I'm Mr. GM and you're listening to For Azeroth Victory.
For the Forsaken. For Lauderon for the Kieran
Tour. For Pandaria.
For calendar to the burning region.
For Gilnaeus, but has not died. For the Lich King, for the
Sindora, for the Alliance, for. The Horn for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of For Azeroth.
I am your host Manny, AKA the True Van Manny, and today I am
joined by Mr. GM. Hello Mr. GM, how are you?
Hello there, I am great. Thank you.
How are you doing? I'm doing OK, I'm doing OK.
It's been a crazy week, but I'm glad that like, finally catching
up on wow news. Except that there's still more
coming on the PTR. There's still the alpha that
will be in a couple of weeks. It just seems like it never
stops these days. Yeah, it's literally endless.
It's, it's, it's the the busiest man on earth, I think.
And I mean, yes, it's got to be good news for for you, for
content creators like us, because there's always something
to talk about. And really, that's what we're
here to talk about today. We're here to talk about how
things happen on the PTR, how to figure out what's happening on
the PTR, and all that good stuff.
So for the folks who don't know you for some reason, they're
living under a rock. Can you introduce yourself?
Hi I'm Mr. GM or known as Dan I guess people just call me Dan.
I am a full time World of Warcraft content creator on
YouTube, Twitch and Twitter, I guess.
I suppose I tweet stuff, I suppose, and Blue Sky and all
the others, Instagram and whatnot.
I'm just everywhere. I'm like a like a parasite.
But yeah, World of Warcrafts, you know, the thing I look take
a look at for the most part, like upcoming things on PTR,
alpha, beta, even just like random updates to holidays and
things like that. And wow, just basically just
wow. It's the best.
For sure, and you have really made a name for yourself by just
discovering all these gems that are coming up and trying to
figure out how things work. And how did you get into World
of Warcraft? I think at first you were doing
one thing and then you shifted gears.
What's the story behind that? Yeah, so I started playing in
like 2005. It must be.
It was just before Bernard Crusade.
So yeah, No, no, I put yeah, I played in 2005, got my own
account in 2006 on Christmas Day because I used to play on my
brother's account. We used to share.
And then I think Burning Crusade actually came out like a month
later, Like it came out in January, I'm pretty sure of O 7.
So my, my mom bought me World of Warcraft for Christmas.
Well, sorry, Santa brought it. And then a couple of weeks
later, I'm like, Hey, I know you bought me this thing, but I need
like this other thing now. And yeah.
And just, you know, started making content in 2011, which is
a long time ago, saying that out loud and was inspired by people
like Turtle, Biscuit, Wow, Hobbs and people like that originally
made content for like the private service scene and the
legacy Wow stuff, classic Wow, whatever.
So be it. And then kind of shifted into
more retail orientated stuff. Like I always played retail
anyway, I just never really made content for it until around
about BFA like the end of Legion BFAI think it was.
Awesome. And so as you transferred into
like the retail servers, the live servers, you've sort of as
I've said, you've made a name for yourself of like going
through the PTR and and all of that.
How do you like construct your guides to to help people find
these sort of things? Like how do I make a like a
video like sort of thing like I guess.
Like, yeah, like how do you give the instructions so that people
can like, follow it so that it that it's a, that it grabs
people's attention? Because I'm sure like, there's a
lot of people who will put out like videos on this sort of
stuff. But like, what do you find makes
your video special? To be honest, it because I've
been doing it for so long, it's like it's got to a point now
where I don't like, I used to script videos like I saw every
single word was written down on a, on a Google Doc and I would
read it word for word and all that kind of stuff.
And you know it, it was very time consuming at my real job
when I had that. I used to do it at that job
because I had like nothing to do.
But anyway, as it, as it progressed over time, it's now
just turned into bullet points. So like a video I'm working on
at the moment for like Leisure Remix, I've got like 5 pages of
like just random bullet points. And I'll kind of like because I
spend so much time on there and I'm interacting with the systems
and learning the systems and things like that.
I kind of just talk from memory I guess in the sorts and use the
points as like a jumping off point.
If I'm talking about like Heroic World tier, you know, I played
hours and hours of it and I have hours and hours of footage.
But I had like, you know, I wrote down a few bits and pieces
just to kind of be like, you know, the XP is 500% and you get
these, you know, these other things and there's achievements,
all that kind of stuff. And the way I kind of present
the video and when I record it is just like me explaining to it
to someone. Like, that's kind of the way I
think of it. Like if someone asks me like,
oh, Dan, what's heroic welty? Like I'll be like, well, and
then you know, to the old spiel, but yeah.
And it speeds up the creation process a lot.
And kind of the stream feeds, the YouTube in regards to like
the content we do on stream normally is the stuff we show on
YouTube in in kind of guide or preview form, which is, yeah.
But although like that being said, there has been more more
recently, I've been kind of doing a lot of PTR stuff off
stream as well, because it's kind of like boring busy work,
especially like with the state of the PTR being so complete
when it comes out. So I do a couple days like kind
of streaming it and then it gets to a point of like every new
build just checking the same thing over and over.
And it's just, I don't find that to be super entertaining.
So I just do that stuff off stream for the most part.
But that was a really long winded answer to a very simple
question. No, I, I'd love, I love giving
that nuance, especially the what you do on stream versus off
stream, because I think sometimes in order to get the
information people need and make sure that it is up to date based
on whatever the latest build is, you have to do that, that off
stream stuff. So on the on that lines, what do
you kind of stuff do you have to check through when you are
looking into these systems? What are the things that like
might trip up people that you're you're checking to make sure is
correct? Yeah, it's that's kind of the
the the worst part of it at the moment is like, for example, I
just put out a video about these Gary sets, these sets that you
get from Legion Remix. And one of the sets was
originally you had to complete a 25 key, but in the last build
they changed that to 30. So the way I did that, literally
they changed it last night. So like, or whenever this comes
out, who knows, I basically just run the data mining software,
right. So then I'll like compare
different tables, like, you know, for example, I'll look at
the achievement table and that'll say like, you know,
they've crossed out like the word the number 25 has changed
to 30. So then I cross reference that
with the game and then kind of go go with that.
But yeah, like if I'm working on a video, there'll be like high
spots that I want to make sure are like the same or like,
sorry, that haven't changed for the most part.
And I tried to keep away from like too much nuance with
numbers and item levels and things like that because that
stuff changes so often. Like today we were looking at
like mythic plus, like what all the loot is from that.
But I'm like, no one really cares that much.
Like they just want to know what a like a + 40 drops.
And maybe I want to know what a rate drops like sort of thing
like, but you know, just for the for the sake of it, like, you
know, I'll keep that information and maybe I'll like tweet out or
something to help other creators if they want to like make a
nuanced guide of like what drops in Mythic Plus and things like
that. Because I think it's important
to share stuff, you know, if you find something or or whatever,
like I think it's important to kind of let everybody know like
about that because yeah, knowledge is power, as they say.
I guess a little bit of Inside Baseball is that Mister GM,
you're always doing stuff that helps benefit the community in
general. That's not a sentiment that
every content creator shares, but like, what caused you to
take on that sort of mindset? I just really like helping
people, like that's really it. Like because I know it kind of
stems from like years ago when I used to like when I was trying
to learn to do different things with date mining and things like
that. There was only like a real
handful of people that were helpful.
And everybody else was kind of selfish in regards to like they
would have like these tools and this information and ways that
do stuff they would never tell anyone.
And there was only a couple of people, literally like a handful
of people who would be like, yeah, I can help you out with
that and teach you that. So, you know, I'm just kind of
paying that forward. Obviously not like, you know,
nuanced data mining things. I'm not really getting into with
stuff on Twitter. But like, I feel like, you know,
in the content creator space especially, like, you know, for
example, if I want it like with the widget thing for the stream,
right? Like it's, you know, I make that
for myself anyway. And it's not like if I give it
to everybody else, everyone's going to blow up and their
streams going to be the best stream in the world.
And, you know, they're going to overtake me as you were.
But you know, but like, I don't know, it's just, I guess I see
people struggling with things that I've struggled with in the
past and I think it's important to help them out.
And also like, I don't really want people to be spreading
misinformation about wow when it comes to news and things.
So I try and, you know, help out where I can.
Yeah, the community helping each other just makes the community
better in general, allows us to like make sure that we are
avoiding misinformation and that.
So I love that with data mining, that's something that not many
content creators can do. It's something that you've used,
I guess to a limited part because you don't want all the
numbers. Is that something that you
started with like roughly early on or is that something that
like you adopted later on I loved?
Finding out how the game was made since pretty much like the
beginning, like, you know, back when I was doing the kind of
undocumented service stuff like obviously they created out of,
you know, you know how it works, but like they they basically,
you know, reverse engineer it in that way.
And you know, regardless of legality and things like that,
it's like kind of interesting to see how the cake is made
nowadays. People create tools and, and
it's all open source and things where you can like compare
builds and things like that. And you kind of just learn by
doing. Like every every day I learn
something new where I'm like, OK, I want to learn how an OK,
for example, like more recently, right?
So I was like, how does the achievement know how to trigger
it? Like what is the trigger for
that achievement? How does that work in the data?
So you kind of go from like you look at the achievement thing
and then one of the tables is called like criteria.
You look at criteria and then you look at that number and you
go to like another folder and like, because there's all
different like files and stuff. And eventually you'll get to a
point it's like, yeah, this achievement is triggered by this
quest and it will have like the quest number you look on my head
and it like kind of correlates. You're like OK, so now I know
and that's it. You kind of learn that, right?
So if I ever needed to find out how an achievement is triggered,
most of them you can do it, but it's just a bit like whatever.
So really it's just learning by doing.
I get into my head of like, I want to know how this works.
You know, random things like the war band character select
screen, like there's a table for that that has like 1 of the
things is like the angle it's looking at on the map ID and
it's like it says like where the different play?
I'm really getting into this, but like there's just different
things like that. I love finding out how Blizzard
make it. I have no idea how they make it
with their tools, but looking at like the data files that they
put out or not that they put out, but that in the game that
you can take out. It's super interesting and I
find that to be fascinating. Yeah, I, I'm sure that there is
like obviously a lot of people love when the data binding comes
out and we find out all these stuff and we see all these
models. But like they are, is a subset
of people, myself included, that like really likes to see how
that that gets uncovered or like how it's connected to one thing
another. When people are data mining the
big sites, the small, small people, everybody in between,
sometimes we get information that isn't properly connected or
misinterpreted. How does that sometimes come
about? Sometimes.
Yeah, I think a lot of there's a lot of assumption and and
Blizzard also, they have loads of things in the game that don't
make it to life. And you know, over the years
there's been tons of examples. I guess one more recently was
phase diving. There was data to suggest that
phase diving was going to be limited in regards to how long
you could phase dive for. And that was one of the early
builds said that in there. I don't think anyone actually
reported on it because it was kind of like, that's a bit
strange. But yeah, just things like that,
like because it's ever, you know, it's ever changing.
There's builds weekly, things like that.
Things are changing all the time.
And I think as said, like people assume a lot, a lot of the time,
like they'll see something and be like, yeah, that's probably
related to this thing. And then people run with it,
like certain websites and certain Twitter people and
whatnot. Like, and I, you know, I'm
guilty of this too, being like, Oh my God.
There's a, you know, I think it was like super early on when
they were developing follower dungeons, there was like a new
thing that came up in the data that was like with AI bots.
And we're like, are they developing this?
And then obviously it ended up that they actually were.
But there's definitely been, I've think over the years I've
made videos about things that never even happened, like a
Baron's war front. There was a map for it and there
was all sorts of different things and, you know, and
whatnot. So yeah, I think that's kind of
a lot of it. And then, yeah, I think it is
just people just huff in the hopium a lot of the time as
well. They see something and they're
like, hey, this could be this, but it's probably not.
For sure. And like with how quickly the
PTR cycle is nowadays, obviously there's a lot of things that you
have to go through in a short period of time.
Assumptions are going to happen, but like, how do you prioritize
what you're looking at when you start fresh on a new PTR cycle?
Yeah, I everyone's different, right?
Some people like Wowhead will always go like almost always go
for models like this. They have like these crazy tools
that nobody else has, which are incredible.
But we have like, you know, our tools are good still, but
they're open source. But yeah, they'll always go for
new models. People love that.
People pop hard for that, right? A new like mount model or a new
boss model or some information like that.
I normally kind of work down. So I'll like started
achievements to see what new achievements have been added and
then kind of go through. And normally mounts is always
one that I go to 1st, like the mount folder because I'm like,
all right, what new mounts are in here?
And it's like, Oh my God, there's 70 new mounts for Legion
Remix and things like that. So it's like, yeah, I just kind
of look at that like kind of the high spots of like mounts,
achievements always have a little look in like classes to
see if there's any new race class combos or, or races to see
if there's anything new like with, with character races or
anything like that. Any changes with those.
There's also like a table called like global strings that has
like things like to do with like controller support and, and
random nuance, things like that, or like the abandoned system for
Mythic Plus that they put in recently and, and things like,
and you kind of get hints of those in there.
So yeah. And then like after time,
because The thing is like these builds come out super late for
me as well. Like last night, I think it was
like midnight. So I'm just like looking at it.
I'm like, OK, this will do. Look at the rest of it tomorrow.
And sometimes I even like, can't you know, I have a whole night's
sleep. I wake up and then I start
looking at it again. I still find new stuff that
people haven't found yet because I don't know, there's so much
there, especially with the major patches as well.
They have so much random stuff that not everyone will pick up
on immediately like in in 11 to 5.
I think even in last the the last bill they put like a bunch
of stuff for housing decor, like they've started putting
populating some tables to do with that, which has been really
exciting. The only things in there at the
moment are the the pre-order stuff, but you know, there's
definitely going to be more coming, I'm sure in 27
especially. OK.
What is like one of the most memorable things that you have
uncovered while data mining or just testing on the PTR?
Oh my goodness. Oh, man.
That is, that is a tough question.
There's been so many where we've had like revelations where we're
like, what the heck? Like, what is this?
Oh man. I think what was it more there
was something to do with time walking recently.
It's stuff like that, like finding like an MPC that does
LFR or something like that, right?
Stuff like that is always really like oh wow, OK or Oh yeah like
here's 1. So they super encrypted the the
dark Ranger stuff. Do you remember that?
And God, I can't. It was shadow lands at some
point they had that and there was all those rumors about like
dark Ranger and they kind of get this quest line.
But then there was like, and it was just so much fun from the
community side of things because they'd encrypted it so hard that
it was, you know, basically doesn't exist in the files.
But there was like there was like random MPC skins where
we're like, oh, this is, you know, this MPC.
And then there was all these different maps and, and
speculation and things like that.
So just kind of uncovering that obviously with people as well,
with other people, kind of posting bits and pieces and then
kind of putting the puzzle together was super fun.
And even then Blizzard encrypted it so much that we didn't even,
you know, it was still a surprise when it was announced,
of course. So just yeah, things like that,
this, you know, yeah, it's just, I think it's the hints to new
expansions as well. I think in BFA, no, in what was
before BFA Legion, in Legion there was like Abfa robe or
something like a, there was like a robe that had like a, a map of
Colteris on it. And I remember like people were
freaking out about it and things like that.
So that's always fun to find. But I can't think of anything
off the top of my head that I've kind of broken the news with.
But I feel like there has been perhaps some stuff maybe?
I mean, as you said, like sometimes it's just encrypted to
hell. Sometimes it is just like a
whisper of something and you don't even realize it until they
finally break the news. You're like, that's what that
was. I always find that is very cool.
I guess more of the hands on testing.
What's something that you've sort of come across that you had
no idea you were going going to see?
And then you just be like, OK, this is where like a lot of the
testing you do on stream where it just like takes over the
stream. It's like, OK, folks, this is
what we're doing for the rest of the day.
I've got a good story for you. So Battle for Azrof Alpha,
literally like one of the first builds.
And obviously they had announced this Warfront feature.
We had no idea what it was like, and they hadn't announced any
testing for it. Anyway, we're in a Raffi
Highlands. And I think it was something
really weird. So there was an airship there
and we were flying around it. And like, that's so random.
Like obviously it's war fronts for like, I don't know how that
works. Anyway, I ended up flying over
it and I got dismounted and died on the airship I released.
And I was in the war front, so I'd got into the war front map
and I'm like freaking out. I'm like, then this is on
stream. I'm like, Oh no.
And Towley found out about it, so Towley's doing it as well.
So we're both in there and we're like, this doesn't seem like
something we should be doing. So yeah, something like that.
Or like more recently at Gamescom, I played with housing
and someone said you should try and escape the house.
I'm like, that's a funny idea. Let's do that.
So I clipped a bench through the wall and I sat on it and I
jumped out and I was outside of the house, which wasn't
neighborhood. It was in like some like blank
map. That's how they they work.
But yeah, so I'm running around this like grey ground, like grey
and textured ground. You can see the outside of the
walls of the rooms that I've put in this house.
And then I'm sitting there. I'm like, what am I doing?
I'm a games comp. There's literally Blizzard
developers all around me and they I'm here to like show off
the feature and I've escaped it like, so I was like, yeah, we
didn't, we didn't do that. That is amazing.
That is so much fun. I remember people talking about
like climbing Mount Hydro and such back in Vanilla and that's
that's what that reminds me of going to the places that you
should never have been in in the first place.
As you're testing on the PTR, as you're testing on alpha and
beta, how do you get people to to help you?
Is it just like you're talking to your audience or like, hey,
can somebody help me with this? Are you organizing ahead of
time? Do you do a lot of testing for
like dungeons, raids, I guess delves now or are you more open
world when you're doing testing initially?
It depends really. So I guess going back to remix,
which we've been doing recently, it's been super good.
So like there's a lot of people that are really interested in
remix. So we've been like the other day
I was like, oh, we, you know, I need to test a mythic raid.
I want to test this. Like to see what it's like with
20 people. I didn't think we'd ever get 20
people. We ended up getting a bunch of
people from the stream. I was telling them like it's
super easy to set up. Like, and I was explaining how
they set up the character and everything, making it as as
accessible and easy as possible for them to be like, OK, I'll
come help out. Like, and, and that's kind of
what it was. And people just, I get, I guess
if they're in the stream and they're watching something on
PTR, they're like kind of understand the vibe.
So they're like, oh, you know, I'll come help.
And like, I'm very, very blessed to have like people in the
stream who are like, you know, I literally say, Hey, you know,
for example, even today, like there's a guy called Moe who's
like super great. And I was like, oh, I want to
test levelling through a raid. And he was like, I'll run you
through it. And he ran me through it for
like 2 hours straight like and, and just leveled my character
like he was Max level and he pushed the character through
just to see how the XP was and things.
I'm just like so nice of him to do that.
Like that is incredible. And it's it's great on the
public test realm, but also not so great on like the alpha, the
very early alpha when it's just like press creators and like a
couple, you know, 100 people who have like signed up and got in
randomly. So it makes it really difficult
with that when you're like, I want to do these group
activities or test as well, boss or test this random thing, but
you've got no one to do it because not everyone's in.
And it's a shame. But obviously as the alpha
progresses into Bayer, especially now with like
pre-orders giving Bayer access, it makes it a lot easier.
And, you know, it's an interesting one for sure.
But yeah, I'm very lucky to have like people who who want to help
out with group content. With the more recent PTR alpha
beta test, things have been moving a lot faster.
How else has that evolved over the time of you testing?
How have things change and force you to change in response?
Yeah, it's kind of crazy. So obviously been doing this a
while. So I've seen all sorts of
different PTR cycles and things. It's definitely way more rapid
now. So like I think we got into like
season 3 of the war within and then like the a day later we got
into the PTR of 1125. I'm like, this is ridiculous,
Like I'm so tired. But I it's great as a content
creator. Obviously it's difficult because
stuff does change so rapidly, you know, and I, and I'm the
only one that really like, you know, I, I overthink it a lot.
But like putting out a video, you know, for example, I put out
a video about the Arsefat weapon and was like, hi, like the, the
highest time level you can get right now on is 633, which it
isn't anymore. They literally changed it last
night. So I'm like, that's annoying.
But you know, I said try not to get into numbers too much
because that stuff changes. But yeah, it's it's it's really
good. Sometimes I think even recently
we've had like 2 PTRS at the same time.
I think we've had like a major patch and a mini patch at the
same time. Obviously Alpha coming up will
likely have two seven at the same time as Alpha, but also
Legion Remix like will release as well.
So that's like 3 things that are going to be happening at the
same time. So it definitely gets
overwhelming. I try to keep like a Trello
board of like I, you know, with Midnight, for example, they
announced all those features. So I made a list of like, I want
to make a video on this. Is this is this.
Sometimes a video will be like, OK, like sometimes something
will come out on alpha and I'll be like, oh, I want to make a
video about this, you know, that that wasn't announced or
something like maybe they'll add like more control of support and
they just never told anyone, you know, and I'll make a video
talking about that because that happens all the time.
There's always stuff that's like snuck into different builds
that's just like Blizzard just haven't said about it, I think.
Oh, actually going back to your question from earlier, I did
think of something when they made oh God, it was like, I
think it was the last patch, maybe 11, maybe 1117.
Anyway, they made shadow lands reps account wide and nobody had
reported on it, not even Blizzard.
And I was the first person to to tweet out and announce it, which
was awesome. And and then I started second
guessing if they even intended it because Blizzard never even
put it in the development notes. They never put in the patch
notes. They didn't even put it in the
official patch notes when they put them out.
And then then eventually they changed it, which was so weird
because it's such a massive feature, right, making an
account wide, you know, reputations for an entire
expansion. So it was very strange that they
never really acknowledged it until the very end.
But sorry, yeah, I'm going off on a tangent now, but it.
Was great because I didn't even realize till just you saying it
now that they had done that. OK, Utterly lost in the sauce
sometimes, OK. Yeah, that was that was a good
one, but I can't remember the original question.
I've gone off on a right old rent.
I guess a question that I did want to ask you was like for
the, for the folks at home that want to like test, right, how
like what tips would you give to them?
Is there like a video where it just shows you like here's how
easy it is to like get in onto the PTR?
Or is there like resources that they can use or things that they
they could at least focus on? Not that I'm aware of.
I mean, there probably is videos from years ago, like how to get
on PTR and things like that. But I guess just kind of it's a
weird one, right? Someone else we wants, like,
would I do it if I wasn't a content creator?
And I think the answer was probably still yes because I
really enjoy seeing, you know, Wow being developed.
And it's always good to have that feedback cycle as well,
especially through the stream, which was actually funny even
today, like one of the devs tweeted that they were watching
my stream and I was like, I had no idea like what the heck, it's
crazy. Never never lost on me.
Honestly, it's ridiculous. But so no, there's not really
any resource to like get into that kind of stuff, but it's
very easy. Like it's all kind of there.
You know, you can create a PTR account for free through your
Battle.net and then just kind of jump in.
I do wish the PTR was more of a test environment with like pre
made a ES and you know, you can buy gear, but like if you don't
have, you know, a Max level character on live, which you'll
be surprised how many people don't, you can't, you won't.
You'd have to level on the PTR, which is just ridiculous.
You don't want to do that. So I think yeah, there should
be. And especially like for example,
like if I wanted to like I recently leveled a Demon Hunter
because I was worried that the alpha wouldn't have pre made
A's. So because I want to test
devour, right? So I was like, I need to do that
just in case. But normally it does, but still
like the PTR doesn't, which I find very unusual.
And it just feels like they've just kind of put the patch out
and they haven't really been like, you know, talk to an MPC
to skip this part or talk to an MPC to do these like different
things. Like I think there should be
more of that instead of just like go out and play, you know,
go and grind this thing on PTR just so you can do it again
later on. You know, it's just like
ridiculous, to be honest. They have got a little bit
better with it. Like in the notes, they're like,
you know, coming back to Legion remix again, it's like they they
added Bran. It's actually called bronze Bran
beard because obviously bronze remix, which is amazing and he
levels you to AT gives you all the power.
Like, he basically puts you at the absolute pinnacle of kind of
remix power and things like that, which is great.
Like, because I don't want to go out and farm all that stuff, you
know, on PTR for it to just be, you know, wiped and not gone
over to my live account. So yeah, I think there probably
should be better resources to get into it, but I try and help
out where I can. Oh, I mean I'm glad you are
making that sacrifice so the rest of us don't have to.
I appreciate your service. I agree with you.
Having been on PTR tests and such myself.
There are times where it's like, oh, this is like let's say it's
heritage armor that's now they're no longer testing, but
it's it's something that is narrowed down to a specific race
or class or faction or anything. Being able to actually test that
is restrictive on the PTR and less restrictive when they add
in the template. So I agree with you there with
all of this testing, how does that impact your live play?
If you're always on the PTR, always on the alpha, testing all
this stuff, when do you get time to just play as yourself, Dan?
I actually like now basically like in the evenings I do like
the weirdest stuff off stream like kind of boring.
Like I, I have like a barometer of like what I think is boring
to watch on stream for me at least.
So I just kind of do stuff like that.
Like I'll go and like recently I've just had this itch to do
rated Battleground Blitz. So I've been doing that in the
evenings. So yeah, it's funny actually,
especially when we're heavy in PTR like we are right now with
with remix. Like retail is my like chill
time, which sounds super weird. So yeah, I just literally just
do my delves and do you know, I just chill and do like random
collecting and things and I just do it in like the evenings or
like if I get like an hour in the morning between something,
I'll do it. So yeah, I just, and maybe that
on the weekend, like I have a laptop that I have downstairs
that I just kind of play pretty casually on as well, which is
nice. It's nice to not be in the
office all the time I find. So yeah, I just.
And also it kind of ruins kind of playing the next thing, makes
you more excited for it. So now you're like can't really
be bothered to play the nought like the current version.
Like for example, in in when we were doing 11/2 stuff with
Koresh, I'm like, man, I wish we could start Koresh now.
So I try not to try not to get too into like nuance stuff with
PTR because then I just get, you know, carried away and then I
burn myself out for live game when it comes out.
Yeah, understand, understand. I I definitely felt that
actually with Koresh, because like you said, very next day
here's Legion, Legion testing. And yeah, it was just so like,
yeah, phase diving sucks. I'd rather be fighting demons.
Yeah. So random question, when you're
not playing Wow, when you're not Mr. GM of World of Warcraft,
what are the games that you like?
I I. Really enjoy.
I got into a weird thing recently where there was this
thing I found this thing called retro achievements, which adds
achievements to older games and I have a steam deck.
So I started playing older games and I added achievements to
them. So I started playing like crash
Nitro car on it was like APS 2 game and and things like that.
Just retro. A lot of retro games I tend to
gravitate towards, but I also have a bunch of games in my
Steam that I've never played that I would like to play.
I was playing through Indiana Jones recently, which was
incredible. And I'm playing through and I'm
like, man, I've really missed out on a lot of games over the
years. Like I know like I would
absolutely love a game like Elden Ring I've never played or
Skyrim I've never played because I was just playing way too much
World of Warcraft, right? And I, I, oh, Metal Gear Solid,
I'm the like the biggest Metal Gear Solid fan in the absolute
world. I absolutely adore that game
series. And I haven't played the new
one. Like they literally just put out
a remake of #3 which is my favorite, one of my favorite
games of all time. So I want to play that, but it's
just finding the time because I always feel this weird, like
force of nature bringing me back to Wow to do stupid busy work of
killing Rez and Koresh. You know, like stuff like I'm
like, you know, I'm playing these games.
I'm like, man, this Indian endurance game is great, but
what about like, you know, phase diving?
I need to go collect those orbs. I I get it.
I the first week I was on every day collecting all those orbs so
I could get them out. I am a mount collector, so I
didn't have anything else. But yeah, it's, it's good to
step away from games. But when you are playing World
of Warcraft and you are on live servers, what's, what's your
personal like focus? What's your, what's your love of
the game? Are you like you doing PvP?
Is that like the the thing that you enjoy when you're not
streaming or are you more about like collecting all the things?
Collecting all the things? Most definitely the PvP thing is
funny. It was like a bit of a weird
side quest that I went on that I thought would be fun because I
wanted the vicious mounts because I really like to look at
the vicious mounts. I think there's some of the best
looking mounts in the game. And I thought, you know, maybe
how hard, how hard could this possibly be?
And the, the the difficulty wasn't in the PvP, it was in the
queue times. I was in a queue for like over
an hour for Blitz and I'm like, this is just not worth it.
Like, how can anyone farm this out?
It's ridiculous, which is a shame really.
But yeah, I just kind of, I do a lot of solo play and, and the
game accommodates it a lot more now with with Delves especially
Delves have been something that have been fantastic and I'm
looking forward to seeing what they do with them in, in
Midnight. I know they're kind of like
something that perhaps not everyone enjoys, but I think
it's a really good method of gearing.
Like I've, you know, getting a vault is like such a normal
thing for a lot of people, but I never got a vault in like
Dragonfly. So I never really did Mythic
Plus. So like having that in the war
within every week, having a little vault of like 3 things
that I can pick from has been really nice.
I was rating, I was rating with, with Sean and, and Sham and, and
people like that. And I was doing that last year,
but I didn't do it this year, mainly just because of timings,
just because they they raid quite early and I have a young
daughter and she has to go to bed and things like that.
So it was a bit unfortunate because I really enjoyed it.
I'd like that, doing it with a raid group.
It's been a very, very long time since I've done that.
And it was a lot of fun. But yeah, the timings just
unfortunately didn't work out for that.
So yeah. But mainly just collecting stuff
though. That's that's kind of and that's
kind of what it is at the moment.
I'm just like logging in, doing a world tour of like 5 res in
Koresh and then maybe going to undermine.
But I fell out of love with that zone so much that it makes me
want to all F4 the game. So I'm like maybe not like the
most random thing I'm doing at the moment is like collecting
raid skips so I can use them in Lesion remix because raid skips
are kind wide. So that's kind of like the most
random thing I'm doing at the minute.
But yeah, as I said, busy, boring work in Wow, but I find
it enjoyable. But no one wants to watch me go
through the night hold four times a week like trying to get
this one raid skip item. Honestly, yeah, it is basically
a lot of people looking at the new and shiny stuff.
Like again, PTR comes and then that makes live a little bit
less shiny. The new life thing hits and that
makes Undermine a little less shiny.
Though I have my own complaints about Undermine, but that's a
different episode for for the tip that you could give for
people who want to test, test PTR.
What's like just a general thing that you could say like, hey, if
you're going to do this, make sure you're on the lookout for
this or make sure you do this. I guess really just like do the
thing that like most spaces are covered, right, Like most people
will do, you know, they will look like, for like, I tend to
look at everything, but some people will be like, you know,
for example, we run a, a discord, but that has like for
public test round. And one of the people on there
is like super focused on pet battles and pets and, and things
like that. So what they do when PTR comes
up is they go and find all the pets and they tell, you know,
they tweet about it and they post it around and all that kind
of stuff. And that's really great.
And I, I guess my advice is like, focus on the thing you
like, you know, like if you're mount collector, you know, go
and find how you get this random mount, you know, like, for
example, like the translocated, translocated Georgia, right?
Like you get the 20 of the thing from the Ecodome invasions.
Like finding stuff like that is always really satisfying.
I really enjoy doing that too, because finding like, for like
example, in Koresh again, like Starbs, right?
Starbs is the big ghosty boy who was the observer who was
attacking the Ecodome Primus or whatever it's called.
No, the Oasis, sorry and he was in face diving, but we couldn't
find him for ages on the PTR and then eventually, like we went
into face diving. He was spawned and we're like
oh, because we knew it dropped from him like this mount because
it was called starves last lunch and it literally said that it
was from him and then finding him and then obviously finding
out that it drops from him was really cool.
So that's always fun. You know there's even mounts now
that haven't been discovered in Koresh.
There's one that's like, it's, it just says redacted as the
source. And I, as far as I'm aware,
nobody's found it yet. So stuff like that is always
really fun to do and I find a lot of enjoyment in that.
So yeah, my advice is that you just focus on the thing that you
want to find out about when the patch comes to kind of give you
a leg up on what is to come, I suppose, and obviously give
feedback. OK.
And then when people want to find you and everything you do,
where can we find you? I'm everywhere, I'm everywhere,
Manny. I'm like a parasite.
I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Twitch, I'm on
Myspace, I'm on YouTube. I'm over on Bebo, I'm on
Threads, I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on I I can't think of any of the
social medias. I don't know.
But anyway, I'm everywhere. Mainly YouTube doing long form
content. Have got into a little bit of
shorts recently as well. Super fun to do.
And then obviously streaming on Twitch and then my Twitter.
I'm like addicted to tweeting as you know, regardless of how
people feel about that platform, I think it's very good for
communication with people in regards to like people
commenting and giving feedback and things like that.
Obviously, you know, that's a whole nother discussion for
another day on that whole platform.
But in general that there and Blue Sky have two very good
platforms for kind of posting out stuff and then seeing
people's reaction, see what people say about it.
And I really like that. It's just that instant feedback
is really good. You know, posting something from
PTR and being like, hey, like, you know, you for example, like
literally just before the show I tweeted about like what you can
do when you're Max power on Legion and Legion Remix.
And then like everyone was like, Oh yeah, cool, this is awesome.
And then asking questions and I answer them and you just kind of
get that awesome like immediate feedback.
But anyway, Twitter is where I'm at.
Spamming everybody's for you pages I guess.
Which is awesome and thank you again for coming out today.
Again, really do appreciate all the work that you do for not
just PTR and stuff, but for the content creator community.
That's going to be it for us today.
And if you need to find anything that I'm doing, of course,
you're already on the channel. And otherwise you can find me as
true villain Manny. That's true without the E over
on Twitter, over on Blue Sky and all the socials except Mocap.
I've never heard of that before. And until next time, may all
your hits be crits.