I would just like to stop tailoring the game to the 97%.
Victory for the Forsaken, for Lauderon for the Karen Tour.
For. Pandaria for Calendar to the
burning region for Gilnaeus, but has not done 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, Manny,
AKA the true villain Manny and I am joined by the other two parts
of the Triumphant first coming from parts unknown.
From background Bear we have lexer ants.
Hello Manny, How are you? How are we doing?
How does the world work out treating you, Manny?
I'm done with the War Within. Not really.
I still have goals in the War Within.
I'm just ready to move on. And it seems like I'm not the
only one. Fair you, I have some really bad
news about that, but best of I I, I do kind of feel you though.
We finally hit salad bar in Heroic, so we're on the AOTC
push officially. We're starting to hold instead
of doing resets and I got my astral antenna so I have
everything I need other than AOTC.
OK, there you go. I'm glad.
So you've got you've got salad
bar on the ropes. You're going to get through them
and then go after Mr. Demi Lord. And then Sean, how are you?
And how's the World of Warcraft treating you?
Warcraft. Treated me quite well, Manny,
Quite well. We are probably doing one more
week of re clear and then extending.
We are on Nexus King Saladar. We have gotten them to P3
thrice. But for anybody who's tracking
Nexus King Salad bar, getting to P3 means you still have like 150
bulls. It's it's very intense fight.
So we're getting ready to to extend after this week's re
clear. So that's going well.
I've, I've stopped rating on EU for the season because the team
has shifted into hey, wouldn't it be fun if we all brought alts
that can't clear this content mode and that's not really a
mode I enjoy. So my now I'm just doing
dungeons and stuff there. But things are going well.
I've dialed back and when I do you guys remember when I came
into the season, I was like, I'm going to have 4 alts all ready
to go. That is dialed way, way back.
I did a bunch of keys last week for the because the week was the
weekly was the dungeon one. But yeah, I'm I'm shifting back
into like, let's just one character per region.
That's more than reasonable, you know.
So we got the Druid EU and the Paladin NA.
That's what it is right now. That's correct.
Yeah, bro, Paladin and Guardian Druid rock and those that tank
life, and I am sort of like dabbling on my warrior a little
bit. We're in a really good spot this
season, so it feels nice. That's that's good to hear.
That's good to hear. I remember my first kill of
salad bar. The entire raid was like
basically dead except for our monk.
The enrage is coming in and then just before it hits the last
spike going up our monk gets gets him low enough to touch of
death hits him with the touch of death, spikes come up, the monk
dies, but it was fast enough to count.
The counts, he can't take those wins.
Yes, so, but much love to our monk for that.
We've cleaned it up a lot since then and we're going to do our
achievement run soon, I believe next week.
And then hopefully that means that I will have my Tuesdays and
Thursdays free because I've got a lot of things going on myself
that I'd like to get done. And I'd, I'd love to open up
those nights that maybe do some mythic plus, get that done, do
all of those mounts that I was like, oh, I'm going to come back
and do that. Remember way back at the
beginning, Sean, when you're like, I did a weekend group and
I got the like B Mountain, the water mountain, I'm like, yeah,
I'll get to that later. Time's running out for me.
It's it's a little scary. Yeah, we're getting very close
to the end. Yeah.
And then all that is to say, we have Legion coming up and I want
to spend some time in Legion, of course.
But even before Legion came out, it's been utterly eclipsed
because we now have so much news about World of Warcraft.
Midnight, the alpha has been announced.
That's right, Blizzard put out a article saying that the midnight
alpha is going to be released. That alpha is going to be coming
on October 2nd. That is a closed alpha.
So over the course of that test, they're going to be inviting
friends and family, content creators, all the usual suspects
to give feedback. If you are invited to this
alpha, you will get an e-mail directing you to download the
client. Your client itself will be
flagged. Watch out for the phishing scams
guys. There are still so many people
who are like hey give give you account info all of this
Blizzard GMs, Blizzard emails will never ask you for your
account information. Be careful.
I have had a friend who got their account utterly screwed
over and it was fun when they logged.
Well, it was sort of funny when they logged back in and they
were in the middle of like Stranglethorn butt naked,
everything gone. They did get their account
rolled back, but it was just a hilarious sight of them logging
in being like, Oh no, And like not quite to tears, but like you
put a lot of effort into this stuff.
Be safe with it, friends. So the roll out is going to be
in five phases. Each phase is going to be one
week starting on October 2nd. That's phase one.
We're going to be getting level 80 to 83 and that's going to be
in the ever song Woods. That's going to have the level
up campaign and the airator story.
It's going to have a thing called R Cantina, which I am
currently puzzled about the local stories.
Of course, housing for all of you guys who are really looking
to get hands on on housing that'll be there for dungeons.
We've got Wind Runner, Spire and Murder Row the Delves.
For you Delve lovers, we've got the Collegiate Calamity, the
Parhelion Plaza, the Dark Way, and of course you're going to be
doing those with Valera Sanguinar, who's our new Delve
companion. For classes, we are going to get
our first hands on with the Devourer Demon Hunter, and for
all the other classes, you are getting class updates in phase
one there. But I do want to tell you that
because you're at level 83, you're only going to get really
like one talent point into each of the different trees and
apparently Apex talents are coming later.
More on that. Lastly, professions.
We've seen some buzz about professions becoming simplified,
so that's going to be there on phase one, which is really cool.
What do you guys think about this phase one and like the
general alpha, you excited? Oh, I'm over the moon, Manny.
I've been do you guys have any idea how long I've been waiting
to mess with devour Demon Hunter?
It's literally since we saw the new raid and somebody put in my
head that there was going to be a void Demon Hunter and I've
been obsessed with it since then.
So I'm I'm super excited. I am really curious about delves
because they are saying there's going to be that like vibe shift
right at with with losing brand bless up as as your companion.
I'm sorry, I think I'm the only person who still hates Bran.
Still hates. No, no, no.
I never stopped. I'm with you if you hate Bran.
Oh, good. I'm with you.
Good. Yeah.
Yeah, listen, I hope he lives his beautiful little dwarven
dreams very far away from me. If I never hear that man's voice
again, we're winning. So I'm really curious what
that's going to look like, especially since it they're
obviously still like they're still going to be a little
goofy, right? There's like the collegiate
calamity, which is the, you know, like, Oh no, they lost
control of the magic room sort of vibe.
So I'm curious what that's going to look like.
I'm really curious what it's going to be like with Felira.
So I'm, I'm beyond excited. Yeah, that tonal shift is
something I hadn't really thought too much about.
Maybe it'll make me like delves better.
But still my favorite delve in the war within is actually when
you have like the pink elephant acid trip delve.
So yeah, I'm I'm interested in that.
What about you, Sean? What's phase one got for you
that you're interested in for? Me, it's going to be all about
the story and quests. I don't spend a lot of time in
retail and I, I will Midnight is launching the same way war with
ended with that three day early access, which I know is a
contentious subject. But for me it's great because it
lets me enjoy that story, which I wouldn't normally otherwise
have the opportunity to do. But I'm going to, I'm going to
hopefully, if you know, we see alpha and I'm not against
watching other people do it too. So I'll watch like Mr. GM.
We all know Mr. GM is going to have alpha access.
He is the alpha guy. I'll watch other people play
through story and quests and stuff like that, but that's what
I'm really looking forward to. The R Cantina I'm also
interested in. I've heard some group think that
it's kind of like an Ember court esque thing, but I would really
like for it to be something more similar to the ecodomes that we
have in Koresh, where we're using the R Cantina to cure the
to heal the dread scar. And over time, you have to, you
know, input these powers because because blood elves have banned
the use of fell magic in in qual philas.
So they're healing the the land in the area.
I would love for the Argentina to be like a phased transition
of you, the player helping to heal the Dread Scar and you
know, potentially helping with the rebuild of Silver Moon, if
that's possible. They may may not want that, but
I would love for it to be like that.
So I'm hoping that's what it is. But those are the things I'm
most looking forward to. But it's called, I mean, I, I
guess I, I, I'm really curious what it is too, especially
because it's called the Art Cantina.
And I feel like I should be able to like guess more from that
because like, it's going to be a bar, right?
Yeah, like I, I, I hear our cantina and I feel like it's
like, you know, a cabana or like this, like, you know, of course
the, the cantina we must. We might be pronouncing it wrong
the right 'cause arcane, so it could be Arcana.
Arcana. Arcana.
Arcana it.
Might be. Shocked.
Are you an arcana or an arcana? It's a.
It's a lot. It's a lot to speculate on based
on just a name. I think it could go a number of
different ways. I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it as
the different factions because they had put that as one of the
end game sort of things activities, right?
And that's not coming through until like phase five.
Who knows? Who knows?
I, I, I eventually got into the Ember court and it ended up
being my favorite of those activities.
So I could, I could go for that again.
I just hope it has some depth. A lot of the activities, the end
game activities that they've done as like, oh, this is for
open world have been incredibly shallow And so I've gotten bored
of them quite quickly. The you'd calling it like the
Ember court gives me hope that it's got some depth to it, some
sort of progression that I build out to stuff and I would like
that a lot. Yeah, we'll see.
I hated the Ember Court. I hated all those mini games.
They were awful. I didn't I didn't like many of
them, but the Ember court was was the exception.
All right, go ahead, Lex. Sorry.
Oh, not to spoil it, but I mean clearly it's something because
there's another phase. Where is it?
I just saw this 2 minutes ago. Yeah, on phase five, which is
the last one, you're going to do the Argentina visitor quests.
So like, it's, it's clearly chunky, right?
Because not only are they testing it, they're testing two
different parts of it at two different times.
And I'm really curious about the fact that they haven't told us
about this because they've told us about either.
I'm forgetting something huge. And when it comes up and we're
like, oh, it's that, right? Like, you know, I don't know
something. No, but Prey is being tested
separately. So kind of crazy that they're
pulling out this little new thing that nobody's told us
about. But I'm, I'm really curious
about that. That could either be the biggest
capital of nonsense, as Sean likes to say, or it could be
like in absolutely mind blowing, like make a break for the for
the expansion. So I'm I'm excited to learn what
that's going to be. Yeah, considering we didn't hear
about it at Gamescon, I'm, I'm worried that Sean might be
right. This might be the flapjack of
fuckery. Who knows what we're going to
get on this, but we'll see. We'll see.
Like I guess we should try and be optimistic, OK?
Why change now? Why?
All right, going into phase two, phase two starts the next week,
that's October 9th through to the 12th.
That'll be unlocking going up from 83 to 88.
This will be in the Zulaman zone.
The dungeons will be the Den of Nalarac and the Mycera Kevin's.
For dungeons, we've got the delves of Twilight Crypts and
Atal Amon, and that's going to be the next week again.
Getting up to 88 is going to unlock a lot more talents, make
you feel a lot, a lot stronger. And when you're going through
those zones, of course, that means of that.
There's the more stories and everything there.
With Zolomon, it can be the second or the 1st or the 3rd.
You can do those in any order, as well as what we saw in week
one with the Ever Song Woods and with Air Thor's story.
Those are all things you can do in any order.
But this week they're going to be focusing on Solomon.
The Solomon appeal to you guys out of all the zones.
Like I know a lot of people are loving this re exploration of
the Ever Song Woods, but I like my troll stuff.
I got to say. What about you Sean?
You like trolls or you? This is like the least like
lovely week for you. No, Zulaman has good memories
for me from Burning Crusade. So is it Burning Crusade?
Yeah. So I'm looking forward to going
back and seeing the differences, seeing how it evolves.
I would. I really hope that we get, I
mean, you use the term depth earlier to describe the
Argentina, but I hope we get some depth and it's not just
trolls bad players good and that it expands a little bit more.
That would be really nice to see.
I'm a little weirded out by the orc body type trolls, so we'll
see how how I digest those. But I'm I'm excited for this.
The dungeons as well. I didn't mention it in phase
one, but dungeons. I'll be looking forward to doing
dungeons in phase two. I really like the phased roll
out of the alpha because it really focuses testing in
certain areas that need it and allows them to get that feedback
hopefully and and put it in. They just need to make sure they
invite a lot of people because it'll be really bad if the zones
are just dead. Honestly, I think part of what
makes the testing on the alpha better is because they have
these concentrated phases. Usually when you have people
getting invited to beta and alpha, they jump on.
They kind of test what they're like, whatever is the new shiny
stuff, and then they fall off. If there's something new each
week, it kind of pulls more people back.
I'm not saying not everybody's going to be back, but it does.
It does keep the things fresh for a while.
They do get that focus the testing, especially early on so
that they can make changes in the adaptations.
And then of course, once they get later on and finally things
are 90 and like you can unlock the full power of your
character, that's when everybody is going to jump back in and be
like, OK, do warriors suck? Where's my cleave and so forth
and all of that. Lex, what about you?
What? What does Solomon have that
intrigues you? Yeah, so honestly, I am just
because it wasn't the lore that I was super into when I started
the game, I'm, I don't have like super strong feelings about
either trolls or frankly, blood elves.
Which is not to say that I'm not excited.
It's just like, it's not like I'm sitting here like, Oh my
God. Like I've been waiting for
Solomon to be expanded upon forever, but I think it'll be
cool. I do have some faith in in
Blizzard Storytelling has expanded significantly in the
last few years. And I think the trolls are one
place where if we're going to have more complex like depth and
exploration, I do think that's one race that really does need
to be re explored and dug into. And I do think the Blizzard's
been doing a pretty good job of going back over kind of sore
points and places that maybe could have been a little bit
more thoughtful when being written in original lore and
making it better. And what's not to say that they
haven't done a chunk of that with trolls in general, But I, I
am expecting good things. I, I am expecting that they kind
of understand that there is something to show to us as
players that they've learned over time.
So I think this is going to be I, I, I think it's going to be
cool. I, I don't really know where
it's going to go because I don't have a huge depth of
understanding of troll lore, so I can't be like, oh, and
obviously XYZ is going to come out, but I'm, I think it's going
to be fun. I think it's going to be cool to
explore. I I don't have the exact faith
that you guys do. We talked a little bit about it
when we were talking about the Arathi Highlands and sort of how
they tripped up there in my eyes.
But this is another bite at that apple.
I guess we'll see if it goes out better this time.
Then we move on to phase three. Phase 3 is October 13th through
to the 19th. Again, it's going to be level 83
to 88 because you can do these zones in any order.
For this one, Eversong Woods is coming back again and we have
Harandar, the home of the Harandar.
For the dungeons, it's going to be just the Blinding Veil.
For Delves, we'll have the Grudge Pit and the Gulf of
Memories. And then for phase three, we
also have the UI for the encounter warnings.
This is something that I'm excited for.
Encounter warnings is one thing that I think is big for, of
course, their entire changing of how restricted the API is, but
also I want to see how backwards compatible it is.
Like, is this something that they have put in a way that they
have to go back through every fight to add it one at a time?
Or is this something that it's just going to go forward and
work with stuff? And it's just sort of like Sean
and I had had the conversation before, like is it something
where when they make a change, they have to go back in and be
like, OK, we have to update the encounter warnings to do that?
Or is it something that's baked in enough that when you make a
change, the encounter warnings change along with it?
I'm interested to see this. This is going to be their first
introduction since they've said a lot of nice words about how
they're going to be doing better with it with UI adjustments.
So this, this landing better on 1st blush is something I'm
hoping for, but something I'm anxious about I guess.
John, go ahead. I have heard from reliable
sources that it will not be backwards compatible out of the
gate and that there is a large group at Blizzard who wants to
push for it to be live at the launch of Midnight with old AP
is immediately turned off so that everyone is on the new UI
encounter warnings. This feels like the worst case
scenario. It not being launched.
I have heard that there is. So there is.
The the rumor I have heard is that there is currently
discussions being had where one contingent is saying no, we need
to have both active at the same time and the other is saying
it's a clean slate, it's a new expansion, just RIP the Band-Aid
off. And the ones who make the
decisions are the ones that are pushing for the thing that I
don't want. I am very worried also because
it's not coming out till phase three.
We will have done four sets of dungeons and five delves before
with with no encounter warnings at all.
Now they'll be normal so it won't be so bad.
You'll be able to figure it out but it doesn't come back in the
five week. Also, where did the dates come
from? You've set dates for all of
these? I don't remember seeing the
date. I I must be missing content?
The dates were not specifically outlined, but the dates were
easily figured out by based on each phase being a week.
The initial put through. So I just, I just put it in
because those dates seem very important and you should just
put them out there. Yeah, because you're smarter
than I am. You figured it out.
You're bot farmers, don't think of that.
But with add-ons available from the get go, that means that
people are likely to like bring in whatever they can code and
makeshift in. So by the time this goes live on
week three, I suspect that the add-ons will have a rough usage.
Now remember these dungeons are coming in and then being taken
out on the same the same week. So we're going to get maybe days
of testing with like whichever add on had the developer lose
sleep to get it up and running. And so they're not going to be
in the best cases. It'll be cool to see the the
differences between the Blizzard one and the homegrown mods that
we're used to. And then on week 5, we should
see it all working. Now, if they're going to make
this push, I would suspect that they're going to allow the
overlap at least in the alpha and the beta, and hopefully
they're going to look at what players do and make a more
informed decision based on that. But from where I'm standing, I'm
on Shawn's side, I think that they need live time where there
is overlap and see what is forcing people to to like say
no, I need my add on and what causes people to say, oh, I
don't need this add on anymore and drop it.
And based on that, honestly, it's adoption.
It's an adoption rate based on that adoption rate and based on
why that adoption rate turns out to be what it is.
That should inform what fixes they should do and then they
should turn it off. And I don't think they should
think that they just know better than the combined total of their
player mass and just go with the fresh start and have the the
game possibly suffer because of it.
I totally hear you guys and I think I am on your side, but I
do like to be fair, I am kind of sympathetic to the devs that
like you're always going to go with the thing, you know, right.
Like I, of course, if everyone's comfortable with DVM and bigwigs
like, yeah, they'd rather, you know, like if you're going to
give them a choice, they're going to stick with the one that
they've been working with for years.
I, I do I, I, I agree. I think it would be better if
there's overlap but I I don't I kind of doubt the adoption rate
is going to be high until they pull the trigger right?
Unless they do things like actively hide things from DVM
and DVM and big wigs. So there's has to be better,
which would be a little bit weird of them.
And honestly, I also maybe you 2 disagree.
I'm feeling very encouraged from the fact that they're putting it
in as early as the alpha, right? So there will be a ton of
testing. You know, Manny was saying like,
oh, we, we do need to make sure. Like I hope it releases better,
but like kind of it's allowed to suck here.
I mean, I guess it depends on how much the the World of
Warcraft player base decides to panic, right?
Like, because on the one hand, it's alpha, everything's
supposed to suck a little, a little bit, right?
If if you're looking at alpha and you're like, well, this
sucks and then you panic and you refuse to use it.
I mean, alpha, right? This is, this is suck phase.
This is bad phase. Maybe beta, you can be like,
it's crappy and now I'm freaking out a little bit.
But is is this not suck phase? I'm going to pass it to Sean
first. The cooldown manager was on the
PTR for 8 weeks and exactly 0 of the feedback was listened to
when it went live, and then it was left in that state for an
entire patch cycle. Oh, fair.
If they so if, if, if they put it on the alpha and choose not
to benefit from that, that which, and I hear you, they have
a history of doing that. So I and I, I, I really, I don't
mean to be like dismissive. First of all, I do agree.
I would rather that they put it out together.
And I also don't mean to be dismissive of the fact that
like, yeah, they, you know, you make vibes based on history.
And historically they haven't really been great at UI changes.
It is only appearing in the in the alpha phase once in week 3
and then not coming back in the the final weeks after.
No, no. Once it's introduced in there,
it should follow through in the in the further phases, right?
It's. Just the zones go away.
Yes, the zones go away, but systems don't.
It's like they have, they have talents that you can access and
they don't. Those talents don't disappear in
future weeks. You still have access to them.
All the systems still carry through.
It's the. It's the content that you're
testing. I thought I remembered
professions only being testable in their specific profession
weeks in war within, but maybe I'm wrong.
No, they were, they were testable all the way through.
OK, OK. Then great.
Week 3 is great. I would love to see week 1.
Can we bump it up two weeks? Are we waiting two weeks?
Because it's not. I dislike that it's being
introduced in the same week that there's only one dungeon.
Like multiple dungeons would have been the best week to
introduce it. Regardless, that brings us to
phase four. Sorry, go ahead, Lex or.
I was going to say, I kind of I, I will actually say looking at
this a second time, I'm a little bit on Sean's side, which is I
think it's not done. I think they only have it
written for blinding bail. That's, I mean, if if I had to
choose to only release it with one dungeon, I'm a little SUS.
I I'm historically a little SUS of where they're at with
midnight with midnights right now.
But that actually when Sean says that I am now a little bit on
the, IT maybe is not at the right place.
Like that Apple keynote that Steve Jobs gave and they
couldn't actually do the demo so they just played a video.
I'm I'm actually on the other end of this.
I think that these UI warnings were stuff that they had the
technology set up before this point.
And then it's just maybe it's about scripting and the fact
that they're like, yeah, it's not going backwards that it is
going to be script scripted going forwards from this.
I, I think it's a little sad. Maybe it's just let's test this,
make sure the hooks are work, working, and then they just
activate it on all of them. So that's why it's it's focused
on one. But again, I'm not a software
engineer, I'm not a developer who knows?
But I will echo what you did say, Sean, which is they put the
stuff out for testing. And it seems like the large ship
that is World of Warcraft development has a very hard time
correcting course even when they're given clear feedback,
which is just another reason not to just try for that clean
slate, allow the issues to be addressed and then shut it down.
That brings us to phase four. Phase 4 takes us into the void
storm. And the void storm is the final
leveling zone of this expansion, at least as.
Yeah, final leveling zone of this expansion.
You don't get additional leveling zones when they bring
out new tears, and that means that we're going from 88 through
to the level cap of 90. The dungeons in here are Nexus
Point, Zanis, Void Scar Arena, and Magisters Terrace being
redone and reimagined. I really looking forward to
seeing how exactly they do that because Magisters terrace was a
large BC dungeon and then they shortened it a lot when they
redid it for time walking. Anyways, for delves we have Sun
Killer Sanctum and we have the Shadow guard point for PvP.
This is when the PvP testing comes in and we've got the
Slayer's Rise PvP zone and the 40 V 40 Epic Battleground
version of Slayer's Rise. Finally, we have Apex talents
only in phase four, which makes me go like, I guess this is
something you unlock when you hit Max level, which all right,
I kind of wish that that wasn't the case 'cause they're not
adding any other new talents to your to your specialization
tree, which means as you level up, you're just filling gaps and
then having to like pull them out and put them back into this.
That seems very awkward if that is the case here.
What about you guys? Let's start with you Lex, this
time phase four. What's interesting you here?
I'm really excited with the Void Storm.
I am curious what she's going to how how she's going to be.
I'm I'm just like in in general. I'm I'm also curious how many
people do they invite to the alpha if they can test A40V40
battleground? Yeah.
Brawl with the Blues on that week, most likely just to really
bring people in, be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, come, come, brawl
with the Blues. I think some people who don't
normally PvP might be interested with that kind of carrot for,
and that's typically how they get that going.
Just like here's a good night, let's do it at this time and
then people jump in to play in a very, again, focused testing.
Wait, I have a stupid what is Brawl with the Blues?
Devs login and play. Oh, I thought it was like
Alliance and I would anywhere. OK, yeah, OK, that actually that
would be very cool. And now?
My chance of pedophilias. Yeah, let's do it.
I was like, wow, they're only inviting Hordy.
You'll be a horde man to get into the alpha.
Yeah. The only take away I have from
phase 4 is that I spent three weeks complaining about the lack
of Pve stuff to test and PvP players don't get anything for a
month. There will be open roll PvP
testing. You're right the that there
isn't like the specific things going here.
But until you hit level 90, why are we bouncing PvP so?
Drew, good point. Good point.
Yeah, I think that's that's why it got delayed.
Yes, unfortunately if you're a PvP player your bread and butter
focuses aren't there until we hit hit cap.
Even with this week, pre made characters would still be the
way to go. And I don't believe you're going
to see pre made in phase four actually.
So there's going to be a weird limitation of who's got a 90
ready to ball with the Blues at this time, and that seems odd to
me. Yeah, I agree with you that Apex
talents, I'm hoping that this is just a an artifact of the
testing where Apex talents are unlocking in the the week that
we get 88 to 90. It is it is going to feel
really, really terrible levelling to 90.
Granted, that's only going to take 4 hours, but it's going to
feel really bad for those four hours having to jam points in
random spots for no reason. Let me start using those Apex
talents right away so that I can enjoy my 4 hours levelling to
90. It's going to be so fast.
Yeah, at the end of it it's going to be a short pain, but
it's just awkward and feels easily avoidable.
Yeah, OK. Phase five, the last phase of
the alpha that looks to be coming on October 21st through
to the 27th and that is going to be level 90.
This is this is when they'll most likely have the ability for
you to create some pre made. All of the week 1 to 4 content
will return, which means you can start a fresh character level
all the way through the campaign.
Instead of having these start at 83 and then go through to 88 and
not be able to go past that level.
The level 90 campaign will be unlocked.
That's your end game campaign and that'll be chapter one.
We don't know how many chapters there are, but if it is like The
War Within, that's going to be 5 chapters.
The as we talked about before, our Cantina or our Cantina
visitor quests will be Arcantina.
I'm going to have to rename this
episode to Arcantina. The Arcantina visitor quests are
going to be unlocked and you'll get that for this unknown
activity. Weekly quest will become
available. Does anybody test weekly quest
on the on the PTR slash alpha? That's something that.
I, Mr. GM will oh Dan, Dan is Dan tests everything.
If you're looking honestly, if you don't have AA access and you
want to see the best alpha footage with I mean obviously
nobody knows for sure, but I have no doubt in my mind Dan's
going to have access to the alpha.
It would be foolish for him not to be wave 1.
He is the goat, one of the top go to like sources for alpha
coverage. So every cycle.
So just go to his channel. Yeah, he'll test weekly quest
there. You go, I'll wait for like a
blur from Wowhead or something. I don't, I don't really care.
Then of course delves, they will have Torments Rise and the
Shadow Enclave being tested. The prey system that we talked
about earlier that will be available for testing and then a
bunch of level 90 activities including Abundance, Legends of
the Herrenar, the Stormarian Citadel, the Amani Abyss, and
for my Co host that were reading along with me, I'm going to
attempt to pronounce this Sothereals soiree.
Sotherel. OK.
Which could also be an Embercord.
That sounds soiree feels very embercord.
We know. We know that these we all know.
Yeah, they were all announced. The Soi, Yeah.
That's the. Like I'm sorry guys, I don't
believe I've heard of the soiree the abundance.
We know that's the go into caves and mine mine stuff or fish
stuff or whatever gathering profession it's themed off of.
The legends is the lore based one and we know about that.
The Stromarian, sorry Stromarian Citadel is help the void elves
guard their void anchors as such right?
The Amani Abyss I'm blanking on, but I don't know the soiree so
let's hopefully you've done some quick little Kung Fu.
Yeah, that one is the reputation one that we were talking about a
while ago where we were like, oh, do we think this is going to
be like a Schreyer Andor thing? Because I specifically talked
about Burning Crusade, but nobody really wants it to be a
Schreyer Andor thing, especially with the war bound.
It was it was that one. I think they might I I also
needed to Google the name to be completely.
Honest. And the the Amani thing I
remember, but I'm like I, I, I, I it's not showing up on the
article that I definitely didn't Google 2 minutes ago.
I I mean, honestly, I know that's wasn't in here because of
the number and I knew how many had been talked about before
Amani abyss because like each of them were themed after a zone,
right. So in the in the void storm, you
had the citadel in Heronar or Heron Dar.
Sorry, you had the Legends of the Heronar and the abundance
wasn't with all of the different zones in.
I guess the Soiree is ever song, right?
So then we've got additional ones that I don't believe were
mentioned before. Yeah, I'm having a lot of
trouble finding. I feel like I remember talking
about an Imani 1 though on the episode we were talking about
all of this. I'm going to go back to our show
notes because I feel like I remember this very deeply.
The Imani legends of the herin are right and the lower of
abundance sending you to different places.
That's both, Imani. OK, so then I think that I am
wrong. I think this is new cuz I did
feel like there was one extra. So yeah, I guess there's a
couple things we haven't heard of that they're testing.
Yeah. And of course, that leaves the
last thing professions, sparks. So this is the end game sort of
thing. I wonder why the spark stuff is
being tested. I know that it's changed over
the course of the War Within. Some people don't like that it
started. It suddenly started costing you
like 250 valor to like combine the sparks.
And then those same people are like, Valor's worthless.
Why do you even give me valor? Sorry I know Venn diagram not
all of ASB but like it just feels like people complain no
matter what. I don't know I.
Think it's because they're changing professions to no
longer have the lower two tiers where everything now is just the
top 2 tiers or the top three tiers.
They're removing the 2 lower qualities, so maybe they want to
test and see how that looks. And Sparks, I got to be honest,
just get with, get rid of all of them.
No, I don't know anybody who's walking around in a rank four
piece of equipment like that's. I don't know anybody even back
in like week one, Week 2. Know them, you just don't
inspect them, you talk to them yeah, they're they they're
they're a little secret they're. Like, are they in the room with
us? Right now they're not in the
room with us right now. I, I refuse to believe Lex would
splurge for a rank four and not go to her rank 5.
But I guarantee you there are people right that like would be
like, I'm not paying that amount and they're like, OK, fine, I'll
go with the rank four. There are people who are
particular about their expenses, but I feel like Lex, I'm talking
for you. So you just tell me if I'm
wrong. I feel like if somebody was
crafting something for you, they're going to tell you, get
me this, this, this, this. They're going to give you the
list, right? You're going to get them.
You're not going to, you're not going to look at at options and
they're going to make you the rank 5.
That is, in fact, precisely what happens.
Hey guys, I think I'm supposed to get this crafted.
Can anyone do it and they tell me what to do?
Send us this. Send us this, and if they want
to push their concentration and push it, push it through rank 5,
they probably say, oh, you don't need to get this.
If they can't get the spirit of concentration, they're going to
say get this rank. And that's just how it's going
to be crafted for a lot of people.
I'm just using Lex as an example here.
I I don't, OK, I don't like the ranking system in anything.
I don't like the fact that there's different ranks of like
herbs and and stuff. I don't, I just, I miss when it
was just you just you get the thing and you do, you do you
craft the thing and it's crafted and it's and there it is.
She's there. You crafted it.
I think that when you did not have ranks of stuff, there were
two things. One was that it was very hard
for them to make a crafted item that would be valid for mythic
Raiders that wouldn't utterly eclipse everything that a normal
Raider could do right. The being able to give it a
delta, a difference is helpful. There's also the fact that
people who are doing professions, being able to like
be good at a profession. If, if it went back to the way
it was before, it was simply somebody would spend like a
couple hours in the evening levelling up their whatever
profession and then they would just flood the market with that.
So anything that was like desirable immediately tanked
because there was nothing that like pushed it to be good.
And then the other part is I hated in Dragonflight where
there were particular, particular recipes that were
very hard to come by. And if you got it first, you
made all the money. And that would be just utterly
compounded if rank didn't matter.
And at least, hey, this person can only make so much at this
rank. Now somebody else gets their
their turn at the their bite at the apple.
I'm using that thing again. That's fair.
I'll accept that. I guess the thing that I don't
really engage with because I'm a pure gatherer, I guess you guys
can have it however you want. I would just like to stop
tailoring the game to the 97%, OK?
You can just switch to leather working, Shawn.
Nobody's making you tail. I'm taking that out of context
and that's becoming the cold eye opener.
Then, based on all that math, that means that the earliest we
might see the beta is October 28th.
The beta coming out at October 28th does not mean that
everybody who has pre-ordered gets invited immediately.
Do not come with your pitchforks, with your torches,
with your devourers. You won't have devourers because
you're not on the beta and say it didn't, I didn't get in
October 28th. What the hell, Sean?
Don't. Don't do that.
I think they did for War Within. I'm pretty sure everybody who
had the beta preorder got in that day.
I'm pretty sure it's a it's a good chance.
I I would say that likely. I just want to cover my bases so
that people are not coming after me.
Well, listen to your beta purchasers.
I'm telling you, you're getting in day one.
And if you didn't come on over to day one launches, if you
don't have the beta and you bought it, come over to bit dot
LY slash fast Discord, let us know, give us your B net ID and
password and we'll make sure that you get it.
OK so 2nd reminder be of worry of phishing scams.
Yeah, for legal reasons, that was a joke.
Oh, man. OK.
All right. So before we go any further,
would like to take this opportunity to thank our
supporters. So Sean, would you just quickly
go through this? Yeah, for sure.
Special thanks to all of our patrons for Azeroth will always
be free, but if you enjoy the content we produce, consider
pledging to our Patreon at patreon.com/F AZ or FAZ
depending on your preference. I don't want to alienate
anybody. And also, if you don't want to
sub to the Patreon, I get it. I don't even sub to the Patreon.
You can leave us a comment or a review on your podcast listener
of choice. That actually helps the podcast
get noticed by more people, pushes up in the rankings.
And we, the three of us are like Tinkerbell.
We require applause to survive. You're going to stop asking me
to read these? No, I love that.
That was great. OK, All right.
Now ahead of the midnight Alpha and everything we just covered,
we are getting a deep dive and AQ and A, there will be a deep
dive that features Chris Metzen, the creative director, and game
director Ian Hasikostis. This broadcast is going to be at
noon Eastern, 9:00 AM in Pacific, or if you're over in
the UK, that is 5:00 PM. Immediately after this, there's
going to be a midnight Q&A, which is going to be hosted by
Randy Jordan with, again, Game Director Ian Hazekosis,
Associate Game Director Paul Cubitt, and the Design Director
Maria Hamilton. So this is going to be giving
everybody information about the story, the mechanics and
everything there before, of course, the alpha releases the
next day. So we will 100% be covering this
as soon as we can. And I'm interested.
I'm interested in it, but I also hate that they put AQ and A out
before the alpha so all of our questions are gonna be like from
a place of supreme ignorance versus what how much more well
informed we would be literally 24 hours later it feels.
Like it would make sense to sandwich it right?
You start with the deep dive, you give people alpha, end of
the alpha before you start the beta, you give AQ and A and and
then you get people height before they go into the alpha.
And then you answer people's questions after they've been
doing free labor for you. Yeah.
I'm excited.
Randy Jordan is Kyvax, right? That is Kyvax and like show
favorite community manager Kyvax.
That's his title, right? Community.
Manager show favorite community manager Kyvax.
Yeah, TM, I'm very excited. That's going to be a great,
great show. Great Q and AI would like to
have it after when we can ask real questions.
But hey, you know what I'm looking forward to all the
questions that that we send. We used to do kind of do a quick
sidebar from my time in the Navy.
Sure. We oh he has his own podcast
films. Yeah, he used to be on the
instance. When he started working for
Blizzard, he could no longer do a podcast about video games,
especially about World of Warcraft.
He continued working with with Scott Johnson on Film Sack.
No shit after watching film sack anyway.
When we were in the Navy we used to have town halls and they
would at the end they would open it up for questions and some
people would ask really good questions that were relevant to
everyone and then some people would ask ultra specific
questions that were only relevant to them and didn't
matter to anyone else. I desperately hope that this Q&A
doesn't turn into that. Some elemental shaman gets
something is like there's a bug when you use Farsir talents and
send lava burst at the same time as a sentence is rocking, then
it doesn't actually spread your lava bursts.
Will you be addressing that? We don't want those types of
questions. Everybody just asked them.
We're going to cross region. Everybody asked this with the
question that I want. Right.
That's right. OK.
Don't worry elemental shamans, your bugs will get fixed.
You go back to bottom damage next year, No?
It won't, but I still agree with Sean please.
Like OK one we have in the show notes a link to where you can
submit these questions. 2 There's already a ton of
questions and they're being pre filtered.
If you ask a very hyper specific question, your chances of it
being answered are next to nil. It might go up as a final
question just because Randy wanted to annoy a developer, and
even then you're not going to get the answer.
Oh man, how do we get kyvax to ask across region?
So there's a link in the show notes, Sean.
I already filled that out. I already wrote it in there.
Oh, can you only do one? No.
You can submit multiple. Go to the Reddit thread.
I'll put the link to the Reddit thread and you can submit.
That feels that feels weird. I think my question should be
chosen on its own merit and the fact that it's something that so
many people want. I don't know anybody who doesn't
want cross region. I literally.
I wake up in the morning and I'm like I I don't know how to go
about my day because I don't have cross region yet.
Oh, you, I thought you were going to say you don't want it
for a second. I was.
I was getting rid of the fight. Collect.
Well, if you recall, Epidemi is in the UK and like I don't want
to be out Sean. So like if I keep stay off in my
own little pool I could be a big fish.
I think cross region will be insane.
I know I've fought against it before saying how crazy it would
be but just think about how that would change up recruitment and
rating. Like you would have to have the
raid open at the same time if cross regions also available,
right? The teams themselves would then,
because how could you be cross region if you're in incompatible
versions of the game? It just it could not work that
way. It yeah, I guess you could just
make it so that you can't play cross region when you're in
incompatible versions of the game.
It feels like a weird thing of doing.
It feels like cross region to not do cross region.
Don't let us queue for LFR now if we're in cross faction groups
so they can obviously just turn it off or something they don't
want. So then the if that were to
happen, and this is again weird thing, if that were to happen,
everybody in EU or whatever connected region would make an
NA account so that they would always get access earlier.
There would be no reason to have an EU account, you would just be
delaying your access. Didn't just release it all on
the same day, OK. You're right, you press a.
Button You press a button and then and then it's here we're.
Inside track. Separately, we got to focus on
the main thing here. We need cross region now.
I'm going to unsubscribe to Disney until they give us cross
region. The Internet told me that's how
it works. Stop paying Disney, you get what
you want. I separate conversation OK, so
make sure you submit your questions guys.
It'll be crazy if we get some some of the things that people
are going to wish list and throw in.
I doubt those questions will actually make it to the ears of
the developers. From there, we also got just hot
off the press. Just released today, PC Gamer
put out the details of the Midnight Physical Collector's
edition. And so this edition contains all
the goodies that you get with the digital Epic edition.
That includes the three day access, the 30 days of game
time, and then all the digital goodies like the tenders and the
transmog and the mountain, yadda yadda yadda, right?
But for physical bonuses, it also contains A hardcover art
book that looks so good, the collector's pin, which is a nice
little thing as well. And the piece of the resistance,
a replica of the dark heart, which in a still photo looks
amazing. But my good.
I hope it's filled with like you know how they have the 8th ball
and they have the sparkles? I hope it's just filled with
that so I can just shake it. And then the little face comes
up and it's just sounds at me like no or ask again later.
That's what I want out of this thing.
I just want it to be a magic 8 ball.
Just to be a hater, I I will say I'm looking at this picture
right now and it could either be so sick or it could be so dinky.
Like if they I don't know what swears I can say on this.
If they half bought this, it's going to be a a damn tragedy.
Like if this is just like a like a like a printed picture that
they put in. Oh God no.
Very sad. I would be, I would be highly
upset if this is like it's just a pretty like I'm I'm yeah, and.
And and like, look, it won't we have the yeah, they're usually
stunning. They're going to hold.
Bucket. I don't think they were supposed
to release that article yet because they.
Took down. They took down the thing whoops.
Sorry PC Gamer. However, your loss is my gain
because now it's out there and we can talk about it.
And luckily I already grabbed the picture off of the article
so it and it's out there on Twitter and everything so.
Are you not just a little bit upset that they're only giving
us a replica of the Dark Heart and not the real thing?
I'm. Going to pass this one to.
X Yeah, I want to take over. I want to summon dementias.
He seems fun. I can't take credit.
I can't take credit for that. That was from Lo Fi Banshee
Jordan on Twitter. She tweeted that and absolute
giga giga blast. It was such a good tweet.
The only way I will accept this as a half but effort is if it is
actually a Magic 8 ball. Then I just think it's hilarious
and I'll love it. That would be very fun.
Anyways, yes, it does look like the article's down.
We will still put the picture in the show notes for anybody who
wants to look at the glory that it is.
And of course, you could definitely find it on the
Internet. Once it's on the Internet, you
can't get it off the Internet. Does this seem like a
collector's edition that you guys want?
I will say for those who are asking, this thing will set you
back $140 USD and your shipping wherever it'll ship, whatever
shipping will be for us poor poor people in little old
backwater. Ontario, Canada shipping for the
last one set me back $100 if I wanted to ship it, so I I'm
sorry I would not purchase a collector's edition for with
that kind of shipping cost. Because Manny, I was looking to
order a lyre from Romania and the shipping was $35.
That's that's real nice. I don't want to make you have to
be a liar, but the the the shipping cost for this was
quite, quite expensive. I mean, I didn't OK, I did not
pay for my collection edition. This was a wonderful gift from
Blizzard. I did look because I was like,
oh, I wonder how much that would because, you know, cool statue
and all of that. The weight of the statue
definitely contributed to it. And this thing does not look
like it would weigh anywhere near as much maybe at best half
the weight. And I think that's even
stretching it. So I doubt the shipping is going
to be as bad, but again, depending on where you're
ordering from and where it's being shipped from, your mileage
may vary. I don't currently own any
collector's editions, this will not be the first.
This will not be the first OK. It's gorgeous, it looks
beautiful. Like the cost is just for I'm I
used to have when my brother and I were part of another
community, a retro gaming community.
I had a, an entire room in my house did like dedicated to
retro video games and it was wall to wall games, consoles,
paraphernalia, custom built cases for figurines.
And it was a lot And I stopped. I I at one point I sold
everything and I was just like, I can't just continue to amass
things. Also how I don't know how to
dust that stuff. I even have figures behind me
now where I don't they're packed, but I did that.
I I don't know how do I like what do I do to dust these?
It gets so dusty. It's just simple, you just take
a cloth and wipe it down. It's.
Where you put up like really high and then like, how is
everyone going to know? Yeah.
All right. OK, I guess so.
I guess so or you get like one of those dusters.
I'm I'm sure like they they they got the Swiffer hand dusters
now. If I call Anjali my duster,
she's going to leave me. My goodness.
So that's going to be it for us tonight friends.
If you have any questions, do join us in the discord.
Obviously, we're going to be very hyped going into the Q&A
and this this entire preview stuff, we're going to be
crossing our fingers hoping that we can get as much into the
alpha and as many things as answers we can for you guys.
So do stay tuned for the next for Azrof.
But until next time guys, may all your hits be quits.