So we had a big amount of news that came in jumbo size, Wow
cast. And unfortunately last week we
didn't put out an episode because I was stupid.
But yeah, there's a lot to cover.
So I guess we'll get right here. Victory.
For the Forsaken. For Lauderon.
For the Karen Tour for Pandaria. For calendar to.
The. Burning.
Region. For Gilnaeus that has not died,
for the Lich King, for the Sindora, for the Alliance, for
the. Horde for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome to you for Azeroth.
I am one of your hosts, Manny, AKA The Treatment of Manny, and
joining me is the other two parts of The Triumphant starting
First, 'cause Lex, I know you really want to get into this.
How are you Lex, and how's the World of Warcraft treating you?
I'm doing good. My team got mugsy down last week
and we are holding. So this tomorrow, Yeah, so
Thursday. So probably the day that the
episode comes out, God willing, we'll have AOTC, which is crazy
to think about 'cause it's been 2 weeks of the season and also
200 years. Congrats, Congrats.
There you go. And on the other side of, well,
I wouldn't say the bench, but other side of this country is
Sean. Hello Sean, How are you and
how's the World of Warcraft been treating you?
I'm Andy, Warcraft's been great. We got one armed bandit down, so
we are now working on mugsy. Oh so.
You're almost my the point with the we're at.
Almost at to the yeah, the point that you're on, that's pretty
good. Alexa, I would like to make one
quick pitch. There's not really a good reason
to extend because you unlocked the skip to mugsy now, so you
could skip right to mugsy and then get another shot at the
loot from there. House of Cards is usually a
pretty big upgrade for a lot of people.
Issue that we ran the the thinking that we had is that it
didn't. And if for anyone in my Guild
who's listening, this is not a drag at all.
It didn't feel though, like we got mugsy because we had the
dance down perfectly and everything was like 100% like
good to go, we are clean, we're going to get in like we'll have
this on farm forever. It kind of felt like we got
mugsy down because like we were holding up really tight and we
were able to push, push, push, then we got it.
So the last thing we'd want to do is to say that we're working
on AOTC and then spend another night hitting our head against
Mugsy again. Makes sense one.
I will give you 1 tip for Galliwicks, that is when he
starts to cast suppression in phase two.
Don't worry about it in phase one, but in his phase where he's
in the robot body get far fast. Oh good, so that's for everyone
else 'cause I just felt I always fell off anyway, so I get
everywhere wherever. I want, yeah.
Yes, well, everyone else in Timbermaw Tavern listen to what
Sean's saying. That's right, I guess maybe that
might be considered phase three cause Phase 2 is when he's on
the edge. It's when he's in his robot body
after he does the beams. No, I know what you're talking
about. Yeah.
Just yeah, just roars and whatever you can to just get
that distance. GTFO, get the Frick out.
OK. So I'm glad that that's going
well, that you guys are all progressing through and that my
team still needs to do our achievement runs and such.
We're just currently doing farm. I'm hoping we do that pretty
soon. I've got my quote UN quote goal
of hitting three KIO, but last week I just could not bring
myself to do any mythic plus just like cards on the table.
I recently got let go from my job, so I've been spending more
time on the IRL and such and haven't been on the discord and
and that and then that also helped contribute to missing
last week. I do appreciate everybody who
reached out and was like, Hey, what happened to that episode of
For Azov, including you 2 who were like, hey, what happened to
that episode of For Azov? So I do apologize to everybody,
but I also want to thank all of our patrons and all of our fans
because like, like the support is always great.
I got a new mic because my mic broke down and Sean for the
millionth time said, dude, that's what the patrons for.
And I'm just like, yeah, OK, this is this is the breaking
point here. So thank you everybody.
But let's get into the meat of the news because today Ian
Hasekosis sat down with two people from the Pod C podcast.
That is of course Dratnos and Limit Max.
And they talked about not only a couple of features that are
coming in 11 point 1.7, which is the legacy of Aerithor, but also
the future of add-ons in general and a new philosophy shift that
is coming with add-ons. So I guess we should talk about
the add-ons coming first 'cause that's a small sort of thing and
that kind of sets as an example for what's coming next, though,
Lex, you had a pretty strong reaction to that.
I was, I was having a very bad day today, but I think that I
can speak hopefully to the doomer community because I spent
this afternoon doomering hard, like texting Manny and Sean.
Like, I don't know if I'm going to keep playing at 11 point 1.7.
I think this game is not going to want to what I want to play
anymore. I think everything is ruined.
I don't know what to do. This is terrible.
This is awful. And then I watched the video
again and I talked to my Guild and I took a little walk with my
puppy and I went, oh, actually this is fine and we're all fine.
Everything's going to be fine. So basically what is coming at
11 point 1.7 is if you know the add on.
Hi Keely, it's very similar to that.
So it's going to be allegedly if I haven't PTR Ed this.
I don't know if either of you have PTR Ed this yet.
The PTR it's not up at the time of this recording.
It might be up by the time this episode's out.
So good for you to cover that off Love that.
So nobody's PTR D it, but the point is it's basically going to
recommend the next spell in your rotation, like the next best
step in your rotation for you. There's also going to be a
single button mode basically, and that is going to have, it's
basically going to have a, a, a GCD punishment if you use that.
So right now I don't know if that's what they're going to
stick with, but right now it's .2 seconds long, like more GCD.
Because the point of that is not to replace play, like playing
the game manually. It's mostly I meant as
accessibility, right? If for whatever reason people
can't or don't want to do more than just press 1 button that's
made for them. But they they even said
explicitly they do not want this to be the type of mode where
your raid leader is like, you know, just turn on single button
mode. That's, that's the opposite of
what they're looking for. So when I first heard this, I
freaked out and I was very convinced that this was going to
make it so the game was going to become significantly more like
just press ABCDEFG in order forever the way it's supposed to
be, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Which is not how I like, which is how some people like to play.
And what they want to do is plug and play and they want to just
go and know exactly what to do. And the point is just execute
the commands in the order that they're supposed to be executed
in as quickly as possible. First of all, I should say Ian
very explicitly said that's not what they want to do.
What they want to do is they want to make this more
accessible for people learning while still giving a lot of
opportunities for people to be able to play on their own and
expand how how they're going. And this also isn't going to be
like significantly more to my from what they were saying.
It's not going to be more advanced than Hakeeli is right
now, which for those of you who play with Hakeeli, I mean I I
tried it and I got rid of it, which is another reason I was
feeling like this is terrible because I felt like it was going
to be kind of forced on me. Hi, Keeley gives you the basic
rotation, but it's not going to take into account nuance right,
So it's not going to take into account oh, we hero at this
point of the boss. So that's what I want to save
cooldowns. It's not going to take into
account, you know, like I I think it will be looking at how
many ads are around you, but it's not going to take into
account like, oh, I'm supposed to focus this I'm supposed to go
over here. I have this like it's very wrote
and just like button, button, button.
So there's still going to be a lot of room for you to learn on
your own. This is more so so you can plug
in and just go for it. Yeah, very much so.
And I love the .2 second additional to the GCD.
It seems very small and it's not going to matter to the people
that it's intended not to matter to.
If you're learning and you're not that that sure that .2
second delay is probably way shorter than it would take you
to be like, OK, what am I supposed to press next or
analyze the situation for people who know the rotation down pat
for the people who are like pushing like being like I'm
going to do my rotation so good. That point to is a genuine DPS
loss. So.
Sorry, I want to pause. Maybe maybe I'm not right and
you are not misunderstanding. But just to be really clear, the
point to GCD punishment is only for single button mode.
So there is a mode that's coming in where literally you will
press 1 button in order and and won't have to do or like do
anything beyond that. But sorry, maybe that was what
you were talking about. OK, sorry.
Yeah, that's sorry. I apologize because you were
talking about two things. So I should I should clarify
that it is that it is specifically the one button
rotation that people were worried would like would cause
them to be forced to use this because there is something to be
said about something that is more baseline in the game.
Even if it is opt in instead of opt out, there is a there is a
lot more of a assumed you should at least use this versus
something something else that's outside the game.
But that like I said, the people who are going to be like, oh,
you need to do it for your DPS increase.
The fact that actually, if you learn it yourself, you should
be, should be better on just the basic, let's say dummy rotation
is one thing. Just like you were talking about
earlier. The fact that it, it's context
sensitivity isn't phenomenal. Like it doesn't know when the
ads are about to spawn and maybe you should hold that that cool
down to line up with the ads that are about to come in.
It doesn't doesn't know that hey, the the boss is about to
switch over from like phase one to phase two and whatever that
entails. So there's a lot of that kind of
context that this add on should like the way they explained it
should not be smart enough to do that.
And if you are basing it on the hit Kelly add on the Kelly
doesn't do that. It doesn't integrate itself with
time is as far as I know when I played with it back in the day.
So there's there's a lot to be said about like it as a learning
tool and an accessibility tool, but not something that's going
to take over all the guilds and everybody's going to be like,
Sean, what are you doing? Actually having five buttons
there. You need one button and press
that. I genuinely don't think that,
Sean, from your look at this, do you think forward like the one
button thing? Do you think this is ever going
to be a point of discussion for your Guild?
Not my mythic Guild, but 100%. I think there are at least 1/4
of my AOTC Guild that would benefit greatly from using the
one button mode, if not more. I'm going to be honest, if
you're not orange parsing, if you're a normal Raider or an or
heroic only Raider and you're not orange parsing, you're
probably going to benefit from this button, this one button
mode, because it never messes up your rotation and it opens you
up to do mechanics better because you don't have to think
about what buttons you're pressing.
You can focus on not dying. So if you're alive, you're doing
better. You're making me hate this
again. I was so fine and I'm completely
like, if you guys are right and this is actually going to be a
benefit to like like this is going to be more powerful than
just playing on your own. I'm kind of back to this sucks
like I I did. I I think I will say I think the
Blizzard is good. Like if that is true, I think
Blizzard will nerf it because I did.
That was not what Ian said said this was supposed to be.
This is not supposed to be a thing that's better for the
average player. This is supposed to be an
accessibility tool. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my
my understanding is that like the point of the single button
mode is that it's only for like really extreme examples.
But the average player is blue and purple.
Parsing that is the average player.
Poor players are green and Gray. Average players are blue and
purple. Exceptional are orange, pink and
gold. So if you're not in that band,
if you're a green parser, you're below average.
So you will gain benefit from it almost guaranteed.
I, I I I I would never tell anybody.
Hey, you have to turn this on. So but but for Full disclosure,
I use when IDPSI use Achille with old Achille I will green
parse at best in any situation, no matter what boss it is, no
matter where it is. As soon as I turn it on, I go to
purple right away and I use it. The way I use it is I like I
know the fight. I know when a sudden if it tells
me to use a cool down, when I know I should hold the cool
down, I just hold the cool down. And and because you can set it
to show you 3 the next three steps.
So just hold the cool down, do the step after it until you're
holding cool downs or do your your you know, your your
rotation, your your normal non cool down rotation in that
interim. And this is actually where I
think the one button micro is going to be strongest and why I
am most excited about it in those moments when it's high
pressure, high mechanic and you're really focused on just
being alive and dodging minds on mugsy or you're trying to get
something done that you you had. You can't mess it up and and
your rotation falls off. And this happens to anybody
who's not a world first Raider. You drop your rotation.
If you're not getting 100% off time on a boss, your rotation
suffers for you hit the wrong button, you have dead.
And this is what I also don't think the GCD penalty is going
to be a punishment at all because if I go and look at logs
for anybody who's in that range of blue and lower, there's so
many ways the GCDS. So who cares if you're only
having a point to take a penalty?
It's better than the 18. You didn't do it all anyway, if
you're able to go from using the one button macro to mixing in
your own rotation. So I, I'll send a cool down when
I know I should use a cool down or I will pull out of the rope,
pull out of it when and do my rotation normally when I, I need
to and then go back into it when I'm not like in a, in a high
stress moment, high movement moment.
I use the use the one button macro when I'm out of that
moment and it's just regular, you know, you gotta breathe
through a second. I switch back into doing it
myself. I, I don't see I'm, I'm, I'm
gonna use it, I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna see how it goes.
I, I suspect it makes me a better DPS and, and the reason I
know because I had this discussion with my EU Guild and,
and a lot of them have said, listen, if this game boils down
to 1 button, that's not fun for me, I'm not going to play it.
You don't have to, but I don't want to be a burden on my team.
It bothers me to know that I could be doing something that
makes my team better and I'm, I'm actively choosing to not do
that and it's making the team worse.
I can't function that way but. But that's the reason that I
don't want this to be powerful. Right, but it's an accessibility
feature. If they don't make it fun, if
they don't make it at least on par, then they're basically
telling everybody who does need it for accessibility.
You don't get to RAID. You don't matter.
No, no, no, no. Sorry.
Let me, let me. OK, I need to interject here,
right? If it is so proficient that the
majority of players benefit from using it instead of doing the
rotation on the by themselves, it will become de facto not
mandatory. It's not that you have to use
it, you can play comparably well, but if it takes you from a
blue parse to a purple parse or a purple parse to an orange
parse. I don't.
I don't think it'll get you to orange, but I it'll definitely,
it'll definitely get you to at least blue, I guarantee.
But I'm just saying like if it bumps you up a grade level from
what people are are running with on like Warcraft logs or
whatever rating system that that happens to be king at the time,
right? The mindset of the player base
will be that it is mandatory. And that is very much against
what Ian was trying trying to do, right?
If it is a something that is installed in the game
out-of-the-box and it improves your improves your performance,
even if it keeps you within blue, but it takes you from like
low blue to high blue or takes you from like high blue into
purple, right? So many people will say, well, I
have to use I have no choice. Why am I even bothering using
using my brain right. And the entirety of the
second-half of the the conversation was about mandatory
add-ons. And I don't think Blizzard wants
to create mandatory add-ons. So if it at .2 it doesn't
matter. As you say, Lex is right.
They will make it a two second GCD.
They will make it and it's not good unless then they would.
I think they would write is that it's not.
Supposed to be like like like it's it's only supposed to be
usable. Like OK, I'm going to be super
honest, like not to go back into doomerism.
If it is the type of thing where like I as I'm going to be
honest, I'm a green part parsing player.
If I don't use it, I feel like a burden.
I'm probably going to quit, right?
Like that will make this game not fun enough that I'm probably
going to walk or go back to healing, I guess because you
know, you can't do that with healing.
That was. What other people said they
would just swap to healer full time, Yeah.
It's like, and I think that's true because like as much as
Sean, you want to say, yeah, I'm going to use it because I don't
want to feel like a burden to my team.
That's a lot of people down the spectrum of gaming.
And while your reaction will be I'm going to turn it on because
I don't want to be a burden, another person will reaction
will be I have to turn it on because I don't want to be a
burden. And now I don't feel like I'm
playing. So I'm just not going to play,
and that's incredibly damaging. I I agree with everything you're
both saying. I don't see a world where this
doesn't make players who aren't exceptionally skilled better.
I don't see it because you're making it an accessibility, a
feature for accessibility. There are people who genuinely
need this to play. They have pain issues, they have
physical disabilities. They can't play otherwise.
And if you make it not even if if you make it so all they do is
Gray parse, why have it at all? They're going to just feel
horrible, you know what I mean? You can play the raid, but
you're going to, you're going to suck.
I, I don't think Blizzard's going to do that.
I don't think Blizzard's going to do that and I don't.
I wouldn't want them. To I think they can and I think
that like people are conflating accessibility with a lot of
things. I think that the accessibility
that they're talking about with this one button rotation and
with the Kelly, what comes next is the ability to learn to get a
understanding of your rotation without having to go to Icy
Veins and read up on it and then practice without having to go
out outside of the game. So you can go through and be
like, oh, OK, that's what my rotation is.
And I can now try and mimic that myself and get it and get an
understanding. And I think that's the
accessibility that we're more focused that Blizzard is more
focused on because if they start going like, hey, before you were
Gray parsing, but now with this one button thing, you can purple
parse. Anybody who isn't purple parsing
or better is doing themselves a disservice by not turning this
on. And that's incredibly dangerous
territory for an any add on Blizzard made or not.
Yeah, I don't know. So I do think it's those are the
the two different conversations. The rotational helper 100% is a
great tool to learn a rotation for a class.
We shouldn't need 3 page guides and 30 minute videos to learn
how to play a new class. The rotation helper is is
excellent for that. It's it's why Achillea is
excellent. I think it's going to be
excellent when Blizzard designs it because they know the API
inside a note so they're going to do it right.
I also think we would benefit from simplifying the complexity
in some of these classes. So you don't need a program to
tell you, OK, you can cast execute now because because you
have two procs of sudden death and you have two stacks of this,
but you only have one stack of this.
So don't execute yet. Like we shouldn't have to
compute that. So I think those are two, two
separate arguments that I don't think the one button helper, I
don't think the one button macro helps anybody learn a rotation.
You're not going to learn anything because you're just
going to be hitting A1 button. I do think it's important for
for people who who can't like physically can't play the game
for for whatever reason, whatever their their disability
is. And I don't think it's, I don't
think Blizzard wants to be in a situation where they tell them
we're going to give you this function so that you can play
the game and but you're just going to be really bad at it.
I actually think you're wrong. The quote from Ann is sorry,
maybe I'm wrong, but I'm sorry. That was very impressive.
But the the the quote from Ann is quote that it's there for
people who maybe honestly aren't interested in the gameplay of
mastering their spec. They want to explore Azoroth and
experience the story and mechanics get in the way of that
sometimes. This should be for them.
They're like, they're here. This is for people who want to
experience the story and explore as Roth makes me think that
they're thinking of this as primarily for open world
players. This is to get people who
otherwise could not play World of Warcraft at all playing World
of Warcraft. This is not to get people who
otherwise would be playing World of Warcraft into rating.
I could be. I really hope I'm not wrong.
Like I, I, I don't mean that badly because I like, I feel, I
feel like on the one hand, like, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's like
accessibility, but also like the the game can't be the it's it's
equally like like the a world first Raider could play it by
pressing 1 button, right? That's not a reasonable
accommodation. I don't.
Think and I, I don't think they will, I like it.
The, the GC difference would matter to the, to the players at
that level and there like there are rotational things that they
would do slightly differently, but I, I can't see them
designing it and not having it follow your ideal rotation.
They're not going to make it. But I think they're going to, I
think they're going to punish I, I think that if it does turn out
to the point to GCD cooldown isn't punished, I, I, I think
they're going to punish you with like GCDS and, and, and I, I
also, I also, honestly, I'm not there's.
Also people on my rate team that would still benefit from it.
I, I, we had people 7 seconds don't hit a button, 7 seconds
they haven't had casting ability.
Sorry, we're doing, we're doing a lot to get our opinions out.
And so like I, I do want to sort of reintroduce some structure
into this. Yeah.
And so Sean, I believe that if everybody could use this as a
helping tool, it would be great. I think that that would be
fantastic to to like get people into learning new specs and new
hero talents and new classes and that work.
And that to me is increasing accessibility.
I think it means that when people are going around and
doing story content and such into like, man, I really wanted
to do the undead heritage armor or the Sylvanas loyalty thing or
the hunter lodge, whatever, that they could just jump onto it, do
this one button and focus on what they really want to focus
on. Which is like, oh, I unlocked
this cool trans mog and oh, I unlocked this cool trans mog and
oh I, I got to experience this story.
That to me is like opening up a world of accessibility and help
helping out people. And that's where I see the
single button thing being in there.
If they are going into follower dungeons where the mechanics
aren't going to be as punishing and therefore you could be
following this one button thing and sort of being like, OK, I'm
going to like mouse click and move, move around because you've
got the you can Click to a position point.
Now that I think is part of it, where like the cognitive load
might be something that was holding them back.
And so removing that from the rotation let's them focus on
other parts. But in terms of rating at a
organized level, which I'm going to put at normal, right, because
rating at normal is an organized level going into mythic zeros is
organized level. So I'm not even talking about
mythic rating or high level mythic plus, I'm talking about
just strict organized level. I think at that point this the
use of the one button should be an impediment to the level that
you should be playing, right? And I think that that's where I
would want to see this aimed at in terms of it's, it's
helpfulness. I can go through through heroic
because I can cue into that. I can go into LFR and it'll give
me enough. And who cares if I am green or
Gray parsing in an LFR I like, I'm never going to see these
people again. But once you go into the
organized level, that's where I see the Hikelly analog starting
to take over, where it's like, I'm going to tell you what's
next. I'm going to say, hey, this is
when you should switch over to your AOE, because now the next
suggested thing is this. But you now need to input these
buttons yourself. Now there is a portion of the
player base that is in a bad area.
When I put those goals at those people who have limitations,
right? Where this one button thing is
genuinely helping them do stuff. But now I've put this this
arbitrary wall because I've I've made this decision that beyond
here, it's not going to get you the performance as somebody who
is able bodied and able to do this thing, these sort of inputs
manually, right? And I have to live with that as
somebody who's making that, making the call on this podcast.
And the designers have to live with that as somebody who's
making the call for the entirety of the game.
But in all cases, where the line is drawn is arbitrary.
And I think that in all cases, there will be parts of the
player base that are going to be negatively impacted.
And so I would like for you, Sean, and then I'm going to pass
over to you, Lex, to sort of say like where you would want these
two to come in and then where you feel like the impact is
going to be. So let me pass it over to you
first, Sean. I, I would, I mean the path that
you just described sounds great. I, I don't think that's going to
happen, but the path you describe sounds great.
I do think the rotational helper should be used by anybody
learning a new class or anybody even on their own class.
Like I have a friend who also uses Achille.
He's a Hall of Fame Raider. He uses Achille and he keeps it
in the corner for if he loses where he's at in his rotation or
if something is really crazy, he can refer back to it.
And then he, he goes, you know, back knows his rotation.
Otherwise, outside of that, just use it as like a reminder.
Those tools are great for that. There's also a huge portion of
the, of the, of the, of the player base said when you say
Achille, they, they think, oh, you're terrible.
Oh, you use Achille. Oh, you're bad, you're bad at
the game. Like, well, this guy's a Hall of
Fame Raider and his parcels are all better than yours and he
blows you away. And I think plus.
So maybe don't be so judgmental. Yeah, I don't know.
I just I hope you're right. I hope it's not something that
where the vast majority of people that are doing normal and
heroic grades and that's where they cap won't benefit from
using it. I just don't see a world where
that happens. I also suspect that the new
common insult in pugs when your damage is low is maybe you
should switch to 1 button. Yeah, guaranteed, guaranteed.
Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't want Lex to quit the game And,
and I, and like I said, I don't for me, I would try it out and
see how it works. And because I don't want to feel
like a burden on my team. Nobody on my team would ever
make me feel like a burden, you know what I mean?
I, I and everybody all know I'm a, I'm a tank anyway.
I, I, I don't need any of that stuff for tanking, but yeah,
like it's, that's entirely a thing on me.
But there are a lot of people out there who are like, you
know, genuinely at risk of being cut from teams if they don't
outperform other players. And I don't know, I just, if you
can focus on mechanics and there are other teams that are like,
hey, we, we choose our roster based on who does the best on
mechanics. Like, well, my damage is middle,
but I survived every mechanic because I, I didn't have to
think about anything else. You know, it I the penalty on it
would have to be so huge for it not to be a benefit to I think a
lot of players. I think, yeah, I don't know.
I don't know, Lex, you played an agency only Guild and I know you
said you were talking to Guild about it.
They like they what's their stance like?
Is it like hey use it if you want, Don't use it if you don't
want? Yes, our and this is what I
taught. My dog is really, really needy
today, so she's breaking my mic. Forgive me the.
Viewers at home Lex is leaned over at a 90° angle into her
mind she's. Getting a really good look at
her Warcraft Collector's Edition headset right now.
It still looks wonderful all these months later.
This is this is better than the time that she, my 40 LB dog,
decided that she really needed a hug and climbed bodily into my
lap. That was 5 minutes ago.
Yeah, that was 5 minutes ago exactly.
She's having a rough night, but shit, it's about to happen
again. So I so first of all, I, when I
talked to my officer team, what they said basically is our
philosophy has not changed just because the add on became within
the game. And our philosophy has always
been, we will never require add-ons ever.
We have, we have players who don't use weak auras and that
means that if there's add on, like if there's a boss that like
a weak aura would basically clean it up.
We figure out a different way. We some of our, our folks use
Hakeeli. We we certainly don't require it
even like even for people, people like me who are parsing
like grey and green in most of our fights, we will never be
like, Hey, you got like we'll coach.
And if you're basically, if your DPS stays consistently below the
tanks, we might have conversations about like sitting
or cutting you. We overwhelmingly our priority
is that we have a good time together and that's and and that
works for us. We have some really, really
talented players who have even like left and come back because
they were like, you know what, I tried higher level rating and I
would rather hang out with the Tavern.
We've also had higher level of people who left for higher level
play rating and are doing amazing and we love them and we
support them. Right, There's multiple ways.
But anyway, so yes, my Guild has within.
I mean, this is within the officer chaps.
This hasn't gone to the community as a whole, but we
have the, the, the officers are all, to my knowledge, on the
same page that none of us would require anyone to take anything.
And I, I guess that's also the other thing.
If you're like me and you're like, Oh my God, the idea of
playing a single button mode makes me want to delete every
single account I've ever had and start playing Final Fantasy.
Talk to your team. Ideally, they're on the same
page as you. If they're not on the same page
as you look at others, right, Find other teams because I get
it. I also really do not like I one
of my, my overwhelming frustrations with World of
Warcraft is that it does feel like it is becoming
significantly more rote, right? My dad used to be a, a Raider in
like Wrath, like, and like at a pretty high level, like at the
point where you have to like apply and go through everything
and you might, you're getting fat half the nights and
everything and you have to like prove yourself to go in.
And, and he, so he was telling me all the stories of like his
old rating team members who like had their like spreadsheets and
they would be like, Hey, actually, I noticed an
irritation. You did this, but like,
actually, if you did this file and this file, it would be
significantly better. And dah, dah, dah.
And I kind of, I, I know that that's never going to come back
because at this point, the like the, the spreadsheet is the icy
veins and it's already done for us.
But, and maybe that's not true. Maybe at like a higher level
people are, you know, doing a little bit more like hyper
needle comparison. But like, yeah, it does kind of
make me sad that everything is is told to me.
Like honestly, if somebody was like, hey, I have a Guild that's
super friendly and cool and we are all like, if like sign an
oath that you will never watch a boss video and you will never
read Icy Veins and everything you have to either figure out by
playing or by talking to other guildies.
I don't think I leave my Guild 'cause I love my Guild, but I
think about it 'cause that sounds really fun for me.
But anyway, that whole long ramble was to say I'm, I, I, I'm
basically at the same point Manny's at.
I think that this is something that I want to make it so that
people can play the game if they otherwise would not have the
ability to play the game and raid to a degree, but I don't
want this to ever. I, I, I think that it would be
really destructive for the game if the like like 50% of players
would just immediately do better if they switched to this mode.
I think that would be devastating for the gameplay as
a whole. Can't wait to find out guys.
I can't. I'm so excited to try this out
on the PTR. I definitely want to see this on
the PTR and it is a question about like how much do they go
for accessibility and empowering players that might otherwise
face barriers versus like how much they want to make this sort
of enforced part of the UI, right?
And like it can be as simple as whether when you get on day one
of 11 point 1.7, whether it's automatically on or if it's opt
in like they had with the new cooldown manager.
And so it seems like with these new add-ons, because looking
back at it, I think this has been a challenge that they've
been looking at for a while. So the cooldown manager was a
very weak start to this and now they've said, OK, we're ramping
up. And that was the second part of
this conversation because it's not just the fact that we're
getting this cooldown manager. It's not that we're getting a
Kelly sort of tell me when kind of thing.
It's not that we're going to have just the one button, but
they're looking deeper at things like removing real time raid
events so that add-ons like DBM won't work anymore and then
putting in their own integrated raid timers so that you have
that. They're looking at shutting down
basically weak cores. We kept saying weak cores, weak
cores. The king of add-ons is something
that days might be numbered. And so there's a long
conversation about this and I really implore everyone, do what
Lex did. Watch the video multiple times
make sure you're not just going off of what some angry
disenfranchised person who jumps into your discord and starts
saying they've they're going to ruin Wow starts doing because
there's there is a lot in the video.
So with the what I considered a change in philosophy, it looks
like they're going to be pulling in a lot of the add-ons that
people feel are mandatory that you have that you have to get in
order to function at a certain level and they're going to be
bringing that into the core game.
So I got a question for you guys.
Outside of DBM and we cores, what do you think are the
add-ons that like jumped your mind of saying like, OK, that's
on the hit list, go ahead blacks.
I bet they're gonna put in location like a coordinates
tracker, which I think you have to add on and either I'm really
stupid and it's somewhere in the game or you have to use it in an
add on. First of all, I think it's
that's one thing that I think it's ridiculous is not in the
core game as it stands. But I I think that's like, I
think Tomcat is one of the first things that'll I don't even have
it downloaded. And I know that most people have
Tomcat downloaded. Yeah, TomTom and and all of
those. Yeah, that, that's very good.
Good one. Yeah, I could easily see that
they got the pins. All they just need to do is just
like actually unlock the game coordinates and so you can share
it. I think that's a big one.
What about you, Sean? So bigwigs DBM, those are huge.
I'd love to have actual Blizzard timers for these bosses because
that would be amazing and would reduce the need for a lot of
updates early on, especially the bigwigs for teams that are
rating like really early in the tier.
Details. I want to see a Blizzard in game
details that gives, you know, breakdowns on damage, healing,
damage taken, interrupts, dispels.
I want all the same tracking we get from details because that
stuff's important. It's you know, it's good to know
all that information. You don't need to just see who
did the most damage. We know it'll be the people with
the one button, so it's not a big deal.
Sorry, Lex. No, it's fine.
I just, I just want everybody to know that Sean had put a full
disclaimer out before this episode that he and Lex were not
going to be friends anymore after this episode.
We. May not be.
We may not be. You don't have to say May
anymore. It's all right.
Keep going though. I don't think they're going to
get rid of We Gore's entirely. I think We Gore has a real big,
really good function. I know they're going to limit
some of the things that it can do, which is good.
Ian talked about this makes me nervous, but Ian talked about
adjusting the way they design bosses if they remove the
ability to have computational solutions to boss mechanics.
But that's the like it needs to. It needs to be something it has
to have. Like they talked about
disarmament to this arms race against the add on developers.
I would really like to see Blizzard take a tier and just
show us a tier with the philosophy that they have for
how they want to design this stuff with.
Leave wikors up, let us have what we have.
Show us, hey, this is what we envisioned for a tier so that we
can see it and then we can be feel OK, you know what?
So you put your guns down, we see you've put your guns down.
We are now OK with you taking away our guns type thing as as
opposed to the opposite, which is they take our guns away 1st
and then they still have their guns and then they forgot to
unload their guns. Oh, they're shooting Manny.
They're shooting us. So, so Sean, in this scenario,
for a good apples to apples comparison, would you be willing
to play a season 4 where all of the raids get adjusted?
And that's a big perfect way to test it before implementing the
shutdown of the API and all of that into the next expansion.
100%, like 100% I would do that. And don't give us those bullshit
affixes. Just give us the raids adjusted
the way you want to make them. That would be great.
Yeah. Show us what you got.
You put down your arms, we'll put down our we'll gladly give
them away. I just need to see that.
You. I just need to see that they
understand, because they've said they understand in the past and
they very clearly don't. They don't.
Well, and to give to give Blizzard a little bit of Flack.
The other thing I will say is if we've been designing raids and
Mythic Plus and everything for so long.
They will not be able to do a full mindset set shift within
one tier. So I think I, I just to give
them a little grace. I do think 1 tier, like the
first tier that we don't have access to the, the weak ores and
everything that they're thinking and like, and, and they're
pulling it into fully their own UII think it's going to be a
nightmare. I think it's going to be a mess.
I think there's no other way around it.
I think it they're going to have to feel it out and they're going
to have to be like, oh God, we thought this was something that
we could do with our own internal UI, but actually this
one mechanic is too hard. We need to fix this and I, I
think there's going to be a season of tooling and I think
that the first season we're going to be doomering on this
podcast and we're going to be like, this is the worst thing
ever and I'm quitting the game. And then I think they're going
to settle it through. It so so Lex, Lex, in your
scenario, would you prefer them that they under tuned things and
it's just like, OK, I guess we can ratchet it up a little bit
and then in a later season they go, oh, OK, we've we've hit the
wall. All right, we're not going to do
that again. Or would you prefer that they
over tune and bring things down? I see Sean make OK, sorry while
you think about that Sean has been making head suggested so
Sean you can give your answer first you.
Definitely start easier and then add on afterwards.
You do. If you you lose players the
other direction, if you start easier and build up, players
will stay and and play longer. The the top end players are
going to clear it quickly get bored, go on Twitter and say how
easy it was and it wasn't wasn't any fun, but they're going to do
that anyway. They did it this tier.
They do it every tier. They said the laundry was too
easy was trying to pulse. So don't listen to those people.
Make it easy. Let people get and then Bill,
OK, we did this. It worked.
Everybody survived the no week auras.
Now let's add on. Hey, what can we do next?
All right, let's add, let's, let's let's amp it up and find
that balance. If you come out of the gate too
hard, you're going to people are just going to start look at look
at mythic plus last season, it came out too hard.
People said, you know what, I don't need to do this.
I'm just going to go Delve. Do that.
Who would quit mythic class after saying they were going to
work really hard on mythic class and then go to Dells instead
because they really didn't actually have to.
Who do that? And and to Alexis point, those
same people, whoever they are, don't return in the next season,
even if it is made easier, it's harder to win people back.
So, yeah, I agree with what you're saying there, Sean.
So the reason that I kind of like mentally checked out there
for a second when you're giving me that option is I started
dreaming of this amazing magical world where they somehow have
enough Dell devs. So what they could do is they
could make like a fully separate server that like is just for
like whatever either you know, opt in or players who are
particularly like like super high level players.
So they can be testing this at a higher level and have like 2
simultaneous like, you know, you have the retail World of
Warcraft, but then also which you know what they could do.
No, they would hate this, but wouldn't it be fun if they did
that with Classic? They did, you know, poor Classic
players. They wouldn't get anything.
But they did get a lot more players.
Because I wouldn't want to test it anywhere.
So in my magical world where, Yeah, because the thing about
Classic players is what they really want to do is new stuff.
That's why they're playing Classic, because they want to
play this game like no one's ever played it before.
I don't. Know why people are upset about
1 button? They just we have classic.
They love that that's only three buttons.
Wow. Listen guys, they're at Mop now.
It's evolved way beyond three buttons.
It's at 4 now, friends. Anyway.
So wouldn't it be great if we could, like I, I would love it
if they could be testing this simultaneously and outside of
retail entirely so they can really experiment and play with
people who are expecting they're being experimented on.
But that's not on the table because I'm also the person on
this podcast who every other day says they're working the devs
too hard. So I can't be like, we'll put
give the devs more work. So in that case, given that that
option's off the table, I think, yeah, easier than a tune harder.
OK, beyond the details being actually integrated, I think
that there is something to be said about the API and how that
hooks into those sort of stuff. When you have details that are
that are integrated, what kind of information can you pull out
of that that that you can then give to a website?
Like there's so many sites that use the API that the same things
that the add-ons are using in order to get their information,
you're looking at Warcraft logs, you're looking at radar IO,
right? You're looking at all these
things that will go and be like, OK, we're going to go analyze
this and say, oh, you could have done better here.
You could have like, this is how many interrupts were done.
This is the timeline of the fight.
And that stuff can be done live right now.
If they shut that stuff down and it's sort of an integrated 1, is
that something that they go, OK, here's a website you can go to
and you can pull off the logs. And then it becomes like a lot
more like how we used to do I, I don't know, like theory crafting
where you would have to like download it onto your, your
platform and then run through it and everything.
Like how restrictive do we think it's going to get?
And how restrictive do we want it to be?
Because like, as soon as you allow it to be instantaneous,
instantaneous access, then who cares if you can't see it right
on inside the thing. You just have an overlay or it
on a second screen or something. So they actually dialed that
back like 3 tiers ago. I think it was echo of an
Etherium was the fight that input that that that encouraged
them to dial it back because people were using the actual in
game live Warcraft, the the in game fight log to make overlays
for that fight. And Blizzard said, hey, we don't
want that. And they actually changed it so
you can no longer access an A a fight log until that fight has
ended. So it's all right.
And I can't see them changing it from that.
You definitely want to access to a poll right after the poll ends
to, to analyze it. I don't think that's going to
change. So, and, and it's because you
can't read it mid poll, you can't generate any of those
overlays any more like you were able to.
So I, I think they've already curbed that, that potential
issue and I'm glad they did and I'm, I'm glad where it's at now.
Yeah, I really don't want people being able to do things like
that. I think that especially given
that there is a bit of a bullying problem in World 4
craft. Sometimes I think that for like
people pugging groups and like LFG not LFG.
What am I thinking of? I lost mythic plus but pugs.
Pugs is the one I'm looking for. I'm having a It's been a long.
Day, any kind of group, group Finder activity, whether it's
like automated or manual, Yeah, I get that.
Yeah, I, I, I would like them to not have an easy time.
I, I would like it to be hard for them to pull up the fight
and be like, oh, you did this thing wrong these five times
because I don't want them to have more ammunition.
And for like for the, the good people who are not who just want
the access to the information so they can coach long term because
they're in an established Guild. Just do that after the right or
after the basic plus or after the fight.
Again, yeah, it depends on the level that you're going at and
what's going on. Like even in a Group, A group
like let's say I was part of the Timbermont Tavern, I could see a
scenario where it's like, OK, we've been doing like 3 or 4
polls. We keep having this issue.
Let's go look at, let's go look at like what what's been going
on there? And like maybe you're looking at
a video and then looking back at, at stuff and you're like,
hey, everybody take your 5 minute break.
Go look at this video. It's something I can easily see
Kirk doing. Yeah, I honestly, I don't want
them to touch Warcraft logs. I want them to leave that
independent. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but
like that I, I that sort of thing, I think it's just better
managed like held externally and managed externally versus like
details, which is giving you like, well, I guess if it's
using Blizzard API, then actually they're probably gonna
be pretty identical, right? Like you can.
So maybe I'm making it up, maybe it doesn't matter.
Like the way the information is presented and how you can break
it down is obviously different between details and Warcraft
logs. Like when you are looking
through like your details or whatever damage meters you want
to look at, you can flip over and be like, oh, how many
interrupts were there and who did the did the interrupts.
But in Warcraft logs you can see when they did it.
You can get a full timeline. You can see where people are
moving around the room. You can see when people were
taking damage versus the healing.
There's a lot of breakdown that is different between the two and
but they still pull from the same API and it and so when
Sean, you're saying like, hey, the fight needs to be completed
and then you'll get that, that information.
I think that's really great for Warcraft logs in a term in terms
of a damage meter. Oh, that needs to be instant.
That needs to be happening mid fight.
You need to. Yeah, that's that's what I was
going to say. Like it's not even just like the
damage meter. It might just be like a OK, I
just need to see how many people are interrupting and so I can
say like part way through a fight, Hey, Sean, I've only seen
two interrupts from you. Come on, stay on it.
It's just a coach towards it, like without being a jerk.
So like that's that's the sort of stuff where it's like causing
it to be in game in a closed system where people can't get to
it is will enable that kind of differentiator.
The other thing that is now kind of coming to mind, especially as
we're talking about Warcraft logs, is I know most add-ons are
a labor of love, but I think some people are making money off
of things like Patreons and stuff.
And I didn't even really process that until right now.
But like, some people are going to lose livelihoods off this
right? Yeah, not just Patreon.
Curseforge pays add on developers for downloads, so the
biggest ones, DBM bigwigs that are on essentially every single
player account could potentially be able to work, yeah.
Or I have to find something new to pivot to?
Yeah. I mean, I guess I don't see this
as a tragedy. I know.
Like it's people's livelihood I'm getting.
Yeah, everybody's gonna be. I become like, what's the
opposite of Ebenezer Scrooge? Like the the bum who's also
saying Bah, humbug. That's where I'm at right now
anyways. No, no.
But what I mean is that like it's a reality that as Blizzard
has integrated various things and such, add-ons that used to
be quite popular have become obsolete.
The original gear score, a lot of the things that use like
world markers that Blizzard was like, Nope, we're shutting that
down. Like it, it happens
consistently. This is no different other than
Blizzard has given a ton of warning for these people to
pivot. So I feel like they're doing it
in the nicest way possible. And so I don't consider this
like an absolute tragedy. It wasn't like they're saying
like, hey, guys, with the release of 11 point 1.7, all
add-ons are shut down. Good day to you, Sir.
Like it's so like it's just it feels like the best way that
they could have gone about this in a very forward facing way.
They're saying, hey, you're going to notice these add-ons
coming in, right? And hey, hey, Kelly, this was a
lot like your ad on Kelly. How many times did they say his
name like in that thing? I want to say I hope I would
like to see them keep it open so we can have the option.
Because based on the video that rotational helper looks like it
just lights up your action bars. I don't play with action bars on
so that's useless to me. But think about it this way, it
can be A modification splinter or or layer of the cooldown
manager, right? Which is basically for me I.
Don't use that garbage either. I don't use the cooldown manager
either, but like it further as they further improve things.
It'll happen and they're introducing it first and
iterating upon it before they take away the options for
anything else, which is also the best way that they could have
gone about this process. But for me, I use Kelly's add
on. I have my bars that are down at
the bottom, which I pretty much never look at.
And then the stuff that I'm actually tracking is right there
near my character so I can I can follow stuff and actually, sorry
Kelly, I don't think I use your thing anymore.
I use a week or so. Mine's closer to the cooldown
manager, just like actually good.
So like, that's what I'm using right now.
And as they make these changes, things will fall off.
I used to love bartender, bartender Addy bags, used to
love them. And then Blizzard added in stuff
and I was like, I want to see. Can I add Bagnon to my requested
add-ons that they implement? Because their bags are
atrocious. I would just like it's
subdivided into categories. That's something that bags.
It's so good. Whereas it's like Susan went to
my bag. It's like, oh, you're a potion.
There you go in that column. I'm good.
Yeah, give me any option between one giant bag with everything
thrown in haphazardly, and then eight small bags with everything
thrown in. You can organize those 8 bags to
like only have particular options.
Sorry, we're going off top. One thing that might solve both
our fears of this not actually being as good as the add-ons
themselves and my fears of people being out of work is
wouldn't it be great if they just hired the big add on
writers? Like wouldn't that be so easy?
Like they already know how to work with the World of Warcraft
system. They already know what players
want. They probably Ted like there's
probably reasons they're like no, we you know, we try to XYZ
things and we found that it didn't work so fast out that
would. Be great.
Did you see Kelly's tweet though?
No. What was it it?
Was just for a while the genie look firstly blizzards have been
after him for a while looking at like a quote from 2017 who
cares? But like his entire thing was
just the genie cuffs coming off being like, I'm free.
The Kelly is so, so happy to be rid of it.
It was such like I remember speaking to him when it was like
gearing up stuff for Dragonflight, right?
Because they did a lot of changes with Dragonflight with
the new stuff. And it's just like programming
all of those in with all the new talents because we switched
talent, talent stuff. It was just like, oh man, like
the amount of work that that required.
And for him, literally genie thing, I'm free.
Okay, did I take it back? It's perfect.
Never. Yeah, great.
But. That's one person.
One person and. Like I said, I would, I actually
much prefer that they hire add on writers and a give them
actual stable jobs right with actual pay.
I mean, I don't know how much better World of War Blizzard pay
is than, you know, writing your. Own or how stable it is?
I mean, didn't EA just layoff 400 people?
OK, I'm not saying they are like, you know, conscripted into
labor, but I, I, I would, I would, I would rather as a
player that the people who have been doing this for ages and
ages continue onwards versus World of Warcraft starts from
scratch. And like all the lessons learned
that weren't like verbally stated, like, oh, we used to do
it like this, but now we're doing it like this.
That's like the quiet tweaks that made things cleaner that we
can't even think of because they weren't put in our faces have to
be redone. Well, you look at the people
that they brought in for this Wow cast, this wasn't like this
wasn't Lynxy sitting down and talking with Ian.
This was a world first Raider and a very well known high level
player, right? That like even if they because
we know that Max isn't writing his own week or is he's got a
team that does that during the race, the world first, we know
that Dratnos isn't writing his own week or is he's just going
out and finding the best and recommending them to people.
These are people in the community that they brought in
to do this. And I think that's the exact
same sort of mentality that Bliss has been doing for years.
You look at Taryn Gregory, right?
He didn't do cinematics for video games throughout his
entire career. He did cinematics and like
Machina and then Blizzard was like come work for us.
You look at Ian has acoustis elitist jerks history and he was
brought in for encounter design and then worked his way up.
So like, this is definitely the company that is going to at
least consult, if not bring in these these people to to do
that. You always hear about like
people being like, oh, I'm doing my Blizzard tour and it's sort
of like, I think something's going on there.
How come I haven't seen any videos from you lately?
Drat knows what's going on. Oh, I'm just going on a little
vacation. Yeah.
So yeah, I think you. That's a pretty safe bet there,
Lex. All of that that makes me feel
better. I feel happy now.
Everything's fine. Sean's world is not going to
happen. They're not going to make me do
1 button. And even if they do, even if
they the big they does make me do 1 button, then it's OK
because my Guild is going to come in and give me a big hug
and say it's OK, Lex, we know that you part's really bad.
We like hanging out with you anyway.
And they won't make me do 1 button.
And also all everyone is going to have a job.
They just need you to cast something in that 7 second gap
where you're apparently doing nothing.
What are you doing in that 7 seconds?
Probably clicking a. Button that I thought was not
on. Cool.
I'm picking it three times and I'm like why it looks like it's
not? Cool down.
Oh my God, that is so that it's So what?
Half of these logs are just like the.
Hot looks open. Why isn't the hot going?
And then I see that. We didn't even talk about they
they announced after we've recorded last week the dinars
and the increase to the item level, the gear Palooza uncapped
crests, war bound valor stones we're.
Going to talk the entire housing thing, right?
Yeah, we can talk about that next week, 'cause that was then
it actually will be out, right? The first, the Gira Palooza,
starts next week, doesn't it? There's no, it's the 14th.
Never mind. We'll prime people.
We'll get them real excited by talking.
About all the information they need to get into it and a whole
lot of me being like no guys no anyways.
I think ultimately though, I do just Manny was just about to say
goodbye. Ultimately, I I think maybe I'm
wrong, but I feel like the general take away from the
Wowcast today was that things the future could be bright like
they are they the more that is in the game naturally or
natively is better for new players will be better for
players who aren't already using add-ons and it should only
improve performance. Like I assume Blizzard's going
to optimize better than who? That's a big that is a.
I assume he's doing a lot of work though.
We. Did 11 point 1.5, I can
understand everybody's faith being shaken, but like I was
actually going to log, sign us off or say say that.
What I was going to say is the one part of this conversation
that we haven't talked about is actually that I don't expect
these add-ons to be as powerful as the third party add-ons.
And that is going to be by design.
They are doing this so that the tools you have are less
effective, which means that they can do less threatening
mechanics. You're not easier.
Yeah. And like that's they sound
genuinely. Said they don't want to do that.
They want to make it less complex.
Yes, still challenging. Less complex.
Yeah, right. But like, it just means that
like I know, but like, I'm sorry, I know it's it's nice
flowery language to say less complex, right?
But I do mean easier. And the reason I say easier is
because a get out of dodge in in .5 seconds.
I need something to let me know that that's happening and just
air horns and everything so that I'm moving before it comes down.
Get out of dodge in two seconds. I don't need those air horns.
I can get out of dodge and react on my own in that time.
And that's a big component of what they're they're doing.
They're going to like this isn't just a de escalation in that
we're not going to do certain mechanics.
It's that the mechanics that they are going to do don't need
to be as split second reactionary or like you need to
have some sort of like. Prognosis of like, hey, we need
you to go exactly here and you to go to these coordinates and
you to go these coordinates so that everybody else can stack in
this in this pixel square so that we can survive this
mechanic. He played echo of an authorian.
That was the boss that we ended on in our mythic in our mythic
question back when my team was doing mythic is no fairy was
just like, yeah, we're done for this decent friends.
I know what boss you're describing for.
Right. And so I think that, yeah, just
playable by humans, or as Sean would say, playable by mortal
men, yeah, is. Give the normies a chance.
Give the normies right is where I'd like to see the game even at
the mythic level right And that's what I think this this is
if you can bring the add-ons that can help people step up to
the organized level and you can squelch the add-ons so that the
the highest doesn't require inhuman precision and.
You can make that not have to press 1 button all day and
pretend that that's playing a video game.
And I think that that makes all the content far more accessible.
You don't need the computational power to power all these things
in the best computer to like make sure your frame rate never
drops below this right while running all these extra
processes. And you've got the help to get
you into the organized level. And I think that's a big thing
about accessibility there. But with that, I am going to end
this episode because we have been going and yes, we have a
lot to talk about in the future. So World Warcraft is looking
bright. Until next time, though, may all
your hits be kids.