delete?
I've named them, I've invested time in them to announce this
with the story can go on year after year into the life of the game.
So very happy about that.
And this time, as to how responsive you guys have
been since the launch as well of Lord of Hatred,
changes that you've been making.
We saw mythics, week after week.
You were responding to community feedback there.
You want to talk about how the team pivoted?
Yeah, I can talk about that.
It's really important for us to listen to the community
and be responsive.
And so really, I want to thank y'all, the players,
for giving us all that feedback.
And we heard you.
And we're making even more changes this season.
So we're changing the mythic crafting in your Harajuku,
such that instead of re-rolling an item in order
to make it mythic, you're just
going to be able to upgrade it directly.
And that's going to allow you to perfect your unique item
and then apply that mythic modifier as that last step
before you do your transmogrification.
Now, this is such a powerful recipe
that we decided to bring back the crafted item tag,
but only in a very, very limited way.
It would only apply to this recipe and no others.
So the jeweler, the blacksmith,
those will not have that tag?
No, they will not have that tag.
Just a direct upgrade.
Yeah, that's great.
That's what a lot of people have wanted.
So great that we've had that change there.
Now, another kind of controversial change
on the test server, we saw you guys
were taking those old iconic mythics
and giving us regular unique versions of them,
but it sounds like that's not going through.
Yeah, no, that's not gonna move forward.
When we introduced this change,
it was with the best of intentions.
There are a lot of folks who take iconic mythics
and that becomes a cornerstone of their build
for the season.
We wanted to make sure that they could get access to that.
But I think we were painting too broad a brush.
Really the iconics we have to look at as individual items
and not as a group.
So we've reverted that change.
We're not going to move forward with that.
And we're going to make sure that the iconic myths
are as special as people want them to be.
And then in the future, yeah, we'll
try a different way to address the issue that we're
seeing but it won't come at the expense of the iconic mythics.
Additionally, we're also adding back the blacksmithing,
crafting, cash that targets just the iconic mythics
and not the other mythic uniques.
Wonderful changes.
Yeah, yeah.
Lots of people happy about that.
Now we're also getting mythic charms, right?
How many of those?
Yeah, so whenever a unique charm drops,
it has a very small chance to become a mythic.
So anywhere you're likely to get a lot of charms,
you'll have a chance to get a mythic charm as well.
Awesome.
Now, speaking of the charms, I hear
we're also getting new ways with the cube
to maybe re-roll after this.
Yeah, that's right.
So it's only part of it.
So there's two new recipes in the cube.
First up is Herodric re-roll.
And that's for any talisman item, so charms or seals.
And you can fully randomize just the base
affectives without touching anything else.
So if you really like the configuration
you have and you really just want to perfect it a little more, that's what this recipe is
for.
Now, the other recipe, Apex Value Reroll, is pretty similar, but it's for equipment.
And so, you can reroll those base Apexes again, but it won't touch your greater Apexes, your
enchanted Apexes, tempers, or transfigurations.
That is great to hear.
Sounds like you guys have really been listening to that community feedback.
I understand there's another big change coming to war plans that has been requested.
That's right. That's right.
So we've received a lot of feedback on this one since the launch of Lord of Hatred.
And we were really looking for the right time to do it.
Now, we were originally going to do this in season 16,
but we've moved it ahead to season 15.
And that is going to allow you to make progression in war plans
and not have to start over with a new character.
So it's going to be realm based progression.
Such great news for all of us who like playing alts, right?
Now, since you already mentioned season 16, I didn't bring it up.
You brought it up.
So so I'm allowed to ask about it now.
Anything you can tell us about the future of Diablo four beyond season?
Yeah, I think we can give you all a sneak peek.
So really what I want to talk about are just what our priorities are moving forward.
So, you know, Lord of Hatred was awesome.
The team knocked it out of the park.
Everyone seems to really be enjoying it.
And we want to make sure that the seasons can really
build on the potential that some of these new systems have
unlocked.
So first off, we're going to focus on build novelty.
I mean, that is the crux of every season, right?
And we're going to do that by continuing to build out
what it means to have seasonal itemization.
And this can come in the form of new types of
equipment modifiers, it can come in the form of new types of cube recipes, and yeah, we're
just really going to try and blow it out. Now, obviously the next priority is end game,
and I know a lot of you have really responded positively to war plans, and we see a lot
of opportunities there to really improve war plans even more than what they were doing
in season 15. And so we're talking about things like playlist customization, supporting
even more seasonal variety and building out even more war plans and game.
The final thing we're looking at is actually introducing a little bit of a season arc.
We have an opportunity now after Lord of Hatred to chart a little bit of a story that's based
on Lord of Hatred.
And so in this season, we discovered a death cult and that death cult is opening
ruptures, the pandemonium, and there's a lot of mystery surrounding them.
We're not sure what's going on quite yet.
In the season coming up, season of Hell's Legacy, the dead are starting to come back
to life.
We're starting to put some pieces together.
In subsequent seasons coming out over the next year, leading up to the release of
the Amazon, you're going to be able to confront this death cult before they consume
Sanctuary and ultimately confront the aspect of death so the season 14 boss
when we kill her she says he is coming he being the new aspect of that that is
correct yes well Dan Owen this has been an absolute blast you folks they put we
got more to talk about but we're gonna thank them for telling us about the
season of hell's legacy yeah thank you so much it has been awesome see you
on September 15th.
Great job here.
Brent, we'll keep you on here.
As we're going to bring on now, some folks
who are helping to bring to life
the next class.
The Amazon.
The Amazon.
Welcome to the stage.
Let's introduce our new panelists here.
Let's start with Lily.
Hello, everyone.
I'm Lily Gardner.
I am a lead game producer on Diablo 4.
Thanks, Lily.
Jane?
Hello, everyone.
My name is Jane Johnston.
I'm the senior lead VFX artist also on Diablo 4.
And I love that we're bringing a new, but iconic new class
to Diablo 4.
The Amazon is finally joining us.
And today, we're going to take a deeper look at what that actually means.
Obviously, the Amazon means a lot of things to a lot of people.
And for many of you, it's a brand new class that you've never seen before.
So I'm excited to dive in.
What made you decide now is the time to bring back the Amazon?
Well, several reasons, actually.
We've just visited Skobos and Lord of Hatred.
This is the home of the Amazons, where the energy under
We're misoverroming all of you.
We're seeing them in Diablo 4 for the very first time, and you're fighting alongside them,
and I think a lot of players, all of y'all out there, were wondering, why can't I also
fight as an Amazon, you know, so what better way to expand on them being here than bringing
the class into the mix, you know?
And she's so deeply rooted into Diablo's lore and history that we feel that there's a lot
of room for us to modernize on something that's new and fresh for Diablo 4.
And you know, this was a decision that was primarily community driven, so I would love
to take this opportunity to thank y'all, the community for helping us make this decision.
Thank you, Riker.
It's helping us bring this back to the Amazon to the class lineup.
Yeah, it's been absolutely great bringing the Amazon to life.
One of my favorite things about the Amazon overall is just her combat style, right?
So it's very evident in the way that she does everything.
So her movements, her weapon mastery, not only that,
but you can tell in everything that she does,
her combat experience has brought her to a place where she can be ruthless,
but in a very disciplined and efficient way.
Ultimately, when you think about the Amazon,
she is the definition of peak athleticism.
And she's instantly recognizable as a female-only class in the universe.
And so it was important for the team to preserve the nostalgia of the Amazon
from Diablo II, of course.
But she also needs to fit the Diablo IV roster.
So to be clear here, the Amazon will be genderlocked.
It's going to be true to the original real-world inspiration
25 years of Yablo lore. Yes, that's you're right. She is gender locks that she's a female only class
She's a fan favorite just as she is
You know this makes me think of when I was a kid. I used to watch Xena warrior princess with my sister are there
The fight scenes in that in that show are incredible
I remember there is one where she throws a javelin it lands she runs and swings off of it
and she just like kicks all these dudes in the face.
And I remember thinking like, oh, that's so awesome as a kid.
I want to be able to do that.
I can't do that.
But seeing that peak physical athleticism on a woman,
on a role, the leading role that was typically reserved
for men, was just really cool to see
and super impactful as a kid.
And really, I talk about how amazing it
is that on Amazon NG2, and now we're
bringing the Amazon to T4, and how it's awesome that we're
continuing to help push female representation in games.
And it's awesome to be a part of it.
Oh, yeah.
Woo-hoo!
Woo-hoo!
Woo-hoo!
Woo-hoo!
Woo-hoo!
Yeah, I mean, very similarly to Jane.
I didn't see a lot of women like the Amazon in media growing
up, and not only that, but to see a strong woman like
the Amazon in a dark and gritty game like Diablo
just felt especially impactful.
I know when I was playing as a kid,
It's just a different kind of conversation, but anyway,
it just felt really cool to see that.
And it also meant that, based on everything
that we've all been seeing so far,
that Amazon just really felt like the right choice
for bringing to the table for.
Well, without getting into too much trouble,
I'd love to press you for every little detail,
but maybe a bigger picture.
I know it's early days here,
but what can you fill us in on about maybe,
what did you go through all designing the Amazon?
Yeah, one of the things we really want to make sure of
is that the aesthetic is really matching that power fantasy.
I can see a little bit of concept art up there.
I mean, you can see how cool this class looks.
You know, it all started at the Scoville Shores,
where we're in Lord of Hatred.
And we get to really see this fantasy come to life.
And so when we're designing it,
we want to make sure that we bring forward
a great aesthetic, but also some really amazing design
pillars.
So one of the first pillars we put together for the design
was that we wanted the Amazon to be an expert soldier.
It's really important that they have full command
over the battlefield in their kits.
The second pillar that we put together
is that we wanted that unrivaled athleticism.
Because not only are they warriors,
you've got like characters like Paladin
who are pretty heavily armored,
But this class has supreme athleticism and precision.
And we added a third pillar, which
was making sure that that was amplified
by their mythical magic.
Their magic is a little bit different.
We'll talk about it in a second.
But their magic is a little bit different
than what you would see in the other classes in the game.
And as we're thinking about designing a heroine
like the Amazon, where, as Brett mentioned,
unrivaled athleticism.
We're starting with pure physicality.
She should look strong.
She should look agile and completely capable
without the need of a lot of body
mass of our tank-air classes, like what
we're seeing with our paladins.
And she has a good balance between her armor
and her mobility, sitting somewhere
in between a spirit form and a paladin.
And that silhouette affects her poses and her animations.
And she's an expert soldier, which
means she can execute her battle commands with ease
and precision.
And she's so well trained that there's
no wasted movement in anything that she does.
And we really want that to come across in her attitude
and in her personality when she's out there,
and also in the way that she tells
the story with her abilities.
So Jane mentioned the sleeker silhouette
of the Amazon, right?
And I think one of the best ways that that shows up is actually in things like her armor.
So we mentioned a lot of her efficiency and movement and her precision.
Her armor has to really reflect that, right?
One other thing too is in the way that she moves.
So spirit porn, we talked about, you know, that class a little bit, when you think
about the spirit porn, they move very quickly, but fluidly.
It's almost more dance-like.
Again, the Amazon has no wasted movement, right?
And all of the things that she does should really showcase that unrivaled athleticism
that we talked about. Also magic, we mentioned mythical magic, right? So when you think about
like a sorceress, those magical abilities are very inherent. However, also there's the
warlock, those abilities are more demonic. So when we think about the Amazon, what is
mythical magic, right? The Amazon's culture and more is incredibly important. And so
how do we bring that to combat? Mythical magic is kind of the answer to that. And
So, you know, anything.
We'll talk a little bit more about that later, too, but yeah.
That's great to hear.
I mean, we've got Amazon mains from 25 years ago
who have been waiting decades to play the Amazon again.
Yeah, lots of love for the class.
Awesome that it's coming back.
Now, can we talk maybe about gameplay,
some different archetypes, design principles
when it comes to the Amazon in D4?
Yeah, absolutely.
We love the Amazon because she's such a versatile class.
You can have melee combat, mid range,
and fully ranged combat that is high damage.
She's a disciplined warrior first with mastery
over all the weapons at her disposal.
And she strikes a nice balance.
We really want the balance between her magic
and her physical to be very intentional.
So she can use anything from poison, cold, fire, lightning,
and physical damage types.
And if you think about the sorceress,
she's not inherently magic like a sorceress.
Sorceress can conjure a fireball out of thin air.
But the Amazon, her power comes from her Ascari ancestors.
And that shared experience in battle and training
bonds them, and that power is rooted in sisterhood.
Yes, so we mentioned Lauren's culture, right,
and how much that plays a key role in the Amazon
and her identity.
So yes, by calling ancestral heroes to the fight,
that's how that culture comes through in that combat.
Not only that, talk a little bit more about this in a bit,
but the javelin is also coming back.
And so staying true to the fantasy
of the Amazon being such an expert soldier.
She is the only class that's mastered the Javelin as well.
And so we mentioned it's important to keep nostalgia
right from D2, but it's also important to make sure
that she fits the apple for.
And that was a critical part of development.
Yeah, so when we came to the conclusion
that we're going to be bringing back the Amazon,
we wanted to take a look at it representing
four different archetypes.
So these archetypes must represent the different gameplay styles.
How are you guys approaching that?
Yeah, it's really important to us.
Not only are we delivering on some of the nostalgic archetypes that everybody had,
but we also wanted to bring a couple of fresh ones to the mix.
So the first one we're going to be talking about is the champion.
Oh, I see a sword. That's new for the Amazon.
So, Jane, you want to tell us about the champion?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely, so the champion, the best way I can describe the champion is she is a gladiator of fantasy
This is the Amazon at her most heroic. She is a frontline warrior
Reading the charge showing resilience inspiring her allies through action
And she's jumping into the middle of the arena and going head-to-head against any monster that she comes up against
You know this one
She she also uses
arenas of support that can for her allies and her
herself and that's augmented by cold-wind magic. And you know as someone who
loves to dive directly into combat this one feels like a really a really
engaging play style but it's also supportive and I really love co-op too
so I feel like it could change up the dynamic of playing with other people.
Yeah so like Jane said the main focus of the champion is really to lead the
charge so when you see the Amazon as the champion you really should feel
inspired to follow her and take down all of your enemies en masse. We talked
about Xena, right? The epitome of a season warrior. So the champion is your Xena.
Yeah. So next up, we're going to talk about a new interpretation of an old Amazon.
I see a javelin. I see it wreathed in lightning. Let's talk about the skirmisher, Lily.
Heck yeah. So as you might have guessed, this is the modern javelin. So the skirmisher really
is a more agile archetype. You weave in and out of combat, you look for openings, and
you're trying to exploit weaknesses while you're fighting. It's highly mobile, so while
you're moving, when you think about the battlefield, the Amazon is looking ahead as much as possible.
She's playing the game of battle chess. So she's trying to make the quickest, most
decisive battle decisions, and also, mythical magic, when we think about that, how could
she used poison and lightning to also navigate the battlefield.
So the main goal of this skirmisher is to adapt to the flow of battle.
I really love my Javazon and D2.
It brings back so many memories and I'm super excited to how these
stances are going to work in being like adaptable in combat.
Yeah. And the Javazon isn't the only returning classic to the game.
So let's take a look at another fan favorite, the Ranger.
That's a bow. A good bow is on. Oh, yeah.
Let's talk about the ranger.
Excuse me. Maybe I did need water.
It's a campfire, you know? There's a lot of stuff.
So this is our, the bow is on archetype. This is our long range combat specialist.
She eliminates the threats before they get anywhere close.
If you think about playing this type, you can line up your shots, piercing arrows that are magically enhanced,
that slay enemies where they stand.
And she also uses artillery, like fiery ballistas.
Is it ballistas or is it ballistas?
Ballistae.
Ballistas.
Ballistas.
Ballistae.
I just don't know before to blast her enemies and maintain
that distance from afar.
So we already have a bow class in the game with the rogue.
It must have posed a unique design challenge
to creating new bow class that doesn't feel redundant.
You mentioned, apart from the...
die, day, die, stove, how else is it going to differ from the rogue?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
When we think about our rogue, well, she's still a master of a bow.
She, thank you.
Thank you.
I got my water.
There we go.
There.
She's still a master of the bow.
But she has a very much more scrappy play style
where she's going in and out of stealth.
And if you think about her using Rain of Arrows,
she'll shoot it up.
And they kind of land where they land.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the Amazon Ranger.
She's so well trained.
She is your Olympic level archer.
She's really the ultimate sniper.
Well, Olympic level archery is my favorite thing to watch.
So that means this is my favorite play style,
and I'm really excited to try it first.
So last but not least, my favorite play style.
We're going to take a look at what the commander archetype is.
So we haven't heard about the Valteries yet.
Is this where the Valkyries come in?
Is it where the Valkyries come in?
Well, okay, yes, I guess it's the convention.
Yeah, so the commander is really where you see,
we talk a lot about the Lauren culture, right?
That's where that comes in,
and you summon your Valkyrie sisters to battle,
and they'll show up alongside you.
And we'll save a little bit of how that comes out
further later on, but yeah,
this is absolutely where the Valkyries come in.
I absolutely love the Valkyrie fantasy that we're
explaining on it.
You know, she's super strong on her own, but when her comrades come in, she can really
like just dominate or overtake control the battlefield.
You know, I have a lot of sisters myself.
I have eight sisters.
And I just imagine like, you know, just like real life, your sisters are coming in,
throwing elbows and backing you up, you know.
And I really love that kinship and sisterhood.
It really resonates with me.
Yeah.
So we've talked a lot about what's coming in with the Amazon.
I do want to say this is really early in development.
But we are taking on a mantle of making sure
that we're letting everybody know what we're up to.
We're listening every single day.
So as we're progressing with this,
please give us your feedback.
We'd love to hear what you think about the Amazon.
And I'm looking forward to seeing where the team ends up
at the end.
You too?
I'm still in complete shock over all the Diablo announcements at this BlizzCon.
This is beyond all of my guesses and predictions.
Thank you so much, team, for sharing everything here.
Do you have any final words?
Actually, I heard before this.
I know we're out of time, but I need to pause a little bit.
I think we have a special guest somewhere in the audience.
Can you come up here?
This is so near and dear and when I saw that you were going to be here, it absolutely crushed
me.
So we have had these cowbells out on the show floor.
Would you like one of these cowbells?
All right.
Here you go.
Future Diablo fan.
Thank you very much.
Diablo fan. Thank you very much for your honor and applause.
Apologize to all of our production people. Thank you very much for going even.
Awwww.
Yes. Thank you so much.
I'll click it on. Yeah, I didn't expect to get my own time. That's excellent.
But yeah, thank you for letting us go over a little bit on time.
Riker, thank you.
Coming up here is a really big deal.
Yes, if you guys do not follow him yet, like and subscribe.
This guy is ass tiered content.
You've actually meant a lot to my own career.
I watch your content all the time.
So thank you for coming up.
Thank all of you for being here.
This has been an amazing two days.
The 30th anniversary couldn't have been here without all
of you here.
We still have time left.
So until the season of HELL Legacy launches,
I look forward to seeing you on the floor
and I'll see you in Sanctuary.
Please come as brought to you by MSI take the next step in upgrading your visual
experience with MSI's QD OLED monitors built to last brilliance ahead gigabyte
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Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing him do something interesting here other than the Oracle.
The thing is, all right, so obviously there's a lot of money on the line as well.
If I'm MC, even if I want to style on him, I'm probably looking for damage first, you know?
I think I would do like open oracle each game, try to get five, six drone kills, be like,
okay, now I can relax a little, because if you're not getting any early damage, Hydra
is going to be able to macro up really quickly.
I guess the oracle is a unit that came into Starcraft much later too.
I kind of forgot about that.
We were talking about the adept.
That's another thing he hasn't had to deal with.
He's going to go for a void ray.
So this is a very different way to play the game.
The void ray is not an exciting unit,
but it's kind of safe against everything.
Like, you know, it's hard to kill you.
You can go out and kill the overlords on the map
so the Zerg doesn't really know what's going on.
And it creates a lot of ambiguity,
which means you could play something kind of crazy.
You could play something very standard.
And he's getting a little bit lucky here,
because it looks like a rogue rush
is in the cards for Aidra.
And a void raid, and in fact, a second void raid
gets started is going to do fantastically against roaches.
Yeah, and we see those roaches making that,
those actually shaded away right before the roaches finish.
Yeah.
So I don't know how aware MC is of what's gonna hit,
but two void raids is pretty good.
The Xerglings are actually more important than the roaches
because the void raid will kill the roaches fast,
but the Xerglings are just high in number.
and the void rake can only be down or shoot down one unit at a time.
Well, let's see what Idra's attack can end up doing here.
He's even making a raptor in there as well.
Now, the void rake comes out and will turn itself on,
power itself up here to kill this overlord.
So it'll kill that very quickly,
but at least it won't be able to utilize that ability
for a little bit of time now.
Okay, so you're gonna get the third base.
Okay, hold on a second.
The attack's already in here.
Oh my God, he just doesn't, he doesn't wall in.
So, Idra's gone for the rush.
The adepts are gonna take a lot of damage here.
The pylon, he really needs to get that pylon.
Oh my God, he's chasing us down instead.
The pylon is gonna fall.
Great play here from Hydra,
really getting some damage out there.
If he gets this pylon, that's huge
because no more units can be made out of the gateway.
He's attacking the third base as well.
And the void raiser doing a good job here,
but he is getting so many probes.
This is insane.
How is this pylon still in this game?
I can't believe it.
18 workers have been killed.
Um, and I can't be the only one was that he was expecting that pilot to drop and he said he's going to go for the nexus now
Now there's three void race. So even though these units aren't like great at killing. He's early and fast
There's enough of them. He's going to run away and now eidra's making sub drones. Yeah
You know, he got good damage there for sure. I feel like he maybe pulled a little bit ahead
But mc saved the nexus. So that's a big big deal. He's got three void race. So I don't think you can really attack him anymore
Yeah, as you see, the void race are just doing too much damage to these roaches and Iger pulls back
Yeah, he's shooting down hold on a second the Nexus is taking more damage to only one void right here to defend
I think he just barely has enough time to drive that away
Now the void race are gonna counter attack here these units by the way are a lot faster
It's the version of the game that the ones that I drew played in right so there's that as well
I think a lot of times people think of these units is stuck on their side of the map
but they're pretty fast in the current patch.
And they're coming right across there for counter-attack.
This void raid just barely holding down the fort there
at that third base.
Aijah looking for some more damage,
brings a group of Zerglings down here to the third.
And oh, GGs.
You know, it's funny.
So that might have looked like it just suddenly ended,
and it kind of did.
I think what happened was he hit so hard,
but then Aijah didn't actually have anything
to fight the air units.
So like, he took a lot of damage,
But if you can't actually kill the void race when they get to your base,
the game is going to snowball and you're going to die.
Yeah, it was actually kind of similar to some of the Rogue vs. Seryl games we saw earlier,
where it's like, okay, you have these flying units that are really strong,
but a lot of damage was dealt to you.
Can you go across the map and counterattack and get that counter damage?
And that's exactly what MC was doing.
And I looked at that and realized, oh, I just don't have enough to hold on.
Yeah, so this is looking pretty bad now. This was the moment I think we all kind of thought this might be a lot closer
MC actually ran away and didn't protect his wallet and then all this damage came out
But you know when you're doing a move like this you have to know that the void rays eventually are gonna have an opportunity to counterattack
I think what happened was they got there and it just were not enough Queens
There's not enough to yeah, you know the the air and then you go okay
Well these are just gonna kill the queen and then they're gonna shoot the hatchery and everything's gonna fall apart
Yeah, I drew is pretty all in there and that's why he was able to get so much damage
He killed 15 16 probes on MC side of the map
So I know he was sweating at that point, but uh, it just didn't have enough follow-up macro there
Didn't have enough links coming across the map the void rays intercepting those few roaches were a big deal as well
Okay, we've got a short delay here. We're gonna be going into game three soon
The map is gonna be a Shakur as plateau
Again, another classic map here.
Yes, many, many games played on this map in the prehistory of Starcraft 2.
Right, right.
But you know, each of these games a little bit different.
I'm glad to see the rush coming out from my drip, but you know, you got to make sure
that you're ready.
You know, when you're hitting a player, you need to look at what they have and
make sure that you've got the formula with a mix of units back at home to stop
it.
because it will be their turn to do that counter attack and that's exactly what went down.
Well, Idra right now getting into the game, looks like everything is fixed up. We're getting ready
here for game number three. It could be the final game if MC takes him down once again,
but Idra definitely showing a bit more strength there in game number two.
Yeah, and if MC wins this, the score is going to be tied up two to two here.
Right now, Team Taze was in a lead two to one, but I mean,
Unless I think I drink it really, you know bring a next level play here. It's hard to imagine
MC losing this
All right, let's do it getting into our next map. She curse plateau
Okay guys, let's get loud in here in the top right of the blue he is MC.
And his opponent is nemesis from the past at the top left in the red he is IDRA.
I'm so happy, by the way, that Ida came down and played with us.
You didn't have to do it.
Yeah, I mean, it's very cool that he came back and, you know,
okay, it's going to be hard, but this will be fun.
But this is a great thing about Classic Cup.
You know, we have a lot of strong pros here
that are still active, but we also have some of these fan
favorites who've been retired for a long time.
And it's so fantastic to bring them in and get to watch
and play some more matches.
Right. So we're probably going to have the adepts made
here from MC doesn't mean he's like even playing necessarily normal but it just
seems like this is the only way he wants to open maybe a depths possibly
oracles of that because we didn't have the void rays last game the big question
I'm asking myself is you know is I try to try to rush again I actually thought
that last game even though he died at the counterattack that was a better game
from him he created an opportunity for himself yeah and he simplified the game
all he had to do is make sure that all of his hatcheries were making
queens it just has enough to block the void ray yeah I think that would have
bit a really easy mid game.
Yeah, it might have been.
It might have been.
But he did end up falling a little bit short.
I think MC was maybe in some ways a little bit.
I think he read it as well.
But maybe a little bit lucky making those void rays
and able to block the roaches as well as he did.
Like if he had an Oracle there instead,
IJR might end up killing it.
So well done by MC.
But I hope that IJR has another aggressive plan underway.
I don't feel like him trying to get up to like 200
Supply to win is going to be the best course of action here today. Yeah
So in this game, we've got the scouting probe out here
It's still a little bit too early to tell, you know, what exactly
These guys are gonna do
We basically need to wait for the cybernetics quarter finished for produce because then the you know the big tech choice comes out
Right, is it gonna be a stargate?
Which is probably what it's gonna be it could be like a robo or like
I don't know if you want to do something weird like make a bunch of gateways and just kind of hit
Yeah, early like with a you know a couple of just basic tier one units
Well he throws down that Stargate once again, so it looks like he wants to stay on that
He's open Oracle. He's open void ray. Well, the only thing left is Phoenix, but you know
How much closer that game got maybe he wants to open with something quick just to get across the map and it's
Phoenix he could have unlocked that achievement of idea. I drew it with each of the Stargate units
So yeah, we'll see
what he's going to do. I don't know. The adept is going back across the map.
And you know, link speed halfway done. We're kind of just in a development phase here.
That's right. It's certainly speed coming up. We'll see what Ider wants to make from here. Okay.
Small handful of links. Of course, you need these to try to counter the adept.
Hopefully he can stop this before it kills too many drones here.
Yeah, he's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, so far. This is a couple though.
Get a little bit painful there as he loses the third. Yeah, so it's kind of hard for the Zerg because
you know they two-shot drones as you can see. So you don't really have a lot of time to click
on the unit and run it away. We've got 14 Zerglings being made and we've got a void rate coming
out so it feels like we're kind of recreating the dynamic that we had in game two. Yeah,
Yeah, this adept looks like it should end up falling.
Yeah, he kills that off,
and some more Zerglings going across the map now.
Definitely some potential here.
Like you were saying, Boydrey's not as good against Zerglings.
So has a little bit more of an opportunity here
for some damage, but getting through the wall
can't be tough.
Oh, the wall is empty.
Hydra gets up on top of those probes once again
and look at this.
If he can get this adept,
if he can unpower this pile on, that would be huge.
Yeah, he's gonna go for probes instead.
Morelings are spilling in.
He's going to play keep away with the void ray.
He actually is going to go up into the vein now.
The void rays fast, but it's not that fast.
And we're going to have a lot more problems go down.
Yeah, he's doing a great job here.
Good micro from MC getting some surrounds
on these Zerglings pixels off as well.
But already 14 probes have been lost.
That's big.
So that is actually a little bit different
than the last game because he didn't make roaches.
It's actually a little bit stronger.
So he kills 14 probes.
Now, we need to make sure that if more Void Rays come out,
a counterattack won't work.
He's going to come up with more Zerglings.
The adept is plugged up the entrance,
but it's going to go down, and he's probably
going to go right up into the main here, or the natural.
Yeah, going after these probes once again.
Kills a probe off there, splitting them up,
so it's harder to defend all the Void Rays
at the natural expansion.
The Zerglings up in the main, killing off
a few more probes here, more damage for MC.
Okay, so he's taken out five probes here.
And that's on top of what was already killed.
And Eider's been untouched, right?
Yes.
Now, does he, he's making a score call on Inx.
He's beating me to what I was gonna ask
is does he have air defense?
He's making more queens.
So this looks like he should be okay.
Well, let's see how much damage
the Void Ray Counter Attack does.
Yeah, I think he has like four queens around this area
that he can bring up plus the two spores.
So I think like he's not just going to GG out of this game right now.
It actually looks pretty good for Hydra.
He's way up in workers.
Now the Void Race can kill a spork crawler really quickly.
We just saw that right there.
Ooh, picking up the spawning pool.
Hydra has to pull his queens up right now.
Yeah, he needs to get all of his queens over here.
The spawning pool, that's a weird building to lose early.
Obviously the queens are going around.
Oh God, he doesn't have a creep tumor connecting the main
to the natural air.
Queens are really slow off creep.
So the spy pool goes down.
Now, obviously that doesn't mean anything for what the Void Rays can do, because Zerglings can't fight this, but that's annoying.
He has to rethink that. That's minus one drone and the cost of the pool.
Oh, that's too bad that the pool went down. Like, that actually makes me really nervous for him, because Ida had a lot of different options there with what he could do,
like he could try for some sort of Zergling attack again.
But right now, his drone count is insane. 50 drones.
The Void Rays coming down to his third base, and suddenly Ida in trouble. He does not have enough anti-air down here.
Yeah, you know, this is the problem Queens in this bird
I guess they changed so long time and the cleanser so slow off creep
So we're having this funny game where void raiser basically playing keep away
And he's done so much damage
Another hatchery going down. I drew really going for a big macro play here. His army supply is very very low
Though I really would like to see him get off the drone production for a moment and just make a little bit of a standing army
Okay, he's gonna take out this quick. This is getting bad guys. Yeah, this is getting really ugly
He sees the Queen's companies, but he's gonna kind of slide over to the side and just keep shooting stuff down
And then run away again, and he's Queens only just get here in time to not really stop them
By the way MCs just continue to make void rays. I think he's like this is working. I'm just gonna yeah stay
Locked in here and now he's gonna do a little drive-by and he could blow this hatch up
Oh, he's going for the layer right now. He gets that player
It's going to be a huge advantage in this game, but some transfusions going down on it.
The Queens come up to help defend, and yes, MC is pushed back.
That's crazy.
So he like committed to that, and it was kind of a race of like, can you heal it and save
it or are you just going to damage it down?
But this is the problem is that now he just runs down here, and Eidra can't keep
up.
I mean, the Queens are coming, but you know, he just kind of moves away.
He's going to damage this hatch.
I don't know if he's going to kill it.
Transfusion gonna save it for now. There are hydrolysis in production now
So a little bit more anti air going to be coming out here for Hydra in the meantime the fleet beacon has been started MC
likely to go into carriers this game
Yeah, he's got that carrier tech coming up here. It does seem like Hydra stabilized. He has hydrolysis out
This is basically what beats void rays and void rays can't fight it. So I think it's gonna
The pendulum is gonna swing to this side of the map now
And Hydra's gonna try to come in here for damage.
And if he's gonna go for carriers, unless, I don't know, he just keeps making Void Rays,
it takes a while for those to kick in, right?
You need to get a couple of them, and you gotta go all the interceptors with a bit of everything.
And actually, it looks like MC, instead of going carriers like we thought, might stay on Void Rays.
Getting a Void Ray upgrade here as well.
The Hydras not yet upgraded well.
They're gonna have to pull back, and the Void Rays kind of chasing them down.
The Queens are here to help as well.
Ling surrounding a bunch of these adepts.
Does Iger have enough to break through this number of void raiser?
He's a little bit all in with these queens right now.
He's doing damage.
I think it's a void race kind of stay alive.
He's got shield batteries back over there as well.
More hygros and links on the way.
Yeah, these hygros really need to get up
to higher numbers to help him out.
The void right count is really good.
I love how MC has a couple batteries
and a couple cannons here.
He's made a great defensive location
to try to hold on at his third base.
So he's just still making void rays.
He's making up two at a time.
This is so unusual to see.
And the attacks that are coming in here,
there's so many void rays.
MC's control is pretty good.
He takes the weaker ones and just keeps running away.
The Lynx though, they just ignore that
and run right in here and start to damage this area
where the batteries are.
It doesn't quite break through though.
The shield batteries doing a great job
topping everything off.
And the void rays turning around with this speed
upgrade, they're going to be able to catch these queens
so quickly, popping a few of them,
Hydra pulling back onto his own creep.
OK.
He's going to run up here into the main.
And again, there's so many Void Rays
that get into the blink of an eye.
It kills the Spore.
And the Queen, it's going to go right for the hatchery.
Oh, they kill it so quickly.
The main hatchery of Hydra ends up
falling a certainly counterattack
since the Void Rays aren't here.
Does Hydra have enough now to take down this base?
He needs at least one for one.
He's got more coming up here.
I think there's more Void Rays
in there are Hydralisks here.
So I think MC should win this.
And you know, as long as this count of void raises
keep getting, it's going to be a GG.
That's going to be a 3-0 victory.
MC taking down Hydra.
Very, very well done.
I got to say, I feel like Hydra was really improving
throughout the series.
Game three, very, very competitive.
Felt like it could have gone either way.
But MC takes it home at the end of the day.
All right, we're gonna throw it down to the stage with an interview.
BlizzCon is brought to you by Fanta, lip-smacking deliciousness, Watcha Fanta?
Nintendo Switch 2, NVIDIA GeForce RTX, Game Changer.
welcome your host and Game Master, Matt Mercer.
I hear you pumpkin.
Thank you bud.
Hello friends.
My name is Matthew Mercer, I'm the voice of Cassidy in Overwatch and I will be your humble
game master for the next couple hours.
I want to graciously welcome you all to this actual play live experience of Questwatch,
which I will be joined here on stage with some other amazing voice actors from Overwatch
in which we will be playing a game of dagger heart.
As our Overwatch characters playing as their Daggerheart characters, it's going to be really
layered and weird.
So please bear with the chaos, but we're super happy to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Before we get started, I'm going to go over some quick overview of how Daggerheart works.
So if you're unfamiliar, you can kind of follow along with what we're doing.
So everyone will have their character sheets and they'll have their hit points and
they have their armor and all the general things you expect of an RPG.
But whenever they're trying to accomplish something that's challenging, dangerous,
something that could change the story, I'll ask them to make a role using one of their
traits.
Their role will consist of two 12-sided dice, a hope die and a fear die.
They roll them together, add the numbers and add any of that attribute that fits to
it, and they give me the number.
If they succeed, they succeed.
Awesome.
It accomplishes itself.
fail, then the story might come back to me to complicate the narrative.
However, if the hope die was higher of the two, they gain a hope,
a resource they can spend on abilities to help each other out,
to generally be pretty cool.
If the fear die is higher of the two,
then I gain a fear is the GM, which is a resource I can spend to
complicate the narrative, add consequences,
and make adversaries do some really dangerous things to them.
So, give me some fear when it comes up.
All that being said, friends, I think it's time for us to go ahead and jump into this
game.
Let me intro some of you to the friends we're going to have at the table.
I take my gloves off because they're getting a little warm.
So first, please welcome to the table to join us the voice of Vendetta, Chiara Preziosi.
Karolina Robassa, the voice of Sombra.
I can't see.
Ajali Bumani, the voice of Symmetra.
Woo!
And our very own Mayor of BlizzCon, Darren DePaul, the voice of Reinhardt.
You have to pass it around because it is strong.
This is Darren's.
There is the wrong paper so we have to switch it around.
This is for this guy.
I don't know if you all know this.
This is live so the bumps are part of the jewelries.
Oh and this is mine.
I'm going to get Symmetra's.
We're golden.
It's all going great.
It's starting very well!
Hehehehehehe
Emma!
The incompetence.
Okay, now we're ready.
Alrighty, get my stuff set up over here.
Thank you kindly.
Alright, so.
I want to invite you all to Cassidy's game night.
A gentle little hidden space in the overwatch base where he invites friends to try and do some...
I'm sorry, I'm Hal Furnace, so everybody on my team gets a hope as we start, correct?
Yes, if you'd like to. So everybody gets to add an additional hope. So everyone starts with two and makes a three.
Do you consider me on your team?
We're working on it, okay?
Oh, wow. How the tables have turned.
Well, I just gotta say, I appreciate you all coming down here to join us.
I know things have been a little tense from across the battlefield and this kind of team-building exercise is
My opinion a nice step towards a little more unity across there. Oh my friend
Everyone is welcome at the table. No matter who we are tonight. They go on an adventure together
And if everyone performs according to their function victory is assured
All right. Everyone's already kind of fallen into it. Now, Trish, we all made our characters last week.
Let's go around the table here and introduce what you're bringing to this journey here.
Let's go ahead and start over you, the Symmetra. Go ahead and tell us.
Yes. I decided to play a character that was deeply different than myself.
And so, I have the sorcerer, a Symmetra.
Very creative.
Thank you, I'm pushing my own boundaries.
Proud of you.
I like that.
Samba, why don't you follow up after that?
I am a rogue, sly-born, half-furnace, and I like code names, so my name is Noche.
Noche, got it, I'll take a note of that.
That means something.
All right, uh, Reinhardt, why don't you tell us who you bring into the table?
What you see is a giant, glistening, giant, giant, giant.
giant glorious figure in armor carrying a hammer he is a fur big which is half
giant and half cow and all his armor is carved listen but always be heard and
heard is spelled H E R D and under that there's painted a little rainbow and a
giant holding hands with a cow person because even so we are different we are
all family and his name is Holy Calf Grigore because he's a cowboy he's a boy
who's a cow
cowboy
Gregor, yeah, yeah, cowboy!
Perfect, all right.
And, uh, holding up in there, uh, once again,
appreciate you taking the time to put some distance.
Yes, of course. It's not like I enjoy being here or anything,
but, you know, my therapist suggested that this could have been good
to work on my past trauma and other issues.
So I have no idea what she's talking about though. I feel like I'm such a calm and collected person actually
So yeah, well my character. Yes, please if you don't mind
I am
Lupina
Which means a half woman half wolf and of course I'm a very strong warrior
Who comes from from a very prestigious family the family?
I'm glad you made somebody very different from yourself to stretch your boundaries.
Yes, of course.
Great.
All right.
Nothing to do with me at all.
Well, that's fine.
Now that we've got the table set here, friends, let's go ahead and bring this into an adventure.
Welcome to Overland, a majestic fantasy realm that I did not create.
I actually get the groundwork for beyond this but I'm choosing this as our place to settle
because it's comfortable, it's familiar.
A magical landscape of incredible vistas, lush forests with ancient mysteries, climbing
towers with all sorts of enchantment and magic, and danger around every turn.
As of late there's been a slow crawl in the shadows around the corners of society
like an uprising of criminal activity that's kept the land a little bit unsettled on its
back foot, if you will.
Now, the four of you have been on some adventure and together as a team, and you recently received
a message from the Royal Astronomers in Yara, currently sets himself up in the Royal
Watchpoint Central Library Tower.
So you've been making your way over towards the tower here in the beautiful Royal Watchpoint
along the water's edge here in Overlip.
As you climb up the central staircase looking to make this meeting, you come to the gargantuan
12-foot solid stained oak doors with the brass trim and the massive hanging poles and it's
already partially ajar and you hear what sounds like voices from the inside.
you do before we enter might I use my innate arcane sense to see if perhaps
there are any kind of ruins or anything on the doors that might tell us what
might be in store through these doors certainly go ahead and make a knowledge
role for me if you don't mind asymmetra first wrong first wrong that is a 16
with fear well by the way I start the game with four fear since I got four
players don't worry it's not dangerous yeah but that brings me up to five I
I appreciate that, so that's a successful sphere.
Look around and there are indeed rooms built into this door,
things that are designed to protect the inside,
the secrets the library holds,
but it looks like the ones in the immediate front
have already been disabled, dismantled,
and the door looks like it was forcefully opened.
It's about that time you hear a somewhat familiar sound.
Oh!
Something heavy hits the ground
and you hear a bunch of chuckles.
That's right, get him, boy!
You glance past the inside of the doors and you see what looks like the royal astronomer himself pushed across the ground.
You see a couple other figures walking by, wide brim hats, masks covering their faces.
You see from the bits of their elbows, bones and strips of hanging flesh as they carry their heavy crossbows at their side.
You recognize these immediately as the haunted highwaymen known these round parts as the undeadlocked gang.
And there, as the astronomer slides to a halt at the base of a pair of extremely expensive boots, their leader stands.
White haired, jaw-missing skin, ash.
In a high, screechy voice that's a little annoying when you hear it, it goes,
Hey there, Royal Astronomer. I appreciate you being so forthwith what we're looking for.
As she reaches down and tears from his grip, it looks to be a metallic scroll case.
And she tackles and steps back towards the window. What do y'all do?
I immediately rush in by myself, momentarily forgetting that I am part of a team.
And I say, hold your cloth, Gregor Jenkins!
All right, you kick on through the door and you go ahead and rush in screaming.
I'm going to call that an intimidation roll, if ever there was one.
So go ahead and roll presents for me.
Okay.
You know what, I'll give you advantage on...
Why should I roll for that Caucasian?
Right, you roll your hope and your fear die,
and you add your presence straight to it.
Ah!
And I'll give you advantage on that for the subtle nerdy reference.
That is a 13 this hope!
All right, not too bad.
Go ahead and take that hope.
That's a success on most of them.
You rush in, scream and laugh, you watch as the...
Now it's the five members of the gang kind of scattered throughout the interior all kind
of step back on.
Oh my goodness, we're under attack!
Kind of freaked out in the moment.
Ash just kind of shakes her head a bit and steps even closer to the window and goes,
I knew he was being followed.
I don't change my plans.
I got to deliver my package.
Rest of you boys, take care of them!
BAM!
Suddenly, out of the nearby doors, windows splinter and wood breaks open.
You see as a massive clink, round and thick, comes barreling through shoulder first with
this tiny little hat that probably should have been refitted before he wore it.
Staring at you, standing between you and Ash, as Ash just falls out the window, metallic
scroll case in hand and vanishes from sight.
What are the rest of you doing?
I was hoping for a fight.
All right, y'all rushing in?
Yes, I do.
I get my sword and I rush in.
All right, so the ambush, the undeadlock gang may have unleashed as held back at the moment
by your intimidation.
You rush in, go tear it into the center next to your ally.
You see there before you, there are a number of members of the undeadlock gang.
There's two, looks like sniper wielders of massive crossbows.
There are three kind of smaller looking fellow with blades and then there's a big old
plank.
Who are you going after?
How many of them can I get with just one attack?
Well you can get one with one attack, but there's three of them clustered in the front
if that's what you're asking.
Okay, because I would like to try using my ability, World Wind, to get as many enemies
as possible, like swinging my sword on the battlefield.
Let's go, yeah, you can get in there and go after three of the members that ended
logging with that, so go ahead and make your attack roll.
Okay.
getting my dyes out.
Well, she's doing that already.
Is there any chance we can talk to the sound?
Because I'm having a really tough time hearing you.
So if we could get a little bit more.
Oh, yes.
Maybe if this monitor has turned up just a little bit,
so we can hear you.
Thank you so much.
Sombra's getting older.
Apologies.
Ain't no wonder.
That noise, is that what you do?
You hack into the systems and make things work your own way?
You know, now I'm support, so I really
have a complication of identity happening.
I don't really know what's going on with my life,
So we're figuring it out.
I deeply, deeply sympathize.
Thank you.
I don't know what I knew that means.
All right, go ahead and make your tech roll.
I'm ready.
So I'm going to spend that whole.
And then try.
What do I add to my roll?
So you add your strength to that.
OK.
So it's...
a good...
eight with hope.
Right, so you get a hope.
And hope is great, right?
You rush in, you make that strike,
but they're a little spry and a little jumpy,
especially after that shouting that came in the door
and they leap back and just managed to narrowly avoid
the tip of your massive blade as it swings wide,
making no impact.
You pull back angrily as the rest of the gang goes,
All right, you heard, Ash!
Take a bath!
They all begin to circle,
so now the spotlight comes back on me.
I'm going to go ahead and have two of the Sharpshirts.
I'm going to go ahead and spend the fear to spotlight
an additional one.
They're both going to go ahead and attack you, Marta.
So first one's going to come at you.
That's a natural 19.
That's going to come at you with 21 to hit you.
I think that hits your evasion.
Next one's going to be, oh, 17.
Two open hits on you out of the gate.
Already getting a little dangerous.
With that, you take 11 points of physical damage
to you on the first strike okay second one not as good it's only going to be a
six but can I hold up my sword as a shield to block part of the attack and
mark an armor use so that I can reduce the damage you go for it go ahead and
reduce that damage severity with that I'm going to spend another fear go ahead
and activate Bob who's at the ready angrily looking at the massive armored
figure that charged in and spooked his high-dress.
He's going to go ahead and rush forward
and attempt to strike you.
Actually, he's going to go ahead and watch his arm unfold
so you watch as a repeater crossbow.
Sticks out.
Shimmings to fire bolt after bolt towards you.
With that.
That's a critical hit on you.
Oh, no!
This is a rough opening gamut for your team.
Let's see if we can turn this around.
So with that, my friend.
Bring your hammer down, Reinhardt.
That's going to be 32 points of physical damage against you.
Oh, my god.
Could I use something that is called unstoppable?
If you want to use it now, you'll
only get to use it once this whole game.
I know, but we're not starting out very good, Mr. Cortesity!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
How loud if you want to do this as just a momentary narrative, big? All right.
I do, indeed.
All right, so you go ahead and place your die on your sheet,
you all watch as Gregor puffs up and begins to become a juggernaut in his own ride.
You put your hammer in front of you and ask this great spray comes at you.
Reduced by one threshold and you can spend an armor to reduce an additional one if you like.
I will do that indeed if I could.
Of course, go for it.
Well then, that gives me one, instead of three.
That's true. You only mark one hit point. Well done.
Excellent.
I learned the game and I'm good at it!
Proud of you, buddy.
All right, that ends my spotlight. It's back to you all.
I would like to try my shadowbind spell on two of the gentlemen that are attacking.
Certainly. So you go ahead and kind of dart up in the middle of the fray.
Explain to me how you bind their spirit or their shadows to the ground.
I look at them and I say,
sana, sana, polita de rana.
And then the shadows come up from behind them, their own shadows,
and they start enveloping them until they give them a massive hug against the wall.
All right, you'd make spellcast roll for that or right? I wish I could hack the dice
Unfortunate that's okay. Go ahead and check the chief isn't asking to make spellcast roll. Oh, yes. Yeah, go ahead
Oh is that
15 with fear that's okay. That's a success, but I gained a fear so with that the shadows reach up and grasp
three members of the a deadlock gang they were all in a clustered space
perfect all of a sudden go hey what the heck pull down to the ground currently
being held by their shadowed selves unable to move they are restrained until
that break-in that finishes your spotlight oh that was with
features that comes back to me so at this point one of the shark shooters in
the back one of the ones that's not restrained goes this ain't looking too
good maybe we gotta get out of here you shut your trap we gotta finish the
They're looking a bit panicked, so one of them is going to go ahead and take aim with his crossbow at you who found his friend, so I'm sorry.
Noche. That's how you say it. Noche?
Noche. Don't add the AY.
Noche. Got it. That's going to be... ooh. There's an 11 hit you.
Yeah. Oh, but my evasion starts at 12.
Oh, that misses.
It goes flying wide, you dodge out just in time.
Uh, you know what?
I'm gonna let that be my spotlight. Back to you, symmetry mongrel.
Yes, I don't really appreciate that they have hurt my friend,
particularly because he is so keen on protecting all of us.
So I think I would like to use my experience.
I don't think so.
And I would like to add, I would like to spend a hope
to add to my improved hand-runes attack ability.
Now that you, Noche, have held them in restrained condition,
I move my hands around in a beautiful Baratnathian pose.
I push forward and I attack with a hard-light rope
that then cinches them harder and burns all of them.
Fantastic. Which one of you attack it?
One of the bound ones, or Bob, or one of the sharpshoots?
Hmm. I think Bob.
All righty.
So, Hope will add a plus two.
You got it. Go ahead and make the attack.
That is a 15 with fear.
That does succeed though. Go ahead and roll damage.
I gain a few.
That is nine points of damage.
Nine points of damage.
That breaks Bob's lower threshold. He marks two hit points.
That's already a pretty heavy hit.
It's not supposed to be in the battlefield too long, if I recall.
I can't do something.
So with that heavy hit on him, silently falls to one knee,
looks up at you with his blinkin' clank, kinda...
slightly...silent eyes.
It looks a bit angry, but you can see some scuff marks on him.
He's showing a little wear and tear.
At that point, the other sharpshooters are gonna go ahead
this friend and take a strike at you for hitting Bob.
That's gonna be 10, it's a 10 hit you.
It does not.
Those wide, no impact.
We're starting to panic even more.
Spotlight goes back to you, what would you like to do?
If it is possible, could I use my ability,
forceful push, to have wonderful Poliakov Grigor say,
Bob, get out of here.
I want to use this and spend the hope to push him away from all of us.
Certainly. Wait till you want to push him away anywhere in particular.
You got the shelves, you got the window ash jumped out.
Push him out the window. Hey, you know about doing that, don't you?
Cutting people's arm off and pushing him out of the window.
That's a really sour subject. We don't want to talk about it, okay?
All right, go ahead and make an attack roll against Bob for me.
It's called chicken or like that.
It was a cocked dice, so I get to roll again because the Metro knows the game.
Actress.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
That is a 13 this hope.
13 with hope? That's a success with hope. Take a hope?
Yes, indeed.
Go ahead and roll damage on Bob.
What dice should I roll?
What does it say on your weapon right there?
I think it's a D8 plus a D6 plus two.
That is true. There's a lot.
So many rules and I've been hitting the heads without my helmet for so long.
Don't worry, it gets on your quick.
Nine!
Nine points of damage, alright.
And with that, you spend that hope to go ahead and push him back.
I'm gonna go ahead and give a reaction roll for Bob to see if he can keep himself from being flung from the top of the tower.
The sixth is not gonna do...
Oh.
Bob stands up goes ahead and reloads his fist where the inside of the repeater
crossbow is situated it turns around to try and impact on your friends as you
swing up with your hammer and boom hit him on the side he goes arc and forward
through the window and you get just enough of a glance to remember oh yeah
we're about 10 stories up aren't we wait a few moments before you hear the
impact and you get the sense Bob is probably not gonna be joining this
fight anytime soon.
Oh, Bob Ransito.
Ciao, Bob Ransito.
Now, spotlight's still on you all. Who'd like to take it?
How many of the other bandits do we have left?
There's five of them. A couple of them hurt.
One of them looking pretty bad and they're all a little shaken.
Five of them. Can I try one more time now that they're restrained?
Right, because Sombra is restraining them.
It could be easier for me too.
Very much so. Go ahead and get in there and attack.
Okay, and since I didn't like missing the other time, I would like to use my experience, hunt down my prey.
Well, me, spend that open. Take your attack roll.
Are they close enough so that I can whirlwind?
I can whirlwind three of them.
one for the experience and the other one for the ability there you go and that
I saw powerful now that I see my play looks so defenseless I can't wait I've
been waiting for this moment let's see if I hit it let's go okay yes no no
No, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's, uh, 13 with fear.
13 is a success. Go ahead and roll damage. I do get another fear, so thank you very much.
I'm not afraid, by the way, just so you know.
I never said you were. Why would you be so worried about that?
Uh, just to be clear. Okay? I'll roll damage. I'll roll damage.
I have two, the ten, I have the rose.
And three, it's thirteen plus eight.
Oh, that's 21 points.
Okay, you comfortably swing even at half damage for the rest of the whirlwind.
You cleave through all three members of the Undead Logging.
The shadows holding them in place.
He watched as the sunken skeleton sockets, the glowing golden spark of their eyes, go wide.
As you just smash through them with your massive blade, you watch bones scatter everywhere.
Skulls scattering on the ground, they come to rest.
The skull massage like, well, dang, that didn't hurt, didn't it?
I didn't think they'd take us out.
They're still talking, but they're in pieces.
And with that, there's two sharpshooters left.
And it's my turn. I'm gonna spend a fear to go ahead and activate the secondary one
They're both gonna start moving towards the entry way where you came through to try and escape
As they're running by one of them is gonna go ahead and make a crossbow shot here
That's gonna be oh that's a natural one one of them the crossbow snaps in his hand. He's like
Not working on his favor at all
The other one is gonna go ahead take a shot of you Vendetta. That's gonna be
12. Does that hit you? What's your evasion?
12. Yes it does.
Alrighty. You take... there.
No, that's a terrible call. You take four points of physical damage.
They're a bit spooked and we should ride.
Four points? That's nothing.
You both avoided it and you shamed him.
You see his eyes drop as he feels really bad about his life choices.
Yeah.
He should go to therapy too, like Vendetta.
Fair enough.
That's about it. It's back to you all. Would you like to do something?
Uh, I am a very squishy character currently, so I would like to find a beautiful shadow
that has been cast from a light, if that's possible, and just sneak out with my shadow
stepper spell.
Certainly. So you go ahead and see the fray, kind of wind them down, think it to yourself,
like some people do. You go ahead and find the nearest shadow. You've been to it
and vanish as you apparate on one of the higher levels of the library and see.
And if you're cloaked over there, so currently I'm invisible forever all of you people watch
All right spotlights still on you all just like sombra to leave when things get hard. I
Think I would there's one left. Yes. There's two left. They're running out. They're running towards where you came in
Yes, in that case if it ain't broke I hear why fix it
so I'm going to once again use my handrobes and I am going to make a
different symbol with my hands and I would like to use my hard light
technology to hold up a basically like a trip wire with my light to see if I
can trip them both at the same time as they're running by all right go ahead
to make make an instinct flow for me sure also I would like to spend the
I hope, as a hard light and elementalist, to improve plus two bonus to the roll.
All righty, let's do that.
I was not meant for greatness.
This is a seven plus two, a nine.
Nine for you.
With fear.
I love it. Thank you.
You're just building the story for me.
You go ahead and build that strain of hard line,
and at that point you realize that maybe you were a little slow on the draw.
The line appears and they've already moved past the space where it was.
That shame hits you.
You don't want to disappoint yourself.
But your friends are still with you. The rest of you gather up on the side.
One of the shop shooters leans over to take one final shot before they go to escape.
With a natural forward, it's not gonna do anything.
Look, both sides are kind of having a rough moment here, I think.
But they do manage to escape and run off out of the tower.
Y'all stand there now with the injured astronomers and Yada at your base.
Bob is incapacitated and broken apart outside as you look out the window,
but there's no sign of ash.
Looks like she have stoned it with whatever this strange skull case is.
Now you just have the astronomer is slowly scraping across the ground
and a couple of scattered skulls that are chattering themselves.
What do you do?
How fast can my floating eye move?
Not terribly quick.
Kind of scared about the same pace you move.
All right, so I wouldn't be able to send it after Ash.
You could try, but...
I'd like to run over to the astronomer, please.
See how he fares.
Thank you so much for coming to my aid.
I didn't realize they were coming so soon. I was hoping to call you here in case there was any way you could help them.
I wasn't prepared. But nevertheless, you are a symbol of tranquility.
And I must tell you, I'm worried, I'm concerned.
These figures here are working with Ash, but not on their own.
They mentioned somebody that hired them to come and take this case from me.
I don't want them to know what was inside.
As he sits back and crosses his arms, two of the skulls in the ground go,
No worry, we enlisted!
The other one's kind of chatters his teeth for a second and goes,
Yeah, yeah, we're already me! What are we gonna do?
I would like to run over and step on one of them with my high heels.
Kindly adjust. Get out of here.
The other skull goes,
Yeah, let's...
We don't get out of here, don't worry!
We don't know nothing, nothing at all.
Thank you.
But we're skulls now, can you throw us out the window, please?
Oh, all right.
Shall we throw them out the window?
This is an idea that I had.
Tell me if the group seeks.
We have one star left, it's correct.
After I throw the two of them on the ground,
one's about to be chucked out.
Could we take one of them with us?
It could be information.
This is clever.
No, I don't like it.
I don't want any of this around me.
That's a smart lady over there. You shouldn't be taking any of us. We don't know nothing.
But I'm saying I would rather kill them.
I would like to make an intimidation rule to see if somehow I can convince them to tell us exactly where she's going.
Certainly go and make a presence roll for me.
Can I aid her with one of my hopes?
Yes, bend a hope and go ahead and add a G6 to her roll.
In a hope for my roof finish.
There we are. That's a critical roll.
Woo-hoo!
So it's a good point of order here.
Whenever any player rolls the same number on both dice, that's a critical success.
No matter if it's 2-1s or 2-12s.
So you go ahead and you succeed astronomically.
You gain a hope and a clear restress if you have one.
So as you lean down the skull goes...
I've been on no few things.
They know Ash and then we were just we were hired by the Shade Witch. We were meant to pick this up
There's something hidden inside the Shade Witch. Shade Witch?
Shade Witch? She's a mastermind?
Please don't hurt me. I'm already dead
Where exactly is Ash going to take this to the Shade Witch?
His eyes glance out towards the outside of the window
And you kind of follow his eye line and just beyond the edge of the window you can see
See, there's the massive dark wooded expanse of the ancient woods.
The mysterious, spirit-filled, shadowy landscape where yokai-like rogues spipped in the darkness
waitens and attack, follow, or steal from those who wander through.
You've heard about the Shade Witch before.
The Shade Witch is spoken about in fairy tales.
Something parents tell their children so they don't wander in too close to the treeline.
After all, hidden somewhere in the darkened hut, where horrors reside, they, the shade
which moira steams children's dreams and hopes.
This sounds like a terrible use of power.
I think it's time we visited the woods, don't you?
Absolutely.
Yes, indeed.
We're off on another adventure, and I'm feeling fine and bovine.
Cowboy!
Are you making fun of me?
No, it's a trip moved to you. Cowboy, move.
That's pretty good, I'll give it to you.
Perfect.
Do I get like a hope or something?
Don't push your luck, cowboy.
I'm...
All the fun I do!
Fair enough, fair enough.
Alright.
Be up to school.
Just for instance, we're still getting paid, right?
Another one's like, shh, don't say anything.
I'm currently invisible in the library.
And before I move over, we're back to my team.
I would like to know if there's anything in the library
I could maybe steal that could be helpful for our journey.
Sure. I'd say go ahead and make either an instinct
or finesse roll you call.
A finesse, because that would be plus three.
Let's go.
Well, 13, 14, 15, 16 with fear.
That's all right.
So, you start scattering around on the upper shell for your hidden, and you can see there's like a nice desk and like a roll top, you kind of filter through this bunch of sheets, but you do find one nice heavy leather satchel that was kind of laid to the side.
A number of journals and things, but there are two vials, glass vials, kind of like an earthy dark coloration to it. Kind of like if you could get a set to it. It smells nice.
low? It is not low. Okay. But it could be helpful. Unfortunately you also tip one
of the Kuchamon that falls off the side and shatters on the ground causing the
royal astronomer to stand up and look up. It would be appreciated as your ally
to not take everything from my personal belongings. Of course not. Maybe just two
potions. Takata Zenyatta it would be very helpful to us if we could take
It's on our journey. After all, it is dangerous when even the most strong of us has taken such a hit.
Ah, so now you know. It is good to ask beforehand.
I was trying to learn information before I was obviously going to ask.
Kindly.
You may.
So, two. I meant three.
Horses.
Two.
As he glads over to you, resty your allies here, he says.
Indeed.
It appears that this...
...this case that's been locked in our archives for quite some time...
...has been protected from ancient knowledge spreading into the hands of the long people.
I know not the specifics of its contents other than...
...it deals with some sort of transformational magic.
Before you continue, may I just use...
Uh, my heart-like elemental skill to raise some heart-like earplugs in the ears of the undead gentleman.
Sure enough.
I'd just like to put some earplugs in there.
Skulls go,
What happened?
Why'd everything go quiet?
I hate it here. I'm dead.
Man, I can't hear.
The other one just makes a good face.
You get to decide which of the two you want to bring with you.
They're both equal parts of the actress.
Can you tie them up and just like tie them to the back of Reinhardt? I don't feel like carrying them.
There you go ahead and take a rope and you have now two yapping skulls strapped in the back of Grigore.
Perfect. So sorry as you will say.
Indeed.
If the shape witch is to be crossed in this, you must be warned. She does not deal in
simple upfront magics.
She is one who wishes to look inside your very soul,
who wishes to learn dark truths and use them to feed or shadow their missions.
Be careful how you interface with them.
After all, recently one of the old gravestones at the bottom of the mountain peaks
was robbed apparently by her own compatriots.
I know not what she's trying to do, so be careful those woods are dangerous.
I was going to offer you some help from my satchel, but it seems you've already helped yourself to it.
So congratulations, you have my gift, and the modicum of my trust has been slightly eroding.
But, best of luck to you all. Stay safe.
And...
...ability.
He glides away with his legs folded up in like a really weird way that looks like it's kind of uncomfortable.
I've tried it a couple of times and I just don't have the flexibility for it really.
It does yoga.
Yeah, not for me. Too hot.
You gather your supplies, you head to the base of the tower, and traverse offward to the ancient Boards of the Settles.
As you grow close to the tree-line, you can hear the heavy sound of critters and crickets.
The wind blows through, and the bare, low abreast of the tree scrapes against the bark.
It's the sound of the forest.
Screeching sounds.
The deeper in you go, further and further in.
It's daylight that will filter through a chute.
Even this high when the sun is high in the sky.
At a certain time of day, some people have mates for them.
I-I... English is my second language.
What is-what is the term they use for this?
Mid-day.
Oh.
As you get deeper and deeper into these woods,
and here the crickets begin to subside, and the sound isn't.
It sounds almost like whispers, strange,
dangerous clattering sounds.
The occasional car of a bird.
Like that.
That was a good bird sound.
Hope you appreciate that.
Good job.
Now as you traverse these, I'm going to go ahead and start
a countdown and put it on a five.
except your journey to try and find your way to the shape which Moira's hunked.
Who would like to begin fielding the head of his journey?
I would like to... Oh, wait! I have to take this!
Hello? Brigitte, I'm in the middle of something!
Tell Anna, I will be a little late for our date, we're on an adventure.
I would like to go north.
Very well. So you're leading the charge from what you believe to be North.
Is that all right with the group?
I wouldn't want to head off on my own.
Before you do, may I use my experience? The bath is open.
To get a sense of what direction we should be going in.
That would use a hope to add plus three to whatever role I would use.
Fair enough. Let's go and make an instinct roll to see if you can find the right direction
to send you on your forward path.
And actually, I also like to spend an additional hope for my elemental origin to use a little
bit of my hard-like technology to cast a little bit of light around to see which of the pathways
would be more effective, which would add another plus three.
That is a 19 with hope.
Fantastic.
That's a success.
Hope.
Take a hope.
If you stand back as you watch Asymmetra, those that hadn't built this grid of hard
line that begins to kind of pierce through elements of the canopies to nearby trees, you
kind of incorporate that with part of your eye, arcana that you were attempting to use
earlier and you end up setting what more or less is an overhead view of this part of
the forest.
That leads you to believe a little bit north and west is the direct path where you can
see a clearing up ahead with a spears seamless dense where the shadow seems more dark.
Befriend? You were right. It is north, west.
Teamwork makes the teamwork better when the team works, as the old saying goes.
We're gonna work on that one, big guy.
Okie doke!
Alright, so now you know the direction. How do you want to find the most direct path?
Do you want to wind your way through the wood? Do you want to clear it? What are you feeling?
I really want to clear the woods, holding my hammer in front of me, and bashing all the weak trees out of my way!
Fantastic.
While shouting, Moo!
Cause it's just fun to do.
I get it. I ain't gonna do it, but I get it.
So with your success and hope, that brings the countdown from a five to a three. You're getting ever closer.
I need you to go ahead and make a strength roll for me as you clear out the woods in front of the rest of your allies.
Oh, Jiminy Jimjams, uh, that is a...
Oh, it is a five-butt sphere.
I appreciate you looking on the bright side.
That's what I do, my friend.
I know, exactly.
We are lucky to even be here.
So the rest of you watch as Grigor hammer in front, charges in that direction.
We're not really waiting up for you. You watch as he plunges into the shadow.
You hear the crashing of trees.
Within the next five or so minutes, you lose sight of Grigor and the path that he was carving.
I would like to use my experience sneaky, unseen, unheard.
Unheard to see if I figure out if there's any
Bad creatures that might affect us or use my spidey senses. I learned from widowmaker to figure out the situation around
Yeah, go ahead make a finesse roll for me. I would also like to assist her with my arcing sense to see if there's any danger of magical
Fair enough. All right, so you keeping your concentration and attention up will you go ahead and sneak around
So I have a 5, 8, but you have a bandage because I assisted you.
Yes, it's the mean plus what?
A 1d6 for a bandage because I assisted you.
Great. So we have like 14.
We'll get the roll of d6 to add that.
Oh, please.
Got.
Six.
Yes, so currently I had 11 plus six. Thank you.
That's a success.
We hope. I'm eagle.
There you go. Take that hope.
That brings down from a 3 to a 1.
You are actively moving through the forest with quite a proponent because you're sneaking.
You're keeping an eye out for two things you notice as you creep it through.
One, some parts of these tree canopies you see shrouded figures with strange masks, long hair.
You see these yokai-like expressions on them, these weird demonic faces.
And they haven't quite noticed your presence directly.
They're stalking. They hear sounds. They know the rest of your friends are around.
You come upon Grigor, who's gotten a bit lost out there, as you also hear another sound.
Another figure who's tromping through this forest.
You see a clank. Older clank, a bit rough, one of the earlier models.
It has some leaves hanging from the chin like a beard, has a satchel over his side
and a big tome under one's shoulder, and seems to be with a walking stick
He's just slowly making his way through the forest.
What do you do?
They're ahead of us.
They are at the moment.
And they have not seen. They have not seen any of us yet.
Neither of them have noticed you yet, though it seems the strange, roguish figures in the woods are searching for something they haven't found yet.
There is a distinct possibility that they are searching for him.
Because he seemed like he's, you said he looks elderly, perhaps an older version of Black.
Yeah, looks a little older, is walking stick, making a path through,
what looks to be a small walkway in the forest.
I think we should proceed cautiously and see if perhaps they attack him.
It might be interesting to come to his aid and see what he is on his way to.
At this point?
That sounds really horrible, but yes, let's do that.
Oh, what were you talking about?
Continue.
I was going to say as a sly born I do have a little extra advantage roles to negotiate with criminals
so maybe if we do chat with these
dirty guys with the beards
They might be of my people. All right. You want to go ahead and talk to me? I also have a question
I
Want to see what happens if I try and smash some of this mask you're talking about along the way
Well, me? Keep your weapon at the ready. If anything get close, you can get the jump on.
Okay.
Alrighty. So you go ahead and approach this figure. How do you, uh, how do you engage with the seller of the clank?
Um, I very carefully walk up and say, buenas noches, amigos.
Oh, hello my friend. It's been a while.
What is your name?
Oh, they call me Deckard Bane.
I study various difficult things in a realm beyond. I don't quite know how I got lost here.
Are you walking by yourself?
Of course. I've walked everywhere by myself. I don't know how I've survived this long.
While you're talking, I'd just like to take a look at these shadow beings and their reactions to what's going on.
They are starting to gather in the woods near you.
Starting to close in and keep a very close eye like a parent in ambush.
I moved closer to his percentage.
And Rigo looks at him, points to his chest.
Say, are you the one that carved this listen,
but always be heard on my arm?
Actually, yes. Many years ago.
When I was following the Herodram, I was appropriately marking your armor as a means of giving forward a great message of unity.
We might be on an adventure, but for some reason I have a hankering to stay wild and listen to you.
While this is going on, I would like to cast a minor illusion to create the look of a similar
plank walking in a different direction.
Pretty much so, as you think, between these, per se, coming up upon him and then walking
in a different direction.
Is that possible?
Certainly.
Go ahead and make a presence role to see if you can deceive.
Actually, presence or knowledge, the choice I'll make is when I'll say, see if you
I managed to convince them with this minor illusion for a moment.
And I'd like to spend the hope to add a plus two bonus to the roll.
With my hard light, just giving it a little bit of a sparkle
so that it attracts more attention to the illusion.
Let's go.
That is so far a 14 plus hope, a 16 plus hope.
Ah, a 17 plus hope.
You get a hope with that, all right? That is a success.
You watch as all of these masked figures are about to collide at this space.
Suddenly there's the flash of hard light, the secondary figure.
They begin to shift their position as they're now confused as to who the actual target is.
Now, in this moment of distraction, you can either try to engage or try to run and use this to get afraid.
What are you doing?
I believe it would be wise for us to move farther faster.
I don't think so. We shouldn't ever run. I've never run from a fight.
Vendetta, sometimes you just move along, okay?
You don't always have to fight.
Also, Vendetta, if you save your strength at this moment,
it will be ready for the larger fight,
that I'm sure will ensue when we visit with Moira.
You might not like this, friends,
but I'm protecting him.
There's something going on here.
He carved something into me, something deep,
and I have the urge to protect this man.
Then we bring him along?
You want me to stay alone?
No, I want him to come with us.
Would you come with us, partner?
Oh, no, I stay put.
I never seem to move anywhere, but one has to come to me for some reason.
But I am on my way to sanctuary.
It's a realm far, far away, and they told me in the long run it's gonna be fine in about a hundred years.
What if I told you to carry on my back, I will take that burden, because I feel a kinship
with you.
You hear what I'm saying?
A kinship.
I'll say it one more time, because I like doing it, a kinship.
I think now you're making fun of me.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
The plane goes, oh maybe that is where I want to go.
Where are you headed?
We are headed further into the forest, seeking a special item of great value to our friends in Yalta.
Oh, where are you looking for it? I'm good at identifying items.
Oh, it is a... a splat... doll?
Something sparkly. And mysterious.
It was stolen from the library.
I've been in these woods a few times. Where would we find it?
We are looking for a being named Moira.
She's a witch.
She has.
Apparently it was stolen on her behalf, and we need to get to it before she does.
Absolutely not.
And he goes running after us.
At which point, the rogue Shilkai that had been waiting there in the trees
swooped down on you because you were waiting.
I'll go ahead and let you make an attack roll to see if you can keep her in her bay.
I knew they were coming, and I was ready to protect my...
temporary allies okay it's uh nine plus three so it's a 12 with hope oh fantastic
go ahead and take that hope that is a success go ahead and roll damage on that
can I really hit them even if they're just shadow weaves they look shadow we
from a distance from when they rush in there they're people in outfits they
are physical creatures. Okay, good to know.
11 plus 8, 19. 19 damage. Wide swing. You
carve through them and you watch as a bunch of them take the brunt of your blade and get thrown back into the trees and spin off into the shadow, yelping loudly. They weren't prepared for such an immediate
it offence and it looks like the rest of them kind of curl back for a moment so
read us out what they want to do you have a moment what do you want to do with
this yes if you want to run this is the moment to run oh I meant to them they
spent a lot but we can run too yeah sure as they hear you and some of them
begin to run back you also continue to run and for a brief moment there is
just a scattering of the battlefield with that you go charging through you
with your hammer up front clearing bits of wood and trees getting in your way
The pain begins to head on further in the northwestern direction as the very shadows themselves get darker.
The scent of the wet birth is the smell of slightly rotting root.
The bark just gets deeper and stronger.
This sort of accurate air begins to fill around you before the treeline comes and opens.
In this clearing, the overhead portion of the canopy is so dense, almost no light makes it in, even though it is night.
The sun's high in the sky.
Again? I'm sorry?
High in the sky.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Near you see before you.
Massive, clustered center of roots that gathers into what looks like a natural-looking hut.
A faxed roof covered moss, dangling vine.
Looks like a singular doorway made of stitched-together planks of wood.
Two small round windows that can carbon the exterior of the roots.
He'll flickers a green energy from inside as you all stare forward the door
Opens on its own and a sourced this voice fills the air that says I
knew you were coming
Curious as to what your business is here friends. Please enter. I'd like to ask you some questions
Show yourself
It's not good manners
to talk to your...
some people coming to find you and not even show your face.
I think it's rather bad manners to be invited in and not take up the invitation.
Wouldn't you say so, Pentator?
Can we take a look around and make sure there's no traps that we're going to walk into?
Yeah, I don't trust them.
By all means, go and make an instinct roll for me.
Okay, but I'm adding my sneaky experience because I have spidey senses for it.
Yeah, it's been that hope for now. That bonus. Go for it.
Instinct, right? Not finesse?
Oh, well, no. If you're looking around for traps on this, let's say this is an instinct to sense that they're in the space.
Okay, six, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
That's great.
Oh, with hope, baby.
Oh, all right. Give that hope back. That's a success.
You don't sense any traps in the way. You glance forward and you can see the path is almost in the fight.
Amongst the dark woods of this area, the path
almost seems to grow flowers into very
irons like time itself is inviting me
really. It's beautiful. The smell of the
swamp air seems to almost subside. It smells
sweet petals. Honey, sir.
Remember, friends, we were told that she
attends to seduce people with her
mental capacities. Be careful where you
go. And I would like to use arcane
scents to sense exactly where the
The magic might be an IF I might be able to sense our magic items that we've been using, that we've been looking for.
Your arcane sense, this whole area, is magic.
And it is like a fuzzy blanket of energy before you.
What would be a pretty acute sense is certainly being obscure, obfuscated.
I learned that word last week. Obfuscated.
So, are you entering?
We follow right by myself no I will go in first you will not by yourself yes
that's how tanks work they go first friends you're gonna take on this you're
gonna risk your lives I've lived a long time if I fall you know what's in that
hut you take up arms and you solve whatever you need to solve I was trying
to find out what happened here on my chest and that opportunity is lost from me the way
I lost everything so I got nothing to lose here friends let me go in there and take whatever
is waiting for us if it means my death I take it and I take it willingly okay but
I'll come with you no no you don't have to do this alone okay you don't need to
die today. Maybe I'll do. You don't know my life. While these two are trying to
out-brave each other, I'd like to walk around to the bag of Reinhart and speak
to the skulls that are strapped to the back of his head. Excuse me gentlemen.
It seems that we are in a predicament and we may have come upon the home of
your employer. Can you tell us anything about her that you need to know
besides that she is very dangerous.
I mean, we were just told to wait outside.
She's kind of scary.
She's working on some sort of project.
Oh, any kind of particular kind of project?
I don't know. There was some sort of dead body.
Just wrapped in black material, just in the middle of her house.
Seemed to know if it was dinner.
Ah, that doesn't sound shady at all.
I mean, we're used to dead bodies. That's our whole day.
Of course, and I'm sure you are the kindest and most polite of your kind.
Perhaps we should send in my floating eye to check before you go in.
I don't want to lose you today.
All right.
I'll give you one chance.
And I'm busting in that place.
Finding out what I need to find out.
Now, at this point in time,
because we invited a lot of these fine folks to be part of this story,
I'm gonna ask a question that you all get to participate in.
There will be a QR code, if you haven't already scanned it, and a question.
Who amongst this troop is the shade which Moira feel is the biggest threat?
So go ahead and bring up your phones, and let's see who amongst this troop she perceives
as the most dangerous.
Can I use an experience to hack them so it helps us?
I don't think it works that way, so far.
Again, I'm having an identity crisis, I'm not really sure what's happening.
I'll give you the number of my therapist after that.
Grigor, I would like to apologize.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been so direct with that gentleman.
I knew you would find...
You gotta be the way you gotta be.
But I promise you that when all of this is over,
I will open the path to find him again,
as we are teammates.
Yes?
Deal.
All right.
Do we sing a song while they wait for the boat or what?
As you are having this conversation,
the air around you grows dense.
And suddenly,
they're never...
I knew it. You just wisely...
Yeah, sure. Tell me.
You feel a grasp of magic around your shoulders
and the rest of you watch as she suddenly gets lifted
and pulled inside the hut all by herself.
Shhh!
What are the rest of you do?
I think perhaps it is time to go in.
One way or the other, we need to save her.
Whether she's...
someone we like or not.
She's our teammate.
It doesn't matter if we like her or not.
It's family.
In.
All right.
May I use my shadows?
Yeah, for it to get as close as possible
to where they're taking her.
Sure, you go ahead and step into one of the nearby shadows.
Plenty of shadows around here to dive into when you're shh,
after eight minutes.
Now, as you all enter this chamber,
you feel the grasp on your shoulders of sigh as you look at it.
Now, there's all manner of hanging threads,
bits of heavy twine, whole trinkets and bones,
strange little magical charms that hang in the air.
There are iron cages that contain folks
who look withered on the cusp of death themselves,
sighing outward.
Above you in the roof expanse,
a black shadow moves, drifts.
A ray-flag being with a stupid skull mask.
Just a really poorly made one.
He looks kind of dumb.
Sounds like a real butt head.
Don't worry about him.
Oh.
As you see behind the table, indeed, there is a corpse wrapped in a similar black fabric.
And, stretched out on the side, you see the face of the shape which moistened.
A fraction of broken skull over one eye.
A shock of red hair that goes in front of the face.
Shoulders that are wide and swollen.
And a large hump on her back that moves under its own will beneath her, rose.
How unsightly.
She glances over at you and says,
Now, T, I want to ask you some questions
and if you answer them correctly and honestly,
I might have a gift for you and your friends.
Might even tell you what it is you're after.
Answer incorrectly.
Now take what I want anyway.
If you wanted me so bad at your house,
you might just have invited me to dinner, Moira.
what she thinks for a second doesn't matter.
I suppose that's also possible, but not as much fun.
What do you want from me?
What is it that you missed about your father?
I'm not sharing this with you.
Then this information and gifts will not be yours and the shadows begin to swell.
You know nothing about my father!
That's why I'm asking. What is it you miss about him?
Very lovely. More than anyone else in this world.
Strong ties. They might carry you through.
She holds aloft a green gem, and you watch as a bit of green energy drifts out of your mouth as you speak those words into the gem.
and out of some of the bodies the caged figures that wither even further to
with them passing out as the gem post this she chuckles
now of your compatriots here which one do you think is going to betray you
first
No, Che.
No, Che, you feel this cold thrum in your chest.
As it hits, you will watch as a bit of green light emanates from your mouth and into
the gen.
Shhh!
Two other bodies wither and collapse.
It glows in her grasp.
I appreciate your honesty. One more question.
Just let me go now!
Soon, my pants.
She holds the gem close to her face, laden it from underneath.
She leans in.
And when do you plan to betray them, dear?
I'm I'm not planning to betray them, but why would you think that?
Honestly you must answer me
Honestly
As long as I need them, I'm not going to betray them, okay?
More resides flicker back between your compatriots with a satisfying grin seeing the threads of mistrust beginning to prove
The gem flickers once more. He watches faint bits of green energy pours from each one of your friends' mouths into the gems and thrones one last time.
She smiles.
Farewell. I made a promise.
I will keep it.
So, the skull case was not for me. I was contacted by an ally of mine to retrieve it for her.
This gem was my payment, and you've all charged it for us, so thank you very much.
As I seek to bring one of my friends to a more useful state.
She looks up to the roof where you can see that stupid skull mask right at the end of those blubber-dum-dum.
I
Was hired by a figure that hides within grace grim stone
The deepest the most dangerous of prisons here in the overland
Domina hell no sorry it was involuntary
She's been hiding there for months, building her network of criminals, the activities spreading
far and wide all across the Overland.
It's a dangerous prison, and the scroll that she took was one of ancient, true form transformation.
It finds the seed of something powerful in your past, your bloodline, your aspirations,
and it unlocks it.
I know not what she plans with it, but you haven't much time,
as I'm sure she has her goals soon enough.
So if indeed you wish to stop her, rush to the Grimstone.
She laughs.
Places the gem there on the middle of the table.
You watch as she and the figure of the body
getting to shift and move, swirl with shadow.
You hear the laughter get louder.
I would like to use my ruins, my hard light technology.
I'd like to use it to wrap a beam of hard light
like a lasso around the gem and yank it towards me.
Go ahead and make an instinct roll for me.
And I want to use a fear here to make it a disadvantage.
Can I move like now?
Can you?
Am I free to move?
You've been released, dear.
Okay, I feel relieved.
Then I would like to spend the hope
to add plus three to this role as well.
Go ahead and roll for me.
Critical roll.
Woo!
Yeah!
Oh!
All righty.
Double ones.
Go ahead and make that hope.
I'll grab a stress, if you got it.
You all watch as asymmetric reaches out.
Yanks, this gem from the center of the table.
There's a shriek.
The shadows swirl even deeper, and in a matter
of instantaneous intensity, the shadows subside and vanish.
The wraith, the shade which Moira and the bodies
themselves brought to some far off place.
Without the gem that they had taken, which now sits
in your grasp.
It grows quiet. This hut is now abandoned for the time that you have your target on your mind
Domino, of course, it's her that spoiled brat. Yes, of course
Well
Grimstone keep yes
Yes, we go sure
Vendetta
Yeah, even in a cave
Even when we are trying to connect
I'm not, it's just a game. It's not like it's real life.
I mean, it would be fun to betray someone in a game.
No, don't you think so?
Moira is just trying to...
I know that you think so, so come on.
Moira is trying to rip us apart, so you can't believe that we're going to betray you.
And also, if you're up...
And also, if you are simply operating by logic, we are very useful to you as a team, not split apart and not betrayed.
That's what I said.
In this game, no matter what happens, I will protect Karen.
side of this game cannot promise I would protect you that hurts that hurts me
deeply that you would do this but we were together it's just a game no no you
don't have to take it this seriously oh no no no no I do takes this very
serious great well just let's go ahead with the story we don't know where it's
gonna have no that's true I appreciate you taking this as
seriously as you do I like my players are invested but we we invited her to
the table we'll see how the story plays out before you lay any judgment
I'm going to pocket this gem and walk out.
Uh, once again, do we know where the Grimstone keep is?
You've heard of it.
To the eastern mountain ranges from here, it lies buried deep within.
There are all manner of soldiers and keepers that are guardians to the inside,
There are all manner of soldiers and keepers that are guardians to the inside.
Only the most dangerous prisoners all across the Overlands are locked in there.
Built in the base of a volcanic expanse.
Now Queen Domina had been thought to have been in prison there for some time.
But if she's taken over from within, who knows how deep those tendrils reach.
What her aspirations may be.
As this pours in your mind, here's that necrotic gem that you managed to receive.
You want to go ahead and grab that there.
As it also asserts the contents of this hug,
now that most of everything was abandoned for the time being
by the Shade Witch being cast out.
You find a couple of interesting items.
A few of those, oh, you have those two health potions
you found earlier, by the way.
Oh, muchas gracias, amigo.
Also all, Marca, stress from that entire
endeavor there with the Shade Witch.
Thank you.
Let's go ahead and marker stress
If we know where we're going
Perhaps once again
I shall use the path is open and see if I can open a path towards where we are headed to move us faster
When can we set up the car wash?
I
Believe we should probably save that for when we have multiple enemies great although unfortunately it would not be as functional as
It was when we had six
Uh, ah, the good old days.
Fair enough. All right.
So, go ahead and roll an instinct roll for me to see if you go ahead and cross that journey.
Great, and I'll spend a hope to add another, uh, uh...
How many hope you got there, girl?
I keep erasing it.
It's on my roll.
That's great. Just check it.
No, no, no, no. I was at four right now.
I've spent four.
Right now, so I have two more.
Well, you started with three.
No, I know, and then I gained hope back to the bottom.
Right, all right.
We'll just check it.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Look at that mass, I promise.
There's a lot of, there's a lot of marks on this page.
All righty.
Oh, I didn't really need it.
That is a 17 plus three for a 20.
30, 20.
Really?
Oh!
Dang!
There's a whole battery over here.
I gotta start spending some of this fear to take you down a peg.
Playfully, it's a collaborative experience.
So now you're versus GM. What are you talking about?
Of course, cowboy.
Indeed, you go ahead and cross that bridge, you concentrate with your allies,
and you see there's a dangerous expense to get out of these woods rapidly.
You go ahead and concentrate your hard light activity,
and with that you open a path between your arcana.
The rest of you step beyond that doorway,
you reappear on the opposite end,
and make a charge to the base of those mountains themselves.
And carefully begin to traverse the rocky landscape.
Eventually you push towards the outside,
and there it is, you see the terrifying visage
of the stone prison intro.
Massive gates.
The parapets.
You see soldiers talking back and forth from the top,
keeping an eye.
I ask you here at Grimstone Keeper,
how do you plan to make your way in?
Are you going to push him?
I'm gonna sneak in.
What do we know about this Queen Donna, like you said?
Queen Donna. She is a...
She's a being completely built from aspiration.
She has created a wonderful network from her mindset of businesses and guilds that work underneath her.
She has an incredible intellect and an endless lust for power.
You might have a little history.
I mean, if you say so.
She's, uh...
She sounds nice. I like her.
She is, um... She is nice.
Yes, some people don't have the natural talent to be able to achieve.
And so they have to find other means to, uh, find their way in the world.
And so they buy a candid choose.
I'll see you later. Can you remind me? Where do you leave now?
Do you have, like, a key or something?
Bindeta, let's relax. Let's focus on the task at hand, please.
I didn't care.
I would like to, um, check out something specific.
Yeah, well, we'd like to check out.
Sombra loves to leave herself a backdoor,
so I was wondering if I could use my uncanny disguise
to turn myself into a soldier
and walk right into the keep
to look for a backdoor to let my friends in.
Yeah, by all means.
Not bad. All right. So you go ahead and you watch over one of these soldiers here.
Go ahead and study their outfits, study their physicality, their walk.
Go ahead and use your midnight match to transform yourself.
So go ahead and mark what you need to to spend it.
But I also believe I have to mark a stress, which I don't like, but okay.
Go ahead and mark a stress?
Y'all watch as Noche changes her exterior toward the soldiers.
the soldiers. You go ahead and march up. One of the front-gain guards kind of turns into this.
Hey! You! What are you doing on your watch? Uh, I was walking around the outside of the perimeter
of the so-called castle and I'm making my way back in. Sir. I want you to go ahead and make a
presence roll to try to save him for me. Thank you. Hey, I think the tone of voice is working
really well. You get advantage on this because of your disguise, so how did he sense?
Oh, sorry, but I, uh, I, I mark up, I, I roll the normal ones first.
Yeah. Well, you, you better have a look at it.
Sorry?
Yeah, go ahead and add your D6 to the roll.
Oh, thank you. Okay.
I'm, I'm learning dice still, people.
Okay, so we have a nine, ten, eleven...
Ssss...
...fifth year.
I love that.
As you talk to the figure, he goes...
What's your name?
Jonathan, sir!
All right Jonathan, I'd like you to talk to the supervisor.
I just had to take a leak and I forgot where the bathrooms are so I just went and...
That's okay Minima's due out here, it's high altitude.
Um, looks to the other soldiers.
Why don't we go ahead and escort our friend here in to meet with the supervisor?
Yes sir, sir, yes sir.
You see a looking as I, where he doesn't seem as trusting as you were hoping.
The rest of you watch as the soldiers escort Noche into the cave.
I would like to send my floating eye, just a hair behind her, to keep an eye on them as he escorts her in, so we know if she's in danger, we can follow her.
Fair enough. Go ahead and send the eye following in.
Following the shadows in the edge of the mountain to try not be seen, and it tries to swoop in from behind before anybody else notices to keep watch.
You head down one long hallway and then another into a sub-basement level.
The rest of the soldiers are quiet as they're holding your shoulders and you get the sense
they're likely going to try and lock you up or put you in interrogation. What do you do?
Well, I also realize I forgot to add three for finesse so maybe I'm becoming a little more charming currently
so that would have been a 14. However, I would like to look to see if there are any lights shining down
So I can make a stealthy escape.
Alright, go ahead and make an instinct roll for me.
Gosh, these rolls... I really wish I could hack them.
Okay, 14. 15.
I don't let my players... up and fuel me.
So... that is the success.
As you're walking through, you can see there are a few grates where
some spaces can be snuck through to give here.
However, as you're being slowly pushed further into the escape, you can see more and more soldiers are starting to gather.
Suddenly, I spend a fear here.
You hear a voice come over these little arcane orbs that are fixed around.
A voice that sparks through with a heavy echo and goes,
Soldiers!
I believe it's time that we prepare for the ritual.
Please, head to your spaces.
And show me your allegiance.
Not quite familiar with that voice, but you hear it from outside.
This Queen Domina seems to be preparing for an event.
Sombra is not safe in there.
No one is safe with Domina.
It's time for us to go in.
It's time for us to do something to take her down.
Like I've always wanted to do.
Do you think we have the capability to take her down, I mean, she seems quite capable?
Now you don't want to fight?
No, no, no, I do want to fight, yes, of course.
I think together we have the power to do much more than we do apart, and some rise in there
alone.
Yes.
She may not always agree with everything that you say, but she is a smart person,
I found her to be honorable.
Okay, so we need to save Nautra first.
Yes.
Now you, in looking through the eye and following the eye line, you also stoked out some of these internal vent pathways.
What? The vents?
Yes.
Great. We should be able to enter through the vents.
With my eye I'll be able to guide us, and kind and benevolent Game Master, I would like to use this moment to...
Well, cash in, cash in, cash in, no hold that, never mind.
With our eye I'll be able to guide us. Shall we climb through?
All right, while you are escorted what was once to go to the prison, instead you're now being escorted to a different area of the chamber after this announcement.
Become a cult member.
Maybe.
Now, the rest of you are trying to sneak in.
I need to do a group finesse roll for me.
So who wants to leave this?
I have a question for you. Call K-City.
Yeah? What's up?
I am a very large individual.
How big is the vent?
Pretty tight. It's gonna be a tough roll.
Do you want to go in a different way?
Going in a different way.
But where are you going in?
The front door.
As the rest of you are moving to sneak,
You watch as your friend Grigor just charges through the front gates.
We're going to have to move quickly.
Okay, how's your finesse?
Okay, I got one, so I guess I'm gonna leave.
All right, so you go make a finesse roll first.
It's a reaction roll.
Oh, reaction?
I am going to mark a stress as an L-phone to gain advantage on this roll
Okay, that is a 16 plus 3 19 with fear now fear doesn't matter for reaction roll
That's a 19. That's so I'd make it for next roll now. Plus one for your friend
That's one.
Oof.
Can I...
Yeah.
Use one of my hope
to get,
since I'm a noble daughter,
I feel like I know these castles,
how they work.
Maybe when I was a kid, I used to sneak around.
So can I use this to add
my plus three experience
being a noble daughter?
Nowhere, you know, some kids hang around prisons when they're young, I guess, you tell me.
We don't judge.
Okay, it's 15 plus 16, 19 with hope.
Great, take that hope back, and plus one there for 20, that's a success.
With hope, both of you rush into the grates and begin sneaking through.
You can hear the sounds of soldiers moving about
and more and more of these echoing calls of Queen Domina
shouting to the rest of her troops and the other prisoners that she's taken into this space.
You also begin to realize, Noche, as you're walking around,
most of the space inside is open.
Most of the prison cells have been relinquished.
It looks like all the soldiers walking around in uniform
We're likely the people held within.
It's a full topsy-turvy interior,
and Grimstone keep us fallen to the queen.
As you get pulled past a long secondary portion
where you can see a bunch of weaponrys being set aside,
all the other soldiers are gathering,
and the air is getting hotter
before you're brought through the gateway
into a central chamber within.
This is the core of the keep, and of the mountain.
streams of molten rock pour down and glow with an orange ember-like light.
You can see a massive structure held out up off over the lava flow into a molten
floor far beneath it. This platform acts like a massive hexagon type shape
where you can see a bridge cross across to it to a central platform. There are
three holding cells across it in massive high hanging chain affixed hooks that dangle for
moving different prison cases around whatever the central deep set prison chamber is it looks
like it's been retrofitted now to be the center of what queen domino wishes to achieve as she
stands in the middle the rest of the soldiers gathering on the outside looking at the windows
within. The two of you charging in can hear the shout of your alfam inside.
Grigor, as you go barreling from within, do you just keep running or do you try
and fight what comes across. I'm going to keep running, straight ahead, if it
not stop. All right, I need you to make an agility roll for me to see how far
you can get without anyone getting any sort of retribution on you that's what
makes it fun
that is 15 with fear all righty go ahead and take that fear for us thank you that
is a success so you go charging through and it takes a solid minute before
anyone's even ready they hear the shouting they're given commands and
orders to each other but they're also distracted by Queen Domina shouting
through the various devices that fix the route. Some of them try and swing at you wide but you're
already pushing through. Others get knocked off under their butts as you just continue to push through.
You follow where all the other soldiers are going and by the time they turn over their shoulders
you're barreling past and knocking them from end to end. A few other bolts shoot out towards you
from behind. That's going to be a 13 to hit you, does that hit? Yes. But I would like to use an
I'll see how much it does. It's going to be 9 points of physical damage to you.
Eh, I'll take it.
Alright, you mark a hit point as you keep charging through.
As you all sneak in to help your friend, you hear the sound of Grigor tearing into the space.
The soldiers are shouting, but Domina comes over the thing and says,
Stop this and come witness the glory.
Everyone turns away from where this anger is happening.
The soldiers hold still, fearful.
You all begin to sneak into the central chamber where you can see
Noche's being held by the soldiers
As you're brought forward, Queen Domina steps forward and goes
Wait, I've heard of you
Aren't you one who steals things from my expanded troops?
From my network of well-earning thieves?
I don't steal them, I just take back what belongs to us
Well, always happy to have a guest here to witness history.
Free her for the moment and have a seat.
She points to the edge of the platform.
With that, Vendetta, Anesa...
Oh, sorry.
Marta, Anesa Metra.
You've snuck into the exterior of this chamber
where other soldiers are fixed, looking inward.
The loud sound of Grigor begins barreling through
in the soldier's turn as Queen Domina goes,
left him in, I'm not worried.
At the very least, some intruders
will make some interesting audience members.
You go barreling in and watch as the soldier
steps aside and lets you into the chamber,
just as the two of you kind of step in as well.
There's a long, broken bridge,
chains on the side that leads to the central platform
as Queen Domina stands, eager, arms crossed.
She goes, Ash, are these the ones that you saw earlier?
She steps out, Ash.
Withered.
Annoying, screechy voice.
Says, why, yes, that is the ones who try to take this from me.
What do you think we should do, want me to shoot them for you?
No.
If they make any rash moves, well, I'll deal with them myself.
Oh, huh
Can I just while she's
Delivering a very long speech that's boring to me. I would like to look and see
What exactly this setup is you said there were three cages that were hanging from why don't I show you?
Can I get some help here to unveil the map for me? Oh?
She talks too much
Simetra. Inhale, exhale.
I suppose I... you don't have to deal with her as much as I do.
She may be my boss, but she's hardly my superior.
Let's go ahead and bring her back for me if you don't mind.
Oh, but I want to be...
Thank God.
Woo!
All right.
That's my many. I'm just gonna set this aside for the time being.
As you all situate yourselves here at the edge, set to watch what is called as history.
Queen Domina takes the center stage where Undead Ash sits, watching at the distance.
She holds forth the scroll case and opens it, the runes flicker, like some sort of an
internal trap that's about to be set.
She shakes her fingers across and dispels it in this.
As it cracks open, steam escapes.
She pulls forth the scroll and she holds in her hand my new guests, my soldiers who
Turn to the right side.
And all of my sweet prisoners will have been battered back.
By the system this kingdom keeps on us,
I am the way and the truth.
So it's over to you, Waysome, that you're close.
And for those who weren't thankful,
may you now look upon your betters
and see what true future power has to say.
She takes the scroll, and she unfurls it before her.
She begins to read from it in a language you do not understand.
In Vodara, Ti Morakachi.
As she begins to read, you watch.
As red energy is a flare in her hands, what do you do?
Um...
My giant cowboy looks her dead in the eye.
And this giant cowboy says, it's high time I end you.
He's a giant cowboy!
I heard you. I heard you. That sounds great. I appreciate it.
While he says that it distracts her, I would like to use, she is not similarly undead to all of the other soldiers at Bash.
soldiers and ashes.
No, no, the only ones who are undead here are the undead gang,
the deadlock gang.
Everyone else here appears to be in the whole swath of backgrounds.
Wonderful.
Sometimes it's good to have a little bit of chaos.
I would like to use this green gem, this necrotic gem.
And I would like to use my staff of light.
So between the two, I would like to mark a stress
and shoot out a ray of light,
far range, which I believe she is at.
And make the target at a far-range take a little more magic damage than I might have with my...
Go ahead and make that roll with your instinct to see if you can strike her in the middle of this attack.
Ideally, ideally, I would like to hit the scroll to be able to burn it up.
Certainly, give it a shot.
So, stress marked and last hope.
No, I'm cashing in my float in eye.
I have a channel raw power ability, so I am going to gain hope equal to the level of that card so I get two hope back.
There you go.
That is an 18 plus 3 with fear.
So 21 with fear and I'm glad to do 1d8 plus 3d12 damage.
15... 15 plus 12, 27 damage.
27 damage to Queen Domina.
Alrighty, that's going to be a severe wound to her.
She marks three hit points on that.
What I'd like to do is pierce through the spell scroll with my beam
straight into her chest your technology is flawed it strikes the scroll while
it doesn't destroy it it's protected by some sort of internal enchantment this
is an ancient power but it does not get free from her hand and skitters back to
this part of the battlefield from there you watch as the impact blaster in
She smokes, apparates, and she...
Close back, Miss.
You ungrateful gait!
The soldiers go,
Queen, shall we just...
Close the doors.
They are mine to pay with.
Ash?
Now that the spotlight goes back to me,
I'm gonna ask the audience once again to vote for me.
Who does Queen Domina sense is the biggest initial threat amongst this troop for?
So go ahead and put in your vote on who she targets.
They come from Italy just saying.
Cast your votes carefully.
There you are.
All righty. Thank you for your votes.
It's a not-real-anyone's-true-surprise.
Eyes focused on Ace-Sometra.
Domina is going to go ahead and first begin with conjure barriers.
She's going to go ahead and mark a stress
and create a barrier of hard light that protects around her,
Now, causing her to not be quite as susceptible to the unexpected strikes you put before,
I will then spend a fear to spotlight her once again with her relentless feature.
She's going to go ahead and do a crystal charge against you.
Reckon an attack roll against you, Asymetra. That's going to be a 19th.
Alright, so from that point you take...
11 points of magic damage to you.
Okay, that is two hit points. Actually, I'm going to use an armor to make that one hit point.
Alright, and that's also going to be where you are against you Grigor and you, no chain.
As the blasts blasts out from the center of a Symmetra, you also take that magic damage.
It was 11?
11 points of magic damage to both of you.
I would like to use something called I am your shield to protect her all right so
go ahead and mark that stress so you take that damage twice you take 11
points of magic damage at two different points so I take none you take none
it is the maximum ego there's been another fear to activate Ash in the
back he's gonna go ahead and go ahead and throw some dynamite I will spend a
fear to use that ability as Ash grabs a big old cluster of dynamite one hand
lights it and chucks it over in your direction. Towards you, Noche, since you
got the first blast protected, this explodes around. So for that I'm gonna
need a asymmetry of Noche and Marta Vendetta to go ahead and make an agility
reaction roll for me. I'm going to spend the stress to use my L-phone
ability to gain advantage on the roll.
It's cocked.
I just hit it.
13 with hope.
Two, not a five.
That was a goal, but with a marker.
Yeah, nothing.
13 with hope.
13's a failure, unfortunately.
And?
A failure.
15 with hope.
15 just succeeds.
So to that point...
That's going to be 14 points of damage to both of you, 7 points of damage to you.
The dynamite detonates, sending you all back about a foot or so. You barely catch yourselves on the edge.
You look over the very, very cliff point of this platform to see the boiling lava below.
The heat itself rises up angrily.
With that, Ash is going to go ahead and relocate back over this direction up top.
And Domina's gonna move over to try and pick up that scroll.
My spotlight's over, it's back to you all. What do you want to do?
Can we see what's the situation like now?
Indeed, you're all here towards the back.
Ash is up here, Domina's over here with the scroll on the edge.
Someone get that scroll!
I need it immediately. Where's Noche?
Noche's right here.
That's you. That's AceMetra. That's Gringo.
Oh, that's so cool. Okay.
Mr. GM, could you please tell me where the shadows are currently?
Because I need to go into my stealth mode so I can be invisible and hopefully steal this scroll.
Unfortunately, it's kind of tough with the shadow.
You'd have to try and make it probably up over on the edge of this platform here, best you can.
I found a deep enough shadow to jump into.
Which you could probably make the run for, but you have to make an agility roll to get there.
Mr. Cole Care City, hello.
Hi, I'm your GM, here.
How far away is Domina from me at this present time?
Domina's about a close range of you, about 20-ish feet.
I want to risk it all.
Well, no, you have to do that when you're at zero hit points.
You know, you want to do a team attack?
Flip-a-de-flap, McGee, yeah, I want to do that.
All right, that's one. Team attack.
So you can do a tag team if you want to.
What do you want to?
What do you want to do with Domina with Marta?
Let's go together.
You and I.
You want to go with me?
Of course.
And this is your chance to find love.
What are the two of you trying to accomplish?
Are you attacking?
We're trying to take Domina out so that they can grab the scroll.
Alrighty.
So you both are making a combined attack on Domina?
Yes.
Okay, I'll go with you.
Really?
Yes, I'll do that.
You'll do me great honor.
Yes.
Do this.
We're not gonna kill her though.
We're just gonna take her out.
At this moment.
You don't want to kill people.
At this moment.
We are a team and we are together.
It's a road.
Okay, let's go.
Let's do this.
All righty.
Yes.
Rush in here.
Make your attack rolls.
So you spend your three hope to initiate this?
Yes.
All right, what'd you roll?
I roll a 15 this fear.
All right, what'd you roll?
16 with hope and duality to my strength.
You do indeed.
So it's 19 with hope.
So you both take her rolls.
That's a success with hope for both of you.
So you both take a hope as a combined attack.
Could you both describe to me how you combine your assault on the Queen Domina for me?
Hold on.
What are you going to do?
We do this together!
What are we going to do?
I take her hand.
I've got my sword.
I grab my hammer, said unfortunately is over there, and I'm not running back together.
Uh-oh.
Yes, we met up!
We do this together!
The heels, teleboto online.
Thank you.
The old hands, we swing together as one.
And with one mighty blow, we take a chance.
OK.
Can you say arriva la punizione?
Probably not.
Please, please, please.
Tell me again.
Arriva.
Arriva.
La.
La.
Punizione.
Is this a rude word?
Oh, okay, you can say Arrivala.
I'll say Pizione, is that fine?
I love it.
Let's go.
Arrivala!
Pizione!
You both go rush it again.
Hammer wide, blade swing and heavy.
And you both hit from both sides as Queen Domina
is unprepared for this strike, reaching for the scroll.
Her eyes go wide as you close in on her.
I'll need you both roll your damage and combine it for me.
Let's go!
Yes.
It's a long way back to my channel!
Thank you.
Hammer down!
This was kind of fun, I guess.
You have to roll for something, but I didn't pay attention.
I know.
Okay.
So it's...
three plus...
It's mine. It's a four with fear.
Well, this is damage. You're already here.
Oh, so I hit an eight.
Does D8 plus D6 plus D8.
D8 plus D8. Thank you.
I got a one, but I have to re-roll the ones, because I...
That's not good enough. That's one of my abilities.
Hell yeah.
It's...
Oh...
14 plus eight.
That's 22.
22? Not bad at all.
13.
Okay, it's 35 points of damage. That is beyond Queen Domina's severe threshold.
Queen Domina's gotten pretty rough. That does reduce by one because of her conjure barrier. So
she does the barrier, takes some of the impact. You watch the hard light shield,
kind of cracks on the outside of her, and she falls back onto the scroll.
And then she shoots back at me. You insolent fool!
It was with hope so the spotlight's still on you. You said you were going to go ahead and dive through the shadows there.
How close are you to the scroll? Are you closer?
I have moved closer since all of this has been happening.
Indeed. So you can go ahead and jump into the shadow here if you want to spend that.
Great. I would love to do that, please.
Alrighty.
And what are you attempting to do now?
I'm currently invisible.
And how close am I to the scroll now that I have moved into the scroll?
You jump from that shadow to that one, you're right next to me.
So I will jump out of stealth to snag the scroll immediately.
You go ahead and grab it and you have it in your grasp.
And as I see her do that, I would like to unleash chaos.
Yeah, baby, she's letting loose.
I'm marking a stop.
However, as you begin to conjure chaos,
I'm going to spend a fear to interrupt.
All right.
As you begin to concentrate on your hard light,
pour to go ahead and unleash this chaos in itself.
You focus just off to the right where you see
aiming down sights.
It's undead ash with the Viper.
It's going to go ahead and take a shot at you.
That's nice and funny.
God, I'm bomb.
Woo!
So that's going to be...
That's going to be 27 points of damage against you, Ace Imagine.
Right, so two things will happen at this time.
Around my neck you'll see that I have a special blue necklace
that actually came from my mother back in the slums.
And I carried it with me my entire life.
I've imbued it with hard light as a runeword.
And I'm going to use that to soak up 1d8 damage.
Alright, go ahead and roll FD8.
It's only two, so that is what?
There's 27, I think, so now it's 25.
25, and I'll mark an armor to take that down. How many can I do?
Um, armor.
Takes it down one threshold.
Great, so that's just a major damage. It's two hit points.
Alrighty.
I have a question about support.
Like, can I run over to her and give her one of my potions?
If you could heal her, because that's what I'm supposed to do.
She's quite the distance away, unfortunately.
Asymmetra has a move and is still back to where you started.
But when it comes to your spotlight, we can do that.
Wait. Focus on the scroll.
We'll take care of her.
Another fear to have Domina interrupts.
As Domina turns and sees you with the scroll and your head goes,
No, you will not take this from me!
And it's going to go ahead and try to grab and grapple over that scroll.
So I'm gonna go ahead and do a contestant roll here.
I have a question.
Since I attacked Domina with Rainer before, isn't she close enough to me to use Attack of Opportunity?
If you want her, she's not moving away, she's right next to her, but if she is...
But yes, but I can just, like, uh, deal damage to her.
Yeah, if you want her?
Yeah, sure. I'll do it.
Let's go, go ahead and roll damage.
First roll to see if you can make the Agility Roll to do that, yeah.
Agility Roll, yes. Is that...
So it's 11 with hope.
Alright, so unfortunately that does not succeed, so as you try to do the nominations quicker
than you expect and the hard light barrier kind of refracts and sends you off the side,
she goes towards you and grabs the other end of the scroll.
I need you to make some tested strength rolls for me, so go ahead and make a strength
reaction roll.
Alright, I'm squishy, man.
It's a minus one.
Okay.
Oh my gosh, I have a pretty girl!
Girl!
She can't be a favorite, she's holding on to it,
but she can't get it out of your grasp.
She's still clutching it though,
and she's staring at you eyes,
tits and feeling fury.
Spotlight's back to you.
Now it's time to unleash chaos.
Yes it is.
Right. So I make a... I would like to make a spell cast roll.
To cast a spell, it's an attack.
And I would like to add my... take away one of my hope.
To add a plus three to that roll with my hard light ability.
Alrighty.
That is a 19 plus 3 as a 22 with fear that is success go and roll damage
One, two, 3D-times, and two.
19 plus, do I add my normal attack?
It's just 3D-times.
Okay, great.
So, you'll notice that my hands start to move in a much more erratic fashion than normal, normally the graceful.
But this time she moves her arms sort of like it's clockwork.
as she does it, and moves her hands around as she puts Domina's neck in her eyesight.
And from afar looks like she may be grasping around her neck to deal 19 points of damage.
Ace, Ace of Metru, how do you want to do this?
Woo!
Yeah, baby gags!
Oh, the joy.
I just want to take a moment so as I reach forward with my hands in this position you
see two hands of hard light move forward in these and grasp around her neck as she slowly
Grumbles to the ground.
Who's your boss now?
As she's crumbled into the ground still grasping the stroll in your hands I shifting over to asymmetry
You watch as she loses her grip on it
It's just...
It's your...
Immanuel K.O.R.
It's not...
What is she doing?
She is reading it from memory, without it before her.
It's uncertain if she is able to complete it to its truest way.
She falls back and plummets off the side of the platform.
Disappearing down below.
You rush off the side and look for her.
But you don't see her.
Before her sound.
And a massive roar fills the chamber.
On the other side, you see it not fully transformed,
but a partially transformed Queen Domina,
Indomina, who has embraced the dragon heritage, that once sat her bloodline centuries before.
Incomplete because you would not relinquish the entirety of this ritual.
Her half-transformed self, rising, angry, taller, stronger.
And ready for vengeance as she goes,
You force. I will complete this at another time, but for now, I will have my vengeance.
The cages at the edges of this prison impact as you watch optic prisoners.
They're rally against the bars. Their lead are now transformed. They start shrieing together in one.
As what was once Queen Domina becomes,
Tyrant Worm Domina.
Now, she still comes in quite damaged
because she could not complete the ritual at your grasp.
And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and spend a fear
to have her immediately take the spotlight.
With that, she's gonna use Shattering Might
on the three of Oh No On You, actually.
She's gonna swing your procedure board
and just tuck her down.
That makes no sense to me.
All right
This one
We're just gonna use your quad claws on you how about that
Oof natural 18. She was not like you. It's gonna be a 21 to hit you with that you take
18 points physical damage as for now extended claws
Tear into your body. I'm going to use my room. What again?
Oops, I didn't need that anyway
Uh, and reduce that by seven points to make it only major damage, but...
She has Relentless. Uh, so she gauge, she can spend another fear to go again.
I'm not doing this right.
She's going to attack again. That's going to be a 15. Does that hit you?
Yes, it hits.
With that, you take...
...21 points of physical damage.
Can I use item your shield again?
Unfortunately, you're too far away from me.
Thank you.
Twenty how many?
I'll be twenty-one points of physical damage.
Twenty-one? I can reduce that again with my runeslam tongue.
Okay?
I'm gonna reduce that to a...
If it's at the damage threshold, it is that many points.
Correct, yeah.
Ver, I am down.
All right, so you get to make a death move here.
You get to choose whether you want to go unconscious.
Take the consequences.
You can risk it all and have the audience scroll for you
to see if you live or die.
Or go out and blaze a glory.
We can spend hope through the risk it all, correct?
No, you cannot. That's just her.
Sometimes the needs of the world around me matter more
more than the needs of my own.
I would like to risk it all and trust in the power
of the people of this community.
All right, friend.
Let's go ahead and engage.
I'd like you to roll until you find one that satisfy you,
whether you want it to succeed or fail, and lock it in.
You have just a few moments.
Think of the power of Simbra.
I'll watch.
I'm rolling.
You're rolling?
Don't worry.
All right.
It looks like the people's roles have come through.
That'd be a fear of five and a hope roll of ten.
So Symmetra, you're going to be a hero, aren't you?
So, Symmetra, explain... describe to us how you get back on your feet after being torn into by the time of the meeting.
As she slices across me with her claws, I believe, yes? She slices across with her claws. You see, my... my outfit becomes even more asymmetrical.
Yes.
And I slowly climbed up with my heels, holding up a hand with bright blue glowing runes on my hands,
and saying, I don't think so.
Yes.
So you get to clear up to ten hit points in stress.
That roll, that was a great roll, y'all.
Thank you, guys!
Good job, guys!
With that, the optic prisoners are pushing to try and get out of their different cages.
The spotlight comes back to you. What would you like to do?
Can I use my spell cast roll to shadow bind this Bruja Domina?
Yeah, you want to go ahead and move close and try and shadow bind her?
I would like to try, yes.
Alright, so you dart across to get within very close range of her right there.
She's kind of flying in the air, a little bit off the ground, but that shadow can reach.
Go ahead and make that spell cast roll for me.
17, 18, 19, 20, who's here?
All right, I'll take that fear, but that isn't success.
You watch as the shadow she's cast from the higher, like, slowly pouring down volcanic falls,
reaches up and grabs and holds her against the floor and she's like,
What? What is this? At which point, Spotlight comes back to me.
Ash is gonna go ahead and pull up her gun and go ahead and aim towards you after conjuring this down.
attack is gonna come in that's gonna be a 15 to hit is that it yes it does all
right so with that you take 12 points physical damage on to you I would like
to use an armor so that it's no I I could use two armors baby use one armor
for attack though oh I can't do that great so that's all good also I take two
points great okay all righty with that I'm gonna use a fear to have Domina
take the spotlight as well. Another fear, the cast off, the restrained condition.
Still use one of my fear to do so, the activation. She's gonna go ahead and
swarm over towards you after the fury of holding her down. Now at this point I'm
gonna ask the audience to help with one final bid. Angry as she is, Domina is
feeling very vengeful. Which vengeful attack does Tyrant Worm Domina unleash in this battlefield?
I need you all to vote for me real fast. You can choose whether it's a withering plague
attack, it's a fiery cataclysm attack or if she consumes a hero. Joyce is yours, you
got a few seconds.
While she's doing this, I can't look around for a shadow to sneak into.
Not in the middle of the fray, unfortunately.
Don't worry, we got this.
Oh, I'm excited.
Can still win.
Shows. Well, I'm so sorry.
Don't make me regret siding with you guys.
No, Che. As you begin to look for a shadow, you watch as the body of the tyrant worm, Domina,
Her stretches, her jaw unhinges and extends, fangs, exposed.
The rest of you glance on as she bites down on a noche,
and then two bites swallows you into her swollen dragon type form.
What? Do I- Can I still use my virus and get her sick from the inside?
You can still fight from the inside, but you are currently restrained.
We take 13 points of damage.
Spotlight's back to you all. Who wants to go?
Oh, we have to do something, guys.
How much hope to do another tag team?
Someone else has three hopes to spend.
Do you have three hopes to spend?
I have three hopes to spend.
Do you know if you take your sword and I throw you?
We should try to slice her off so we can free Nautre.
Okay, maybe you cut it open. Yes. Yes. Are you gonna do that with me? Yes
I'm going to spin around, you know like the barbarian and the Diablo games that they used to play but I must they'll
Haven't heard about it. Can we do this? By all means. Do you have three hope to spend? Yes, I do I do. Let's go
So you're gonna go ahead and throw her on your head
Put down my hammer I lift her up
Yes, make this count
because I'm counting on you.
Okay.
Alrighty, so as you spin the hammer, you throw it with you on the front of it.
I'm gonna gather all of my strength and try to hit Domino's Art if I can to slice her open.
I think it was in a cartoon, in an animated cartoon, and she would open up and we can retrieve Noche from her insides.
Absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah, if you guys can manage to deal a severe wound together, mark three hit points, that might be enough to go ahead and spill your front.
So both of you roll a tattles for me.
Okay.
I wish also to use my last hope to use my experience at my experience ruthless to do so.
Yeah, you can do that. That's pretty ruthless. I'm not gonna lie.
I have a 22 this whole
See with hope could I please add?
I want it all I can do this and my wonderful experience that says now has seen nothing yet
To add a three if you want to usually have to put that before the roll
But why not come on to the end?
I'm born to my vote.
Of course, you've already succeeded.
Don't let him have it, please.
You both share that role.
So you both succeed with hope on this.
Go ahead and roll your damage, and we'll
go ahead and combine it against Dominant.
V8 and V6, great.
Plus two.
I bet you didn't pick a fear.
You don't have to worry about that.
You both take his role.
That team.
I mean, I'm a spirit, too.
We roll one, so don't forget it's your ability.
I can roll two? Okay, that's eight.
And then it's a 10, so it's 18 plus eight, so it's 26.
12!
That's 38 points of damage. That definitely is beyond severe threshold. That's 300 points of high.
No! No! No! No!
We have it!
She screams...
Belly curbs opening, you spill out.
you watch the the the dragonoid scales themselves they begin to bind up again
where the cut was but it's not fast enough she looks very hurt right now
angry furious must spend a fear after that to immediately get the dominant to
unleash next strike this will be volcanic breath I need you all to make an
agility reaction role as she inhales and okay unleashes a torrent
extremely hot fire and lava can I grab her hand and just help her with her
role as well as with mine you can help hers if you want to spend a hope to help
her but reaction role let's go no cheese notch is out I'm out she's really out
they good yeah your action now we know you're outside of her body which means
you are susceptible to it so that's it's really real yes that's right okay and
I'm going to spend the stress also to use my reaction in advance it on my
reaction boom I did not meet that 19 this hole that's a success you managed to
get out just in time that is a 28 with hope that's okay it's 21 with fear that's
a success you step out of the way dang 11 with fear you take 22 points physical
damage as the rest of you duck out of the way but because you hadn't quite
scrambled to your feet it unleashes all upon take you use a shield do you still
have a shield yes okay I have one here one less no I'm down she's done right
do you want to make your death move do you want to do risk it all do you want to
glaze the glory you have to risk it all right now guys all right audience if
If you could vote for me, please.
One more time.
This is so stressful.
No, I really need therapy.
All right, Hart.
It's all righty, it was that.
You get up from the ground.
I need you to go ahead and clear four hit points.
As you pull your route from the flame gout,
then blast out from Dom and his maw.
You can feel the tension rising.
Your friend's brutally beaten.
All of you barely stand there.
What do you do?
Drink your potion as I run towards her full speed ahead.
I'm just going to f-
Tell me, yes, I see your face.
OK, I'm going to run forward full speed ahead
with my staff of light in one hand
and my hand rules in the other
and just make a straight up attack.
Go ahead and launch attack for me.
How far away from me is she?
Can I use my pair of staff of light within the far, sorry.
You can get to her definitely.
Great.
Go ahead and shift your space up right next
to her to combine the two.
Go for it.
Launch attack.
And as an order born, I would like to use the knowledge
of the thing that I learned as I was growing up, which
was a statement of why do you struggle.
And many times I've used it as why
you struggle against your fate as a death called towards people but for me it's why do you struggle
against your greatness and so I'm going to roll a d20 as my hope died let's go that is a 21 with hope
that's success roll damage for me
I was going to take the one back that I gave you
Okay, that is... 6 plus...
17 damage.
17 damage. That's gonna be two hit points.
Tyrant Worm Domino's looking real hurt right now,
but it's angrily prepping for another round of bound.
Still in your camp, because he got the hope he wants to go next.
How close am I? Now, I have no hammer, because I have thrown it.
So all I have is me. How close am I to Domino?
You're within close range. You wanna get him? Get him?
I want to, if I can, totally Yukon Cornelius her,
Flee myself at her and drag her down into the lava.
Go ahead and make a strength roll for me as you press-
She's not a bumble! She won't bounce!
Make a strength roll for me.
What is it, what's nice for them?
It's the 2D12.
Hey, please, I'm an old man.
Oh, for the love of each dragon.
That is a 10.
Plus your weapon, right?
I don't know, it's a 10, Miss Hope.
Again, a Hope, but unfortunately as you rush towards her,
Dominant breaks up from the ground, flies above you,
and you go flying underneath.
Your momentum carries you to the edge of the platform,
and you barely stop in time.
I'm going to go ahead and spend a fear to activate Dominant.
I'm just gonna move up behind me and try to push you in.
Ooh.
That's gonna be a natural 18 plus 3.
It's a 21.
I need you to make a strength reaction roll for me
to see if you can hold tight.
So go ahead and just roll in at your strength.
Can we help him on a reaction roll?
Not at this moment, not at the reaction roll.
There is an 8 with hope.
The rest of you watch as Domina claws on his shoulders,
shoulders, shoves Grigor off the edge and in slow motion you watch your friend vanish
into the lava pool below. Now, this will bring you to zero hit points. Would you like to
make a death move? Can I risk it all? Can I go out in a place of glory? Choice is yours,
friend. Want to go out in a place of glory. So Grigor, as you're tumbling off the
edge as you got pushed you realized as you were sprinting you hit your hammer as well and as
you're falling it's skittering off the edge and you see it plummeting with you you grab it what do you do
I whirl around and I take her vis-me I hook her vis-a-hammer and pull
go ahead and roll damage to that hammer for me please it's a blaze of glories and
automatic critical success so roll your damage oh no that's an eight plus a six eight plus
This is a 10 plus your max damage because it's a crit.
We should be 14.
That's 24 points of damage.
That is described to me, Grigore, how you finish the Tyrant Queen Domina by bringing her into the lock.
I pull her down. I look in her eyes
Turn to you
Remember me
Hammer down forever Pally
In that quiet moment, that stillness, the final roar of the Tyrant Queen silences forever,
does the vibrant shouts of your cowboy friend. The rest of the soldiers and
prisoners look fearful and scattered and run out of the grimm's prison. Ash
vanishes off into the shadows. The three of you stand here. The Tories, yet at the
At the same time, the process of the loss of the friend.
The sacrifice of a true hero.
The memorable moments.
The sorrowful moments.
Of Rowling.
But with this, the Tyrant Queen is done.
Domina's terrible rule has come to an end.
And a new group of heroes carry this memory forward
into the Overlands.
wherever future adventures may take.
So, we'll close our adventure there.
Thank you all for playing with me.
I appreciate that.
And thank you, Gassidy.
Thank you for our wonderful game night.
Hey, maybe you show up next week too.
Get another venture for you.
I can't believe you sacrificed yourself for us.
Any time for you, Van Better.
Any time.
Now you know how trust works.
Well, friends, that concludes our Quest Watch adventure.
Thank you so much for joining us.
A massive, massive thank you to Make-A-Wish,
of which we partnered for this venture.
All of these minis, this whole set piece,
will all be signed and put up for auction
with all the proceeds going towards Make-A-Wish.
Please check it out.
Go ahead and check in for the options if you can.
Donate if you have the opportunity.
But once again, I appreciate so much for joining us.
Thank you all for joining us.
Before the rest of you, Liz Khan friends.
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We go back with the AWC
and the action is just about to resume,
you can feel the anticipation
And thank you to everybody here to support these incredible teams.
Now we have a big matchup like we've been saying.
And while you're leaning kind of towards Echo, particularly you, Chan,
what do you think that Guild Beam needs to do to stay in this and
really give it their all?
I think Guild Beam are gonna have a really hot time because
anything overcome, not just the Roof Mage, but the Rogue Lock and the Mage Lock.
And I think on Echo you have the best Rogue in the world,
the best Mage in the world, and now the best Warlock in the world.
How are you going to overcome three STL comps?
Especially, you know, like, I think you would be,
we're going to see some interesting comps coming out of them.
I think, I'm expecting actually to see
Red Warrior come out of them.
But then Echo has Mage Lock to counter that.
And if they play something else,
Rogue Mage is waiting, Rogue Lock is waiting.
How are you going to overcome that massive obstacle?
I don't know how Guildbin's going to do it,
but they have to play sick.
It is single-align, you know, it's due or die,
anything can happen.
and we have seen Echo fall before.
It's true, look, there could be upsets
and of course this would be an exciting place
for them to happen.
And I see a lot of the chat
as well has been leaning towards Echo.
I mean, with their legacy, it's no wonder.
But I do know that for Gilpeen,
there's a lot here that they really want as well.
Lawn Tower in particular has cited
that he really would like to be a champion
and win on the BlizzCon stage.
So I mean, that's a kind of extra amount
of pressure you're playing under Ziko.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, they got something
that they really wanna play for.
And I think for all of them, not just Lontar, for Gilbinh,
this is unfinished business.
The last time they were here, they got knocked out by Ekko.
They were one game away from taking it all.
And now this is their chance to settle the score.
It's single-alim, which I think also works in their favor
because just like Chan mentioned,
Ekko tends actually to lose quite often
in the upper bracket.
And then just clean sweep the bottom bracket
and then clean sweep the finals.
They're a very adaptable team,
but there is not a lot of time to adapt here at BlizzCon.
It's due or die, and these teams have had some time
to prepare for each other.
So maybe there's a surprise waiting.
I can't wait to see the blind pick.
I know.
I think that's going to be the real question, right?
We've seen some interesting choices already
from the teams today.
And Super, obviously, we know that a lot of these players
are renowned for various, you know,
abilities that they have on various classes.
But what do you think we're going to see
come out class and spec-wise?
It really depends on the mind games here, right?
Echo, if they believe in their mage lock,
that it can beat the Ellie Shaman,
as well as the right warrior,
then I think that mage lock is likely
what they will lock in blind.
But then if Gilbeam knows that it's mage warlock,
they might have some time.
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It's time to discover the creative vision behind World of Warcraft forever.
Well, hello BlizzCon.
We're gonna get a little cozy for this one, you know?
So welcome to the Found Photographs panel.
My name is Josh Greenfield, and I help
lead the content and narrative direction for WoW Forever.
And my name is Evan, and I'm the lead content designer
on the World of Warcraft Classic Team.
Today, we're going to dive into our team's approach
for developing the content, stories, and characters
within this world.
We'll kick things off by talking
about the setting of WoW Forever
and how it fits into the larger
world of Warcraft narrative. Simply put, WoW forever begins at the same time original WoW
begins. The game contains all of the original quest content from the original game and builds
on top of it. We will expand upon events, characters, and locations that exist or could exist in
the original WoW timeframe to further flesh out the original world. This is before
Kazik reopened the Dark Portal at the start of the burning crusade and before we traveled
to Northrend to stop Arthas and wrap the Lich King.
We are focused on this year one period of WoW's history and we intend to occupy this
space and expand upon it indefinitely.
So this panel is called Found Photographs.
What do we mean by that?
Well, this was a term that was coined by Chris Metzen in our earliest conversations
talking about adding new stories in our season of discovery game
mode of WoW Classic.
The simple idea behind found photographs
is that most of these new stories are things
that could have happened feasibly
during the vanilla era of Azeroth's history,
or again, year one of World of Warcraft.
For the classic team, it also refers
to how we approach the stories as well.
For many of those stories, we also
want to maintain original WoW's focus on what
we call local stories.
This is things along the lines of unraveling
the mysteries and motivations of the defiest brotherhood
and helping Tyrion Fordring rediscover his lost purpose.
This ground level view of localized stories
is what makes the world of Azeroth feel large and textured.
We are building these stories just
like we used to in the early days of World of Warcraft.
We will have big epic narratives,
but will tell these stories at the ground level.
And large linear campaigns that focus
on major Warcraft characters aren't really our focus.
So, what opportunities does found photographs approach
afford us?
The first big opportunity, and my favorite
as a long time wow Lord nerd,
is the ability to glow up existing,
but perhaps underutilized characters
and giving them an interesting story.
Take the former Paladin, Gregory the Truthbearer,
raised into service of the Scourge as a death knight.
In Warcraft III, he was a minor named Paladin NPC
that went by the honorific title of Sage Truthbearer
and was only featured in a single mission
in the Scourge campaign.
We continued his story in Season of Discovery
and fleshed him out as a character greatly,
bringing him full circle back to the light.
This is the kind of glow up we'd like to pursue
for other characters in WoW Forever as well.
We'll also be able to see characters who were active
but off-screen during vanilla.
What were they doing at this time?
Mole and Earth Fury of the Earthen Ring
is a great example here.
He was the leader of the Earthen Ring
but was largely absent from original WoW.
He will be present in WoW forever
and have a role to play in new stories.
We also get to visit places
that may have been hinted at or mentioned
but never got screen time.
Or maybe we go to places that we maybe
have seen in a version of WoW
but were presented in a much different way
than we planned to feature them in WoW Forever.
The magical city of Dalaran is a great example here.
Dalaran has always been seen as a flying city in the sky
in World of Warcraft,
but it wasn't always flying in the sky.
After being destroyed in Warcraft 3,
Dalaran was rebuilt,
but existed underneath its protective magical barrier,
nestled in the Arthurac Mountains for several years.
In WoW Forever, we'll get to see Dalaran
and all of its freshly rebuilt glory as part of the world.
And maybe we'll explore why the protective barrier around it
is no longer present.
This segues into talking about the continuity of wow forever.
The million gold question I'm sure a lot of people
have when it comes to wow forever
is how does it fit into the larger wow continuity
and timeline?
And the short answer is that wow forever
does not exist in the same continuity
as modern world of Warcraft.
Metz and likes to call this our little time bubble.
So why do we do this?
Well, the main impetus of this approach
is to ensure that we have the creative freedom
to do what we want to do with the game
without creating problematic situations that
require a direct response in the modern game.
This does not mean that we are going
to completely upend the foundational lore, especially
established events from the RTS games. We aren't going to suddenly say, in this
universe, Jaina was a dreadlord all along, or Arthas never became the Lich King.
Our approach to the new stories we add is to paint inside the lines of
established foundational lore as much as possible, but also to build on what
comes next in a way that makes sense first and foremost for a while forever.
And to continue on to that thread, let's take a look at our content goals
levels for this project.
When we're looking at the world and discussing what content to pursue, we tend to break down
the content into three categories.
The first is the anticipated.
These are the types of things that you may be aware of, the things that did not exist
in the original release or may have been inaccessible at the time.
The example shown here is Mount Hygel, which we've added as a new experience, as
a new zone for you to explore at higher levels.
More on that in a minute.
These are the company and the expected, the wish fulfillment
of seeing some of these places that you're aware of
in the original release, but we haven't been able to explore yet.
If there's a piece of well-known content you really want to see,
the chances are pretty good it's on a whiteboard back at the office,
or perhaps even in production right now.
The second type is something we call New But Familiar.
These are the areas with new concepts or stories
that are grounded in locations or with characters
that harken back to the original WoW and our early RTS games.
These types of content are the things
that may surprise players, but really feel
like they could have been here all along.
Our goal with this type of content
is to craft experiences that add depth to the world,
but fit seamlessly with taking inspiration
from the rich history of Warcraft.
The third type is something we call the unexpected.
These are new concepts and often involve
places or characters that exist within the Warcraft
narrative, but have not been explored previously.
This is also a category of content
we plan to introduce sparingly.
When looking at this category, we
want to be very mindful of what we're adding,
so not to upend the world, the stories, or the characters,
while still creating the experiences that players
want to enjoy.
One of our goals for this type of content
is to ensure that it makes sense within the greater
fabric of wow forever.
So to continue building on that a little bit more,
We've talked about where this idea of found photographs comes from,
the types of content that we discuss as a team,
and the inspirations in our approach to developing these experiences.
So let's take a deeper look at some of the new content
that you can play on while forever.
Whether you're starting your journey as an orc in the Valley of Trials
or a night elf in Shadow Glen,
there's something new just for you.
New NPCs might greet you in your journey,
they might offer you quests,
and others may offer you training and skills
and recipes and professions, and that's only the beginning.
Part of our team's journey throughout this development
was to incorporate flavorful additions
without, as Josh mentioned,
taking away from the classic experiences we all know and love.
Overall, we've added dozens of new quests, characters and stories
to each of our new starting zones,
along with additional content in every zone for your journey.
And of course, with new stories and new adventures,
comes new rewards.
Each of these moments along the way was handcrafted by an incredibly passionate team of individuals
with the same love of this world as each of you.
Let's talk a little bit about world travel.
Once you've leveled up beyond your starting zones, you'll find not only new content but
new means of world travel throughout the world.
This is an area our team spent a lot of time discussing.
We really wanted to maintain the exploration
and your journey as you navigate the world,
but we also wanted to offer you ways to explore
and change the way that you play.
So what do we do here?
As you can see on the screens,
some of these locations might seem familiar.
In total, we've added three new ship routes,
encouraging exploration,
questing in new areas throughout the world
and really leaning into the opportunities for social play,
which is an incredibly important pillar for this project.
The first image you see here is a connection
from Stormwind Harbor to Aberdeen.
Humans and night elves and eudwarves and gnomes
in the audience who are deep-run trans enthusiasts,
now you can rejoice.
You can now play with your friends
throughout starting zones together,
whether spending hours or perhaps avoiding
several corpse runs reaching one another.
The next we have is a three-part stop.
This new route begins from Menifil and then on to South Shore before arriving in Aberdeen.
The last here is located in Steam Weedle along the eastern shores of Teneris.
Now when Josh was talking about found photographs, we're often asking questions about the
world itself, the characters and locations.
These can be questions like, you know, what is the Steam Weedle cartel been up to?
Are they expanding their operations?
And where might this ship take us?
and perhaps the ship takes us to somewhere new.
So thanks to our friends in Seamweedle,
our new adventures await across the sea in a brand new zone.
And today, our team is very excited to welcome all of you to the River Glades.
The River Glades is an expansive new zone, roughly the size of Stranglethorne Vale, with
an expected level range in the mid-30s to mid-40s.
The zone itself was built in an area that existed in the classic world but was previously
inaccessible, and so we decided to fix that.
When you enter the zone, the first thing you'll notice
is the incredible level of detail
are artists and world builders and sound designers
put into creating a zone that fits seamlessly in the world.
For those of you who have flayed through Red Ridge Mountains,
a new fork to the burning steps awaits your new journey
into the River Glades.
While this zone has diverse biomes and creatures throughout,
it also blends seamlessly between each of the nearby connecting zones.
These null camps that you see on the screen here,
They're not just a presence, but a continuation of the world's story.
Now, when we talk about integrating content,
it's not just about carrying the stories or creatures over
from one zone to the next, but it also presents us with opportunities.
This is one of our new POIs,
where an ogre clan has established their presence,
and in questing, you'll meet them and other characters
and factions along the way.
In total, we've added nearly 200 new quests to the zone,
with stories for both Fortnite Alliance players.
You'll experience new cultures throughout the zone,
like the powderfused goblins who run this powderfused port,
and enemies like the Twilight's Hammer,
whose presence is felt throughout the zone,
in areas like Sunnyglaid, a callback to Warcraft's history.
And of course, launching your adventures
from areas like Rogmar for the Horde,
and Farhold Keep for the Alliance,
where you'll encounter one faction in particular
getting back to early Warcraft,
the brotherhood of the horse.
The River Glades is a blending of inspiration from classic historical events,
new beginnings and stories integrated into our living world.
And most importantly, to us, it's a love letter to all of you,
to our players, and to those who brought this world to life
more than 20 years ago.
But this journey doesn't stop here.
Beyond our new zones, our team spent a considerable amount of time
Going back to our roots,
examining zones like the wetlands,
among many other areas in the world.
Part of this journey was simply to explore the possibilities
without taking away from these areas and what already existed.
And for areas like wetlands,
we found opportunities to build on the characters and the stories
within without disrupting what exists.
For wetlands, we've added all new content,
including over 25 new quests
and providing new opportunities to discover new stories
and characters, and new leveling paths in your leveling journey.
Alongside areas like the wetlands,
we've also updated areas like Desilis,
where new Centaur faction quests await.
Also included new rewards.
And this led us to another discussion
about breathing life into the spaces that weren't used previously,
but they were waiting for us
for a moment that felt like it was the right time to create something new.
For new stories to be told,
and now, if you continue your Centaur questing journey
and make your way all the way down into the south of Desilis,
a new journey awaits.
Chandra Loss.
We've added Chandra Loss to the south of Desilis
through the Valley of Bones.
This new area offers dozens of new quests to explore,
the rich, rich, deep history of Elderful Loss,
its stories, and their people.
We felt it was important to bring this zone to life,
and the stories we wanted to tell
that made sense within the fabric of WoW Forever.
We felt it was important to include Mount Hygel
as one of our new zones,
and an opportunity to explore new stories
that make sense within this project.
Here, you'll explore the aftermath of the battle for Mount Hygel.
You'll meet new factions and build relationships along the way.
You'll work with new allies,
and you'll encounter all new enemies and areas throughout the zone.
And throughout this experience,
You'll start to see where this journey leads you.
So changing gears a bit, let's talk about one of our new race and class combinations,
the Forsaken Paladins.
So while Forsaken Paladins are far from our only new race and class combination, we did
want to take a few minutes to give them a bit of special attention.
This is an especially exciting part of the lore for us, and I'll admit, as a paladin
named myself, it's something I've been waiting to jump into for several years.
The story of the Forsaken Paladins rolls directly off of the new Warcraft 3 campaign,
Forsaken Kingdom.
This campaign deals with the initial struggles for the Forsaken to find their footing as
a people, while the threat of the Scourge and the Scarlet Crusade looms.
We don't want to spoil too much of that campaign or the story or the characters, but suffice
to say there's some direct connective tissue here that we will explore in WoW Forever.
When WoW Forever begins, we find the Forsaken Paladins at a time where they are deeply
mistrusted by the other Forsaken.
You have to imagine that if you were an ordinary Forsaken citizen, the only thing
you know of Paladins are organizations like the Starlet Crusade who have made it their
mission to torment and destroy all undead, including the Forsaken.
Making matters more complicated is the fact that some former paladins who are raised
into undeath don't take the transition well.
The act of channeling the light is almost maddeningly painful for the undead, which
is part of why it is so hard for some to adjust to life as a Forsaken paladin.
Some of these maladjusted souls will lash out, attempting to destroy or torment other
Forsaken until they themselves are put down.
So when we find our Forsaken Paladin heroes at the start of WoW Forever, they are facing
an uphill battle to get the rest of the Forsaken and, by extension, Sylvanas to fully accept
them.
One of the new locations we'll visit in WoW Forever is Bandarian Keep.
This keep is in the formerly unreachable northwestern area of the Tirisfil Glades called the Whispering
Wood.
Forsaken Paladins will be directed here around level 10 to start familiarizing themselves
with Bandarian Keep and will receive most of their class quests from this location.
And of course, no Paladin is a true Paladin without their trusty steed.
And the Paladins of Vandering Keep are no exception.
Also, Forsaken Paladins will also embark on their very own Epic Mount quest at level 60
as well.
Whereas the Alliance Paladins claim their Epic Charger in the name of Redemption, Paladins
the Forsaken write in the name of Retribution.
Now that we've had an awesome look
at some examples of that anticipated
in the new but familiar category of content,
let's take a look at something new and totally unexpected.
The Skyborne and their home in the clouds, Zephyr Psy.
I think it's best to start by talking
about the history of this new race.
The Skyborne are a race of high elves
that call themselves the Shindorai or the Hidden
People.
Their history starts in the ancient kingdom
of Eldrithalos, which we now know as Dire Maul
in the immediate aftermath of the War of the Ancients.
A group of concerned citizens united to oppose Prince
Thortheldron and his plans to harness
increasingly dangerous amounts of demonic energy
to sustain the highborn of Eldrithalos.
Having just seen the destruction caused
by the War of the Ancients, these rebels
rose up against the prince to try and prevent him
from completing his grand design
and throwing the kingdom into darkness forever.
The rebels' interference cost Thortheldron dearly
and prevented him from realizing his full plan,
but it was a period victory.
And ultimately, the rebellion ended in defeat.
Forced the flea calendar to escape
the terrible wrath of Thortheldron,
these wayward elves spent years on the open sea,
pushing ever westward into the unknown.
Eventually, the rebels ran aground
on an undiscovered land ruled by ancient primordial
elemental spirits.
With Tortheldron's fleet close on their heels,
the Desperadels were forced to strike a bargain
with a group of wind spirits who lifted an enormous landmass
of this island into the sky
in order to escape Azeroth entirely.
Using powerful elemental magic,
these wind spirits anchored this floating island
in the realm of air, Skywall.
Safe and hidden from the vengeance of their pursuers,
the Sky Lawrence spent thousands of years building a small but
vibrant civilization hidden in a corner of the Elemental Plane.
Now, the Elemental Plane has been a core part of
Warcraft history since the earliest Warcraft games.
We visited it in various realms and other versions of World of Warcraft as well.
For a while forever,
we were excited to go to Skywall and experience this place through
its slightly different lens.
The Shindorai as a people have gone through many changes over the past 10,000 years of existence in the Elemental Plane.
Much like their high-elven cousins who settled in Quel'Thalas, the Skyborn developed their own unique physical characteristics after being suffused with the magic of Skyward.
They are more life and agile than their Kaldorai ancestors, and the magic of the Elemental Plane has had other effects on their physical characteristics.
such as hair color, eye color, as well as skin tone.
When we find them at the start of wow forever,
the skyborn have been thrust abruptly into crisis.
After thousands of years living alongside their elemental benefactors,
they have s- that the wind spirits have suddenly vanished.
For the first time since arriving in Skywall,
the skyborn must now fend for themselves.
The absence of the wind spirits has also thrown the magic
that holds Zephyrus together in turmoil.
The ancient pylon structures that anchor Zephyrusisle
into the realm of sky wall have begun to falter
and fall into disrepair, causing portions of the island
to fall into ruin and darkness.
In this period of turmoil, several factions
have gained traction and are vying for control of Zephyrusi.
The wind shapers are the shamanistic spiritual leaders
of Zephyrusile, and they are one of the playable factions
of Skyborne.
And this is the faction that will ultimately side with the horn.
While all Skyborne on both factions can be warriors, druids, hunters, and robes, only
Wind Shaper Skyborne may be shaman.
This is to reflect the deep connection that Skyborne-Shaman have with the elements and
the now departed Wind Spirits.
By contrast, the High Order are the more pragmatic and forward-thinking faction,
and they see the departure of the Wind Spirits as an unprecedented opportunity for the
the Shindorai people to truly be independent.
And this is the faction that will ultimately
side with the Alliance.
The members of the High Order are the proud descendants
of the Highborn Magisters who joined the rebels
when they fled from Elgerthalos.
And thus the ability to play as a mage
is restricted to High Order Skyborn only.
Lastly, we have the Alaketh.
The Alaketh are a cult dedicated to the worship
of Alakir the Windborn.
The wind spirits rarely spoke of Alakir in their time
with the Skyborne, making the elemental lords
something of a taboo mystery.
Some among the Skyborne, however,
were able to use their shamanistic sky site
to peer across the elemental plane
and gain a glimpse of the terrifying might
of this elemental lord.
Tempted by power, these Shendorai broke with the rest
of society and dedicated themselves
to the service of Alakir.
Emboldened by the departure of the benevolent wind spirits,
the Alaketh have risen to prominence,
using the crisis to stoke fear and seize control
of a large portion of the island.
When we find them in Wau-Fer-Ever,
they are an ever-growing threat
to the already fragile peace of Zephyr-Sah.
So while we want to keep most stories
firmly grounded on Azeroth,
we felt it was important and exciting
to be able to explore Skywall a bit more.
And a starting zone is a great opportunity for that.
Zephyrus is not a major fixture in the world
and it's very self-contained.
You aren't going to go here every week to raid
or to farm materials.
This is an example of how we plan to sparingly
and respectfully create new and totally unexpected content
in Wow Forever.
So before we wrap up talking about Zephyrus,
I want to call attention to the screen.
So this is the final in-game map of Zephyrus Eye.
And here is the original sketch that Chris Metzen drew up
for Zephyrus after our first meeting talking
about the concept.
He was very stoked, and he sent this to me very excited.
As someone who remembers reading the original wow
or original Blizzard game manuals and seeing Chris's
sketches in these.
I can say it was definitely a surreal and geek out moment
when he sent this over to me.
And we thought it would be cool to share with you guys.
Thanks, bud.
So speaking of sharing, we thought
it would be fun for us to go on a little adventure together.
So we are going to go off script a little bit.
And we're going to dive into a conversation
between the two of us, and a few thousand of our closest friends here today, and we're
going to talk a little bit about the development of WoW Forever.
And so to kick that off, we're going to jump right in with that first question for Josh.
Tell me a little bit about how the learnings from Season of Discovery were applied to
this project.
Yeah.
So in Season of Discovery, we did a lot of work to try and tell stories in a very
classic way, in a way that felt very diegetic to the world.
And I mentioned earlier talking about blowing up existing characters, like Gregory the Truth
Bearer and Annas the Vindicated, and following their stories as they sort of, you know, there
was a backdrop of this Legion invasion and they came together to rediscover the light
together and stave off that adventure.
Well, telling those stories at the ground level, focusing on those two characters,
that is very quintessentially vanilla.
And it was something that we leaned into heavily.
We studied a lot of original wow.
We played through all of these classic questions
we knew and loved to create those types of stories.
And we want to bring that forward into wow forever.
A lot of the quests from Season of Discovery
are things that we, sorry, a lot of the quest lines
in wow forever are things that we
started in Season of Discovery and carried forward.
Speaking of kind of like the journey that we were talking about earlier,
like can you tell us about the development journey of something like the River Blades?
It's so grounded, it's so vanilla-wow.
Absolutely. Where do we begin?
I'll take you all on a little bit of a journey, a little bit of behind the scenes about our development process.
So when the zone was, we're first looking at zones,
what areas do we want to develop for this project?
And there was this piece of land on Eastern shores
of the Eastern kingdoms.
And it had never really been developed.
It did exist on the map.
If anybody wants to go look at that, you can find that.
And that started a discussion.
We have a lot of discussions on our team.
And that was, what could we do with this area?
And that led to discussions about how could we have
stories from certain zones tie into this, whether they're
connected or other areas of the world.
And that led us to one of our world builders coming
up with a couple ideas for the zone.
It started as a few different biomes.
We weren't sure if we wanted to have it be one single zone.
It's a very large zone.
It's about 30 chunks, which is roughly
the size of Stringelhorn.
And ultimately, we did land on making it a single zone.
And that led to a lot of other discussions about,
well, now that we have our zone idea,
what kinds of stories do we want to tell?
And that was a very long discussion,
a months, months long discussion.
And we whittled down about 10 or 12 ideas, I would say,
to a handful.
and those ultimately became some of the stories
that all of you will get to experience
in the River Glades today.
Yeah, we bounced a lot of those off of Chris Metz
and very early on, and he was really excited
to kind of revisit some of these places
that we'd seen in the earliest Warcraft games,
even for a single mission, like someplace like Sunny Blade.
Super cool to go back there.
You know, continually on the topic of the journey,
Evan, why don't you tell us about, you know,
how we went about choosing which level bands
to include new content in, because that was something
we really wanted to make sure that we rounded out the world.
Tell us about that.
No surprise to anybody here, and a lot more discussions.
What we do is we have discussions all day every day.
It's great, because it gets us thinking about,
why do these decisions matter?
How do they impact the player experience?
For something like Riverglades, a lot of it
really came down to that we wanted to provide players
not only a new zone to explore with new stories,
but a new level band so you don't
have to stay in the areas that you're already familiar with.
And that's part of the journey that we wanted everybody
to be able to take on their own.
Or if you want to explore the new areas, you can.
If you want to stay in the old areas,
you can do that as well.
And it was a blending.
And the blending of the stories from one zone to the next
also coincide with the level-bending for the spaces.
So if you're in Spangled Form, you want to level there.
Great.
If you want a little bit of a break,
you can now go experience an entirely new zone
with hundreds of new quest for both factions.
And we're not talking just only about Riverglades
as well, when we look at areas like,
Wetlands and spoilers.
There's some areas of Northern Kalimdor
that might have new questing as well.
All of this is intended to help give you more opportunities
to not only explore these stories,
but change the way that you level.
This has been somewhat of a solved thing for some time,
and we wanted to give you different opportunities
to play the way that you'd like to play.
Yeah, being able to review that journey
and seeing it through a different lens each time
is really exciting.
And it's been a joy to level a bunch
different characters on our internal tests and kind of take a different route.
You know, I think vanilla players, right?
Like we kind of have a route we like to go.
It's the comfy kind of kind of butt groove in your leveling process.
And we sort of we were able to kind of up in that a little bit.
It was a lot of fun.
So when we're talking about, you know, level banding and all the zones
that we want to introduce and all the new content that we're going to create,
tell us a little bit about what kinds of how we approach those big story moments.
Yeah, so I talked a little bit about telling stories
in a sort of vanilla way or a classic way.
I think one of the things that we all,
I'm gonna speak for everyone a little bit here, I'm sorry,
and say that I think the things most people agree
is awesome about original WoW is the mysteries it created.
I don't know about you guys,
but I remember in like 2006 watching a grainy video
of the first guy to go through Scarlet Monastery
with a corrupted hashbringer on his back, right?
That's stuck with me.
He talks to Fairbanks, he learns about Darian Mograine
and Outland, and I spent kind of years, I feel like,
wondering where that was gonna go
and how that was gonna play out.
I think the unfortunate thing about 2026, however,
is that a lot of those questions
in the intervening years have been answered.
And so what we're really trying to do
with something like Wow Forever
is create opportunities for new mysteries for everyone.
How did the brotherhood of the horse end up in river plains?
Like, what was their motivation?
How did the Boulder Rock ogre clan?
How did they end up, you know,
they were a part of the twilight's hammer,
a little bit of a spoiler, sorry.
And how did they end up on their own?
And what will that mean?
And their interactions with the Lord, I don't know.
And so, creating those new mysteries is really important to us.
So when we're talking about all this stuff, and we're in the office, and we're talking
about ideas, and we're planning for current and release and future content, it provides
us a lot of opportunities.
So the last question I wanted to ask today with Josh, no pressure, what does the future
hold for a while forever?
Oh, boy.
So, you know, I think if you're playing the beta next Thursday and you're feeling
a little adventurous. Maybe you might want to try and do a little bit of a corpse run
to the entrance of a place called Grimbatal in eastern wetlands. If you end up there,
you'll notice a, maybe potentially notice anyway, a much larger red dragon presence
outside of the mountain. I'm not sure why. I don't know what that's about. I don't know.
Anyone have any opinions about that?
I don't know.
All right.
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
And you know, I think you hinted at this a little bit, Evan,
but talking about some zones that we've also
added more things to, such as a Shara.
We haven't talked about it a lot.
We gave a Shara quite the glow up, too.
There's a lot of new quests there.
I will say, though, there's perhaps a crater-sized hole
in the content of that zone.
And I'm wondering if maybe at some point,
we might feel bad.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Thank you.
You know, that about wraps up the time we have for today.
We hope that all of you enjoyed this discussion.
And we can't wait to invite all of you
to come play this journey with us throughout Azeroth
on behalf of myself and Josh, the classic team,
and the World of Warcraft team.
Thank you all very much.
Enjoy the rest of your BlizzCon.
I can't wait to see you in Azure Wall. Thanks.
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You can just sense it on a period domain, excuse me.
I mean, it's definitely something that's going to be a difficulty for them.
But they've started to find their stride. However, there we go.
We see it locked in here. Ziko, is this spelling doom for them?
Or are they just deciding this is it? We're going to go with this.
This is the ramifications of losing the previous two games.
When you're facing, like Chan said, a team that has triple STR comps
with the best players on each team,
triple S tier comps with the best players on each role.
You're gonna have to pick your poison here.
You lost the blind pick, so you can't just ping pong back and forth
and continue to get at least on your wins, you know, good matchups.
You can't do that because you lost the first two.
You have to pick.
Do I play a red warrior into mage lock on this map?
Or do I pick red, the cupid clean here
into potentially a rogue mage on this map?
Both options, pretty terrible,
and it's actually not even gonna be the rogue mage.
It is going to be the rogue lock here.
Now, this is something that Chan has
a lot of experience with as well.
Yeah, Chan, tell us more.
I love to see Mercy play.
Like I said earlier,
I think he's the best warlock in the world.
We haven't gotten to see him play too much.
Of course, he did play earlier today,
but since he's joined Echo,
he really hasn't been playing too many games.
It's always been the rogue mage or some other comp.
But now we finally get to see him
on his main class, on the warlock.
I've seen him play this in war games, in practice.
I am not happy for Zplay right now,
or Mara or Lanta. These guys are going to struggle because KaleSport hits so hard now with the disruption buffs.
And of course with Wazz supporting him, setting him up, Wazz, you know, he understands exactly what he's casting needs.
He always supports them to cast.
Most of them are going to get double KaleSport off the entire game and even Lanta, he can die on the prison vote because he has to play close range.
It's going to be a very scary game for Guildbean, but if they do win this game, I can, I feel like they can really take this series.
I'm so sorry, could you say that a little bit louder?
if still I really feel like they can take this.
Oh, that would be great for my predictions.
Thanks, Chana.
I would love that.
Since everybody else here went echo, yeah.
I think that would be fantastic.
So Guilping needs to lock this one in not just for my predictions,
but for everybody else is supporting them out there.
But it is going to be challenging, right?
This is a big open map, and they could be sitting ducks.
Supa, how do you play around a map like this with the comp
that they're running?
I mean, it's going to be very challenging.
CPI will be tested in this.
If you overextend from the wrong spot,
It's feared or cycloned in a corner
and his teammates get isolated.
It will be game over.
So for me, it's all eyes on Zephyr in his position.
It's cool down management.
How can he enable and protect his hunter
at those critical moments in time?
This is a matchup I didn't expect to see.
I didn't expect to see Mauro on the hunter.
And we're seeing the rogue in the warlock.
I thought Rogue Mage was likely going to be running
most of the show.
But in this series, we're seeing quite an expansive roster
from both sides.
It's a huge map and you can see those pillars
are very tiny.
There's not a lot of points
line of sight against the chaos bolts there's almost nowhere to hide and it
seems like this is gonna be probably their greatest challenge. Blizzow kept
them alive and now he needs his team to deliver the win on the most difficult map.
I mean it's gonna be a huge challenge especially with all those open spaces you
were just outlining. Echo have the advantage here they have two points
they only need one more to move on and have that championship crown in their
sights but Guild Bean if they want to actually make the dream that they've
They have to get another point on the board Ziko.
Match point here, Ekko looking hungry and they are tagging in the Waz mercy combo here.
Giving us a little bit of a treat in the semifinals.
If Ekko wins this match, it will be the first team to advance to the grand final
where they will await their opponent.
And let's see what Gilbien can do to stop it here.
I mean Maro on the Hunter sneaking around right now.
The opener, Mercy is going to be the target here for Yield Bean and a decent opener so far, getting good pressure, but look at that immediate fear coming out onto Nultar.
D5 is going to be the target of choice here as well, giving a lot of pressure.
Big swap of the motto, the inferno to call in.
Morrow already having to use survival of the fittest there, already dropping quite low and Nultar already burning through some of his own pullbacks.
Okay, so Mercy is running the fly over here.
Very intelligent in this matchup. There's a lot of magic crowd control that you'll be able to remove from JT
So they're gonna have to cover that with things like Hunter's mark to try and prevent its dispel
And if they can win that 50-50 on the dispel they'll get pressure. If they lose it
It will be very challenging for them and every time they lose that gamble
They will fall further behind but then you catch walls around the corner here and force JT to use iron bark
They sleepwalk and there's that imp to spell it removes the sleepwalk from JT and that imp is gonna be MVP
I think this matchup Zpie trying to get to a target, but you get four texts back on the rescue the targeting the warlock
They're trying to swap on heal over time effects again in this matchup. They switch back to laws. They catch him to get his cloak
explosive damage from Maro and Zpie however was does respond appropriately
Yeah, but why is now with no trinket making a very very interesting situation here for Gilbeam
They can connect like that again
the problem is like you mentioned that imp is going to be standing in their way here for mercy and
And Nontar also had to use his trinket, so openings here potentially onto Morrow or Zipai as well.
They get the Damodized Trap, which cannot be dispelled by the imp, so a little bit of extra protection there at least against that.
But still, where is the pressure? Where's the damage going? Both healers able to deal with it so far.
And it's going to be Zipai here on the back foot, Waz, who's getting up against the ropes, getting his dots taking.
Morrow's going to be the target of choice, but Nontar able to spam here.
He had a sleep on onto Waz, but fortunately broke a little early look like they wanted to sleepwalk him behind that pillar and now look at mercy
He's already on the opposite side of the galaxy here. He's ready to load up those care balls
I mean echo they trust that they'll win in Anthony. They're they're playing very hesitant
They're not getting on top of them. They're providing their time and waiting for their moment just strike
They're playing very passively. I wonder if that will come back at them or not because usually echo they're aggressive in the interview
They said they had to play aggressive and push in.
But it's really only waz.
We can see waz on top of the entire enemy team,
but the rest of them, they're off the screen.
They're so far away from the engagement.
In Echo, they're hesitating.
They're pulling away.
They're just trying to drink.
They're trying to reset,
but they do get counter-engaged on now.
It's done into freezing trap.
Mercy in the middle of the map.
He's going to port back to the killer.
As long as the target does get shut down for a moment.
Garote's being applied.
Waz is rampaging his damage.
Obviously, Glock and JT, where is the dispel?
Looks like it's not going to hit this time on JT.
Hammers are down.
No trinket.
They find enough damage with the true shot, really needed pressure there, they don't find anything and now they swap on Long-Tar.
Get his emerald communion, he's probably honestly happy to use that he's gonna regenerate mana but they immediately switch targets.
They've got two targets low, it's Matt's point for kill beam, they still face elimination and Mercy catches him in a coil, blasting him down from midfield.
And look at Long-Tar's team, just absolutely in shambles right now.
What happened to Long-Tar? He's still dying.
Finally the deep breath is gonna induce him from control and get him out of that CC chain.
That was an incredible push by Echo and now all of a sudden though Mercy could be the next target
He's so far away. He's on the other side of the map. Oh my god, Mercito with the fast trinket
He sent the whole spellbook there, used his underneath resolve as well
Small coming out defensively on tomorrow as he is taking a huge chunk of damage
Both teams super explosive at this point in time but I am worried for JT, I am worried for Mercy
He'll be had a real shot here at taking out the warlock if they can execute it perfectly
There's a scatter shot. There's a trap of little merciless
He is running for his life with those points as well building a lot of distance JT gates away from the crowd
But Percy has infernal he called that down on tomorrow
They stun Z5 Z5 needs to bubble this time around if he's at the target the roads are hitting multiple targets
Implifying their damage by a heavy amount and the entire team is starting to rock hammer of justice on the warlock
Just trying to get around that imp dispelled
But it's not really gonna get too much value that you get the finding shot now. They get the intense done
Where's the trap that you get the diamond ice and they target no Maro is the one still just dying at the moment unable to get to mercy
Mercy has adapted his strategy knowing that he's vulnerable and making himself just not a target whatsoever was pushing forward realizing
He's got his medallion. He's got a Bayesian so was is throwing himself at the enemy team and baiting them saying it's done
Me trying to attack me
You'll make an even trade and deny all of their damage
They have to go on the warlock in this position,
but they're just getting intercepted.
They can't move off the pillar.
They're locked down, chanceful to flying in.
It's match point.
They can yield beam, find the line to push through
and achieve victory.
But for Scattershot, pushing in on Mercy.
They're taking their time, though, to do it.
Zpie is so low, Longtie is so low.
Longtie has been struggling this entire match.
I mean, look at the damage meter.
They're almost getting doubled.
Yeah, it's brood on four.
The Cupid can need to try to connect back
onto their target.
Mercy just bang heads up here making sure that he's always far away and I also think they should still walk to wise
Just to make him, you know leave the pillar
But smoke bomb coming out all tomorrow
Why K.O. Smoke is going to connect
Long-Tar out of practice
We'll go for the deep breath to try to stabilize there
Buying himself some time for more to get out of that smoke
Beautiful play there from Long-Tar
But Pudan's not looking good
80 seconds on the Ember of Communion
Morrow have to use the Churchill here
His biggest defensive Pudan out of the way
Z5
He has that bubble, but long time gets done there by the infernal big
down coming out the care folks are raining in Mercedes playing aggressive now
that JT has his trinket back for she also has his trinket and of course that
underneath resolved only 40 seconds away from mercy basically completely
recovered from that and lumber earlier on and now ankle in the driver's seat
they need to get an emerald communion off successfully but if you get
cycloned on it it's GG they cyclone them you can't connect the emerald
communion. This entire team percent of this point comes out of the cyclone
there in the covers. They've managed to actually pause the game for a moment.
They get it done. It's dispelled by the Ember. The post-coach of shadows at least,
but Laws' evasion is only a minute away. Another kidney shot.
One turns down into the skies, but they're targeting him. They find Lontar.
Is he ready for the attacks? It's deep in depth, and he's just going to use
Ember of communion while he's on cyclone domination return.
So he can't be punished. He regenerates the team. He gets some mana,
but here comes another vanish. Kingsbane is available. Coils are available.
and Mercy could do a lot of damage at any moment.
Who is going to be the target?
It was, falling behind the trolley,
manages to recover huge heals from JT.
Maybe they swap JT as well, maybe they just risk it.
They risk it all, facing elimination.
At this point in time, they force the Barskin on the swap.
They're keeping JT on his toes,
and that's exactly what you need.
If you're going to be able to topple,
well, look at that pressure, look at the momentum.
Mercy is just getting them in a stranglehold at this point.
That was an instant dispel of the JT there on the hodge.
Beautiful work there from Mercy.
And now long turn, looks like he's going to be the target with Marlowe.
He rescues him in, into a howl of terror.
This could be very, very dicey here.
Mercy, so quick to respond there again, building that distance,
doing such great work on the warlock.
Nice gateway here for JT, realizing that he is a target
that could easily chop here.
And now Waz is well doing that behind.
He did show up coming out, but Waz trying to stay alive in that situation.
Didn't have to use any cooldown to de-first come in.
It's a little bit late, but they do force out the trinket.
And Waz could be swapped through as well.
But everyone at Gilbeen is dying so there's no man on left.
Moral's got nothing and they will fall.
Echo will advance to the grand finals.
Echo have done it.
They have taken this to three points,
which means they have secured the first spot
in our grand finals.
Now, Gilbeen really did look like there was a shot at this.
They played incredibly well and they definitely
came prepared to try to deal with what Echo put up
for them, but it's Echo.
How do you face them when they are legends
and constantly outplay their competition?
I mean, super brilliant from both of the teams,
but I think Echo, it's just amazing to see how well
that they have a handle on this.
The adaptations, I mean, I don't think they anticipated
these types of compositions throughout the entire season.
We have never seen a hunter come out from Gilbeam.
We've hardly seen the warrior either.
Echo just absolutely flawless performance,
great adaptability from all four players in this series.
They didn't get thrown off by that first game with the Frostmage and the pressure that was thrown to them.
They had strategies, they had multiple compositions, an excellent series, nonetheless, and tragically that will be the end of the run.
For Gilbeen, their rematch will fail this time around and Echo continue to remain dominant.
Well, you know, it just gives you more fuel for the next time though.
You know that they wanted this to be the BlizzCon that they can come and leave their mark in the Hall of Championship fame.
But of course, Echo, they outplayed the competition and it is well deserved, everybody.
We love hearing you raise your voices for the teams and very soon we'll be hearing from the teams themselves.
But Ziko, do you have any thoughts here as we look back on the series?
Honestly, I think Gil Bean fought valiantly and they had a good plan.
It just didn't go according to their plan.
They predicted the blind pick, they wanted this stupid cliff to work and win against the main block.
And if they had, it could be in a completely different series,
But unfortunately it took too long for them to come online in this series.
That last Warrior Game was very good, but it was a little too late.
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely seems like there were moments, right,
where they really were showing that they could go for it.
They could overtake Echo.
But Chan, it seemed like, like you said, it was a little shaky throughout.
Yeah, I mean, that is also the nature, right?
Obviously, the comps that Echo has, like I said earlier,
they've got the three STA comps available.
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It's good to see you, my friends.
Azeroth has shown us wonders beyond imagining and dangers to match.
But whatever comes next, remember, you are not alone.
BlizzCon! Yeah! What's good? Holy crap! This weekend, am I right? I'm gonna play
WoW forever and ever and ever and ever. My name is Andrew Russell and I have the
The unbelievable honor of voicing Caligos in World of Warcraft.
And you are our members of my family.
You know what I mean?
See what I did there?
Of course you did.
I'm also a lifelong Blizzard fan.
I've played the game for years, a long time, World of Warcraft player, and I'm someone
who's frankly spent way too much time playing the game.
be honest here quite a lot. So getting to stand up here with all of you especially getting
to talk about the people behind these characters is incredibly special for me. And we've all
quesed with them. We fought alongside them. Occasionally we've yelled at them. Let's
be honest here. But behind each of these voices is an actor, a storyteller, and a
whole slew of people, a team working together to shape these characters at the moments
that stick with us all along after we log out.
You know what I'm saying?
So BlizzCon, let's talk about the voices of worlds of Warcraft.
Ha ha ha ha.
Now, first up, known for her remarkable range
and transformative performances across all
of the gaming landscape and entertainment's biggest
franchise here at BlizzCon, you probably know her best
as Illyria Windrunner.
Please welcome, Mera Juno!
Now next up, you're going to love this.
We have question with this person, this next person we started in the war within.
But throughout midnight, she became our link with the heronair.
Please welcome the voice of Rowena, Kaia Freitz!
Now we've got one more guest for you.
You might know who she is. You may or may not.
And you might not know where she is, because she's hidden amongst you right now.
You can all check under your seats. You might find her. She's not here. I'm just kidding.
It's not like that kind of show.
You might recognize this voice as somebody from midnight, somebody that's going to be
coming in the midnight eclipse.
Behold, Salotath might watch you.
Oh, so this is where you've all been hiding.
I have watched you.
I have whispered to you, I am not showing my feet, you pervert.
I have led you places you never should have gone, you naughty, naughty boy.
And yet, you came here.
Oh, how predictable.
Hello, BlizzCon.
I am Zalatath, and I have been waiting a very long time to meet you.
Okay, okay.
I'm Claudia Christian, and please, all of you, stop summoning the void.
Wow.
Not even going to step on that entrance.
Next up, we have one final guest, a very lovely, exciting guest to have.
A member of the Blizzard team over 20 years.
This person has helped bring these characters and these stories to life.
We're very lucky to have with us
principal designer story development, Terran Gregory.
You know this feels right, you know, I'm just going to rearrange a little bit, I'm just
going to move this over here, and in this get that.
I'm just so happy that you are all here.
I'm such a geek, I'm freaking out here, we have a talking dagger, can you believe
it?
Fadia, thank you for stepping out.
It was so amazing to see Zalatath be swooned by the audience.
Can you talk a little bit about Zalatath?
Zalatath is one of those amazing characters
that it's so scary without even,
there's no yelling, there's no screaming.
You have a calm presence about you.
It's a voice of Zalatath.
Can you talk a little bit about creating this scary character?
Well, in the beginning, I didn't find her really scary at all.
I mean, she was manipulative.
And as the blade, I think I was playing more of a castling
turner in Jessica Rabbit kind of thing, where it was that
whispering.
She was like really sexy.
And it was a different vibe.
I had no idea that when I started that, that it would
turn into this really destructive character.
I mean, she's got anger issues, don't you think?
I mean, really, she needs just a little bit of therapy.
But yeah, it was interesting to see the transition
from somebody who's just a manipulative whisperer
to somebody who's intent on destroying everything
pretty much, especially you.
Ah.
Yeah.
Ha, ha, ha.
What a dynamic these two.
I mean, speaking of that, Mara,
I gotta say I've been admiring your performance
as Alaria since 2016 early, oh my god, right?
I would be interested as the voice,
it's fun to see you kind of battle between these lines
where you're talking to people,
but you also have a lot of internal speech.
Can you talk a little bit about like,
what's that like in the booth?
You know, I always say it's good
to be a little bit schizophrenic.
It's always a really, I always love getting to get into the booth with Alaria because
you know there's always going to be some sort of deep internal struggle.
So I kind of feel like it's a little bit of therapy.
So it's a lot of fun.
You know I really love getting to address you know whenever she has to face the darkness
and how she's challenged with that and the strength that she always has to summon
within.
walk out of the blue feeling a little bit more empowered. So
it's it's pretty nice.
That's amazing. Yeah, I think we all can agree we see that in
the performance, right? It's so good. Now, how has your
approach changed throughout the years while she's become more
central to the story of World of Warcraft?
Absolutely. You know, when I first started portraying her,
it's been actually, I believe it's been about 10 years now
we go since legion, you know, we kind of went in with more
stoicism and you know, she was going through a lot, obviously
taking on the void energy. But as years have developed, you
know, we started to kind of bring more personality to
Illyria to show just just more, more dimension, because she
is a living breathing character, you know, she's lived a
long time. So we're trying to bring a lot more, more
personality now and a lot more, a little bit more fun sometimes.
We've got to have some fun.
It's so good.
And I am in love with Alaria, but I've also kind of loved new stuff in
World of Warcraft, and I've really enjoyed going through midnight and
Urwena.
I mean, talk about some emotional depths right there, right?
Now, Kaya, you're pretty new to this World of Warcraft, which is so
cool and so amazing and can you talk a little bit about your connection with
Rwena and what really excited of you about seeing the art for the first time
and your character for the first time and that moment you went to the booth and
realized what this is. I love Rwena. She is probably the character I play that's
the most different from me. Her voice is a lot deeper and a lot more
commanding and I love being able to kind of get to play in that world and
just find her nurturing side and her serious side and just like really make
her come alive. I think when I first saw the art I was just like so blown away
especially when the first trailer dropped of how cool she looks and like her
hair and the teeth and the paint and everything is just like so cool to like
see it come alive and I think finding her voice was a little trial and error
figuring out like where I want her to sit and like how deep she gets down so
yeah it's just so cool to be like I feel like I get to know her a little bit
more every session I get to have with her. That's awesome and getting to know our
characters more and more it's it's it's so fun for us to dive in just like you
said it's it's something that we are gifted the opportunity with these
amazing story developers and writers and the teams like Taryn who can
and developed these stories over the past 20 years.
Come on, man, that's amazing.
Can you talk a little bit about some of the roles
that you've had over your 20 years at Blizzard?
Oh, well, yeah, of course.
About 21 years ago at the first BlizzCon, 2005,
I was a fan and my friend and I submitted our short film
to the movie contest and they won.
And they played it at community night,
just like we had something last night
and it just felt very reminiscent.
But from that, they hired me to initially do trailers
for Vanilla Warcraft, and then that became
in-game cinematics after the Black Temple trailer
and the Wrathgate and Wrath of the Lich King,
if anyone remembers the Wrathgate.
Wow.
Oh.
Oh.
There goes another big knife.
I don't know, it evolved from there
into directing cinematics, writing cinematics,
and now I do a lot of story development with the team.
How has storytelling over the years changed?
I mean, speaking of Rathgate, I mean, that,
can you talk a little bit about working with the voice talent
back then and how it's changed to the point where we're at now?
Well, funny enough, Rathgate was the first time
I'd really worked with professional voice talent,
having moved down here to the Los Angeles area.
And I remember going up to a studio in LA,
recording some of the lines for the Rathgate.
And one of the most iconic was, of course, Pew Thress.
And in that session, I'd had a vision of the line in my head,
which, you know, directors really shouldn't do that.
Give the actors the latitude to play.
But I always imagine, you know, death to the scourge
and death to the living was going to be this,
this like deep sinister thing.
But it was the actor who said,
hey, can I just try something?
And I said, absolutely.
Just go for it.
He's like, death to the scourge and death to the living.
And I ended like, blew my headphones off.
And I'm like, oh my God.
And that's the exact take we ended up putting in the movie.
And it was incredible, yeah, so just loving the actors do their things, seeing what inspiration
they have, what they bring to performance, like especially working in cinematics as long
as I have, like the actors are the load-bearing pillars that define what like the heart and
soul of the human experience that we're trying to convey.
And it's one of those things that we never take for granted as actors, I think.
You giving us the words and us going in and getting to play and be our dirty selves and
we get to reap the benefits is so great and you're providing us the tools like I said.
And I want to come back to you, Claudia, because speaking of getting these tools and these gifts
with the script, how do you manage always being like 10 steps ahead of everybody else
in the game?
Yeah.
I'm actually not.
If it wasn't for the writers and directors and the visuals, I would be lost because I
mean, I think I started this at least 14 years ago or something.
It was also over.
2012?
2016.
Oh, 2016?
Yeah.
Was that my first?
Yeah.
10 years.
Oh, we're the same amount.
20?
Wow.
No, it's interesting because Zalata, I think, I like to play her as somebody who's
has intention, but is also sort of making it up as she goes along because nobody,
Nobody can predict what's going to happen, but if you don't believe you're going to win,
then you'll have less of a chance of winning.
So it's a fine line between arrogance and confidence and without having something underlying it,
which is hard to believe, a little bit of fear, a little bit of fear of losing, because
she's lost everything before.
So it's just that little bit of fear underneath is necessary, otherwise you're just going
Mustache twirling, you know, which is fun, right?
It's fun, but it's not as fun as having a back story in your head.
It really comes through. I mean, you can see that.
Like, in that eclipse trailer, I mean, come on, that thing was crazy.
Now, I'm going to take a note from Xalatath here and kind of make it up as I go along,
because I'm also kind of a geek, and I want to see maybe if you guys would be willing to,
I don't know, do some like, seeing work as your characters.
Yeah.
Maybe?
Yeah.
Why not?
Great.
Just so happens, I have some music stands here with the scripts on them.
Wow.
I wasn't prepared for this at all.
You know what?
Let's have Mira.
All right.
Why don't you come up first?
I'll read with you.
It's not a big deal.
This is a fun scene.
We're not going to necessarily tell you exactly what it is,
but you will recognize it from within the game.
Can I borrow that?
Here we go.
All right.
All right.
This is going to be wonderful.
Are you ready?
I am ready.
Between you and me.
We're going to set the scene.
This is basically what it's like, by the way.
When we go into our voiceover booths,
we're with a director who's either in the studio,
a producer who's either in the studio, or on a call.
We kind of get our scripts, we come in, you know, we have our coffee or our Diet Coke or whatever.
And then we come into the booth and then they say,
Go.
What have you done?
The shadow, it saved us.
I would have rather died than see you fall to evil.
Turalyon didn't understand, but I could not fault him.
If I had known that embracing the shadow would push him away,
would I have sought another path?
No.
All of the things I did, I did for a reason.
War is sacrifice.
And I have sacrificed everything to protect those I love,
to keep them safe.
And if it takes sacrificing myself to protect our world,
I will not hesitate.
I am a soldier of Azeroth.
Holy crap!
Yay!
Right?
Woo!
Thank you.
Woo!
I have skin tingles.
I'm so happy.
OK, who's next?
What are we going to do next?
How about we get some...
I think we all want to hear some Zalatath, am I right?
Yes, um, if you could just give us a little excerpt, we will all listen.
They say that I am the harbinger of the void, that I am the blade of the black empire that
was. There have been many tales told about me, but I'll tell you the truth. No one living
has heard. Once, long ago, I was mortal like you. I lost my world just like you. I drowned
in hatred and vengeance, just like you.
But the one thing I've learned over in eternity
is that survival is all that matters.
Wow!
That's what I'm talking about!
Pinch me, am I right?
Crazy. Amazing.
Kaya?
I would love to hear you sing with me.
Now, this is kind of a fun one because we're going to talk a little bit more about
what it really is like to look at these things.
There's something called stage direction on here.
And Taryn, if you would, could you talk a little bit about this scene?
Oh yeah.
What we're going to be doing here?
So this is going to be a little scene from the war within.
One of the early cinematics that we met or or when and when she is confronted by her non
Because the rest of the hair and ear are going back and they want her to come with them
So this is a little scene that I wrote back then and you wrote this with the team
Cool, but it's just a wonderful scene. So I'll read the stage direction
If everyone's ready
Okay, I think we're ready
Wow X 11 dot zero dot seven or when is goodbye
Hanan stands alone on the hill, or Wenna, in her bat form, flies in, lands, and shifts into her humanoid form.
She looks around, concerned, before addressing Hanan.
Hanan, where are the others?
This was a mistake, Her Wena.
Coming here, revealing ourselves to the mortals, getting caught in their affairs, you've put us all in grave peril.
Our goddess is crying out for aid.
How can we not answer?
We followed you in your visions this far.
But we cannot break the Heronist traditions any longer.
It is those very traditions that put our home at risk.
You've seen the growing threats, Hanan.
We cannot give up now.
The others and I are returning to the cradle
to seek forgiveness.
You owe it to them to face the elders by their side.
Tell the elders that the fault is mine and mine alone.
I will face them in time.
But for now, my path is here.
Then you will walk it alone.
Hanan steps up so the two are nearly face to face.
I don't, I don't understand your conviction, Elena.
But I do admire it.
Hanan bows his head before her, or when a reciprocates the gesture, their foreheads touch him.
May the ancient roots of our people ever thrive beneath your steps.
Goodbye, Hanan.
I felt like I was like Kallagos eating eel gut soup in his little hut, just being like, wow, this is cool.
Now, we have one final scene and this one is really cool because this is not a scene that
has been actually these characters in the game.
And to set this up, it's just a little fun thing.
I'm going to have Taryn talk a little bit about what this scene is, because it's fun.
So this is going to be really fun.
We thought we'd do some scenes that you're all familiar with with these characters,
But we're going to mix it up and do a scene that these characters are not in, but is probably
one of the most iconic Warcraft, if not Blizzard scenes, ever rendered.
But we're going to mix up the roles and we're going to have our villains play our heroes,
and our heroes play our villains.
So with that, please, Myra.
Glad you could make it here, sir.
Get it?
Watch your tone with me, boy.
You may still be the prince, but I am your superior as a paladin.
As if I could forget.
Listen, Uther.
There's something about the plague you should know.
The denizens of Stratholme can be seen, clearly sick and infected from the tainted grain.
Oh no, we're too late.
These people have all been infected.
They may look fine now, but it's just a matter of time before they're turned
into the undead.
This entire city must be purged.
What?
How can you even consider that?
There's got to be some other way.
Damn it, Uther.
As your future king, I order you to purge this city.
You are not my king yet, boy.
Nor would I obey that command, even if you were.
Then I must consider this an act of treason.
Treason?
Have you lost your mind, Arthas?
Have I?
Lord Uther, by my right of succession and the sovereignty of my crown, I hereby relieve
you of your command and suspend your paladins from service.
Arthas, you can't just...
It's done.
Those of you who have the will to save this land, follow me.
The rest of you, get out of my sight.
You've just crossed a terrible threshold, Arthas.
Jaina?
I'm sorry, Arthas.
I can't watch you do this.
Ha ha!
That's what I'm talking about!
It's good to be bad, isn't it?
Unreal.
Thank you for doing that.
It's good to be good.
I've got to say, on behalf of everybody here,
I can't tell you how thankful we are to be a part of this world.
We may be voices in World of Warcraft,
but you guys are all the voices of World of Warcraft.
We can't do this without you.
You guys make the memes, you make the content,
you share the streams, you stay up late and roll another DPS,
and instead of actually staying as a healer,
because you're not a DPS main,
and you never will be, so stick to healing, Andrew!
Sorry.
Seriously, you guys always come back, and we thank you all so much.
Enjoy the rest of your BlizzCon.
We'll see you guys later.
Thank you!
Fresh me!
Hi, I'm Darren.
I'm the voice of the butcher in Diablo IV.
I've voiced Diablo and Diablo Immortal in a whole bunch of stuff.
We're now going to start a conversation.
Welcome, travelers.
I voice a lot of heroes.
I voice a lot of monsters.
But tonight, we gather around this fireplace
to meet some of the voices behind Diablo's heroes,
wanderers, and nightmares.
Now, for many Diablo fans, there
is one voice that instantly feels like home.
Please welcome my new best friend in the entire world,
Michael Goff, the voice of Deckard King.
Hello, my friends.
And stay a while and listen.
Please welcome the voice of Cheerio, Jonathan Adams.
A new day breaks for both angels and men.
The mankind's greatest champion, the Nephilim, rose to confront the darkness that we in
Now pride would not face.
My brethren, I will take my place among you once again.
But this time, as a mortal, forevermore,
we shall stand together, angels and men,
in the light of the glorious new dawn.
Welcome to the stage, my other best friend in the whole world, the voice of Narell
Judy Alice Lee!
And the weak were made strong.
The lands would feast on their shepherds.
And finally, please welcome to the stage
My best friend in the whole world.
The voice of the female decremancer, Al Moulin!
APPLAUSE
Your bones betray you, and they shall soon serve me.
Okay, confession time. I am a huge Diablo fan. I have played, you know, one, two, and
three over and over again. When I was on tour with the show, or when I was backstage Broadway
between shows, I would go to that dark, dark world. It felt like home. So to have Jonathan
and Michael here whose voices were in my head, part of my consciousness before I even dreamed
of being an actor for Blizzard to have them part of my journey here.
And then also to have Judy and Elle, who we all kind of came up together at the same time,
to be on stage with these four fabulous performers.
It really, it means the world to me.
Now, what I want to start with, Michael, you were there in the beginning.
What was that journey like and has it changed to the way we record now?
Yes, that was the first answer.
Well, in the beginning, it, when I was first asked to just sort of offhandedly read a
few lines of this some new character that and it wasn't even blizzard at the time
necessarily because I was working on these like educational software things
like I think reading blaster math blaster stuff like that which were being
produced under the same big umbrella as Blizzard eventually evolved from and they
just said one day here's we just have a character an idea for a character could
you read a few lines and I thought maybe it was another character for these you
know whatever was gonna be next with learning stuff so and they they sort of
suggested that maybe he sounds like an older Sean Connery or something he's
kind of an old wizardy character so that's where that originated from and I
just started you know thinking okay what would an older Sean Connery sound like
you know please stay a while you know and then it evolved and they asked to
record some more lines of that, eventually.
And that turned into Diablo I.
And as I know, we talked about a little bit earlier
with some interviews, Deckard Cain
was sort of a little more of a functional entity originally.
But then he definitely evolved and grew multidimensional
and you know, had a real emotional life to him,
which was just, you know, as an actor, that's,
thank you, thank you, acting gods,
you know, things that you can sink your teeth into
and chew on and really invest in.
Well, one thing that a lot of you share
is a musical talent.
You play bagpipe, piano, theremin,
which there are many I don't even think is a real instrument air what is it is
it is real
uh... well a good sanctuary uh...
that's right it is
it exists in the
ether
but it's real well yes thank you for
mentioning that the
the there are many is actually an instrument that you play without
touching it
and uh...
uh...
i just somehow yes i've been
kind of uh... uh... into music and
a musician ever since I was old enough to be aware. My mom was a musician, pipe
organist, piano, teacher, and all kinds of things, so I even though I was I didn't
really like practicing because I was kind of lazy and restless and I'd rather
be, but I did thankfully develop enough and then a musical ear, you know,
Which certainly helps with playing the pheromone because it's all judging space and what you bring into the booth
Well, absolutely. We're just gonna you know
There is a musicality to all
voice
Recording I think it's all it's sound obviously it has to have you know emotional reality and and be
Have to be
Grounded in truth. Well that what Jonathan you and I were talking earlier because you have a
First of all your your TV and film credits are amazing dark wins. I love last man standing
I love every time I see you on the screen
I am so happy because I know it's gonna be interesting choice
It's gonna be a reliable choice, but you have a background in Shakespeare Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Yeah, how many years were you there? Yeah, I was there for four four five years
four seasons and
actually my oldest daughter was born in Oregon when I was working there. She's
out there somewhere. Hey, and yeah, I was there. I played a lot of different
characters. I did Taming of the Shrew. I played Petrucchio. I did as you like it.
Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, a couple of the history. And you know, I really,
I really, really, really love Shakespeare
and I really feel like the, thank you,
and I really feel like the, this sort of thing,
the heightenedness of the speech that he has to,
that I have to be, it really blends itself
to having some kind of background in theater.
Well, you're from Pittsburgh
and we were talking about my favorite playwright,
August Wilson, who's from Pittsburgh,
and the musicality to all those speeches.
Absolutely.
And it's so grand and yet so grounded.
And you've done August Wilson.
Yes, I have.
I've done Joe Turner's Come and Gone,
Fences, Two Trains Running.
What's really interesting is that those speeches,
especially the longer ones,
aren't really the way people talk,
but they feel like it because of the way that it's written.
And if an actor is behind it,
They create something even more.
And there's heightened speech in Diablo as well.
So you get very familiar with that.
It is heightened language, but grounded so that they care.
Exactly.
And Judy, they care about you because you went through
literal hell as Narell.
Can you talk about that journey?
Because I tend to go in the booth and get surprised.
and just, you know, it's everything here, here,
and I just do it.
I don't wanna know ahead of time.
How did you approach Narell?
I mean, Narell has such a special part in my heart
because she literally gets tortured, and it's on display,
but it's also such an internal journey,
and she has the weight of the world on her shoulders
for such a young, innocent kind of soul,
and has to deal with and confront some horrors.
And so, I mean, session was really special
because we talked about our personal traumas
before we started recording.
So I opened up about like my family dynamics
and how dark that got in my childhood,
not to bring this down too much.
But yeah, you know, we like really opened up
and we shared and accessing those like tumultuous parts
of one's history is a big part of this kind
of emotional work that I got to do for this.
And I just feel thrilled and honored to be a part of it.
I'm just happy to be here.
Now I cobbled together a little bit of Narell's lament.
Would you be so kind as to read that for us now?
Oh my God, absolutely.
I have it right here.
Okay, here we go.
Okay, here we go.
I know there will be no answer to this prayer.
I have seen past sanctuary, the darkness of the hells and the light of the heavens are the same.
Humanity's struggles don't interest them.
We're all pawns in their never-ending war.
But this soul stone exhausts me.
So, I ask for guidance, for help, for something to drown out the hate.
Or is that just the river?
It's getting hard to know the difference sometimes.
It takes everything I have to remember who I am, to keep my fist still at bay.
This is a fight I think I'm losing, drowning in hatred.
So to anyone or anyone listening, lend me your strength.
And when I find my journey's end, I know I will not stand alone.
I will brag on my friend a little bit now.
When we first met, you were a sound engineer when I would record, so you know all of that.
You understand how that works.
You're also a singer and a musician.
How do you bring that into the booth when you record?
Oh my God.
Let's see.
I was a recording engineer for six years before I went full time into voice acting
and that took off for me and that comes into play almost every day when I'm
reporting auditions, when I'm submitting, when I'm editing my files, topping and
tailing, cleaning out clicks and pops and mouth noises. So that that's a very, and
setting up my home studio, do you know what I mean? So it's like it's very
embedded in my life. In terms of the musical capacity that comes into play,
I think this is a fun one to talk about is I play guitar and sing and
And I feel like being able to do both those things simultaneously
actually translates to voice acting in a way because I have to compartmentalize my brain.
And if I want to do something differently in a different take, I have to trust that my hands are going to continue to do what I will trust them to do
while I adjust something in my singing.
And I feel like when I'm doing accent work and voiceover, when I'm doing efforts, you know, exertions and stuff like that,
I have to maintain a certain part of my performance, and then in a technical element, bring out
or adjust or change other elements of my performance, and being able to separate those two things,
I feel like is all kind of interrelated and feeds back into each other.
So I don't know if that answered your question, but I'll probably go.
It did.
It did.
The history that we've had together and what you bring into the booth, I mean,
they rose journey, it was great, it blew me away.
And L, now we really are like best friends in the world.
And you are from, I want to say Scotland?
No, I'm from Van Nuys.
It's a rumor that I'm Scottish.
It's a role I play to get Scottish roles, but I'm actually from Van Nuys.
That makes my heart happy when you put that on, because we'll talk about deep subjects
over tuna sandwiches and cry about life.
We will.
But we're very silly people.
Often.
So you trained a lot in Glasgow.
Yes.
Well, I mean, I, in what?
In theatre, in voice.
Well, I actually originally wanted to be an opera singer, and so I studied with a teacher
who was from La Scala and I studied Italian arias and I thought that was going to be
my career. And I guess voiceover, I mean I came to Van Is to pursue singing actually.
I came out here to be a singer and then I ended up falling into voiceover because
of my brogue.
Now you were recording the Femon Necromancer and another character at the same time and they were whole opposites?
Yes, so basically if anyone remembers 2020
So in 2020 I in the same week
Booked the role of the Necromancer in Diablo 4
Which took me to hell and I also booked the role of horizon and apex legends
Where the season was called Ascension, so I make the joke that for most of 2020 I was
bouncing around between heaven and hell.
It's true.
It's what I do.
Would you be so kind, Michael?
I cobbled together a little bit of a Deckard Cain speech.
Would you be so kind as to read that for us?
Well let's see.
I thank you, friend, for coming to my aid. Regrettably, I could do nothing to prevent
the disaster which devastated Tristram. It would appear that our greatest fears have
come to pass. Diablo, the Lord of Terror, has once again been set loose upon the world. I fear even
worse, my friend. I fear that Diablo has taken possession of the hero who sought to slay him. If
If true, Diablo will become more powerful than ever before.
You must stop him, or all will be lost.
Al, can you give us another line as the female necromancer?
Do you recall any?
Um, we'll ask your best friend in the whole world.
Let me think.
Sure.
The one that reeks?
Well, I just want to say that I do not ever want to eat any more blood petals.
Well, you like doing a lot of different accents, even though...
I do.
It's not your normal one. And it's a very powerful portrayal.
How is it when you just do one at a time?
Do you mean accent?
You are a surrogate for the player.
Yes.
You don't get to do these wonderful speeches in Diablo, it's just sort of information.
How was the challenge for that?
So I had a particular challenge with this.
As I said, I was recording a completely different character at the same time, and my other
character is very high in a register, and it's like very upbeat, and so I would
go into sessions and it was mostly J.B. Bless-A-Soul and it was basically, no, you have to be flatter,
you have to be flatter, because she's the necromancer. So it's like I had to try and remember the
gravity of the necromancers, not only history, but the role, the service. And so as the
player character it's just really important. Well actually in saying that I
actually felt very strongly to we all did as player characters we had a
particular relationship with Nerelle as like at times we were mentoring and we
were very sad when bad things would happen to her. So for us it's more just
we are conveying the information and pushing that along and just remembering
For me it was like just remember that there was a somber nature to the necromancer but
there were times when it would get to be fun, like she would get to pop off and you know
show more of a personality but then it had to be...
It's a dark game.
Well she's a dark character.
The one thing is we're all in this project but our characters really have never met,
you've never gotten to interact.
So I thought it might be interesting
if Narell and the female necromancer,
and Tyrion and Deckard Cain got together
in a talk show that happens in Sanctuary
hosted by the butcher.
It's a little talk show that I like to call fresh meat.
Hey!
Hi!
Me butcher!
Welcome to Fresh Meat!
We'll serve for the band!
There's no band!
Butcher killed them!
Butcher went,
First guest, Decker Kane.
Decker Kane, very smart, very wise.
You know, you probably think culture wants to murder you and devour your succulent flesh,
What? That's just because I do?
So, how does Butcher change?
How does Butcher be kind?
I'm sorry, did you say my flesh was succulent?
Yeah!
What a strange turn of events.
How can you be kind?
Well, I think one way which is a particular favorite of mine is that if you could just
learn to stay a while and listen, listening, you see, is a lost art.
If you can empathize and listen to somebody, then you might not have the urge to rend them
limb from limb.
Pass!
Curio!
Yeah?
Yeah.
Wait!
Follow up question, Deckard Cain.
Favorite fresh meat?
Favorite fresh meat.
Mutton!
I love a good mutton.
can you be my dad I'm old enough I might be beautiful beautiful angel wings
white and yet voice intense scary wait are you my dad I think we saw
Hold this. The last time we were on Jerry's Springer.
Uh-huh.
I am not the father.
Follow up question favorite fish meat.
No comment.
Nero!
I think I'm scared.
No.
You're strong, and carry heavy, and heavy burden.
You bear the shard, but you control nothing.
So, say something nice about Mephisto.
Well, because you know, we're like pals.
I call him Tofer, and he doesn't talk to me.
So come on, say something nice about Mephisto.
Mephisto is...
a bad dog.
Ha ha ha ha!
Follow up question, favorite fish meat!
Uh...
Lion heart?
Ooh, lion are good!
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Make a more air answer!
You're all about death.
But tell me,
tell but you're true.
What meaning
of life?
Think of life as a brief, messy apprenticeship until your real career starts when your heart
stops beating and you belong to me.
Boucher thinks meaning of life is sanctuary, not just a place, it's a feeling and feels
better when experienced with friends.
Decker came with that, Boucher being kind.
You surprise me, Butcher, where do these deep thoughts, this welling of wisdom come from?
You seem on the surface to be so, so, sandpapering, and yet you turn out to be a soft tissue underneath.
Butcher's owned out, meaning of my favorite fresh meat.
And that is the very first and very last episode of Fresh Meat!
Thank you for tolerating that.
Because I just thought it would be fun.
When I was recording all the stuff, it's one of the rare projects, Diablo 4, that they
bring a group in to do like background demon noises.
And so I'll be there with the greats like Fred Tattershore and Deborah Wilson and Misty
Lee and they're just amazing and everyone's taking their turn and it's kind of like jazz.
You're there and you're weaving those noises that in and outs so that it's not one complete
wall of sound because that doesn't cut through.
So we give them choices and in a way we're kind of like Muppet performers with Henson
because we're all standing at the mic
and everyone's very serious.
I don't know if you've ever seen background video of the Muppets.
I have a lot of friends who do Muppet tiers.
Leslie Carrara who does Abbey Good Abbey
is really my best friend in the world.
But you'll watch the Muppet
and all the chaos is up here
but their face is very serious.
So when we're doing all those demon noises
it's like the chaos is here
but we're playing the mic
because you can't really move,
you don't wanna get off mic.
So it's just this phenomenal experience that I got to have in one of the very few times
that we get to work as a group and record.
And Diablo is such a dark world, but for all of us, where do you find comfort?
Where do you find joy in bringing those characters to life?
In what could be a very heavy script?
Michael?
Well, what gives me hope and joy, as you say, about Deckard Cain, is that he never gives
up.
He is always at least holding on to whatever thread remains of humanity, civilization against
the powers of darkness and he's, to the bitter end, he's, he's adamantly fighting the good
fight, so to speak. Whether it's warning people, whether it's trying to remind people
of the history of what's gone on and what is coming. There's always a little beacon
of light shining through Deckard Cain, piercing the darkness, even if it's as overwhelming
as it often is.
And material, I mean, he sacrificed a lot to become mortal.
The fallen angel of justice, he believed in justice so much that he decided to become
mortal in order to fulfill that justice and make it happen.
That's where I give my hope from.
I think that is pretty much he defines hope in the, almost in the entire series.
He's always there to help the hero move on to the next thing and he's always there to
be to fight along beside him or to use whatever powers he has to help the hero move forward.
That's great.
You really inspired a lot of people.
It's really beautiful.
It's grounded and yet the language, it gets to you.
And Judy, it was a dark journey.
She carried the burden for everyone.
Did Narell ever have hope?
Did you have hope when you were recording?
I think the beauty is that the hope dies with Narell.
And I feel like in modern life, right, like there's a lot going on, and I feel like sometimes
that I'm being complacent in the way that I live, and I'm comfortable and privileged in
a way that I feel like I'm not doing enough in this modern world, and I feel like, if
I can't do it in real life, I can do it in games, so if I give my life and everything
that I have, my life energy, my spirit, and push towards the goal no matter what
the end result is, like that was very cathartic for me and I did find hope there, yeah.
And El, again, not a happy character and yet a conduit for the, I always kind of, I gravitated
towards that because having the skeleton warriors around you, as I love that power, but where
does the Necromancer find hope?
Well, as a player character, you get to go on the hero's journey.
So a lot of the hope that I found was in serving that journey towards vanquishing evil.
And I really found, I found a lot of heart and a lot of emotion within the necromancer
because she had to hold so much in and a lot of the direction that we played with as the
tale was told and time went on was to really dig deep and it was almost like to me the
best kind of acting is when you don't see the emotion, you see them working, you see
a person or the best kind of emotion is like you don't see them, they're holding back.
You're playing through the emotion as opposed to showing the emotion and so as the next
I held a lot of emotions in check, but the journey for me was in getting to play with
those nuances where they would come out and then they would come back.
And then it would come out and then it would come back.
And it was like, you know, she always had to stay strong.
So I know nothing about that in real life.
Because you write poetry, you're a musician.
You have a horse therapy business?
Yeah.
I work with people, human beings, and I would put you into an enclosure with a horse, and
I basically, in a sense, become a conduit for the voice of the horse and the voice of
the human, and I have to watch both, you know, I have to do a little bit of a game
of TANIS back and forth, back and forth to try and read the energy and try and read what's
happening and thread it all together.
I guess it's like acting.
Yeah, I mean everything we do in this weird job and the business is changing and it's
getting harder and harder and harder to break in and even once you broke in to keep going.
But there's that wonderful duality.
I don't know how many of us, I know you and I share something.
I'm over now at Oogie Boogie Bash.
I'm the voice of the Haunted Mansion in the parade every night
because I do the ghost toast.
You do the gopher in Winnie the Pooh.
Would you be so kind as to give us,
during this dark panel where Decker Kane is kind of hope,
would you give us that wonderful bit of joy?
Speaking of popping up out of the darkness.
Hmm, looks like there's about 760,000 people here.
Well, it's time to get back to...
BOOM!
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
And thank all of you for tolerating our seriousness, our silliest moments,
but for letting our voices find you through these wonderful characters in these Blizzard games.
They found me, I wasn't getting hired for a long time in New York,
I had done Broadway and I just hit a wall and nobody bought what I was selling.
And that's just what it is when you're an actor.
A friend of mine said every time you're an actor
or having a life of an actor, it's like jumping out of an airplane
and then sewing the parachute on the way down.
You know, it's hard, it's hard, it's hard.
Moments like these when we can share our joy
and our goofiness and our appreciation,
they are rare.
So we do not take that lightly that you did.
Stay a while and listen to us.
Thank you very, very much. But this would not be a Diablo panel.
If Diablo did not have the last word. So...
Take comfort in your stories.
GERROR!
GERROR!
It's all that awaits you.
Hahahaha!
Hahahaha!
P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P.
Uh, what's with all the white magic?
System takeover complete.
Don't panic, security. I just upgraded your schedule. Sorry to interrupt your little dungeon
crawl, but did you really think you could ban me again? From here, try again, amigos.
Everything can be hacked and everyone. And I mean everyone now, because I've been reworked.
In BlazCon, babies, put down the loot, turn down the comms, and encendamos las luces.
I'm Carolina Raza, the voice behind your favorite hacker, and now support hero, Sombra.
And it's time to shift gears to the coolest FPS on the planet.
Help me welcome our guests to the Overwatch panel.
flawless geometric precision and absolute perfection to the stage make
some noise for Anjali Bhimani the voice of Simetra
I
Know Bruce less melee champion in the arena give it up for
Arriba la povisione!
The battle-hardened veteran begging everyone to actually use cover.
Put your hands together for Caggin and Vint, the voice of Emre!
So, Liskar!
What are we?
Bringing chaotic tracking daggers and unmatched tactical optimism, give a massive cheer for
Kaiya Freight, the voice of Sierra!
I got the scars!
Leading the high ground and leading the mecha squad straight into the dive.
Scream it out for Lily Pichu, the voice of...
Steven!
Play together, win together.
Yes!
All right, let's get started.
Wait, aren't we back to 66?
Ah, I'm getting some new intel here.
Released straight from Grimmsbottom and looking great for his age!
Oh, this one has teeth.
Please welcome Tushinga Beppete, the voice of Drill!
It's great, North and Basin!
Yeah!
Yeah!
Yes!
Whoo!
Welcome, welcome, everybody.
This is so exciting.
Mm-hmm.
Just, please, noobs, take it all in.
When have you ever been in front of 8,000 people?
Oh, Lily Pichu, you've had the...
No, no, it's...
Yes.
Please welcome, welcome and take a deep breath because this is very exciting.
I hope you understand what a big deal this is.
So congratulations and welcome to the team.
Auntie Symmetra and Dia Sombra would love to welcome you guys.
Yes, welcome to our reality.
To the Overwatch family.
Before we get started, I would just love to let you all know that this game has really brought together diversity, inclusion.
We represent people from all over the world,
which is why this game is so popular all over.
And so you guys deserve an extra applause from everybody.
And we would like to give you guys all an applause,
because this game wouldn't be what it is without all of you,
loving else from all corners of the globe.
So thank you for making this so special.
And now I will start with Symmetra so that we can give these guys a chance to catch their
breath.
My work wife, Anjali Bimani, you have done TV, every single TV show on the planet.
You've been on many Broadway shows, actual plays by the dozen, and you run an amazing
charity called the puppy roll and you have watched thank you yes you have
watched this game evolve over a decade I'm so proud of you don't have no don't
really cry at the beginning all right so Metro has been a beacon for hope for
people who feel different who feel misunderstood you are an icon of
order, neurodivergency, and elegance. I would like to know what carrying this legacy means to you
and what this character and this incredible community has taught you over the years.
Sure, yeah. How much time we got. You know, especially recently as I've been thinking back
over because of the 10th anniversary and really thinking of all the adventures with all of you,
Starting from the very beginning when we all met these characters and they weren't just about one aspect of who they were they were all a
Combination of all of these amazing unique characteristics that they had all coming into one person
And so no one of them was defined by any one thing
And I realized recently and it may sound really really simple, but how much this game is about
The power of being seen
whether it is seen as a hero that you can identify with in the game, whether it is seen by the
community who we actually get a chance to connect with regularly, thank goodness, and you are
also supportive, and so giving, and so artistically generous, and also just seen by each other.
Because when we first began this, we have no idea, just like any of you did, we had
had no idea the effect it might have on people and we've been able to build these beautiful
relationships with people. You know the first time we hung out together about 20 minutes
into the conversation I invited her to my wedding and it wasn't just me being crazy
it was because it was a connection. You see each other for who you are all of those
combinations of who you are and so being able to play this character who is not only
a representative of one way neurodivergence can manifest and present itself, but a representative
of a woman in STEM, a South Asian woman, a really hot woman, a woman who can run in heels.
No, but there are so many different aspects of this character that make me proud because
she allows us to know that all aspects of us contribute to us being seen by the world.
One of us no one of us should be defined by any one part of us not our gender not our
Culture not our size not where we came from none of it
And this game has really really proven to me the power of that around the world
And that's why she runs PR for all of overwhelming
Is there a specific fun story that you love about a fan interaction or
or something that's happened online
or a specific Overwatch community?
Yeah, there was someone who was telling me that they were,
well, no, I'm gonna tell this story instead.
I think I might've told this story.
But right when beta had started,
and we all, again, none of us really knew
exactly what was coming out.
And my husband is a rock musician
and he tours all over the world,
so he's the one who gets to do all the fancy stuff
in my estimation.
And he was at a bar and he texted me,
babe, is your game called Overwatch?
And I was like, yeah.
And he was like, who do you play?
And I said, Symmetra.
And that was the end of the text.
And he came home and he was like, okay,
so we were at this bar and we were talking
to some people and we talked to this girl.
And we said, what are you doing right now?
What's your jam?
So I'm playing beta for this game called Overwatch.
And he said, oh, I think my girl's in that.
And she said, don't tell me it's Symmetra.
Please don't tell me it's a myth.
And he said, I think so.
Yeah, it's Symmetra.
And she screamed and went running out the door.
I have that effect on people, apparently.
Just that moment of like, oh, wow, this is bigger than any of
us possibly could have imagined.
And then there is one more I just have to share.
There was a woman who was babysitting for a young
Indian girl. And when this little girl saw Symmetra on the screen, she started saying,
oh, she's Hindu like me and she's speaking Hindi. This little, little, and it made me realize,
you know, when I was growing up, I had Wonder Woman. She was brunette and she was female,
and that was the end of all of the things that we had in common. But now each one
of us gets to be there for people who are growing up. There are heroes for everyone.
And that's a really powerful thing to know that we get to be a part of.
I love that.
I love that so much.
For all of us.
Absolutely.
Chiara.
Ekumi.
Chiara.
Chiara.
You are a prolific Italian actor who came up in the dubbing world and you mentioned
earlier that you never imagined to be working on an American, with an American company,
much less global franchise like this.
Yes.
How has stepping into Vendetta's shoes helped you find,
as you mentioned before, confidence and strength
in a way that you never imagined?
I mean, let's say I'm still working on it.
I mean, yes, it helped me,
but being right now in front of all these people,
I mean, I still might have some work to do.
So yes, I was born and raised in Italy.
So I've never actually lived a broad,
all my life is in Italian,
and it never crossed my mind
that this could even be a possibility in my life.
But then, hey, life sometimes can surprise you, I guess.
And I was lucky enough to have worked
with an Italian voice director who worked on the localization team of a lot of Blizzard
games.
And he is a huge Blizzard fan.
And when they were looking for an actress who could speak English, which I can do,
I learned how to speak English in school and through consuming media, basically.
But they needed an actress with an Italian accent.
So this voice director called me to do this audition and I went and had this audition.
I would never, never, never, you know, million here because of course I, I'm like, we can
say I'm kind of a nerd so I knew what Overwatch was when I got the audition and I was so pumped
about having this possibility but I wasn't confident enough to think that I could
land it. But then learning that they chose me to be the voice of Vendetta, it was the
first time that I think, well maybe I have the capabilities to do something like this,
to do something huge, to be a part of this wonderful family and sitting side by side,
such amazing actors. These have been a real honor to me, yes.
I want you to know, thank you, that you just showed the world how to kick some serious
butt in an actual play. In your second language, and you did it so
eloquently, it was beautiful. May many little Italians feel proud and feel seen and hope
that they can reach great heights like you are doing right now. So I want to commend
you because that is so huge. Thank you so much. Absolutely.
Get him.
Carl, my next victim.
You had a whole other career before starting this one,
that's right, which I hope gives you a lot of hope because a lot
of people want to be voice actors and you always think
you have to start when you're tiny, but you can start at
any age. And I love the fact that you lobbied to be this
agent, you knew it was coming, you did some research, and now you're representing your
country, Turkey, on the world stage.
And I would like you to share a little bit more about how you came to this role, because
I think it's one of the most badass things you've done.
That's very kind of you to say.
Emre has been with me for a very long time before he was, not one bit of code was programmed
into him.
He was teased originally in 2018 as a lore drop for the game.
And I've been a player since day one.
I've got the Widowmaker skin to prove it.
And it's just been this journey with him where he was always this North Star that I was always
trying to get towards and building this voice acting career part time at the time.
And it was just this goal.
I would pass by a Blizzard campus every day going to work,
going, one day I'll walk through those doors
and audition for this character.
I was on message boards as a fan,
just going, MRIS coming in 2019, right guys?
He's coming, right?
And always being wrong.
And then I got the audition and I overthought it.
I thought, is he soldier 76 his age?
Is he more like in his 40s?
So I gave two takes, sent it out, forgot about it.
Then I went to Turkey right after that.
I just jumped on a plane, got to see friends and family,
and reconnect with my roots there,
and had a very spiritual experience,
just thinking about this character, meditating on him,
hoping that I'd get that call back.
I'll cite the day that I thought,
or I knew that I got this,
because I got the callback offer while I was in Turkey.
But I went to pay respects at a cemetery for my grandmother.
And I don't know this cemetery very well.
I got out of the car.
And my eyes just lasered in on this tombstone.
And it was a beautiful sunny day,
like god rays shining in the cemetery.
And I saw this tombstone that read the Emre family.
And I got chills and I thought, oh my gosh, this might happen, this might really happen.
And I came back and I just felt, okay, I know who this guy is, I know what I want to do.
And whether it comes to be or not, I'm going to give it my all.
And Emre became part of my life and it's been a tremendous journey this last year.
It's been incredible.
That's beautiful.
absolutely amazing. I hope you feel so proud and so happy every time you main
Emre and troll people online. I heard you had a funny fan interaction and I'd
like to hear about it. Yes, while trolling online as I am a player of the
game, everyone calls me one trick Emre, but I do main other characters guys, don't
worry, but my story is actually, it happened at BlizzCon, funnily enough, pro tip guys,
if you want to avoid being stopped by people, stand next to somebody who's dressed as your
character. They will absorb all the attention. So, I've been playing this fun game and some
of you in the audience are probably my victims of this little game I've been playing where
People stop the Emre cosplayer and next to this. Oh, can we get a picture with you Emre and
They go absolutely and then I jump in and say I can take your picture for you and then oh, thanks, dude
They hand me their phone. I take the camera and then I get into my Emre voice and I go one two three
And then you see the gears turning
Way to me
Who are you?
I love it. I love it. Awesome.
Moving on to Kaia, my little ray of sunshine.
Sierra is so infectious. She has such bright, fun, overzealous, modern energy.
And you are also insanely prolific.
You have produced and directed three short films.
You've narrated over 50 audiobooks.
You have written a book yourself.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would love to know how becoming a part of Overwatch as Sierra has reshaped the way
you are a storyteller and how it has changed you for the better.
Oh, gosh.
Sierra has definitely changed my life.
being a part of this community has been so amazing.
And Sierra being the first black female character
in the game is not a responsibility I take lightly.
It is the coolest thing.
And I've gotten comments and messages of people
just being like,
Sierra sounds like me and my friends.
And that means everything to me.
And I'm just so glad, like Andre was saying
that we get to kind of be like,
this is a lot of power that we have
to be like a pillar of representation
for people that look like us and characters
that we connect to personally.
And Sierra, you know, she reminds me a lot of my mom.
I'm from Virginia, I'm Sierra's from Virginia.
And-
They have Virginia in the house.
And-
But mom, I'm her daughter.
Even her personality is like a lot like me
and a lot like my mom, very bubbly and fun, I think.
I say she's a lot more like my mom
because I don't think I'm as confident as Sierra.
But I love her.
I think all of our characters are teaching us a little bit more
about confidence than we realize.
For sure.
Yeah.
What a beautiful way to honor your mom and maybe grandparents
and all the people that we channeled through us
to get to certain characters.
Like all the disapproving aunties.
All the disapproving aunties.
Have you already had a fun fan experience,
or we're just letting you out into the world
is a little terrible to discover this.
I mean this.
This is the coolest thing I've ever done.
So thank you guys for being a part of it.
Thank you.
And congrats on being on all three of the games
that we are talking about today.
Not me, but you know, the other panels.
Lily, Pichu, Hi, stop.
I
Don't let her fool you she tells you she's shy, but I saw her one watermelon margarita in last night and
She is the most fun. I've ever seen and I recommend we get another margarita tonight
Yes, I love it and we need it right now. We're a little nervous, but we're gonna shake it out
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Ask away. Ask away
You have a huge connection to the gaming community, obviously.
You are one of the OG streamers that was streaming before it was cool.
Sure.
Or mainstream.
No pun intended.
Yeah.
You're also a musician.
Yeah.
And a painter.
Yeah.
And we may have played the piano and guitar and sung together recently,
which you will see on a stream soon.
Or whatever you call your music.
I brush it off.
Yes, brush it off.
How has getting to voice a hero on a AAA game
changed the way you content create
and the way you live your life as a streamer?
Because now you are on both sides of this machine.
I think for sure ever since getting past this demon,
I think people started taking me a little bit more seriously
as a voice actress because usually when you're a streamer
they think you can't do anything but stream.
like we're pigeonholed into this one role
and you can never do anything else.
So I liked the bit of seriousness it gave me.
On Demon, it's still surreal to me
because 10 years ago I played Overwatch
and I played so much D.Va.
I thought, oh my gosh, she's a Korean gamer girl
and I'm a Korean gamer girl
and I related so much to her.
And now my voice is shaking, I'm so nervous.
Getting cast with Demon is like, it's surreal.
Like why am I here?
That's how I feel. Yeah.
This is so hard. No.
Talking on stream is very different because you don't see
the faces. Yeah. Just leave comments. But here you see
everyone's faces very clearly. I've been avoiding eye contact.
Just pretend they're all sheep. It's really hard. Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. I hear them. Thank you. Yes, well done. I also want to commend you as a
actor because usually we don't hear people finding a deeper register in their
voice character and people can't believe your demon because they've known you for
so long yeah I used to get typecasted to like this voice so I was so shocked I
got a call back I'm like are you serious I did this audition and you know
didn't think about it I got the call back I went in and it was so fun I had
a lot of fun I go back to my house and I'd like to say I forgot about it
but I checked my email religiously like every single day.
You're not supposed to do that, but I did it.
That's how it goes, we try to forget about it
and we really can't and we just keep referring.
Yeah, and yeah, I got it.
I think I slapped Michael awake.
I'm like, wake up, I got it, honey.
Good, I love it.
Well, congratulations.
I hope you feel so happy to have this family.
Happy to be here.
Very cool.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Fosh.
Hello.
Guys, you have no idea.
This guy has also an incredible career in theater,
in the theatre of London,
also a lot of TV,
and a whole music career
that you guys have no idea about.
So please look him up.
I would love you to soon create a song
I would love you to soon create a song,
and I'm gonna get it wrong, but I'm really trying,
a song that goes,
Macu moanon di terera!
Hey!
That's your song.
You hit me all.
What does that mean, first of all?
It's death.
Death.
Upon you.
Death is speaking to you.
Death, oh wow, not freaky at all.
Death like listens to me.
Oh, I love it.
And it's just, you know.
It's hard to translate a lot of the things because of the way, you know, English to Shona
isn't quite directed, context-based.
Okay.
So it's like, yeah, death listens to me, basically.
So now y'all know, so don't tweet at him asking what the heck his alt means, like propaganda
is useless.
So this game has brought people together from all over the globe, and I wanted to
to know how bringing in your Zimbabwe roots,
what this has meant to you as an actor,
and I know you're playing a vampire,
but how beautiful is it that you get to merge
your heritage with a fantastical preacher?
And I'd love to know if this has happened before
and how you have felt throughout this whole experience
that is very surreal.
Yeah, no, I was born in Zimbabwe
And this is the most surreal experience I've ever had in my life
because being born there and then moving to England,
this world didn't exist, this gaming world.
Being a voice actor doesn't really exist in that way.
My whole family's medical.
So I was like, I'm going to become an actor, guys.
And they're like, oh, so you want to be poor?
I was like, great.
I was like, thanks, thanks, guys, thanks.
But then Blizzard come to me with this character and they're like,
OK, we want to model it off of you.
Tell us about yourself.
And I was like, I'm some Barbie and Shana is the language.
And they were like, OK, let's let's work on how we make this come to life.
And I was like, are you serious?
Are you sure you don't need to do some other accent?
But the fact that they were so open to making it so personal to my story
And who I've been and who I'm becoming and who I am
means everything to me and
genuinely if one person sees it and goes I
Don't feel as alone as I felt when I was a kid playing these games and getting lost in this world then
Yeah, I feel like I've done my job personally. That's yeah, it makes me want to cry at the time
That's it.
Thanks, guys.
And also, I really wanted to say thank you to everyone for welcoming me,
and all the comments have been so lovely.
All you guys have been so lovely.
The wider Blizzard team, all the Overwatch characters,
and yeah, you guys have just, yeah, like, I thought,
I'm walking into this world where they're gonna be like,
oh, another guy.
54. Hero number 54.
No, it wasn't that it was just like yes doctrine. We love you. It's like in American accent, but yeah, yes
Before we move on to a little game though, I would love you to share a story about when you sent off the mp3 for this audition
Okay, so
When I sent off this audition I was filming a job
But I was on the way from one place to another part to do the job
The only time I had to do it was on a train, but I was like I can't do on the train. I'll do it before the train
I'll go to the toilet. I go into this toilet. I'm recording the lines. I'm like embrace your salvation
And then you just hear a massive fart
So I'm like oh, I'm probably the best editor in the world. I'm gonna edit out the fart
I send it to my voice agent they go, um, so did you far in the middle of your audition?
Because I don't think they'll give you the job if we send this.
Anyway, they were like, okay, we'll ask for an extension.
We'll get that, you know, and we'll back you.
We'll say he's incredible.
He'll work well.
And I was like, don't talk about me like that before I've even done it.
And then I got that extension, managed to do it.
And Blizzard were just amazing.
They, yeah, they really opened it up to make sure that I had the time to do it and do my best work and
I've not looked back ever since. I'm here. I'm BlizzCon.
So we have decided it is hashtag toilet doctrine
Toilet doctrine the doctrine will see you now. Yes
But I love that because I know you you recorded in a closet before hopping on a plane
Yeah, it was after an all-nighter in London during,
I had got the audition during sound check
at the end of a tour that we were on
and I knew that I was gonna have to stay up all night
to catch my plane.
And so right before grabbing my luggage,
I turned on my phone, I asked my husband to be quiet.
I read the lines on my phone, sent it off.
I was like, okay, I did my job.
I don't know, okay, I'm getting on this plane.
And like many of us, we were wildly surprised it happened.
That's how it happened sometimes, yeah.
So it's why you say yes no matter how hard it seems or how silly it seems even if you have to audition in a toilet
Yes, even if I have to have a fart in the middle. Yes. Thank you for it wasn't me you farted by the way just just oh, yeah
Yeah, that's what they all say
Okay, now that you all that we all know a little bit more about your characters
Let's put your overwatch knowledge to the test. I will do you know your characters?
We just want to play a little game
Noteprocupis, I'm going to help you.
Um, here's what's gonna go down.
The Overwatch team has prepared a simple game of this or that,
and all you need to do is stand to the left or the right to choose
which one your character would want to choose.
So, if you are a dog animal,
I mean, a dog person, you move to the...
Symmetrically, you love dogs.
And if you love cats, then you move to this side.
Oh, okay.
Right?
not even a question yes yeah no not Jeff that cat sorry okay great I think um
no you know what I have a better idea this game is kind of boring so let's
start something different on screen you'll see two heroes in a certain
scenario each hero will make a quick case for themselves one sentence people we
don't have a lot of time on why you are most likely to blank in each round
And you will stand to the left or the right of which person you think should win, correct?
Let's get started heroes
This is supposed to work, but I don't know. Oh, there we go. Whoo. I love it. All right
Most likely to be the best roommate
Symmetra or Sierra Sinatra you have one sentence
You will never have to worry about there being disorder in our room because clearly the true enemy of humanity is disorder
I think we would just have a lot of fun you want to go puddle stop and now you guys have
to decide what way the audience please clap and help us out the best room mate
Uh-oh.
Fiera Vestrom, mate.
All right, one point far, Griffin.
I mean, Fiera!
Whoo-hoo!
Next question.
Most likely to be a teacher's pet.
Thank you again.
Emre or Symmetra?
Again.
Honestly, I feel like I might not be the teacher's pet
because I would probably correct her
because I'm always right.
Oh, I see.
always right. Or him or them. Everybody knows Emre Sarola always follows protocol.
All right audience what do we think best best not roommate teachers pet? Symmetra?
Most likely to be a teachers pet Emre?
Okay, mercy, you can throw one t-shirt into the audience.
Next question, sorry, Lucio, you don't get to boop anyone right now.
Most likely to have a fan club.
Vendetta or Doctrine?
Okay, can I just say, I'm basically a wolf and you're a vampire.
So, I feel like this is Edward and Jacob all over again.
So just vote whoever you prefer, but remember, I have those muscles in the game.
Team Edward, team Jacob, team Doctrine.
So, do we think Doctrine just won?
For even that, I must with Doomfist, okay?
Mercy, you can throw one more t-shirt into the audience.
Most likely to host a podcast.
Sombra.
Woo! Woo!
Or Demon.
Oh.
You want to go first?
No, I'll go first.
Guys, I know the T about you already.
I know your IP address.
So, A, I know all your answers.
your answers and be best audio engineering and see unmatched charm
okay I have a lot of topics to talk about on the podcast anime gundams living
in diva's shadow that's at least eight episodes so
guys she's a traitor she totally said we should post up host the podcast
together I didn't mean oh okay all right so let's clap clap for the one I think
you want one we don't know that's on brah anybody
okay Lucio you get the shoe one sorry mercy you get to do I don't know who
one on this one most likely this is our last question guys oh gosh please be
careful don't kill yourselves and most likely to get lost at least one Emre or
Sierra make a case for yourself we'll start with Emre okay I am mr. override
blackout come on guys I'm gonna get lost I need a child harness
I think you can trust me. I'm a pretty good leader and I know my way around
Looks like me to get it lost every
They're all I think Sierra one
And we have reached the end of our game. So thank you for coming out
I made it I was in the loading top and I was trying to get in candy
And what happened was they locked the door amazingly from the inside.
They wouldn't let me in, but we have gifts.
Come, come, come.
Okay, big guy, I have a confession to make.
I may have hacked the locks and locked you out because you wanted to do some stupid,
like team trust building exercises and I thought this game would be more fun.
I like games and jokes and games and jokes and also games.
How about this can knock knock no Reinhardt we have to end the panel right now, so please
Hang out these gifts to everyone
The cast of World of Warcraft!
The cast of Diablo!
And the cast of Overwatch!
Thank you, please fun!
And thank you for listening!
You are our shields!
Oh
Oh
Oh
Hey, I don't know
I just want to close our show off very quickly and say a huge thank you to all of you on behalf
of Blizzard what a party this has been energy like no other thanks for bringing all the joy
I love you and thank you to everyone who came out it's been a packed house for the last
two days and thank you to everyone at Blizzard for bringing this amazingness to life now
The party here is still going here in Anaheim.
We are still about to crown our new champions
in Overwatch World Cup and the Arena World Cup World
Championship.
And they'll both be really exciting to see.
So keep the party going here for sure.
For those tuning in, this is the official close
of our broadcast.
But remember, lots coming.
We've got WoW Forever out in seven weeks,
Beta on Thursday, Warcraft III reforged out literally yesterday.
Go play it.
Zalatap is coming to Hots.
PTR starts tomorrow.
C4, Season of Hell's Legacy, begins this Tuesday.
One of the coolest new heroes in Overwatch doctrine.
I am definitely a part of the doctrine.
Fan Club is coming in over a little over than three weeks.
Hearthstone's monk class coming in March, Diablo V coming in early 2029, and StarCraft
coming in early 2030.
But as I mentioned, in opening ceremony, we have so much more in store, so keep your
eyes on Blizzard until then, and until next BlizzCon, thank you, everybody.
Take care.
Great.
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I'm not sure if you can hear me, but I'm going to try to make it sound like I'm in the middle of the game.
I'm not sure if you can hear me, but I'm going to try to make it sound like I'm in the middle of the game.