I don't know, Alex. Jesus, we just gave everybody
invincible, for Christ's sake. Why do we got to make it so?
Yeah, I mean, come on, we're giving.
We're literally handing out bags of mounts.
It's like Oprah Winfrey. Like, you get a mount, you get a
mount, everybody gets a shot of fear.
Like this is ridiculous. For Lord Iran, for the Karen
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 Horde, For Azeroth. Hello and welcome to another
episode of For Azeroth. I am one of your Co hosts, the
Grandpa Manny and I am joined by my 2 great friends.
First coming from parts unknown because she has moved, it is Lex
Rance. Hello Lex, how are you and has
you touched the World of Warcraft at all this week or has
it all been moving? It's mostly been moving.
I did get on to do a couple of the Delve belt quest to keep
that up to snuff, and I was very excited that we got a couple
like video slash audio things that I could do while doing
other things, including moving. But mostly I have been trying to
set up my house and it's still, I got to say, I'm still in quite
a few boxes. For those of you who don't know,
I just bought a house and spent this week moving in and that's
why I wasn't here last week because I was moving.
So yeah, yeah, still very much in the organization stage, but
we're very excited. We're living our dreams.
And if we're a little echoey, they'll be wall hangings
eventually. Well the audio was coming in
good so far but of course we will get like 20 comments about
the audio. Make sure you send those in and
we will try and do our best. Now coming further, further EI
think again Lex parts unknown we have Sean.
Hello Sean, how are you and how's the World of Warcraft been
treating you this week? I'm doing quite well.
I would be very impressed if Lex somehow found a way to get
further E than I am and still be in the continental United States
that will be that will be crazy yeah Warcraft's been great.
We just did some raid testing today first 3 bosses on heroic
went well everything feels good. And for those of you keeping
track at home on the what will Sean play next year wild ride
that we have, I am. I'm now comfortable locking in
saying that for Ghosts of Koresh, I will be dancing at the
pink palette club for the entire tier.
It looks like, barring some wildly drastic change in
circumstances. And then bear an EUI don't
really. I always I always sort of like
talk reference my main based on NA because EU is just always the
bear. It's a because I'm not really a
big fan of a kid that plays lip that was going to make a pop
culture reference. I I'm lost too.
Like wait, kid who plays? There's a show called The Bear,
The main actor, his name Gabes me, but he played Lip in
Shameless. It's like Jeremy or something.
Jeremy Irons No. OK, alright, we're we're on,
we're on the same page. Like when you're gonna do a
reference like that, you have to at least put in the bare
necessities just so we can follow it.
I gotta land it right. I gotta stick the landing.
I was hoping our live chat would come through with a big saviour
for me, but we don't know this guy.
Jeremy Pivens? No, that ain't it either.
There's a lot of Jeremy. Jeremy Renner, No.
He's just a guy with the faith he's got.
A very a very specific face. It's not ugly, it's just not
traditionally attractive, Which. Yeah, which we love.
I didn't say ugly. I just say not not traditional.
You know what maybe I should throw stones when I'm rich and
could like back myself up with on that lawsuit.
But anyways, we're. Special shout out Special shout
out to for Azeroth's official favorite listener, Xander Jeremy
Allen White is the name I knew it was.
Jeremy. All right, ready to move.
On so of course this world this week in World of Warcraft, I
have returned to mount hunting. We have two events that are
happening throughout July. We have of course, the Diablo
themed event where you can go around and you can get those
goblins and get the transmog. People have been going super
hardcore, have already gotten every single one at this point,
but you still have all month. So why in the world are you
sweating so much? Come on, guys.
Beyond that, we also have concurrently with that the
collectors event, which again is through till the 29th in NA and
I believe the 30th in EU. And that allows everybody who's
not me to get so many mounts with an extra 5% chance.
You too can get more than the one stupid mount that I've
gotten over the course of two weeks.
Or it could be 5% more salt, as you will soon see in this
episode. You're very, very angry, man.
I, you know, I gotta say this, this World of Warcraft week
ain't vibing with me. Really.
Is this not vibing with me? The event, I think, is actually
quite cool. We said last week it is amazing
to see everybody all throughout the World of Warcraft, even
stuff that isn't affected. People are like, you know what?
I'm hunting mounts anyways, let me go do Rockmar.
Let me go do out outside bosses that nobody's doing.
Conversely, reset and Undermine. I'm glad there's a lot of NPCS
because otherwise that would be a ghost town.
Undermine has officially expired in the eyes of the public,
Which? No, you're wrong.
Oh. It's not for the top of the hour
when the goblins spawn every gun like, but outside of that, they,
they, they, they show up, they kill the goblins and then they
vanish. Oh, they kill all of the
goblins. It Rex, well, they don't kill.
He means the treasure goblins. Like he's not talking about the
goblin residents. But but to to clarify, go ahead
Sean, tell us how it works. For So for anybody who's who's
doing the 3D emissary event and you're like, I just want to find
these goblins out and you've been parking at Donegal or
Orgermeyer or Stormwind at the top of the hour, killing your
one goblin and then going about your day.
You're doing it wrong. Join me fellow sweat Lords in
the top of the hour. You had to undermine the zone
nobody wants to be in anymore. And every single rare that
spawns and gets killed spawns goblins, treasure goblins.
You can get like 40 between 40 and 50 of the currency in a 2530
minute span from the top of the hour to the bottom of the hour,
which I found out this week is not a phrase in Europe.
They don't say bottom of the hour for like.
I don't think it's a phrase here either.
Lex Chime. Well, I, I, I'm a little bit
more concerned with you can get 40 things in in a 25 to 30
minute span from the top of the hour to the bottom of the hour
and I'm concerned what's happening to all the other
minutes. Like you, you've already
collected everything that you need in that that, but if if
you're going. From the top of the hour to the
bottom of the hour, yeah. Well, 'cause.
The top of the hour is like 4:00, the bottom of the hour be
430. But because it it only spawns.
Those 4:00 what a random hour 'cause I'm like 4 clock's not at
the top of the clock it's like. Well, the top, the top of the
hour is when that's some we're, we're sort of sidetracked
actually. 30 minutes I I assume. Yeah.
The top of the hour is 00. The bottom of the hour is 30.
Wait. OK, that actually doesn't make
sense when you're thinking about a clock I.
Where the minute hand is where the minute hand points but.
We're not saying the top. OK, OK, OK, OK, OK.
Yeah, clearly that's not OK. I actually did, I suppose,
answer Sean's question, which is, have I heard of the top of
the hour? Yeah, very quickly.
All of my European friends were like, no one says that here.
They don't, but they don't. They also don't say top of the
hour, which is crazy, I swear. Like it's on all of our radio
stations. Maybe it was just from work as
well in the Navy. Anyway, the point is, stop
parking at Dornegall, Stop parking at your major cities for
your one measly portal an hour, Head to the undermine, Get
upwards of like 15 portals in a 30 minute window.
Get far more of that currency, Get that transmod bot so you can
get on to doing other things like PTR testing.
Yes, and you will need time for PTR testing because today we had
three hours of PTR testing plus an extra half hour convenience
fee if you wanted to even get on the stupid realms.
They have their schedule for testing like a minute after the
hour. I think it was like, oh, the
hour's coming up, 50 minutes until the server restarts.
And then it was literally quarter two rate testing.
That's why I said four rate testing was at 4:00 mic time and
at quarter two it said server shut down in 15 minutes.
Yeah, and those servers were down for at least 15 minutes
because I walked away from my computer about that time.
That meant that people who had been there looking to jump in
and get into the raid, they had to sit around and wait for the
servers to come back up. Sean, because you actually
toughed it out. How long was it before those
servers came back? It was 28 minutes before the
first person was able to get into the raid.
We had to then get our group together.
So we're looking at like 35 ish minutes from when the raid
testing was supposed to start to when it actually started.
Luckily the first boss is light on mechanics and it seems pretty
well put together. There's not there wasn't a lot
of bugs. It's a fun fight.
It's basic, it's simple, but we enjoyed it.
So it wasn't super heartbreaking that we lost 30 minutes at the
front of it, but we did then game, they gave us 10 extra
minutes at the at the back end of that, that testing, we had
already killed it at that point, but.
OK. And then the rest of the testing
went on as normal, An hour for each of the other two bosses.
You would have 10 minutes knocked into the second boss so
that I only lost. 10 minutes from the second boss, which
again wasn't a big deal because very light on mechanics, very
easy to understand, good boss design overall so far and we
also killed him long before the 50 minutes was up.
I mean, of course, PTR organized group you, you're the group that
Sean runs with is a lot of great people Raiders that come
together for every every PTR test.
This wasn't just a completely made-up pug and included, I
believe some people from your raid team as well, Sean.
So like these are these are mythic Raiders doing a heroic
testing boss. Remember that when you are
testing on Heroic, they often, I guess the term is pull the
punches so that you get to see more of the those mechanics.
They really just want to see that those mechanics do work and
then when it goes live, it's usually ratcheted up from there.
The bosses usually have more health so that they live and do
less damage so that you live and get to see more of it.
So what are those 3 bosses again?
Those were the first 3 bosses right?
Yeah, it was the first 3. Plexus Sentinel was the first
boss, Lumothar is the second boss which is a heartbreaking
boss that makes me really upset to fight, and then the last one
was Soul Binder, Nazrinder, something like that.
I I've got to ask John, when you tested this on normal, you
didn't do this, but on heroic did you turn on arachnophobia
mode? Oh I did not.
It does. So I have been told it doesn't
work. I was actually asked to do that
by one of my writers on EU and I told her that I would and then
didn't. So I'm going to have to find
someone who did and send her a screenshot.
But it does apparently work on Lumithar.
You can turn, I think it's to him, into a crab.
OK, I mean is. It a cute crab.
I don't know. I didn't.
I didn't do it like. I think that the easiest thing
to do would be to look in the dungeon journal with
arachnophobia mode on and see what it what it does, but I
don't think you'll get the cause.
The poor creature gets split in half part way through the fight,
and I don't think you're going to get that part into the
dungeon journal anyways. Technically, it splits itself in
half out of pure rage. It is so furious at us that it
tears its body in half to chase us around.
It's it is a horrible fight, Lex.
We go into this room, This thing is just moisturized, thriving in
its lane, minding its own business, making the silk that
the ethereal wrapped themselves in.
And then we show up and start attacking it and fighting it and
destroying its its weaves and destroying its threads.
And it gets so angry at us, so enraged that we're because it's
suspended from the ceiling. It gets so furious that we have
come in and just decided to stick it and blast it and poke
it and prod it that it tears itself in half to try.
And because it's trying to pull us to it with webs and we keep
breaking it like I'll just pull them towards me with these
strands. We keep snapping the strands and
it gets so frustrated that it can't pull us in and can't stop
us from hurting it when it just wants to exist that it tears
itself in half and crawls around the room while it's arcane
essence leaks out from the back of it.
It's actually when you, when you, when you watch this fight,
it actually drags its back legs like if you stepped on an Ant by
mistake and didn't kill it and you could see it like crawling
away in its back legs didn't work.
That's what this fight is like. It's heart wrenching.
It's enraged mechanic is literally it's blood pouring all
over the the arena. Yeah, it's it's a horrible
fight. Like if you were upset at rat
the ration on fight because we fight ration on and ration on is
like been mind controlled by Zalitath and the black blood and
Ansorek. And in the middle of that fight,
Ansorek starts to regain conscious ration on starts to
regain consciousness and says no, no, stop.
What are you doing? Because it realizes, hey, I'm
being mind controlled and it's just a mother trying to protect
it's babies. We we kill ration on through
that. If that bothered you and it
should have, unless you're a heartless monster.
The loom with our fight is is really rough.
It's like that turtle in Thrown of Thunder.
That turtle and throwing Thunder that everybody fights was a
regular turtle that gets stuck in a wall.
And because it kept eating and growing, it couldn't get out.
So the other small creatures of that cave would bring it food so
it could stay alive. And we show up and kill it to
get through that. Really feels like a fable, like
one of those little fables. No, Read the Dungeon Journal.
No. No, no, no, no.
Horrible. No, I mean the the the the the
turtle is stuck in the wall and all the little cave animals
bring it food so it could live happily ever after until the
hero showed up. Yeah, that's right, Until the
heroes showed up. Yeah.
Anyway, Lumothir, Lex, enjoy. It's the second boss.
Yeah, so I will be playing an 11.2.
I'm going to be taking a little mental health mentee health
break as they call it. Again, we won't, we won't be
telling Lex anything more of the tears that she will be
committing that because she likes to go into bosses blind.
Yeah. She likes to do.
Let's do. Her atrocity is fresh.
No, it's good. It's good to, like, prepare
yourself for trauma. And so I'm glad that I'm gonna
go in aware that this will be a devastating fight and I'm gonna
have to give my little puppy dog a hug.
But if you want a breakdown of all of the fights, do check out
our last episode where Sean who has gone through all of normal
as well as like the later part of the raid in Heroic.
We went through all of those and even did a little death grip
counter on how many fights? Death grip is so so necessary
and I won't spoil that. Now go ahead and watch that
episode. Talking about DKS, we saw a lot
of tuning come in just recently with some hot fixes.
So we're before we were talking about DKS getting the first
movement in free in power spell and it's back on again.
Nope, that doesn't exist anymore.
But we are seeing a lot of these classes get tuning and changing.
It looks like the large changes are coming in.
We have seen some tear sets get completely reworked or revised.
Shaman part way through last week got a huge hit to their
tier set again, I feel like it was warranted for enhancement
and I feel bad for Elemental that got caught in the
crossfire. Maybe revise that a little bit.
So do check out those revisions. We're seeing a lot of a lot of
changes there. I also suggest to everybody do
take a quick glance at the PTR notes.
Some things are going to be affected already because we're
not getting any new buff food, right?
So that's a that's a thing. Could that be important?
Yeah. It meant that when I bought up
pretty much all of the undermine clams for 60 gold, I'm sitting
pretty while now people are paying 200 per.
I might put some of them back on the oxygen house to make a a
little bit of mint, but like I suggest people do check that
because it is affecting things. And we now have the release date
for the last major patch of the war within.
And that means that come August 5th, only two days after my
second birthday, we will have the new well, it won't actually
be the new raid, but it will be the new patch, the new area.
And then the week after, which is the 13th, again, ten days
after my second birthday. You will then get season 3 of
the The War Within and so this means that you should make sure
that you are getting things done that you wanted to do.
If you need to get your Delvis journey done, make sure you get
that done. If you are looking to get your
KSM or KSL, make sure you get that done.
AOTC, Cutting Edge, all of those will be gone in just six weeks
less than, but it's because they that is Tuesday or Wednesday in
the EU and we are running out of time.
Now, of course, this is one week where we will not have any raids
of the new raids open. Any of the dungeons will
actually still give you rewards from season 2 during that time.
So when the vault on the 13th, when you open that up, it's
still going to be old rewards. I do want to tell people if you
haven't gone through and done Horrific Visions and you're like
oh I need to get this ready for season 3, don't bother.
As soon as you get gear from season 3, and I think even
before you get gear from season 3, the helmet chants from
Horrific Visions will be shut off.
At least that is what it looks like on the PTR right now.
So save yourself some time on that.
Focus on your Delve belt. Focus on on your gear.
But of course, we're getting new gear.
So first week, Sean, that includes new Ray, sorry, rather
new dungeons, right? And yes, can you remind us what
the dungeon pool is? Dungeon pool for season 3 is
Ecuador Maldani, the new dungeon from The War Within.
We then have Halls of Atonement and Taz of Esh, Streets of
Wonder, Taz of Esh, Soleil's Gambit all returning from Shadow
Lands. And then we have the four
dungeons as voted for by the player base, which is
Dawnbreaker prior to the Sacred flame, Eric Caro, the City of
Echoes, and I'm sorry, yeah, Eric Caro, the City of Echoes
and Operation Floodgate and those will all be available
minus Tazewash two run in Mythic 0 in that first week.
So starting August 5th, you can run six of those eight dungeons
in Mythic 0 for champion track gear, which because of the fact
that we're upgrading to a new season, is going to be an
upgrade for everyone immediately.
So make sure you're getting together with your armor stack
friends and you're running a world tour of those mythic
zeros. There's they're back to the
weekly lockouts. You only have to do it once for
the week and get your drops, get your champion track drops and
get started out well for the next season.
Or don't be a sweat Lord. And I don't know, like pets.
I don't know what people do that are.
I feel like OK yes if you don't want to be a sweat Lord go ahead
enjoy the story right play through because you are going to
need to get your your Rishi wraps which come at the end of
chapter. Sorry you get it in chapter 1
and I think the upgrade is chapter 3.
All of that is available in the first week that leads up to the
raid. But going back to the dungeons,
I feel like it isn't too much for somebody over the course of
the week to do the dungeons. Maybe not armor stack entirely
right. Maybe you can't be like, oh,
we're going to do druids and and demon hunters and be an entire
leather leather daddy squad. That might be beyond what you're
wanting to do, but just run them.
It's it's one, it's one dungeon, basically 1A day.
Just fit an extra 1 in on the weekend and you're fine.
And I think that that isn't that much to ask.
It it's a good idea to do them as well, even if you're not like
man, he said. If you're not doing the armor
stack, it's a good idea to run them if you're planning on doing
mythic plus at all. Because there are changes in
almost all of these dungeons that you will want to see and be
familiar with before you jump into your mythic plus and
inevitably start doing keys that are probably above the level
that you should be doing and then dying to something that
you're like, oh, I didn't know this boss did this.
It didn't do it last season. Yeah, yeah, you're right.
There are lots of changes as well as adjustments.
Eric Cara, the last boss that terrified so many people, has
received substantial nerves and may not kill everybody on site
initially that that's a good thing.
They even fix some bugs. So like the dawn breaker.
Congratulations, DK you're not immediately nerfed as soon as
you step on that ship. That's another one.
And so I'm I'm kind of glad about these changes.
It looks it looks pretty good and it honestly, it's a new
season. You're going to have your class
changes you're going to have with a little bit of rust from
taking some time off during the season.
It's a good way to get back in the swing of things to to run
these dungeons. Now that also leads us to the
Delves. The Delves are going to be back.
We're going to have a new nemesis, which is the Nexus
Princess returning from the raid.
And so that means new affixes that are going to be themed
around the Ethereals. This is going to be available to
people on that first week and is another good, good source for
Luke if you are looking for some upgrades.
And it does provide provide upgrades.
And considering how quickly we were tearing through season 2
and how some of those trinkets were actually quite decent, I
would suggest people of all stripes try out the delves.
Also we got a new Delve which the entrance is located in our
new zone of Koresh but takes us back to the Azure vaults in
Dragonflight. So, you know, a little I don't
wouldn't call that a blast from the past because it's literally
the last expansion, but a little fresh change of scenery isn't
isn't bad. I will say as our resident
delver, the more that we actually resident delver.
I'm, I'm probably doing fewer delves than both of you, but
whatever, It's a resident joyful delver.
But is that I, I feel like as we're getting more and more
zones, we do kind of need to consider getting something like
a, a fast travel the way that you can.
I guess I feel like I'm feeling stupid as I speak because in
mythic Oh. Sean, tell her the news.
Rex, I have good news starting at 11.2 that I believe it's in
Tazewesh. There is a portal to all of the
Delve locations in Tazewesh. Is it all the delves or is it
all the bountiful delves? Oh, is it all bountiful?
Delves, I, I, I. We'd have to double check.
Sorry. Editing Manny will come in here.
Do do do do do do do. Hey, it's editing Manny here.
The four Bountiful Delves for the day will be available in the
Portal Room at the start of Tazewesh.
It also will have a portal that will take you back to Doran
right to the Delvers headquarters as well.
So for the ports will change each day to take you to the
Bountiful Delves and you can always just take the 5th portal
to get back to the headquarters. Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo.
And editing Manny will tell you what what it actually is.
The best part is there's zero shot that editing Manny is going
to do that, and you're all just going to have listened to Manny
make that sound and then still not know the answer.
OK, well, that that was me setting that up.
I definitely didn't just forget to read the show the the note.
I didn't realize that was happening.
That's so exciting, though. That's going to be great because
I was really not looking forward to like trying to like pulling
up my map and being like, where's the glow?
And like going all the little glowies and realizing that I
have to double back and go to freaking undermine for some
unreasonable reason because one of them's glowing and I guess
we're going to go over there. So I'm very.
Happy you have that boy that teleports you to a random
bountiful delve. Wait, there's a toy?
The Tel teleport you to a random bountiful delve.
Yeah, I'm really not the resident delver, but.
I need I hate delves so much. I can't know more about delves
than you could. I have the toy.
I still have not used it because like I used.
It to know. But like I cuz like I was going
to use it and then they did this entire overloaded thing.
So I only care about the overloaded 1.
So a random 1 isn't what I want. I want the overloaded delve.
And so now I've got a 5050 chance that it actually works on
my spirit. I'm not going to bother with
that. I'm just going to run to it.
But yeah, there will be portals. And if for some reason you still
don't have all the stories, because that is an achievement,
getting all the different stories of delves in 11.2.
When you mouse over the Dell, it will tell you which story
sequence or scenario is active on that day, which is also so
welcome. I'm happy for that.
Like, you know, these small little improvements, little bit
of, of quality of life where we get to teleport to The Dells, a
little bit of additional information where I need, where
I get to find out, oh, that's that pink elephant one.
That's the only one in that stupid Dell that I actually
like. That's wonderful to me.
I love it. That's very fun.
I love that they're getting into the the quality of life upgrades
for the delves, like just the cute little things to make it a
little bit easier, a little bit more fun to jump around, make it
feel more established and less like a thing that kind of
slapped in the game. And we're like, that's good.
Which to be fair, a lot of work has gone into the delves.
That's what it means with me. But I'm I'm glad that it's
starting to feel like an integrated part of the game with
all of the different things that usually you'd expect something
like this would have. It's very fun.
Yeah, one thing that I am kind of sad about with the mythic
plus rotation is that there were particular dungeons that had
mounts. Also something you should
consider before things rotate. And if you didn't get stoned the
stone core amount in the season 1, it's not coming back in the
what I assume is the final season of this of this
expansion. So that means and it was a
mythic only mount and mythic is tied to the mythic rotation
right? Even if it was like heroic then
you could at least run in on heroic.
Or is that even true anymore? No, it it has, it has been
unavailable all season long, but we have some mount collectors in
our EU team and they have been pretty salty about it and I
don't think they're very happy about it not coming back next
season either. Yeah, yeah.
So if you still need the mount from cleft of is it cleft of
Shadows? Shadowclaff.
No, no, no, no, Stone vault's out.
If you didn't get that in season 1, you ain't getting it back
this season. It's what is it Shadowclaff?
The one with the darkness that chases you down the mind.
Dark flame cleft. Dark flame craft.
There is a mountain there. You have six weeks.
Get it? It's going to be impossible to
get next season. So yeah, do you check your do
create your checklist and check that off.
Do look forward to all this stuff coming, Sean, go ahead.
Or Fasdev, if you're listening, maybe put in some caveat that
lets those mounts drop in heroic something, because the mount
collectors shouldn't have to wait until War Within is over to
go back and find these mounts out.
I don't think that's right. Honestly don't know if heroic is
just the war within dungeons. I actually think it follows.
It's Season 1. It follows the same thing.
You can't even do it on a Rook. It has to drop on normal for it
to be Evergreen available. That's how crazy it is now.
Yeah, that is awful. I gotta say, it's possible that
I I'm sure in fact that I just wasn't paying attention and this
is normal, but I didn't actually.
Maybe I should just ask and admit that I don't know.
Has it always been this way? That if like the dungeons that
aren't part of whatever rotation are just not accessible at all.
No, you could always, Until the War Within, every dungeon was
always available on Mythic difficulty.
It was when you went to Mythic Plus that the rotation changed.
And that has only been a thing since Dragonflight season 2.
Yeah, I don't. Yeah.
Like it? Season 1. 4. 4.
Season 4 of dragon fight is when they did the squish and made
mythic 0 as difficult as a 10. Right.
Oh, right, right. Right, but like the rotation of
like mythic actually following that wasn't a that was.
That didn't start until the zeros were up until dragonfly
season 4. You could do mythic zeros
regardless of the season of the dragonfly dungeons because we
used to spam run Ruby live pools on the weeks when you had to do
4 dungeons. Right.
Yeah. So that yeah, it's an
unnecessary unexpected casualty, but like, hopefully they can do
something to address that. Yeah, it's it's weird because
it's not like I would have been running mythic zeros, so it
doesn't really matter, but there's just something about the
fact that I can't access all of the content of this season it.
Just feels you feel the money normal.
Yeah, I don't know. I can't really figure out how to
put in words. It probably is just like a weird
emotional thing. I just I don't like it.
I mean the the mounting makes more sense.
That's an actual reasonable argument that isn't just.
This feels bad in my feelings, but like, I just don't.
Like it? I don't know, Alex.
Jesus. We just gave everybody
invincible for Christ's sake. Why do we got to make it so?
Yeah. I mean, come on.
We're giving. We're literally handing out bags
of mounts. It's like Oprah Winfrey.
Like you get a mount, you get a mount.
Everybody gets a shot of fear. Like this is ridiculous.
Except. For Manny, he doesn't get mouth.
I already had shot of fear, don't worry about it.
For legal reasons, that was a joke.
I think we should all be able to get these items.
But yeah, it is. It is a strange thing.
The other thing that I thought that was like kind of unusual is
that usually you have like that season 4 where all the old
dungeons come back. At least that's what happened in
Dragon Fight when they started splitting up the current
dungeons. And without that, yeah, you're
going to have to wait until midnight when you gear up.
But like, imagine going through and like, let's say in Dragon
flight, because that's the last time it was there.
They were like mount swears, like you need this item from
like the mythic boss to then trade in or like particular
mounts would drop from the different dungeon.
So I'm a little salty about that.
But this is not just all about the mounts.
This is also about other things as well.
So Lex, I'm going to turn it to you because you love the lore
and we had a little bit of a short story that came out.
So tell us a bit about this short story, please.
Yeah, so we got to learn in the Warcraft audio novella The Doom
of Koresh, we got to learn from Locust Walker's point of view
what happened to Koresh, right? Yeah.
Is is the name of the. I literally literally listened
to this today and I just said the name, but to basically to
the planet of the Ethereals and why they are the Ethereals and
not, you know, full corporeal beings and what also what the
plan is to happen to Azeroth, right?
Like what we are aiming to do or what Dementius is aiming to do
to us. So we can kind of see what what
we're getting. And it was a three-part audio
like YouTube listen with Pretty Little pictures that come up or
you can read it, which I really should have done.
Every every like every few years people talk me into trying an
audio book again. They're like, listen to it.
It's so cool with the the voices and with the voice actor.
You've got to listen to it and I'm like, fine, fine.
You're all saying it's super cool and it's super wonderful.
I'll listen to an audio book and then I'm 30 minutes in and I'm
like, I have no clue what just happened.
I've not been paying attention to any of this.
So we if, if you're like me, read the PDF.
It's very fun. I did listen to it and having
the voice actor doing the voices and with all the fun sound
effects and seeing the pretty pictures, that was very cool.
And it's also just a very beautiful story.
And I think to be fair, since I am historically A hater when it
comes to short stories, the audio book might have helped
with that, that I was hearing more of the emotion and less
like focusing on the exact wording of the book of the
story. But I thought it was really
sweet. I thought it was really cool.
I really want to play this at some point.
Like the story that they told was very interesting and very
engrossing, I thought. And the, the ending was kind of
telegraphed, as it tends to be in World of Warcraft, but still
very sad. I, I was very, I, I was, I was
like kind of tearing up at the end of it.
I'm going to be completely honest.
OK, that I mean like the fact that it still had that emotional
resonance with you while like even if it was telegraphed, even
if you were expecting it, the fact that it still landed like
that, that's pretty good. I think that the audio book has
like a couple of things that are kind of cool.
Like as he's, as he's going back in time, as he's recollecting
and he's sort of taking you back to that moment, the voice sort
of changes a bit. It's it stops having that like
ethereal echo and then becomes a little bit more grounded as he's
talking about like how Koresh used to be.
Oh, it's never like Azeroth. It was never had the CS and
stuff. It was always this harsh world,
right? Like having somebody who's
talking about it and reminisce and reminiscing about that and
having that candor in their voice I think really does add to
it. So yeah, the audio book would be
cool. I but I feel like if it depends
on who the like, what kind of learner you are, There are
people who are very much auditory listeners.
I had a person who called me up in the middle of the night,
right? And was like saying some stuff
and stuff and it wasn't important.
So I was just like, I just want to go back to sleep.
And then like the next morning, I could recall all of that.
And I've fallen asleep trying to like read a book and I've had to
be like, I'm have to start the chapter all over again.
None of that stuck. So like I'm an auditory person.
So like it works in the auditory, but it doesn't work in
writing. Some people exact opposite.
So whatever works for you, dear listener, dear Lex.
That's that's what I would suggest for that.
But overall, the story that is told in this short story is
summarized or otherwise explained in the in the
campaign, the story campaign as you get get towards the the
raid. So if you skip this, you
actually aren't missing anything.
Like if I would, if I were to tell Sean, oh, like this is what
happened to Koresh or even ask Sean what happened to Koresh,
because Sean has played through the campaign, he would be able
to tell you. And I think that is.
Again, that's the answer. What happened to Koresh?
She's gone out of. Curiosity is the story that's
told in the campaign, is it via Locust Walker or is it a general
story of like the overall what happened?
It is. Yes.
Eventually the full, eventually the full, truth is told.
Yeah, we start with the Chronicles version, you know,
from a certain point of view, Locus Walker's point of view.
And then as things develop, we find the real version written
by. Yeah, oh, this is exciting
'cause I haven't done PTR so I don't know what the story is
yet. So turns.
Out it was the jail turns. Out it was the jailer.
No, Sean, No, I'm joking. I'm Jill quit next year in
between the the spider boss and that I will be gone like don't
even. Play with me.
Turns out it was a dealer. That's girl.
Oh man, that's. Agatha all along.
There you go, this episode, it was the Jailer all along.
God. The way that the truth comes out
is actually part of the story, so I do like that as well.
But then we got to go into this next thing that Blizzard put out
about the story, which I think is such a it's just spoilers.
It's just spoilers. So guys, if you haven't seen
Blizzard's little 2 minutes short, stay away.
Run as far as you can. If you see like a oh, teaser
trailer for for Koresh, No you didn't.
I don't think we can call it a spoiler because Blizzard.
Like if it was data mined and released by Wowhead.
Sorry. If it was data mined and
released by a community website, then yeah, we could say that it
was a spoiler. But Blizzard put it out there.
This is Canon posted by Blizzard.
They want us to know it now. It's not a spoiler.
I disagree with you, but I don't I know we, we, we already went
off into such a sidebar before. I'm just gonna agree to disagree
on the on this one. I think that the way that you
experienced it, Sean, where you play through the the campaign
and then the moment happens that I think is the proper way to
experience this, however. Blizzard disagrees with you.
Apparently Blizzard disagrees with me and Sean is such a butt
kissing lackey that he also agrees with me.
So to break the tie, we're going to turn it over to Lex.
OK. And sorry, before Lex, you tell
us. Anybody who wants to remain what
I consider spoiler free, please skip ahead 7 minutes.
I'm going to give you 7 minutes. Lex, go ahead.
There's no way it's gonna take like 7 minutes to explain that.
But we're gonna have to talk about afterwards.
You're wasting our time. Yeah.
All right. Sorry.
Basically, you hilarious chatting with with Locus Walker.
We're having a fun little day. Hilarious.
Like you told me. I I need you to introduce me to
this person who said he's gonna help me.
And all of a sudden, guess who comes out of the ground?
Basically, it was probably a portal.
I don't remember. It's Zealotath.
She's on our side now, and she's gonna help us defeat to Mencius
and Locust Walker and Larry get into a little fight in Alaris
like you're a freaking idiot. And Locust Walker is like, no,
I'm not an idiot. We have to do this and zealotas
making little snarky little comments in the background and
then they decide to end on arguably one of the most cliche
phrases in in the history of writing, which is I'm not asking
you to trust her. I'm asking you to trust me and
ruin the entire emotional moment of the the cinematic because OK,
congratulations. I'm sorry that to me, like that
specific cliche is one of my like writing sins.
Like when I see that, I'm like, oh good Lord.
So land based away like so I I got no filter go for it.
Yeah, yeah. I'm so sorry.
Occasionally writing makes me a a massive rating raging hater.
And this was another one of those times where I was just
like, all right, but it's OK. It was actually OK.
I will say, I will say because I'm going to be a hater, I need
to also be a lover. For what it is worth, when we
had the Salatath reveal, I audibly gasped.
Like that was very exciting to me.
So I think it was, well, it was. It was well done.
It was. Excluding Lexus fetish for toes,
when we actually saw Zalitaf, she guessed.
I don't think this should have been in the trailer.
Like they're like what's happened with Zalitaf?
When she going to show up, show up again.
The fact that she shows up as an unlikely ally, in my mind that
should have been like the moment of, of like whatever chapter it
lands in. And I don't know why I'm trying
to like stay away from spoilers when Blizzard is being so
blatant about like again ruining one of the biggest beats of like
leading up to the raid in my in my opinion.
As a non PTR girly I did kind of assume that this was a like.
Not like this was the beginning of the story and not really A
twist. Are you telling me this is
actually written as one of the major twists in the story?
This this like I cannot think of a like, sorry, that's not true.
I can't think of a larger like, Oh my God, this is what the
truth is moment in this campaign, but it is one of the
largest. OK, I do.
I'm kind of I'm kind of with you, Manny.
I don't I think that's silly. I think the teaser trailer
should be the first like the the first big plot device of the the
intro story. It is it It you find out.
Like you, before you finish Chapter 1, you find out.
OK. This is a big twist of chapter.
One OK I hate it 2 reasons One we last saw Xalatas in game like
what a week ago? And when she appears Alaria
doesn't. I want to clarify I love
Alaria's reaction. She appears, Alaria pulls her
bow she's like Oh my God what do you want a Xalatas she's the
enemy. And Xalatas says oh you haven't
changed a bit it's been a week. The last time we saw you, you
were turning our best friend into a Arcane Crow.
And Jim, I'm in a tiny little hole, so no, sorry, I haven't
processed that yet. You've been manipulating.
People are trying to kill us and trying to conquer the world and
trying to do all this other shit.
Nobody knows what you're doing. You're obviously violently evil
and we oppose you. So no, I'm sorry.
You're right. Valeria hasn't changed in that
week that you've been missing. Well, we fought the other guy
that was working for you, who was also trying to kill us.
That's not why I hate it though, because if they gave the player
the choice I would let Dementius burn it all before I would
believe and trust somebody who is so obviously and clearly
evil. This all we have to work
together for the great bull. Think of a real world example of
somebody this vile and they came to you and said, hey, we have to
work together for the better of everyone.
And you know that they're a lying scumbag who never does
anything and bankrupts everything they touch.
You would tell them to stick the dark heart up there.
You would not work with them. Yeah, I, I do think that it's
like also there, there there was a line in the novella that also
with like, I, I watched the the video and listened to the
novella. And I won't try to quote the
novella partially to pretend that I'm not giving spoilers.
But there was a line that it really felt like they were kind
of like hammering into your head, like, by the way,
Zalatat's going to betray us. And so I, I kind of, I kind of
agree, but like, I don't know, I think it, it's going to be fun
and up until the moment that Sala Tath very obviously.
Yeah. You know.
Manny's writing down all of the swear words.
I'm so sorry, Manny. I.
Just this is going to be a a lot of editing.
It just makes me so angry. It goes.
I play like I play Warcraft. Obviously I play it because I
like the competitive side. I like to raid, I like playing
my friends. But there is still part of me
that has an attachment to my character.
And like I, I try to give my characters the moral compass
that I would have. And there I, I am telling you
right now, there is a 0% I would let the world die before I would
work with someone like that because I know what they're
about. There would have to be a better
way. And there obviously is because
of Larry at the end of it all says we're going to find a
better way. I would, I would take Larry's
hand. I would walk over there and I
would let Locus Walker in Zaltath have their fun little
void. OK, I I apologize for the list
of listeners for becoming was angry and incoherent.
OK. Negative, negative.
Sean and I talked about this because we had done part of the
PTR together. I had Internet issues.
We ended up completing it separately.
And then we sat down together and we're like, what did you
think about it? And this was Sean's big, big
complaint. And I had said, you know, I was
hoard through BFA. I'm already used to being
railroaded into doing things that make zero sense.
Why the hell are we following Sylvanas after the garage thing?
Like what the hell? So this feels like Blizzard
storytelling of classic design. But yeah, I agree.
I agree with that. I don't like being railroaded.
We have clearly gone past the seven minutes, so I'm going to
avoid talking about like exactly what happened through.
But I dislike when you undermine, so readily undermine
player agency, not only stopping them from feeling like they are,
they have a choice, but so easily putting such a
contemptible choice in front of them that is so hard to believe.
Like if it had been just, I don't know, we're fighting a
boss and like a boss at the point and we're like, oh, we're
going to lose. There's no way we can win.
And then she saves us. And in that moment is like, OK,
she's saving, she's saving us. It's like crap.
I guess we do need her for something.
It's like, and then it's like, I'm watching you like not like
if Locust Walker turned, turned to her and said I'm I'm watching
you. We know how you operate.
And Illyri would be like, I don't like this.
Just tell me, just tell me the information.
I'm not, I'm not working with her.
I think much of what happens afterwards would still follow
the same beats. And Sean can agree or disagree
with me, but it would be more believable.
And then all I need is the ability to either go with Elyria
or be like, I'm going to stay here because I have to watch
her. And then it's not like, oh,
we're walking hand in hand. It flows into that tenuous,
untrusting alliance that had to come from this anyways.
They decided to spoil it on the Internet six weeks before the
patch even comes out. What the hell?
Like, that just doesn't seem right to me.
But yeah, it's a big bomb moment in the storyline, I guess.
Yeah, I agree it's not the choice I would have made, but
maybe that's what happens when you outsource your entire social
media team. We'll, we'll have that
conversation in a different episode for sure.
I guess what I want to ask of you 2 is basically in this short
period of time, what are you going to be doing to get ready
for 11.2? Sean, I know you are big time
Raider and such and you've been on the PTR.
I'm assuming that is to like put together strategies and such.
Can you walk us through kind of the process that you would do to
like just prepare for a new patch?
I will run PTR dungeons till my eyes bleed so that when we won
hits of the season, I'm better prepared to go in and get to
whatever the Max vault level is. If it's still 10 or if they move
it to 12, which they should, Blizzard consider moving it to
12. Whatever the Max vault slot is,
I'll push to that for that first week and I'll be able to do that
because I will have done the dungeons a lot on the beta.
I will also do the raid testing. I've done heroic, I've done
normal, so all the bosses are normal, all the bosses are
heroic. We start mythic testing
tomorrow. I'll do that again.
That's it's not so much for strategies, because the
strategies you get an idea of what works, but ultimately
everybody's going to copy those strategies that happen from the
top teams down. So while you go into PTR testing
and you may come up with, hey, this works, this works, this
works. There are bigger brains whose
job it is to come up with these strategies.
We're just going to copy those, but we will be familiar with the
fights. We'll know intricacies like can
I taunt mid cast on this tank Buster?
What happens if I do this? Can I immune this?
That kind of stuff we test for. So that's the the intro, the
smaller things you want to know going in the PTR, not
necessarily locking down a Strat that your team will use ad
nauseam. And then lastly on live, because
I'm main swapping, there's still a lot of grinding to do for
crests. I have one last piece I have to
upgrade to crafted, which will give me I'll be around 683 then
682 maybe because there's a couple of pieces that I have
there still hero track, I need to get swapped over to myth
track. So hopefully the vault is good
to me and that is something that you can do.
Everybody can do that. Like we're going into the next
season. Gilded crests are really, really
abundant right now. You can get 75 a week from tier
11 delves alone and that includes the roomed Crest
upgrade that you would do. That is is great.
Obviously, if you're doing dungeons 7 plus gives keys
everything in that 7 to 11 range is kind of the Wild West right
now. If you can do twelves to
twelves, you're safer there. That's there's more people doing
that that are familiar with dungeons.
But if you can't take your chances in that 7 to 10 range,
there you go the Crest. But you want to be crafting even
if you're wearing so you're a heroic Raider and you're wearing
all hero track all maxed out at 671.
You should be that's that's wrong.
You can you shouldn't do anything you don't want to do.
You can. Benefit from.
Yeah you can benefit from grinding old gilded crests and
re crafting your boots. Racers cloak.
Actually I would do the cloak last.
Don't don't bother with cloak. You're getting a new cloak,
boots, embracers, rings, neck. You can be wearing 681 crafted
items of this weapon offhand, same thing, 681 crafted and then
one piece of your tier. You can get crafted at 681 and
then go into the tier at at a much higher state, which will
help you to progress through whatever level content you're
doing early on, whether that's normal raid, heroic raid, or
mythic Plus. There is a lot of benefit to
that. It just that that that early
power boost makes life so much easier.
It does mean a little may mean a little bit more of a grind right
now for those of you who haven't been doing that and haven't been
keeping up. But it pays off in next season
because you'll be able to hit your goals faster and then you
get a longer tail to the season, which you're going to want next
year because Legion Remix is coming in the .7 patch.
So start thinking in the frame of I need to have all of my 11.2
goals done by the .7 patch because I'm going to be face
deep and Leech in a remix following that.
So if you can give yourself a head start now, I definitely
recommend doing that if you want any of this stuff.
Any tips on this? You have any questions come to
the FAZ discord bit dot LY slash FAZ discord.
I'm happy to walk you through this.
There will be a document that comes out with what to do when
season 2 season 3 launches. I'll share that in there as well
for anybody who wants it. If you want to get, I don't want
to say sweaty, but if you want to be more optimal.
OK. And if you want to, we'll go
with less sweaty. No, you didn't want to go with
sweaty. If you want to be more optimal
for happiness and just do some fun stuff.
Lex, do you have any pointers? I I wait, I object to that.
I'm very happy. I enjoy this stuff.
So this is not a like Lex. Yeah, Lex is happy yet, but I'm
I and I realize right now the tone that I'm using doesn't
sound like I'm happy and that about 10 minutes ago.
What are you talking about? Old man, I'm as happy as I've
ever been, I. Made some comments 10 minutes
ago that also didn't sound too happy, but I enjoy when my
characters are at that level so we can say happiness when we say
relaxed might be more relaxed. If you have an alternate route
for happiness in the World of Warcraft, what would you suggest
you do with your last couple of weeks in 11.2 ahead?
Sorry, 11.1 ahead of 11.2? What are you going to be doing
with your time? Other than, of course, setting
up your house and taking care of your dog.
Yeah, so first of all, buy a house and then spend this next
six weeks moving and prepping everything.
Very easy thing to do step one, but I I would say take stock of
how you feel and what's going to hype you up the most.
So for like this this season just for my team was a very like
emotionally challenging season just based on like things that
are going on in real life and, and, and things that were
happening within our team. And so I, that was, I think one
reason why I was not playing as much this season as I usually
do. And I think that I'm going to be
using a lot of this time to give myself space and make sure that
when I'm coming back next season, I'm genuinely excited
and happy and ready to hit the ground running and ready to have
a really good time. If you are feeling like spending
time doing other hobbies and and taking space is gonna make you
like not excited to come back. And what you want is to keep
your keep revving up. Think about the things that
would be really cool for you. I've gotten I, I did some stuff.
I, I cast a PvP pet battle last weekend, last week, last
weekend. It doesn't matter.
Nobody cares. It's in the past, which is very
fun. It was very exciting and I have
started doing a lot more pet collecting because I think
that'd be really cool to get into and then do more pet
battling because that thing I used to think was really fun.
You know, if you are like, I would love to be, you know,
feeling really excited about the things that I could get.
Go to some mount collecting. If you want to go in with your
optimal gear, go pop over and and do some music.
Plus at a time that it's going to be less stressful and that
you're probably over geared for most of the stuff you do find
the thing that's going to really make it so that when 11.2 comes
out, you are ready to go and hiked and your engine is full
and you're just raring to hit the ground again.
And and really prioritize that because it's the time that you
get to do what brings you joy without any pressure.
Worry about, you know, people you're letting down or or ways
that you could be building. If you don't want to and if you
want to build, build. OK, well there you go.
So those are two alternative means of how you could be
spending your time over the next six weeks.
Again, August 5th that is going to be the release date for
Koresh and with how quickly things are going look forward to
August, I believe it is August 22nd is Game Connors at August
30th. Starts on the 20th. 20th to 24th
is games com and there is some speculation that the big
Blizzard news will come on the 20th because that's a press only
day. Right, there we go.
That's why I was thinking so, yeah, look forward to like more
news coming forward from that. And that leads me to what I
would say if you are chasing down mounts because you already
have a bunch of mounts or you don't care about mounts or you
don't care about transmog. If you don't care about gearing
up your character and watching that number go up and hitting
those that dopamine I of that super megacrit, you might
consider dusting off your professions, going back and go
and clearing through and getting that stuff on top of all of the
extra trans mog that's dropping and better chances that mounts
with all of that stuff. You could get your professions
up, and if the rumors about housing using all these
professions from all of these different expansions is true,
now is a great time to get your professions all set up so that
you are poised to take advantage wherever the patterns and such
may drop. So food for thought for you
people at this point. We are going to call it an
episode here. Until next time guys, may all
your hits be quits.