It's just like, you know, if you use crutches for a long time,
eventually you lose the muscles, the development of your muscles
that are supposed to help you to walk on your own while they use
the crutch of the add on community for a long time and
now they don't have the muscles to properly develop and design
these boss fights. Victory for the Forsaken.
For Lauderon. For the Karen tour for.
Pandaria. For calendar.
To the burning region. For gilnaeus or 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 one of your hosts, The true man, Manny, or just Manny.
And of course, I am joined by the two parts of the triumphant.
We're introducing Rhea, who is saying hello to you right now.
We have her coming all the way from the wonderful.
Did I say North Carolina last time?
We're gonna go with South Carolina this time.
Hello, Rhea. And hello, Lex.
How are you? I am good, I am living the
dream. I posted about this in the
discord, which you can join by the way at fit dot LY slash spaz
discord. But I got the World of Warcraft
cast iron today so I'm going to be making a little skillet cake
after. This is my branded World of
Warcraft cast iron. You can always get me with
usable merch. I am so like with merch in
general, I get so anxious about like, oh I don't know where
would I put it? What would I do with it?
I can. I only get World of Warcraft
merch around like Christmas when I'm buying it for the Guild or
for my friends and I just buy myself a little piece too for
fun. But if the merch is usable
immediate purchase I will spend when that cast iron.
When I saw the link that there was a cast iron that was World
of Warcraft branded, I had fully prepared myself to spend up to
$100 on the cast iron and it was only 40, so I was very happy.
Yeah, yeah, I, I was a little sketched out that it was only
40. I was like, oh, but like, you
know that stuff because it's got the branding is going to cost
more and stuff, but the brand apparently is actually good is
what people are telling me. Not just pretty, pretty
standard, at least for for enameled cast.
For not sorry, not enameled for preseason cast iron.
OK, OK. I'll, I'll let you know if it
sucks, I'll tell you, but I'm very excited.
Yeah, I, I, I do want the full review on that.
I don't think it's something that I would buy just because
I'm kind of particular about my cookware.
I'm like very much like a, oh, I've got to get like this and
this because I have a bunch of friends that are that are
trained chefs and we're like, you have to get this.
And it's being like pushed it pushed into my head that like it
is a particular thing. Anyways, we're now going to the
East Coast of Canada. We have, of course, Sean.
Hello, Sean. How are you and how's the World
Warcraft treating you? Hi, Manny.
Hi, Lex. I'm doing great.
I can't wait for Lex's review of her cast iron skillet.
On a scale of Richard Nack to Christie Golden.
It's going to be fantastic. OK well yeah, Warcrafts went
good. I I finally have some time to
start dedicating to my EU character.
So today I went and got my praise pushed up to nightmare
tier. Did my did 4 delves, 4 bountiful
tier, 11 delves. I'm 257 and will probably start
filling my vault with 10's and twelves this week.
And on NA, things are good. We're progressing through the
raid at a really good pace. We are working on Mythic Light,
Blinded Vanguard, and because Prot Warrior is incredibly good
for that fight, I am in instead of calling it.
So I get to be in for Prague on that.
Yeah, OK, things are good, things are good.
How about you? Well, the race is over.
I'm done casting. I'm freed from my prison.
Yeah, I'm I'm really happy to hear that.
And we'll talk more about the race side and as we go through
this episode, of course. But yeah, that is our first
story. The race to world first is over.
So at the end of everything, Liquid has taken or rather has
retained the crown. They defeated the Midnight Fall
encounter with 474 pulls. I mean just yeah, 474 pulls.
Echo took second with 534 attempts and Method obtained 3rd
place with 524 pulls. Even though they had less pulls,
they were a day later so it was quite the intense race this
tier. Method was more pulls, not less
pulls. Less pulls?
Did I switch all thumbs around? What's the switch to the
background? I'm pretty sure you had the
numbers right, but they were 500 plus and everybody else was sub
500, right? I must have switched those
numbers around. Of course, if you ever want to
check this stuff, the the place that I was pulling numbers is of
course Radar IO. You can check their global
coverage and they will show you every every kill.
You can check the that now you can see if any of them are
currently streaming. So according to according to the
tracker I'm seeing liquid at first with 474 echo, second with
534 poles and method at 524 poles.
So there might be an error on that, but that's where I'm.
Pulling it from sorry I during the broadcast they use the
Warcraft log pull counts, not the radar IO pull counts.
Warcraft logs any pull that's under, I think it's 10 seconds.
They don't count as a real pull, which is normally fine, but in
this fight there is a hard wipe mechanic inside the 1st 10
seconds, so not fine. So yeah, I apologize.
Yes. No worries.
But like, yeah, like, I mean, for those who aren't familiar
with the fight, like how in the world does that Midnight Falls
fight go down? It is like 3.5 phases.
Walk us through this, Sean. Yeah, so the Phase 1, so in
normal, heroic and mythic phase one is, is roughly the same.
You're fighting. It's timed so you will.
I just shocked myself 6 times. You will always fight all of
phase one, no matter how much gear you have, no matter how far
into the tier you are. So phase normal, heroic, mythic
phase one is the same. You fight Laura.
She shoots glades around the room, she shoots beams around
the room, she does the memory game that everybody's familiar
with, and she summons some crystals that you have to
interrupt and then some ads you have to kill.
Intermission is the same across all three difficulties as well.
It's a bunch of star beams that you have to dodge and not get
hit by. Phase 2 is the same in all of
them as well. You get beams that you point to
planets, then those planets get sucked into the Lura and you're
moving in a circle at the same time.
Mythic adds an extra mechanic and that where you have to
spread phase three. Surprise surprise is the same
across all three. There are like slight mechanics
added on. Tops are a little more
difficult, but you're fighting Lura again, but this time the
room is filled with darkness and you have to stand in the light
of the Don crystals that your party is carrying to be safe.
And then this is where it differs.
In Mythic there was a secret phase four.
So on Sunday at Easter, Liquid brought the boss to 0.0% and
started to celebrate because they thought they had won the
race to world first. And Blizzard said not today,
call an ambulance, but not for me.
And he and Lura was risen and unlock the secret mythic 4th
phase, which is super cool if you haven't seen it.
It's visually beautiful. Lura resurrects into a dark
Archangel format and she flies to the center of the dark well.
And these hordes of void like Shaw are crawling their way out
of the center and across the room.
And you have to dodge them all while you're in the light of a
single crystal and this beam chases you.
It's very, very cool. It is a very cool effect.
When it happened, it was like all over social media, everybody
collectively was in, was involved in this moment.
It was a really fun, fun reveal that that they managed to mostly
keep it. And they had found some of the
spells in data mining, but they just assumed it was stuff that
was discarded from intermission that wasn't used.
So they didn't, they weren't prepared for it.
And then it took them, I think 2 more days.
They killed on two. No, they killed on Monday.
So yeah, one more day of Prague to get that kill.
Echo killed it the same day, Well, the day after because they
went to bed and got up, but I think it was the same.
No, they killed it on Tuesday. Anyway, it was great.
It was very exciting. Lure was a beautiful fight, very
visually stunning and probably the biggest disappointment for
me overall in the race, which we can talk about at some point.
Can you imagine? Yeah, I mean, we, we can
definitely talk about it. One thing I I want to talk about
because you were there at the desk commentating and there for
like several of the polls when you were doing your shift.
And you, you've got to like feel what the, what these like
players are doing where like you said, one team will go to bed
and the other team will be working on it.
And they'll be, there's a question of like, can you sleep
well knowing that this might race might be over because
you're only human. And that happened where Echo had
to go was staying up super late. And then the secret mythic only
phase got triggered and they're like, OK, well, there's no way
we're going to be dealing with that.
We've got to sleep. We can't do do any further extra
hours And then liquid couldn't get the job done and they're
like, we have to go to bed and now maybe echo's going to do
that. So like, and during all of this,
you've got method that is also progging at the boss percentages
behind, but also progging at the boss.
And they've got to feel like they they want to make up that
time. But again, they can only do so
many hours. And when I say hours, we're not
talking about 2-3 hour raid days.
We're talking about 14-16 hour raid days that get extended into
these are long shifts where they are just hitting their head
against the wall. That's how they get to 500 plus
poles to to kill this thing in such a short time.
So what is that like for the for the teams?
Like how do they like make those calls to be like, OK, like we
have to call it here? Liquid is very, very good about
like this is our sleep schedule. We're not breaking it for
anything. We're going to bed at bedtime if
the boss dies while we're while we're asleep and the boss dies
while we're asleep. And I actually think this is a
strength for them because of the fact that it allows their
players to get rest and to come back to the RIP fight strong in
the morning. And I think it's, it's this is
might be a hot take, but I think pushing the bedtime pushing,
pushing that sleep time the way that Echo has done the last two
tiers, I think it's contributed to why they've lost.
Because I get it. It's, you know, this Herculean
example of, look, we're pushing through rating until 2:00 AM to
try to get this killed because we're going pole for pole.
That's detrimental. If you just like in dementias,
it wouldn't have made a difference because liquid killed
it in that night time. But if they just go to bed when
they're supposed to go to, if they had gone to bed on time the
night on Sunday, if they're going to bed on time on Sunday
before Liquid unlocked the heroic phase, they would have
woken up to a heroic phase and been fresh and had a whole day
to Prague. As opposed to going to bed late,
getting up, being tired 'cause you're not going to sleep very
well. It's just, I think it's a
mistake. And then I I mean it.
While Method played extremely consistently in getting to P3 in
the fight for two days, there was some stumbling from them on
fine on Bella Ren, Prague and early Prague on Laura and then
again after the fact they played very poorly.
They they were never in the like there was never in there was no
opportunity that they were even close to either the other teams.
So I don't think that they felt anything probably other than
frustration of themselves. So their sleep schedule never
changed because there was no reason to change it.
Unfortunate. We're obviously playing at very,
very different levels, but I do know there are frequently like
final bosses where we will call the end of a rain night early
because it's so obvious that we are just doing worse every
single pull. And like, on the one hand, it
feels like you kind of want to like white knuckle through,
like, no, like we're just going, we just got to focus up.
We just got to figure it out. We just got to go.
But if you're just tired and frustrated and then like every
mistake, you get more and more mad at yourself because you're
exhausted. The number of times that we've,
you know, ended a raid feeling like we're never going to get
this boss down. And then the next raid night we
get in two pulls, maybe like I, I again, very different levels,
but if you're tired, you're not going to be working at the level
you need to be. And so a couple extra hours I I
totally believe that a couple extra hours playing at your most
exhausted is much less worthwhile than a couple hours
waking up earlier to to play at your most rested.
Yep, even if it's different levels, like you're the, the the
level on the total scale is different, but it it is one to
one. You're you know, the rate that
you're doing is as difficult to you as the the rate is to them
for the skill level, right? They're at the level where
they're they're playing a boss at their hardest level.
They're doing their best. And so are you is just at a
different difficulty level in the fight and that like I have
100% I I'm with you. Like I couldn't possibly be more
in support of what you just said.
Like you need time to rest and sometimes just logging off and
going to bed, you download the boss better like your your brain
has a chance to process like, OK, hey, why?
Then you wake up the next morning, you're like, I got it.
I know it clicks while you're asleep sometimes.
Yeah, in your asleep. That's like psychologically that
when I was in college, I was a psych major and I very
frequently if I was stressed about a test, I would study like
immediately before bed because then it's running through your
brain. Yep, yeah.
OK, I mean this. I mean, the last two bosses were
definitely exacting. They were fights where if
somebody messed up something, it led to a wipe.
It wasn't recovery thing. Especially since like with
Midnight Falls, the first 3 phases are basically full DPS
checks of like you've got to get that damage.
You've got to make sure that when you're getting into phase
three that you've got it to at least this point.
And so there were like frequent times where they're like, oh,
they're behind going into that first intermission, they're
behind going into phase two, they're behind in phase three
and how are they going to make it up?
Where are they going to get this damage from?
Same thing with Bellerin, where like there were particular
things where like if you did not do it right, congratulations,
pull again. And so when you have fights that
are like the execution has to be at that level, aside from like
some cheeses that the that the guys ended up doing, how does
that weigh on the pull? Again, like there are times when
you're like, OK, we're only doing a 2 minute break.
We're only doing doing enough time off.
So you can like run to the washroom and then get back and
go at it again. But like that kind of
requirement to consistently be excellent with so little margin
of error, how does, how does that like weigh on those those
teams? How does it weigh on like even
the home teams when you're playing at that at a mythic
level? I mean, they train for like they
they're they're a lot of the players are used to this because
they're the race world 1st pool, unfortunately is incredibly
small. So if you were to look at the
rosters of race world first, the top three race of the first
teams this tier and go back 5 tiers, I'm willing to bet you
have very few new faces, probably less than 25%.
So they they've been there before they're used to this
pressure they're used to playing that way.
I think you see it more on so like a team like Liquid who's
won the last now 4 races in a row.
If you make a mistake, it's probably easier to forgive that,
right? You're coming from a place of
success like we've won four in a row.
You made a mistake. OK, well we'll, we'll figure out
the problem and then come up with a solution.
On a team like Echo, when people are making mistakes, I think
it's probably more intense on them mentally because they've
lost four in a row, 2 incredibly close ones.
So for them, mistakes probably feel more, they probably noticed
that more and it it probably causes more pressure on them,
which then leads to more mistakes because that's what
will happen for a team like Method, I think.
I think Method had more players who were new to the racer world
first this year than either of the other two teams.
And I think it showed just yeah, it showed.
I don't like to use the terms locked in or focus up.
That's those, those that means nothing, right?
These players are all focused. They're all quote UN quote
locked in. When you're watching a broadcast
and the caster says the team, you know that the team wipes on
something. If the caster says they just
need to focus up and lock in, that caster doesn't have any
idea what they're talking about and probably shouldn't be on a
desk. Yeah.
So it's they're, they're all, all these teams are focused so
that those mistakes weigh on them.
But you know, they're the best in the world for a reason.
And hopefully the, hopefully the, the management around the
team, the leadership around the team is able to, to coach them
directly through that. But you do see it, you see, you
see frustrations. You know, there was one day we
had no Comm. We were told we can't cut the
comms for the team. And it's because they were
frustrated. So we weren't able to, to put
them on comms for it. So it's, yeah.
And it's also tough 'cause they're not just trying to win
this race, they're not just trying to play at an extreme
high level, but they're also putting on a show.
There was over 300,000 people watching them.
You know, when's the last time 300,000 people watch you do
anything, you know, and and think about the pressure of
like, you know, I mean, you know, the numbers of the
downloads for the show does that.
How much pressure do you feel just from that to put out a good
product? You know, now imagine it's
multiplied by whatever amount to get to 300,000.
Spoiler alert, that downloads to the show or not 300,000, I
guess. Yeah, like it's it's it could be
though. I think it's products there, but
yeah, it. Was let's get that pressure
going. That's right.
We just need more moms to
listen. Yeah, but no, it's good.
They put on a good show. They all played really well.
And yeah, I think from a viewer's standpoint, it was
probably a race that was a bit confusing, bit of a roller
coaster from start to finish. But I like to believe that the
ending was strong and that people will walk away happy,
happy with the race overall. The vast, I think the vast
majority will. I didn't, but I think I think
others will have Sean. You've been hinting a lot.
I really want to know what you're frustrated about.
Tell me your feelings. Well, it's there's a couple of
them, there's a couple of things.
So and they're all intertwined. They all work together.
Now we came into this tear being told, you know, we're further
ahead along in the add on restrictions or further along
further along in this add on list world, add on restriction
world, API world than we want it to be.
So we feel confident making this cut so that you won't have
access to them because we don't think you'll need them.
And we're going to design bosses and dungeons and raids going
forward without them in mind. Cool, we all said.
Well, some of us were skeptical, some of us were optimistic, and
some of us said we can't judge them until we've seen the
result. So let's see the result first.
We've now seen the result. We've seen the first tier of the
raid start. It started my my concerns
started with the light blinded vanguard.
So void Spire was being cleared very quickly.
The community at large was concerned that the race was
quote UN quote too easy. Oh, this race will be over by
Thursday. And I mean for all intents and
purposes, that first rate tier was over by Thursday.
They cleared Chimeris, they cleared void Spire by Thursday.
But in heading up to that, Blizzard did some reactionary
buffs, which we talked about, yes, last week, reactionary
buffs to the paladins, the the like blood of the vanguard
fight. And I'm frustrated because one
of the things they said they, you know, weak auras and
computational weak auras restrict our design space and
we're unable to be as creative as we want to be with those in
place. And their first knee jerk
reaction in how to buff the light blinded vanguard fight to
make it more of a challenge was to include a dispel mechanic
that required a weak aura to solve.
They bumped the number from 4:00 to 8:00.
The teams found a way around it, designed a weak horror for it,
solved it that way, and anybody who didn't have access to it was
hard stock and couldn't progress it.
That's frustrating to me that there for now.
So that being said, OK, it's their first tier.
I say reactionary, but it was it was panic.
That buff was panic. And we know it was because they
removed it Tuesday after the kill.
They completely reverted all those changes.
OK, so you're you're in a panic. You're trying to say, you know,
stop people from saying this race is too easy.
You're trying to put up a wall that makes gives the team some
kind of challenge. You go to the well that you
know, which is make things harder by making them, you know,
need require a weak or to solve because there wasn't really an
effective human way to solve it without it.
Cool. All right.
So then they tell us. They told us, you know, the
messaging was clear. Illyria is the penultimate boss.
This raid tier even though it is 3 raids is not linear.
It's not dream rift then void Spire then March uncleod and
ass. We are weaving like they
literally told me personally in an interview we are weaving the
difficulty between the tiers so void Spire first one to three,
then chimeras, then back to void Spire, then Bella Ren after like
like blended vanguard, then a Larry is the penultimate boss
and then Lura. Well, when Alaria died in 30
pulse and everybody said that was too easy, they went back on
that and increase the item level of the drops from Bellerin and
increase the difficulty. And how did they increase the
difficulty of Bellerin? They made every mechanic A1
shot, which is a lesson that we learned 6 tiers ago. 5 tiers.
Like I can't remember how many tiers ago it was when they were
like, Hey, we we recognize that you guys don't like this
punishing thing where everything is a one shot for the team.
So we moved away from it and they have been to Blizzard's
credit, they have been extremely good.
I can't remember the exact here when they said they're moving
away from that. It might have been newer bar
palace. But anyway, they've been very,
very good about moving away from that.
But we reacted to the Bellerin to, to artificially making
Bellerin the new penultimate boss by going back to the well
and, and buffing her to a point that no other team could
hopefully progress her outside of the top, you know, maybe top
five teams because of the tight DPS check required.
And we see this week they have reverted all of those buffs and,
and brought her back to where she was, which is frustrating
because teams that got there and had no hope of progressing,
we're basically just told your raid, you don't get a raid week
this week. You get to go do Mythic plus
because you can't kill the boss you're on.
So OK, that's fine. It was done for the spectacle,
it was done for the race. It was done because people said
this is too easy. So now we're on Louvre, Midnight
Falls, the final boss of the raid tier and the, the, the,
the, the, the biggest selling point in, in an interview with
Paul Barker or with Dylan Barker and Paul Cuban, I asked them
what are they most excited for the players to see the new
mechanics that are coming. There's one in particular that
we're really excited about that we couldn't have done if week or
has existed. And we can't wait to see how
players engage with it. And it's the memory game.
It's 100% the memory game that he was talking about because it
was the only mechanic that wasn't seen yet by anybody and
it required a week or I have asked, I asked everybody I
casted with at the time. I've asked people that I've seen
that the raid is split into 3 phases.
Each phase gets a couple of pieces.
There's 5 icons that are shown. The phase with 10 people sees
two of them. The other two phases sees the
other three. But it would be so like it would
be like phase one sees the first one, phase two sees the second
one, phase three sees the third one, phase two sees the 4th one,
phase one sees the fifth one. And I asked people how and then,
and then in those five phases, 5 people in each phase are marked
with the icons and they all have to line up in the exact same
spot so that the beam hits them all at the same time in order.
Incredibly difficult, Incredibly difficult.
The teams wrote weak auras. One of the one of the core
tenants they told us was that we don't weak or we don't want weak
auras to be able to communicate to each other while in combat
through chat these all the week or that was written communicates
through chat to all the other players one person.
Well, in that case three people enter what icon they see and it
gets distributed to everybody else.
It, it, it is flatly and boldly against what we were told over
and over again for months that they didn't want to happen.
And I'm frustrated this is, this was like, this was the straw.
And I'm frustrated because a Blizzard designed this mechanic
this way, knowing this was the only like I've had people say,
oh, they just expect the people to call them out and then repeat
them until people are lined up in the right order.
It's you have like 7 seconds and the icons flash 1:00 every
second. It's there is no human way that
was the solution. Nobody's doing that.
So I'm frustrated that this was designed this way.
Obviously this boss was designed before the removal of
Computational week or as before any of that stuff.
It it obviously was, there's no question in my mind.
But I'm also frustrated because this was the opportunity for the
three teams at the top to not try to find a workaround, to not
do everything they could to get a get around and to just say,
OK, we're going to follow Blizzard's intent.
We're going to do what they say they meant us to do and then
fail and have it show so that then it had to be changed and
they didn't. So Blizzard designed it, the
teams found a workaround and now we're in a state where if you
don't have this add on, you're not killing Mythoglura.
And I'm, and I'm just like, well, if we're back to using
weak ores, I'm going to use our 1F.
Now what? What's it for?
What did we do all of this anyway?
That is OK, not to start drama on the podcast, but wasn't it
Max who was saying like, Oh yeah, you guys might be freaking
out by week or it's going away? We don't really need them.
Like that's that's that's like middle of the pack sort of
issue. We're going to be fine.
Yeah. Yeah, I I know that's not a.
Quote the middle of the pack don't have on staff coders to
build their own their own stuff. The middle of the pack doesn't
have like teams of like guilds that are going to funnel them
the loot so they can like get ADPS check that.
Even if I were to join one of those teams, I wouldn't be able
to make right. Like it's just it is such a
different world for race to world first.
Even if I were to attempt those bosses, like my team shows up
and gets 474 attempts at at this boss tomorrow.
I'm never gonna do that. Never gonna I'm never gonna make
that Like it's there's playing. They're almost playing a
different game when, when, and like I say, almost because the
race, the world first warps the game, even if you're not playing
it in every region, like prices start shifting around.
People start like be like I'm going to go do splits with blah
blah blah and lose out loot. So other guilds start slowing
down relative to their progress. Like it's just, it's such a
weird thing because it's like the way that they inflate their
item level, the way that they accumulate their power, the way
that they tackle the, these, these things is so different
from the way that you and I would do it at home.
They, they've got people who have like 1010 alts and it's
like, which one got the jackpot on loot?
That's the one I'm running with. And then they've got people who
are, who have like a backlog of alts that they decided to farm
up, you know, in that space between Thursday and the reset.
So they had even a deeper goal of characters to to go through
and they look at it and they're like, yeah, we don't need the 3%
Dr. from from rogues and the damage there isn't isn't really
worth it. So they kick the rogue and they
go get this thing they like the the what was it?
The Aug. The Ogvoker Tech.
So augmentation on So Bellerin. Bellerin got nerfed this week,
but actually got stealth buffed. Augmentation of Ogres were
brought to make sure that they were intentionally buffing the
Wind Walker Monk and the March Bishop hunters for the egg phase
augmentations. Eben Mite had a Max range of 100
yards, so they would position themselves so that only the
Windwalker Monk and the Marksmanship Hunters were
guaranteed to get that Eben Mite buff going into the
intermission. So they were forced funneling
this buff on them, which was increasing their damage, which
is allowing them to two phase bellerin on the egg.
They increased. Blizzard didn't like that.
They didn't want people to be doing that, so they increased
the range of that ability to 500 yards.
They said no, we don't want that 500 yards.
And that was the range for Eben Mite, which is a stealth nerf to
that egg now, because now you can't force your eben mite on
those three classes that you needed to have to two phase.
And now Bellerin will be harder to kill for a lot of teams
because you won't be able to two phase, which means you're going
to have to three phase it, which increases the healing
requirement because in that second, in that third Phoenix
phase, he has 20% healing reduction applied to the raid.
Well, and also that's the line, like that's the thing.
The Blizzard was like, oh, you that you guys can't do that.
That's not what we want you to do.
I'm doing that snap thing that young people do because I agree
with length. It was frustrating.
I wanted to love the race. I wanted to love it.
I, I'm going to let you talk in a second because I know I
bogutted the mic for this whole section and the spectacle of the
race was great. And if you're somebody who just
is tuning in to watch, it's exciting, it's pull for pull,
it's percent for percent, it was great.
But as somebody who's been tracking this for a long time
and as somebody who loves this game and somebody who who was
genuinely concerned about the removal of these tools that
everybody whatever. But a lot of people use and
being told, don't worry, we've got a plan.
And then the plan being just kidding, we don't.
It really puts it really put a damper on what should have been
a great race for me. And I don't know.
I don't know what this means for Atalu tech, but right now for
Lura, if you're not using this week aura and you're fighting it
on mythic, you're not killing it.
Luckily, northern sky developed it.
Relo over at northern sky. Shout out to relo the true hero
of of of add-ons. He developed the same thing that
these top teams had done. Hugo hero, hot pot hero got to
Lura. They don't have a coder.
They were literally offering to pay money to somebody to write
them the add on so that they could fight the boss.
They were the 4th place Guild in the world and they couldn't
fight the boss because they didn't have the add on that
Blizzard told them they wouldn't need.
Sorry. OK, now I'm done and I'm going
to drink my tea and I'm going to be happy about the next thing we
talked about. I feel like the add on
Apocalypse landed poorly in that if it had gone one way or the
other in terms of direction of severity, it might have been
better. But we saw, we kind of saw this
coming and it's because these teams, they're in a kind of each
having a gun to each other's heads where it's like if you do
not do this, you are giving up the advantage and you're
throwing the race. If Liquid did not do this method
and method and Echo would have would have done it.
To echo and methods credit, Liquid got to the boss and had
this written. Oh yeah, neither of them did,
and they didn't write it until they saw it on Echo's on Liquid
stream. So the first, the first strike,
so to speak, was from Liquid. And.
But but then they immediately. And then they immediately wrote
it right? I think if they had like liquid
was pre emptive about it they went dark on fire.
After 12 hours. Oh don't talk to me about cease
fires today. Anyways, the pre emptive strike,
they went dark on a heroic hole to test this thing.
They were going in guns blazing to make sure that they had had
this ready. Then of course, panic, right?
Like Oh my goodness, this this needed or did it need?
Like at this point we can only speculate that this was needed
to do this. I'm not like based on like the
speed at which it comes out. It really feels like it was I'd,
I would have loved to have seen an alternate reality where they
had done as you, you had said, Chon, they didn't do this.
They had butted their heads against the wall.
It had become mathematically impossible.
And Blizzard would have had to have said, hey, we cannot do, we
cannot do this anymore. But Blizzard was really trying
like they put out like hot fixes against different ways for weak
cores to communicate when they when they were seeing it like
that was something happening in the race where they're like, OK,
we're changing it so weak cores can't communicate to people
outside of the race. Because originally there was
some program that was like sending messages to like some
21st person that was outside of the raid and therefore their
computations could work and then bouncing it back into the raid.
So this was a whack A mole game in some cases of them trying to
be like, uh oh, people are people are trying to use those
computational add-ons. Let's let's bring the hammer
down on that. And they failed.
They did not, they did not get it down.
And that made me think that they had to go the cold Turkey route
because if they hadn't done it in the way that they did it this
time, they would not have seen it when they finally pulled the
trigger. And we would be in the same
situation just a Tier 2 later where team one team, regardless
of whether that's licked, regardless of whether that's
Echo, regardless of whether that's like some team in a
different region. That's like, hey, this is how we
get the advantage here. Would have found some clever way
and probably still will. I don't think that this is the
end of it, right? Probably still will find some
creative way and and until Blizzard wants to start throwing
out bands in the middle of race the world first because you're
not adhering to the spirit of the law, not the written word of
the law. Like it's gonna I feel like this
is a trend that's gonna continue and that's a sad reality that
I'm I'm thinking is where we're at.
What what do you guys think of it?
So not to play Sean's role, but one thing it sounds like in this
Blizzard whack mole that they didn't try was extending the
time, right. If if everyone universally is
going to add-ons to fix this problem, including insane things
like bouncing a message back and then they tell you back in, they
could have just extended. I mean, I, I guess I don't we we
don't know what would have happened.
If they've been like, it seems like it's a little too hard and
you guys are like fighting for your life to not have to do it,
stop doing that. But also now you know, it's a 14
second situation. I mean, I guess it's probably a
more complicated fix, right, Like that changes more things
about the boss that could make it messy.
But I mean, that's what they said they they do right?
They that was kind of the promise is we're taking away
weak or as we're going to make things more human and and
realistic versus. And the lie detector said that
was a lie. Well, that I think that might
have actually been the same interview where they said that
weak horrors weren't going anywhere.
So that was not a strong interview.
OK, so then Lex, if they had changed the the fights.
I just hold on. I just want to clarify the
bouncing messages bringing information back in was not for
the memory game. That was so that they could
track other people's cooldowns and externals and stuff.
Yeah, another, another functionality that was taken
away from us that everybody's been asking to have returned it.
Was also the fact that people would get buffs on them, right?
So Lex, you as a Demon Hunter, you get like arcane brilliance
and you're like, I don't need this buff.
And So what people would do is they'd be like, hey, Lex macro.
Remove Arcane Brilliance onto your cooldown so that and then
my add on will see that you've lost Arcane Brilliance and say,
oh, Lex has started your cooldown and then track it that
way. That was another thing like
people who were being very creative about like how they
were getting around the restrictions that Blizzard was
putting in. And I'm not arguing for
Blizzard's restrictions as some sort of utopia, like, hey, there
are lots of restrictions that they put in that I wish they
would adjust so that like people can play and like track
externals properly and all of this sort of stuff.
But every single restriction that they've put in, somebody
has attempted to find a way and in some, in many cases found
some creative way of breaking those restrictions.
And I'm, and what I'm saying is not that like, hey, like I'm not
being in a Blizzard, apologies. I'm just saying that like
regardless of when they said, OK, this is it, no more add-ons,
people were going to start doing those those workarounds.
The the examples that we gave are the same examples that would
have come up next tier if that was the tier that they decided
to throw the switch. Whenever they throw the switch
there was going to be a tier of people doing weirdness.
That's I I misunderstood your argument and that I do agree
with. I mean, I think there's an
argument to be made that if people are doing all of this to
get add on functionality back, do the players really want to
not have add-ons? That said, I have had a lot of
conversations with people, arguably myself included, the do
kind of feel like, I mean, it's not really that I want an add on
to like, you know, tell me. So stack over here, do this.
Like it's just I I know I'm going to because it's easier,
I'm going to play better. And so I kind of feel like I
have to like, otherwise I'm tanking the raid and I'm looking
like kind of an idiot. So it's that one's it's, it's a
hard thing to kind of parse out like, but but yeah, I, I, I do
kind of agree. And I think the more I'm in this
as well. I, I really do think that it
was, they were going to have to pull the Band-Aid off.
I don't think this is the right time.
I think that they hadn't perhaps enough Like I, I, I, but I, I,
yeah, I think, I think this. Is just.
I think the concept of a slow rollout was never really
feasible. Yeah, I agree with that.
I agree with that. The this is just what we've
seen. There are workarounds that have
not that weren't aired to 300,000 people on Twitch, that
people are using today that get around things in other ways and
that you'll never see. And so now you're left
wondering, was that plus 20 key times because the players really
gained hard, or do they have some tech that they've not
released? Anybody else they've kept to
themselves? Which does also kind of defeat
the point of the like this was one of the things that was
frustrating me a lot with the race to world first and the
like, you know, Oh, well, they have people who are coding in
their you know, like on their team.
Is that that just means like it used to be.
Oh, it sucks. The people you feel like you
have to like know what add-ons to go download.
But you can find that on a Reddit post.
You can find most Google like you can Google like what add-ons
for your team will probably yell at you or nicely tell you what
you need. It was it was yes, it did mean
that like solo players maybe had a little bit more of a
difficulty curve, but it was a very accessible information.
And now it just feels like it's it's so much more, you know, the
elite and the plebs, right. And I, I think one of one of the
reasons I don't really watch the race world first is because I
think it sucks that it's three teams.
I think that's boring, right? I would love it.
I, I think, I mean, yeah, yeah, like 3 teams technically.
But like, I, I think the base would be really fun if there was
actual competition. And I understand 99% of that.
If there's not enough players, there's not enough interest,
there's not enough money. Like there's a million reasons
why it's a super limited pool. That's not little things that
make it harder. But yeah, if you can only
realistically compete in the raced world first, if you have a
dedicated coder on staff, it's a two team race.
Like there's there's really that's not a there'll never be
an underdog. Not that there really was any
way, but like baby, right, Like it was on the table and now it's
completely off the table. There will never be a surprise.
Like I mean, maybe not never there'll I'm sure they'll get
better at doing these over time, but like it just it just
increase again. It feels like there's the
special people that get their cool week auras made, hand
picked for them and then all of you losers got to figure it out
otherwise. I, I feel like that I don't like
that argument. I feel that there's so many
different things that are contributing to like the
stratification, right? Like I already talked about the
splits and, and that like the amount of people that are
funneling loot to these guys, so their item level suddenly
balloons way higher. The fact that like last week one
guy had the top 2 geared play things.
And that's, that's not because he really like, I mean, he
worked hard. Let me let me stop myself there.
It's not it's not just because he worked hard, it's that he had
like 40 additional people that were also working hard and gave
up their loot to give to him to to like stratosphere his an item
level. It's the fact that like, hey, I
wish I could take off like that much time to spend making that
many attempts at a boss. I wish that I had a personal
chef that was on on hand so that I could get meals and not have
to worry about cooking. I wish that I had a team of
people being like, hey, Manny looks like in phase three, this
happens and that and this happens so that I didn't have to
rely on John being like, Manny, you're doing it wrong. 2 weeks
later after he sees the stuff because he was born and said,
Manny, you're being an idiot. Like it's there's like so many
things that like make this such a stratification.
Like yes, the this does add to it and is no less an of a
contributor to that. But all of the other things are
stuff that we have yet to like to like really note.
And I don't want to note this one thing alone.
Like it's some special case. It is a new contributor and
equally as as like separating is everything else but is not
standing on its own. That's fair, I guess.
Maybe more so. What I should say is if
Blizzard's making changes in the game that are meant to affect
the Race to world first team, I think that movement should be an
attempt to make it more like like accessible, not an attempt.
An attempt, OK, is not the word that I'm trying to say.
I think the focus should be on how can we make this something
that more people can access? And I think that if it it
increases the difficulty of of smaller teams breaking in, I
think that should be considered a strike against.
But I hear you that like, yeah, right.
Like, unless they're going to start pumping, you know,
Blizzard money into E sports to make it so that more people can,
you know, have the type of job or like can take time off and
then be gamers full time or like, then by and large, none of
this really matters, right? I, I, I, I hear that.
And I think that's fair. And that's also probably why
they don't care, right? That's also probably why that's
not really on Blizzard's radar, because the number of things
that have to change to try to make the race world first more
open to more people is so like, you know, they'd have to change
the concept of capitalism in America, right?
Like, I get it. It's it's complicated and it's
difficult and they've tried. My understanding is that
Blizzard has played with like attempting to do E sports is a
Blizzard thing and it's kind of always fallen on his face.
So I. I think that's why you have like
the AWC and you have like the Arena World Championship and you
have like the MDI, which is basically just the great push,
but they decided to go with the more popular name.
Not anymore, no. They changed it back.
It's back to speed running. Back to speed running.
Oh, I'm happy to about that news.
I was unaware of that. Thank you, Sean.
You're welcome. So MDI, that's actually going to
be high. MDI is going to be worse though.
The add on changes were meant to.
To quote Blizzard, the at the the at the new add on changes
and the changes of the API are meant to.
I think this is the phrasing Lex was looking for.
Narrow the gap from the top end to the bottom end.
And in fact, it has widened that gap instead.
So A-Team like mandatory who has access to their own coders is
going to be able to use all of their tools as they speed run
dungeons and they're going to be going up.
It's because teams like Ducks can fly who I can almost
guarantee you do not have an on staff coder.
So MDI is going to be, yeah, it's if we thought the race to
world First was egregious in the level of, you know, and
everything that many mentioned is, is all part of that.
The cooks, the splits, the they have entire organizations
designed to make them the best. That's what they do.
But the MDI is a team of five, and some of those teams of five
have access to those same coders because they're all parts of
those organizations. So if you're not on one of
those, you better hope Northern Sky put something out for you
from Ethic Plus. Spoiler they won't.
My my hope is actually that Blizzard sees all these work
rounds, sees what failed or did not go according to the plan
might be the better the better way to phrase it for their
benefit. But like everything that didn't
go according to plan and they adjust it for one point O 7,
which is an X rate that's going to open up, right.
And for sorry, 12 point O 7. And then for 12.1, they again
address it for the Mythic plus and for and for everybody.
Because while this has become an additional stratification
because some people are pushing with those weak ORS and some
people are not, generally I feel like the accessibility of most
of rating has increased because heroic is not that same beast.
In fact, I think people who are able to push relatively far in
Mythic aren't laughing at her. They're like, this is this is
nowhere near the challenge it used to be.
People who are wading into the waters of Mythic plus find it
more accessible. People who are cutting their
teeth in in the PvP or finding it more, more understandable,
more readable, because that's something that was always
daunting with PvP was that I was like, I can't even follow what's
happening as a spectator, let alone in the midst of it.
And so if they can continue to do that, yes, the the current
pitfall is that mythic rating where the stratification is 100%
expanding. And as you are prophesizing,
it's going to be that much worse at these cutting edge level
competitions. But for the people at home, has
this been the same failure in your mind, Sean, in your mind,
Lex? Well, I I.
Was going to say I think we just need to separate.
Separate out accessible and easy, right?
If I, I think if the mythic people are like, Oh my God,
heroic is the face rule, nothing ha ha, ha, that doesn't
necessarily mean that heroic is more accessible, which means
it's easier and I guess it's a little bit of a square
rectangle, right. Like on the one hand, yes, if
something is easier to do, it's more accessible to more people,
but I, I don't think that should be the goal.
At least it's not that I want heroic rating to be boring.
And I, I will say, I mean, again, my team has unique
struggles this year. So we might be having more
difficulty than other people, but like, we're all on DBM,
right? We very quickly realized that
the functionality of World of Warcraft internal UI and alerts
and stuff was not doing it. And we learned the DBM actually
is doing a lot of the stuff that DBM allegedly not supposed to be
able to do. And we all went back on DBM.
So I, I, I guess it just feels honestly I not much different
except kind of uglier is my take right now.
So one of the one of the struggles that I've that I've
seen teams having is with the Dragons, the breath.
That is, that is when we went back on TPM.
OK, right. And so Blizzard's default for
when that breath is on you and targeting you is laughable.
It's just it does not point it out.
Sean has also pointed out that on Crown there is a mechanic
that just flat out is not signposted at all, right?
Do you consider that gaps in their in their setup or are you
saying that every fight in general is less accessible
because of the the gap between DBM and the default?
Are there no fights like you went through three of them
without without hitting it? You found like definitely one
that I point to and go like, Oh my God, like that is AII call it
a gap, right? That's a fairpoint that it might
be more like there's individual. I, I personally have not loved
this tear. It's felt very messy.
I it has not felt like there's a, a clear ramp of difficulty
like I, I and I, I personally also really do not like the
split raids. I thought that was really
exciting when it came out. And I especially like what they
originally were saying of like, you're going to go here and then
you're going to do this. Like I no, I'm sorry that's
confusing and annoying and I do not want to spend my great
nights running around to different locations.
So I may be being a little bit of a downer in general, but that
that is AI guess The thing is that the gaps when when gaps do
come up now it feels I guess worse like a lot of these gaps
wouldn't. And again, they are usually just
solved by by downloading an add on again, which I guess you
know, to what I said a few minutes ago.
Like it kind of means nothing changed.
It's ugly, right? And maybe that's not terrible.
Like maybe status quo isn't the end of the world.
It kind of makes me wonder what we did this for, as we love to
say on this show. I already used the F bomb lux,
you don't get to use it. I already used this show.
Yeah, I mean, I I guess I don't I don't think we're in like a
crisis. But also I was on record saying
I thought it was going to be really fun to not have add-ons
and to get to experience this all in real time.
And I'm not finding myself enjoying rating significantly
more now. And it just kind of feels like,
oh, Jesus Christ, you guys also couldn't figure out how to like
alert that one properly sick. I love that I can't change the
like. I love that I can't decide what
we're going to show up when this is fun.
I guess I'll go back to TBM, which is the thing I wasn't
supposed to do. So it, I guess I'm just, I, I, I
was expecting this to be like a really fun, creative, exciting
tier where they're getting to experiment with stuff and
instead it's just feeling like, damn it, you know?
OK. And then feel X.
You should have AT and be happy. That's what I did.
I had AT and now I'm happy. There you go.
Yeah. You want my thoughts, Manny?
You want me to tell you what I think?
Yeah, Yeah. I think it is something that's
always been there. There have always been gaps in
what Blizzard has designed and put into the bosses and what
information they give us and how they presented to us and the add
on community. We're the heroes we needed.
They took it on themselves, they put it on their shoulders and
they carried all of those things.
If there was a if there was a mechanic in a fight that
Blizzard didn't clearly define to let you know, hey, this
ability is on you. add-ons did it for us.
Somebody designed a week or for it and we use that.
Blizzard said, hey, we don't like that.
And to their credit, they shouldn't have been just relying
heavily on that. It's just like, you know, if you
use crutches for a long time, eventually you lose the muscles,
the development of your muscles that is supposed to help you to
walk on your own while they use the crutch of the add on
community for a long time. And now they don't have the
muscles to properly develop and design these boss fights.
I get it. It's OK, that's what happens and
everybody has said there's going to be growing pains.
Let's talk about the cooldown manager which came out in 11
point 1.5. So what's that 3 1/2 patches
going out? There are still abilities that
can't be tracked. There's a hunter ability that
increases your damage by 30% that there's no way to track it
other than your buffs to the top of your by your mini map.
No way to know when you have this buff active or not.
Death Knights still can't track all their abilities, So, you
know, you still can't track racials, you still can't track
potions without using an add on, still can't track trinkets.
Nobody uses trinkets, do they? It's not like they put a 2
minute trinket in this raid or a minute and a half drinking in
the puzzle box in this season that everybody literally is
running. It was a 2 minutes that
everybody is running. Yeah.
And you know what? And here's the thing, I have my
team happy now. We said there's going to be
growing pains in this transition, expected it to be
worse than it is now and and you know the state that it is, you
know, can we overlook it because it's normal and heroic or easy?
Sure. Yeah, I guess, I guess so for a
mythic team, Heroic is easy. I get that, you know, it's not
accessible. It's easy for teams that are
progging heroic. I know some teams that are
progging heroic, much like Les Experience until they installed
Bigwigs or DBMI think Bigwigs is superior, but Bigwigs or DBM and
like the northern sky week or or the northern sky pack that gives
you warnings. It they struggled, you know,
there was more tank deaths than we'd ever seen before because
tanks weren't being told when it's on because the if you track
the Blizzard, the Blizzard timeline, not only is it not
always accurate, but it gets to the bottom.
And they intentionally said, well, when it gets to the
bottom, that doesn't mean it's casting.
That means it's next in line. That means it's spell queuing.
So like, well, what? No information is better than
bad information. So, but we knew we knew it was
going to take a tier. This is their tier.
If a tall utec 12.1, the troll tier launches like this, that'll
be my last tier. I'll be done.
I'll be I'll I'll leave the show.
I'll be done with Warcraft. You'll all never see me again
because I'm not. They get one.
They get one tier. I'm not going to go through this
again next year. If next year launches and it's
the same state and we're all in the same spot and we're having
the same conversations over and over again.
This is one of the reasons I left the Navy.
I couldn't have the same conversation every single day.
And that's what the Navy was. It was the same conversation
with the same people every day. Every we had a saying in the
Navy, every time is like the first time.
No matter what the Navy did, it had been done dozens and dozens
of times in the past. There were standard operating
procedures for everything, but that didn't matter.
Every single time we did anything, it was like the first
time it had ever been done in the history of mankind.
Did anybody ask what happened when the last ship did this?
No, no. Oh, 'cause this is probably,
this is probably some growing pains that we could have
avoided, you know. Did they come into these?
Oh, we don't know. We didn't ask them.
You didn't. You didn't ask them.
This is an incredibly complex thing we're doing.
Well, you didn't think to ask the people who did it like 6
months ago? Yeah, you'll be.
You guys will be looking for. You'll be looking for a new host
Manny, if it comes out like this.
So let me ask you, do you think Blizzard will have it figured
out by 12.1 in August? So here's my here's my.
I guess I'm going to consider this the closing thought.
Here I am. By the way, I am happy.
My tea was amazing. And I can see light at the end
of the tunnel. I'm about to be free.
Blizzard did not have proper. Conversations with add on
authors at the outset of this, there was hope that maybe they
would get they get things together and have less
disruptions than they have had. I did not expect it to go
perfectly, but I think that they need to refocus.
They need to lock in like the cast who say and callback.
Good callbacks. I love you guys.
I'm going to miss you in August and they need to focus.
On making sure that this that the issues that came up this
time are solved so that we aren't having the same
conversations again. I think that there will still be
problems, but if there are new problems, if they are, if there
are new workarounds, at least then we could say it's progress.
I think that they need to start handling this with a Red Hat
program. Find the holes in our in our
logic, find the workarounds, hire people that they're just
going to looking to break the system.
Be like, oh, I can just recreate this doing this way, right and
just have them going at it because clearly the teams and
the community is already going going at it.
And then if that is the case, that will still be a different
conversation where Lex goes, this isn't signposted well
enough and I need an add on. And if that's the same
conversation they're having at the top end, that's way better,
way more uniform than, oh, I've got to go to to this Guild to
hopefully get them to release it.
And I'm sure that number of the Guild will do that method,
method liquid echo, because that gets more eyes on their their
website and and so forth. So like now that the race is
over, guaranteed you that's a suite of add-ons will be out
there that give all of that, that sort of stuff just like it
has been in many different times.
But at least the working plebs had their versions of those
atoms that came out from the community at large.
I think this was also partially compounded because the weaker
dev packed packed up said, I'm not doing a compromised version
of this where somebody picked up that forked it and said I'll do
a compromised version of this. And other people did not think
to to do that. So they all have their forks
that are out there. That stuff will be obviously
picked up and analyzed. And I think that they just need
to really work on the solution because I think the hubris was
that they thought that they would fix it one way and that
would be good for all time. And the community has shown that
they are way smarter than that. I agree in.
Other news, there was no midrade wall boss for the first year
since Chattelands. So we did it.
That's a win. That's a win.
Yeah, that's a win. The wall is actually flying to
the other box. That is no.
One was able to see that one anyways, now that.
The race the world First has concluded.
We have seen a number of hot fixes.
We have seen a number of changes, both class balances and
rate changes and item changes as well as PvP changes.
So the doors are open. We're seeing a new flush of
changes as well. Make sure you are looking at the
various websites to see what those changes are.
But until next time guys, may all your hits be grits.