Unfortunately, I had some mic issues with this recording.
By the time I realized it, we had already recorded the
entirety of the show, so my apologies.
It'll be fixed for next time. And with that, let's get into
it. Victory for the Forsaken for
Lauderon, for the Karen Tour, for Pandaria, for Calendar, for
the Burning region, for Gilnaeus, or has Not Died for
the Lich King. For the.
Sindora for the Alliance for the Horn for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome to another episode of For Azeroth.
I am one of your hosts, Manny, AKA The Trivial Manny, and I am,
of course, joined by the other two parts of the Triumphant
First coming in from the amazing bayous of Mississippi.
We have Lex, and I know that was a little bit switching up there.
We'll just say Georgia, Let's go the entire station.
Aren't aren't bayous in Louisiana?
Yeah, the bayous are Louisiana and Georgia and Mississippi are
two different states. That's why I want to say, yeah,
but like Georgia has, doesn't Georgia have some at the South
end? I'm pretty sure.
I mean I'm not American but I'm pretty sure to hear the term
Bayou I I strictly think Louisiana.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the gumbo and all of
that. Yes, definitely, definitely.
But like I anyways, I paid it because I was like, no, wait,
Mississippi's not right. I got to go to like say that she
has it anyways, I apologize, Lex, I I screwed up your state.
So we're just going to stick with with Mississippi this time.
And I don't know anything about Mississippi.
If you know something about Mississippi, feel free to
message me. But Lex, how are you doing this
week and how as well? Mississippi facts.
None of them are crud. No offense from Mississippi.
Wow, how are you and how is the completely non controversial
World of World of Warcraft treating you?
It's been. Treating me good.
I so I will say this week especially, I've been knee deep
in Christmas cookie baking. I bake Christmas cookies.
I, I took on what used to my grandfather's role of baking
Christmas cookies for my entire extended family, although he
only did it for his like three children and I do it for my
entire extended family. So there is quite a bit of
Christmas cookie dough in my fridge right now that needs to
be rolled out and cut into hundreds of Christmas cookies.
But that's OK. It's very fun.
That's nice. And then of course, coming from
the East End of Canada, we have Sean.
Hello, Sean, How are you? No bayous here, I'm doing quite
well. I'm doing quite well, Manny.
World of Warcraft has been treating me good.
I have a surprise for the listeners, A twist that will
shock and amaze them from last week.
So I'm excited for us to talk about our first topic because
last time on for Azeroth Ball, for Azur on Z, it doesn't work
when you just put the Z on there.
I was doing a Dragon Ball Z thing.
I can't do the radio announcer voice through the Korra thing.
So I was, I mean you. Could like approximate the thing
last time on Dragon Ball Z or whatever?
It was approximated, yeah, that this.
Is AU skill Manny? Yeah, I can't.
Last time on for Azur off, Sean talked about brucing up the
place. I yeah, we left the last episode
and I was like, housing is great.
My house will be a empty box with four windows.
And that's what it had when we ended the call last week.
Well. And one thing we know about you,
Sean, is you've never stated that something doesn't interest
you on this show and then taken aback later.
So I I'm fully believing that your house is still an empty
box. That's right, that's right.
I'm nothing if not super consistent to my takes.
I consistent in a ironic way, I guess, yeah.
So that is our first story. We are going to be giving our
first impressions on. Wow housing.
It looks like I guess Sean is eating crow.
Let's start off with that, Sean. I guess housing more interest
than you thought. So I don't, I don't think, I
don't think eating crow is the right term because I didn't hate
housing. I just had a lot of doubt in my
own patience and my own skill. It turns out, Manny, I am
incredibly skilled at housing masterly.
I'm a masterful designer. So I left it, you know, I had, I
had four windows in my, my box. That was it.
And it's just because every time I went to make a room up to that
point, I had just like, I would just start going without any
goal, without any vision and I would just start putting things
in and it just wasn't working. It didn't didn't line up to what
I wanted. It wasn't ever, you know,
hitting any sort of cords in me. Like I'm seeing these beautiful
greenhouses and saunas and stuff that people are building.
I'm like, I'm just making a room.
And then I was laying in bed on Thursday evening last week.
And as it often does, I was struck by a euphoric moment of
clarity when I thought I know exactly what my house should be.
I I was a pretty big fan of the show of Vikings when it was on
TV. It was a history show.
And so because of that, I get a lot of Vikings things in my
feeds as I'm joy scrolling at night.
And so a picture came across, it was Lagertha who was one of the
main characters. And I was like, Oh my God, I
need to build a Viking hall in Warcraft.
And from the moment that I had that thought, like I immediately
started like vision boarding Viking halls and seeing designs
and layouts and putting pictures, saving them and
sending them to myself in my second Discord account.
And then the next morning, from the point that I woke up to the
point that I went to bed, it was I was laser focused on housing
and finding what materials are available in the game and
designing and building a Viking hall.
And that's what I did and it came together really, really
well. It took two days of farming
materials and getting stuff. And I'm really pleased with it.
I did a little video showcasing it.
It's online. And then I opened up my house to
everybody who wants to come see it for friends on bnet or
whatever you can, you can come look at it.
I love it. I love housing.
But that being said, I don't have any visions for.
So I have 4 houses that I could build two EU 2 Nai built that on
my aligned side. Nai have no other visions.
So the other three houses don't even exist.
There's not even a house on a plot for those.
But my Viking hall turned out really well and a detail that I,
this is the last thing I say. And then I'll, I'll hand it off
with the one detail that I did that is that nothing is aligned
to the grid. So in real life, if you were to
walk into somebody's house, nobody's house is perfectly
aligned the way that some of the people are like designing their
houses in Warcraft and, and a lot of video games are like, it
looks perfectly alike. The chair is perfectly aligned
to the table, which is perfectly aligned to the walls.
Nobody's house is like that in real life.
So every single item in my Viking hall is off somewhere in
the range of two to six degrees from the grid lines, which gives
it this really lived in feeling. It feels functional and like
people are actually in here doing stuff.
And it probably drives people that have OCD crazy because the
tables aren't straight and the benches and the tables aren't
straight to each other, but it's because they wouldn't be in real
life. And I love it.
That's amazing. That's amazing.
So I guess what we're looking for is another late night doom
scroll and or sorry, joy scroll. You call it joy scroll, joy
scroll and suddenly we'll get something on your first EU
account to the house or maybe on your your NA hoard side,
depending on what works best for the theme.
And I love that for you. That is that is great that
you're finding the joy. Has it taken well, I guess you
took two days on it, but that did that like completely absorb
your two days or were you still like bounce the ground doing
some other things as well in in Warcraft?
I know I spent two days laser focused on doing my house except
for we did our raid re clear on Thursday because we always do so
that 30 minutes 45 minutes it took us to re clear the raid.
I was in the raid, but I was in our tank chat talking to my Co
tank about the stuff that I was doing So still just very much
thinking about it yeah, but it was pretty much it.
I started doing like afterwards, I was like hooked.
I, I got this weird desire to have everything on one
character. So I started like grinding old
world reps on, on my warrior, which is great.
You throw on the tabard, you go around Botanica 7 or 8 times and
you're done. And you can do that all the way
up to the end of Cataclysm for all the reps.
So definitely recommend that for anybody who's missing those reps
back there. Just go buy the tabard from the
the quartermaster and then run a couple of Botanicas.
OK. And then heading from your about
face to Lex, who and what had the initial enthusiasm?
Lex, how's housing going for you?
Oh, I was completely right about how housing was gonna go for me,
where I go in one day and I build something and then I
forget about it for months. And then I'm gonna get a bunch
of new stuff and I'm gonna be like, what if I checked out
housing at some point and then I'm gonna go do everything in
one night and then I'm gonna forget about it for months.
So yeah, I've I've forgot about it.
It's so in your cool kitchen. It just, you know, I didn't do
anything in the cool kitchen. OK OK, so in your one one day of
flurry you made a cool kitchen. Any other rooms or anything like
that? I have I, I, I so it's basically
it's identical to when we talked last time.
I have I, I think it's really cute.
I think it's really fun. I have my nice little living
room. It has a little dining room
table and also a little the desk.
And then I'm a cute little bathroom that has a tub and I
tried to like kind of approximate a toilet and sink.
I was very proud of it. That's, that's my pride and joy.
And then I'm a really big kitchen and I have a bedroom of
course. And I will say one thing that
annoys me. They might if they change this
and I missed it, I'm sorry. When you are in edit mode, you
can only. Remove.
Doors, at least I can't figure out how to open them and go
through them. So you have to every time you go
through a door, you have to go like click out edit mode, open
the door, go through it, click back into edit mode and keep
working. So you know that would be great.
Although I I will say this not to to spoiler alert the rest of
the segment, but the floating houses, which they just
introduced. I am a little intrigued by that.
Sounds very fun A. Little Why don't you just leave
all your doors open? No, when you go into edit mode
it defaults them back to shut. Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah, It's a huge. I don't have any.
I don't have any doors. There's not a lot, not not a lot
of traditional doors in Viking halls.
So I haven't experienced this. Good for you.
Honestly the bathroom was a huge pain because also I like to make
the sink kind of work. I had to kind of clip it through
the wall and anytime it like occasionally would get mad it
would be like this. There's no floor there when it
would have been fine 2 seconds ago and then I'd like go remove
everything and find it and do it all again.
It's fine though. OK, turns out you can make
fountains really small and then they kind of look like look like
sinks. I I'm sure somebody who knows
how to do like people would look at my house and they'd be like,
are you serious? Like that was your little sink
approximation. Somebody else has some beautiful
thing if my pod thought. Sorry if I'm talking to you
right. Now, yeah, I also need to eat a
lot of crow. I think last week, Sean was
you're like, oh, I've got a mattress and and like two things
and two windows and like, I was like, yeah, I don't even have
that. I spent some time hanging out
with friends. They showed me their place.
I got inspired. I completely turned around on
housing as well, just like you, Sean.
I was like, OK, I'm going to do something here.
I'm going to push through on this.
And for me, it was a matter of like, OK, by the time I look
around, your housing is like Level 3, and you could put all
these rooms in. And I remember when we tested on
the alpha, the first thing, Lex, you did was like, I'm going to
set up all these rooms. And then it's like, what the
hell are we going to do with all this space?
And it was just overwhelming. And so for me, my process
started with outside. I wanted to design an exterior.
And I did that because the outside exterior at 200 is very
limited. And honestly, I, I wanted to
like create like a patio and all that sort of stuff and, and
create that friend of the show Rolly Rods had an entire going
around his Guild and people who went in to chat and allowed him
to see their homes and showed a bunch of different things.
And so it's like, OK, I'm going to set up a garden and use a
fountain as a full size fountain instead of instead of a faucet
and create a workspace and everything and just create
something that I that I wanted for like my quote UN quote
adventurer, like a place for that he would actually go home
to. And then I started building
rooms. And like you, Sean, I didn't
want things to be in perfect square rectangles.
I really wanted a lived in cozy kind of feel that like this is a
place that somebody returned to. This isn't a place that somebody
set up as a showroom. This is some place that was
actually lived in. And so, yeah, making sure things
were at different angles, making sure that not everything was
lined up perfectly was it was a big part of it.
And it kept stories going through my head of like, oh,
like when I came back from doing whatever we did in this
expansion, like BFA or leading and stuff.
Like, let me put like a little trophy of that in the into a
room. And then like you, Lex, I was
like, how come these houses don't have bathrooms or working
toilets and stuff? And so I made not only a
adjoining joining restroom through my master bedroom, I
also made a guest bathroom downstairs as well.
And it just became this weird little thing I love.
I loved it. Just some of my friends have
done incredible, incredible things.
Right now on early access, you can get to level 5, which is a
lot of space, a lot of different rooms, a lot of budget and
people have done fantastical things with that.
I am nowhere close to that. I've used less than 800 of my
budget to slowly start putting things together.
But I think that's how I'm going to build this place.
It's going to be getting 1 little thing and be like, oh,
where can I place that? Does that fit into my home?
I still got empty corners and stuff that I want to build in,
but it's breaking the 4th wall here.
That's kind of how I live myself.
Like I just sort of like I have my couch, my TV, and then I got
it and then I went to a place and I put that on the bookshelf
and then I went to a place and I hanged that up on the wall.
But like when I first moved into my place, buck naked bare walls,
had a partner that was like, what the hell?
And I'm like, no, I just, I travel places, I get experience.
I don't bring stuff. And then she was like, you, you
should collect mementos. I'll say, OK, I'll do that.
So that's how I started building a place.
And I like that I've transferred that same sort of ethos into
World of Warcraft, that it actually supports that too.
So a lot of these things are a little memory of when I like
actually defeated this raid boss.
And so we get the like, Head of Enixia or the like Eye of Nazov.
And that's what it's actually attached to achievement.
I think those really make it feel like this is, even though
I'm sure everybody and their uncle has the head of Inixia,
that head of Inixia is when I was playing with this Guild and
we went through that and I had the quote UN quote, royal family
and all the stories that I could talk about that like really
helps connect to kind of a history of the of the world.
And I. So I'm super happy that housing
allows me to do that. And yeah, but housing has had
some updates. We've only one weekend and
they're already making some some updates based on that.
And Sean, do you want to cover this?
Yeah, So that housing budget you mentioned, it was 200, which
everybody on the planet in every Ave. they can think of has given
the feedback that they need more.
And Blizzard did say, hey, we started at 200 because we didn't
want the servers to melt. And we, we will slowly increase
that as time goes on. And so it is now unlocked when
you hit rank 3 in the renowned track, you get 250 for your,
your outside housing budget, which it only sounds like 50,
but that's a huge jump. You could do a lot more things
with that. So get your trees out there, get
your fences. And then the other thing is the
floating houses that Lex mentioned.
So people last week had figured out ways to put platforms down
and then put their house on top of the platforms and then delete
the platforms to make the houses float and blister.
Had actually just the initially planned to hot fix that as a bug
and they actually had an OPS channel set up where they were
going to shut it down. Zorbrix tweeted this on Tuesday
that the plan was to shut it down and they had somebody come
into the channel and just link 5 houses that have been made.
And they were so blown away by the creativity that instead of
removing the functionality, they made it a feature.
They said, we're going to keep it.
We're going to double down. It's now available to be done by
default. So you don't have to do the
weird pixel stacking platforms to get it.
You can just do it. And that's pretty cool.
I think that's a huge W for the team.
And you know, a lot of times we'll say, oh, fund detected and
they nerve something. But this was a case where fund
was detected and they supported it.
The dev team, the, the part of the dev team that's behind
housing has just, it's been home run after home run.
And it's so nice to see the accolades are getting.
And the, I don't know if he's the head of the housing division
or if he's just the most vocal, but there's a dev on Twitter,
His name's Jesse. And every morning I just imagine
he must wake up and scroll through Twitter and just get the
biggest smile ever. Because if his feet is anything
like mine, it's just tweet after tweet of these beautiful houses,
these beautiful designs people have made.
And now Mr. GM made an add on to help people with their cameras
so they can get smooth camera pans.
So now we're getting beautiful videos of these houses.
It just it's it's it's really nice that they housing
completely shifted the conversation away from anything
else to do with midnight. And it's strictly now in like
look at how awesome and cozy this is.
And even the people who aren't enjoying housing, you don't hear
from them. They're not out there Pooh Pooh
and people stuff. Nobody's out there like down
voting houses that are being built.
It's just pure unfiltered joy pumped right into my veins every
time I open my feeds. I love it.
I'm really glad housing is here. I can't wait for my next
inspiration to hit. That's awesome.
Don't read too far into the comments.
There's always somebody who's like, oh, they're finally
getting held and like this. There's always, there's always
somebody. I never read the comments.
Just can't just shut up and let people have their fun.
Yeah. So I'm really glad that housing
is inspiring so much joy for so many people and giving that
outlet. I think just a non competitive
form of expression in World of Warcraft is really such a such a
joy. So I'm glad for that.
Turning towards more traditional stuff though, we have raid
testing. We had a number of raid tests
over the last week, both for Mythic and over the weekend we
had normal testing as well. I did not get a chance to do the
Mythic testing just because I had to focus on real life for a
week. But I did get in some of the
normal raid testing. And Sean, I believe you also did
some mythic testing as well. I tested the first two out of
the three bosses that were sorry, I did all four of the
bosses on Thursday and then I did two of the three bosses on
Friday. I actually didn't do the last
boss. I was at that point so
frustrated with the raid testing that I left the the testing
group that I was part of. I was like, I'm just not.
I can't do anymore. I can't do this last boss.
I need to walk away because I just am at a point now where I
nothing of value will come from this for me.
So I didn't do the last boss. It was testing.
But they have announced the just
first thing I would like to say, Blizzard, if you're listening
and you might be fasdev from myself and everybody else that I
know, like every single person who is willing and eager to test
these raid bosses. Please, for the love of all that
is holy, stop giving us 4 hour testing sessions.
Because by that fourth boss, you're not getting anything
constructive from anybody. Because we're all just like we
don't even a lot of girls don't even raid Prague for four hours
at a night. You're asking us to do 4 hours
in the middle of the day on bosses that are buggy, with UIS
that aren't functional. It's it's too much.
Please, 2 is ideal. Three if you have to.
I beg you, please stop at the 4/4 bosses in one testing
session. It's, it is awful.
It's awful and it just makes me more angry and it taints the
previous like by the time I get to that fourth boss, I'm just
like exhausted. It's like I have to do another
boss and so the ones previously just start to start to suffer.
I. Would.
Think yeah, there's no prog joy. There's no joy at all, Lex.
There's no I immediately have to log off and go look at a bunch
of housing, please. So yes, at this rate, John will
give up his sword for plowshares.
Unfortunately, yeah, but in. General though, so you asked me
about raid testing that they announced that there is new raid
testing coming on December 19th. We're doing the first 3 bosses
of the Void Spire. Again, this is mythic testing.
I'm not surprised because all three of those bosses felt very,
very not ready. Like very not ready.
I'm going to quote Stripe, who is the the GM and raid lead from
Echo, and his tweet perfectly encapsulates my feelings on the
testing that we had last week. And it was I can confirm that
these bosses do not look easy without weak auras.
They also would not look easy with weak auras.
So it was a lot, yeah. Do you feel like these are all
issues that can be tested out though?
Like, does it feel like it's just they kind of need to do a
little tweaking and like, understand how things work a
little better or are you concerned on a higher level?
I am certain that the way they look, the way they looked last
week will not be how they look when they go live in March.
I am even more certain now that's, I don't want to say
certain, but I am even more convinced now that these, the
design of these bosses started before the decision to limit the
combat API came down the pipeline and that they're now
being changed to meet the reality that they live in These
bosses, none of them feel as if they were designed from the
ground up for the new world that we live in.
And that's, that's my biggest concern is, is that they feel
like they were designed for a world where we had access to a
lot more information. So.
One thing that I noticed that changed from week to week are
tic tac toe boss the dominus when those portals like well in
mythic, there's a there you now have a bubble that you have to
pop in your and there's like the extra complication.
But when those portals did explode in previous testing on
heroic, it was this swirl of pools that came out from it.
In mythic it looked like it was more just straight shot lines
where it would go out. Yeah, yeah, it was gone.
And the the added a mechanic where you have to dispel.
So 10 people get a debuff, you need to get 5 dispels on an ad
to break its bubble so that you can then put the tank soak on it
to kill it. And you have to do this on two
different ones. There is almost not enough time
to do this. Like naturally we had we were
lucky we had which we had three, but we had two priests so we had
two master spells. First boss of the raid on mythic
should not require a 2 priest healing comp.
It should. There needs to be less of these
that you need to to debuff less the spells required.
And right now it's like a hard requirement of you need to have
two priests. This first boss just going to
say. 5 is a lot of dispels. It's a lot.
And there's, there's, it's not like they gave us extra time.
So there's like we, there's three enemies that spawn that
each have a Dome and then two of those enemies, the Dome has to
be broken and then you have to hit them with a tank soak
mechanic. The debuffs go out almost
immediately there. I think there was like 3, three
to five seconds before the tank soak comes.
So you have to be pre stacked on the first one.
You want to pop hit your five dispels.
You're just randomly dispelling people because there's no way to
pre assign this. And then if you're one of the
five who wasn't dispelled, you need to then be running to the
next one that we're going to pop while the group takes the soak.
On the first one. The tank soak happens right away
and then there is just enough time to get the boss to the next
one and have already had it popped to then put the next tank
soak on that one. It was extremely tight timing
for a first boss. It was it.
It definitely felt like it was designed with them expecting
that this coordination of who was getting dispelled when and
who was going where was going to be handled by a week.
Or is is how it felt to me. This is just on mythic, doesn't
happen on heroic. Well, I, I still maybe I'm
losing my mind. It's been a few years since I've
healed, but I'm kind of losing. Like I I'm trying to do the math
on like how long before your dispell cool down goes off.
Just. You have you have just enough
time. Yeah, it's like it can.
It cannot be done like without some sort of mass or people
helping. I don't know what kind of effect
is it? Is it a magic?
Debug so it is. But you can't.
You absolutely cannot have an extra like you have to know
exactly who is dispelling when because you only have 10 and it
takes 5 to remove the Dome, so you have to have exactly 5.
So if somebody if a warlock singes off their debuff and they
weren't supposed to, and then the five healers each dispel
one, well now you can't do the next. 4 But again, like you, you
could have them move to the position and then remove it,
which is what you need to do to do if you don't have a a mass
dispel, because it's just if they're out of position and it
gets removed, you don't get the bubble.
They have to be in position and then you dispel.
So as soon as those go out, if you, if you have quote UN quote,
well, I've assigned 5 people assigned by a week or to go over
there. That's the level of coordination
it almost feels like. Exactly.
It feels like it was designed that a week or was going to
split the group into two. Five people with a debuff, go to
1/5, go to another. That's how it felt.
Could it be changed? Yeah.
Give us more time, but then you're fundamentally changing
all of the timers of that boss to push up more time or have it
be less dispels required. You know, give 10 debuffs and it
only takes 3 to drop the there's a couple different ways it can
be done. It just it was not a good tone
set. It was the second boss of the
day that we tested. The first boss of the day was
oh, no, sorry, that was the first boss of that day, but it
was not a good tone set. It did not feel, did not feel
good at all. And none of the, I mean none of
the bosses it was it was. I have been, I have raid tested
every boss that's been testable since the first raid in Dragon
flight. So since Vault of the
Incarnates. And this was the first time that
I left early and I won't, I won't be going to the testing of
the 19th. So pretty, pretty grim from you
on that side. This is a good cause to to say,
hey, they have scheduled that additional testing.
Are these three bosses that you see here the ones that you feel
are most problematic on Mythic? No, Fallen King Salador didn't
feel Fallen King Salador wasn't terrible.
It wasn't fun, but it wasn't terrible.
It probably just needs a little bit of tweaking.
The first boss definitely needs work.
The second boss we don't even. Yeah, the second boss definitely
needs work. Because I couldn't even tell you
how the mechanics function on that second boss.
Or some things that just didn't seem to be working at all.
You soak an orb and it's supposed to cause the circle to
be less big than it when it explodes, and it just wasn't the
size just wasn't changing it. So yeah, I don't know what.
And like both Dragons, when we tested it in Heroic, one dragon
was in the air and one was on the ground, and then they
switched. But when we tested it on Mythic,
both were just on the ground to start, so I don't know if that
was intentional or if that was a bug or or what.
Feel like if it was a bug they would have either fixed it in
later part parts of the testing or they would have shut it down
and be like hey it's not testable in this form because
it's the hard bug. That we get awful yeah, I don't
know. I don't know.
So I I don't think they're the worst.
I think the first the the dream rift boss I think is by far the
was in the worst state. I there's just so many issues
with that boss. I don't even know how to
describe it. But yeah, these were these two
of these three were not great. Fallen king was OK.
OK. So then I'm glad that they're
doing another round of testing that they are that are bringing
them back. I'm hoping that they do do see
improvements. As for my normal testing, it
wasn't as threatening as Mythic. Obviously I've difficulty aside,
I find that these fights don't feel compelling, like there's
not a strong narrative to what's going on in it.
In these fights, they just seem like mechanics that are put
together. It might be just my bias of
like, well, this is no name dominus #4 and this is that.
So like when we get to something like the light blind, and I
won't say anything more just because I want to avoid
spoilers, but the light blind, I know those characters, but it
still just seems like a spasm of like different glowing effects.
And I liked how when we were doing the demon hunters in our
current raid right now that it felt like Demon Hunter abilities
that were being done. The light, the light blinded
doesn't have the exactly the same thing.
There are a few hammers flying around and so forth that are
like, OK, that's there. And I guess I wouldn't want
puddles lasting forever, but they, they kind of do, which
makes me feel like our regular guys boost.
And so like that's the one that I more closely say is like, oh,
this is, this is a, a story because the narrative's there
and because the abilities more closely relate to something that
I, that I know. But so many of these fights feel
just there to fill in the space. Like, I'm Boss six, I'm Boss 7
and I, I, I think that the team has done better in the past.
I'm hoping with some shifts that this will be more compelling.
Maybe it's a it's a matter of tuning, because like when the
fight is tuned just right, that like, stuff that doesn't seem as
compelling isn't as important. And the stuff that's compelling
are the things you got to pay attention to.
Yeah, that can be, that can be a great fight even if there isn't
a full cohesion. But I I just don't feel like
there's a cohesion. John, any like comment on that?
No, it just feels like it feels like I'm doing a raid from Wrath
or BC. the IT, it feels like that design like that.
That's yeah, I bet the asthma gold crowd would love these
raids. So that's, you know, it's two
mechanics, mechanics you have to only have one of the time to
deal with. So just it's it's disheartening
for me because Manafort Omega is one of the the best raids I
think I've ever done. And it has arguably my favorite
boss ever and two other bosses that were like they're in the
the pantheon of great bosses, you know, in forge Weaver and
Nexus king. And then dementia is obviously
the one I was talking about being the being my favorite ever
it and coming out of the raid testing for Manafort, like I
came from that raid testing thing like this, I was like, I
have I have receipts where I said this raid is going to be
amazing. These bosses feel ready.
This feels awesome. Now, maybe it's because we're
three months away from the raid launch that these bosses don't
feel as polished. And maybe there is more that's
going to go into them and they're going to be drastically
different by March. But as it stands right now, you
know it's on par with how I felt about Sepulchre and I, spoiler
alert, did not love that raid. So we'll see.
OK. I don't, I don't think that this
is anywhere close to as bad as your as you might paint it.
I feel that. Like obviously I didn't do many
times. I was running through heroic, I
was running through normal. How many times in normal or
heroic did you ever have to deal with more than a single mechanic
at a time? That's BC and Rath error rating
1 mechanic at a time. I I would say that even if I was
in like Mist of Pandaria, which has a number of fights that I
love, Lei Shen was amazing. I felt that the garage fight was
also was also quite a feat that was still like an evolving
fight. But one big thing that you're
dealing with at a time, maybe like you would have issues where
it's like, oh, we've let these ads last too long or we've got
the balls rolling across and we haven't quite cleaned up exactly
what we needed to and that would cause issues.
But obviously there's like the tank Buster that's going to
force this switch and stuff that's that's quasi overlapping
and these fights have that as well.
I don't think that I want to go all the way back to Wrath and
BC, but I would put this at like Mr. Pandaria, Warlords of Dre,
Noor in terms of like what add on what it's throwing at me.
I think that's a more fair thing.
OK, so just 15 years old instead of 20.
All right. I'm happy to settle there.
But but again, mileage may vary what what they do with this new
era. I think you might be right.
It is something where they're trying to triage things that are
based on what the new reality is rather than being truly built up
from from the ground up, which kind of points back to like
maybe they should have just allowed an overlap for a for a
season. But we'll leave that aside
again. Friday, December 19th, we've got
three fights starting at 2:00 Eastern Standard. 3 fights will
be a Verizian Voracius and Fallen King salad bar.
And I will say it just because I know Sean was avoiding saying it
for so long, but we got to actually say what fights these
are anyways there. Was the first three in the voids
bar. Is Fallen king in the first
three? I thought it was a bit a little
bit later. No, first three.
OK. Yeah, so there, Manny.
I did tell the people. Yeah, you avoided their names,
is what I was saying. Don't.
Don't assume our. Listeners were.
Intelligent. Enough to know who the first 3
bosses were. Yeah.
You assumed our listeners were dumb.
I assumed our listeners were intelligent.
You're welcome, listeners. OK.
Well, Sean, if you want to congratulate our wonderful,
wonderful listeners, they're amazing intelligence and of
course, they're continued patronage, could you do a little
thing? OK, I want to give a personal,
heartfelt thank you to all of our patrons, but especially to
Louis F. Or Louis F if you're French.
Maybe for hearing my cry last week of begging someone to join
the Patreon so that I wasn't confused again by what was
written in my script. For Azeroth Will Always Be Free,
but if you enjoy the content we produce, please consider
pledging to our Patreon at patreon.com/for Azeroth.
And if you're a patron and you join the For Azeroth Discord at
Bit dot LY slash Fast Discord, you now have access to a very
new Patreon hangout text channel where we mostly just shit talk,
but it's fun and you can hang out with us there if you don't
want to be a Patreon. If you don't have a Patreon,
that's cool, we get it. If you also wanted to support
the show, you could give us a five star review on your podcast
listening platform of choice, Apple iTunes or Spotify based on
our demographics where most of you are couple of iHeartRadio
listeners out there. We see you and Goodreads welcome
in both of you and go ahead and leave us a review and help the
show get found by more people and we would love to get more
FAZ inside more bodies. Well, I feel like, I feel like
it's assuming this is the Lewis FI.
Think it's the Lewis FI feel like he deserves.
Also a little bit of an extra special shout out because this
man has been a real one on Spotify for ages.
Assuming I'm the same, Lewis leaves like a number of comments
and everything on Spotify. Yeah, it's the same.
It's the same, yeah. Super nice I I went through like
a little phase when I was feeling a little.
Maybe this is a peek behind the curtain too much, but sometimes
feeling a little bit sad about. Things and it was always very
nice to go on and see like oh look I.
Love it, he likes. Episode so thank you Lewis.
I appreciate you my man. Is he the one that said I was
negative and incoherent? No, of course, he said.
You were negative and incoherent.
He's. Checking.
He's checking. You're still listening,
commenter. I grabbed myself to sleep.
This compared to You've already forgotten their names like you
were. It wasn't that important.
Manny, I can't remember the name of every bot that says I'm
negative and incoherent. I do also appreciate the fact
that like I was in here being like, this is somebody who
always has the sweetest comments and you're like, yeah, I met Lex
is reading like Sean is negative and incoherent and he like,
thank you so much for saying. That Lex needed to pick me up.
But yes, obviously we read your comments.
We, we appreciate your support. And with that, we're going to
turn towards dungeons, which have been getting some dynamic
changes over the last week. They were away for Thanksgiving,
they came back. And this week we've got a new
list of dungeons to test as well as a number of fixes to the
dungeons. So this week we've got the Pit
of Throne. We have three other dungeons
that I cannot remember off the top of my head.
I'm sure Sean will point it out eventually, but we've seen a lot
of changes for all of these dungeons just in general.
Some repeated trends have been that many abilities have been
reworked either to add further mechanical clarity.
Sean, you were talking about those birds that were igniting
and turn the ash and then being reignite.
We were talking about like, what is that Venn diagram and how
frustrating a fight that would be.
They completely rework the visuals on that to be an egg
that gets highlighted when it is in danger of being reignited.
The when the guys first land, they don't just immediately
ignite the rest of them. They have a decay time so that
they will eventually die as well.
So it's it's a lot better, it's a lot less frustrating.
They have heard the cries from people giving their feedback.
People just like you. As long as you're not just
complaining into the void, they're listening to feedback
and the list of changes have been amazing It for these
dungeons increased cast times for things.
Something that was like instant cast, that was a three second
cast. Some things that were like 2
seconds got doubled to four. We're seeing along with the
damage profiles being changed, we're seeing rot damage instead
of being like just like intense quick rot damage extended it out
a little bit. And then that same amount of
damage is over a long period of time.
That gives you more time to actually heal.
That's an adjustment based on all of the burst healing that
they were talking about last week.
I mean, like, oh, we got to bring that back.
Well, then they also change the dungeon so that you don't have
to quickly heal it to everything that's happening.
The last thing that I want to point out is the Dragons in
Algathar Academy, also one of the dungeons being tested this
week. Instead of shooting out two
clones or images that do the whirlwinds, now it's only one
that's far less space denial means that these done that these
Dragons without adjusting, they're like flat out how much
damage it's doing are are less dangerous, less less threatening
to pushing people out of range or denying melee or forcing you
to run into it in the next pack at that last little bit there.
And I love this change it. I didn't even think about it,
but it's so elegant when you see it online.
John, what's your thoughts on these changes?
WS across the board, yeah, They addressed almost everything we
complained about, not complaining about.
They didn't complain. Everything we whinged about,
they oh, that's worse. Whinging.
Yeah, Whinging is worse. I thought that was the.
Joke. Yeah, that was the joke.
All of our feedback was addressed almost directly in in
Pit of Sauron and Skyreach specifically.
We didn't really have any feedback for Seed of the
Triumvirate or Algathar. We had some for Algathar Academy
and they didn't address all of the Algathar Academy stuff.
But no, it's a it's a win across the board.
Yeah, this is it's the worst. Terrible.
Yeah, it's over. The season's over.
Really happy with with these changes.
Great communication from the team.
I'd like to get more than just four dungeons a week that I'm
sure is coming at some point, but we're back to testing these
ones. So it'll be good to test these
this week to see these changes, see how they feel.
And hopefully this means that the dungeons from last week are
coming out with their own set of changes when they recycle back
in again next week for the Christmas break.
If you can give us all 8, that would be great because I
understand that you're taking two weeks off Blizzard, but not
I'm not, so I need something to do.
So please let me have access to all eight of the Season 1
dungeons. Just me.
Yeah, just flag my account. That works for me.
Sean, why don't you, why don't you come visit me as a friend or
family? Go visit family, spend some time
with friends and family over the vacation time.
You don't need these dungeons. Manny, visiting you would cost
me somewhere in the range of seven to $800.00, so.
I get it. I'm not worth it.
I get. It I'm going to how much how
much did Louis F donate to the Patreon?
Is there something you're not telling us?
But no, I'm really excited. The changes look good.
The the ones in sky rage specifically they, you know,
they added visual effects that were missing that needed to be
there, which we we expected they would.
And this seeing how quickly they turned around some of the stuff
from the dungeons and there's still work that needs to be
done, especially in the UI side of it where we're getting there.
But seeing them just with this quick turn around in the
dungeons, it gives me hope that they'll be able to do the same
in the raid. We just need to see it.
We need to see a patch note that says, I, I wish with the
announcement of raid testing, it would say, here's some changes
we made to this boss so that we have an idea we're going in
because you go in blind in every situation.
So you're like, OK, well, what happens?
OK, well was and like in some cases it's like was there any
changes at all or we just now seeing if the damage meter is
tracking dispels because it wasn't last week.
So you know it's it's you turn on the little dispelled thing
and just nothing shows people are dispelling.
I see debuffs from being removed, but nothing is in this
little meter. I.
Once again, point to our proactive feedback sign.
Let me, let me tap that and yeah.
Yeah, but if they let us know what what the change over?
No, this this looks good. Dungeons look good.
I'm happy for the changes. They're they're staying agile.
We should stay agile as, as list as testers, which is what we are
at this point. So it's really going to be like
a joint joint. Thing cooperative effort.
Yeah, yeah, there we go for the for the for this season,
especially Season 1, they're doing such a big thing, they're
making such big changes. They need as much from us as we
can give them to make sure that it's good.
And if we want it to be good, we need to be giving that feedback
and helping. If you don't want it to be good,
just quietly build your house until it launches and then
complain that it's bad. Or give the reverse feedback
like be like, I actually want 5 whirlwinds.
I think that would be a lot prettier.
Just to confuse things, shake them up.
You will not be able to guess what podcast you listen to.
Don't you worry about that. That's right, you'll have no
idea. I don't.
Know the next. Three points this person's going
to make. Yeah, immediately that sounds
like a lexer Ants comment. OK, let's let's little little
sidebar, because some people in content creation were upset
about that little comment for me and about like yeah, yeah, it it
and I and some is not just like one or two.
There was, there's some people who took umbrage with that.
And to those people, I want to say it was something you should
take as a compliment. Your words reach people.
Your words influence people. One might start to call you an
influencer somewhere along the line.
And I need you to understand that what you should take away
is not my audience is stupid and just parrots what I say.
What you should take away is that your words hold power and
maybe you should talk with some nuance.
Maybe not everything should be anger and snark.
And I, I, I hate you all and they all need to be fired.
Maybe like some reasoning should be in your discussion.
That's it. That's my soapbox.
I'm off of it. Pass it along.
See. I can't.
Content creator, am I just a Leo?
Because if I learned that somebody could immediately like
somebody was saying something and somebody else not only was
the first person saying something that I said, but
somebody else could recognize they said something that I said
that is like the pinnacle of my existence.
Like if that if that ever occurred.
So much validation I. I've won.
I've won content creation. I'm taught.
Yeah, like literally we had how many people messaging being like
it's a lot in the discord on the thing that's already happened
that made. Me so happy.
And it's still like people are going back through the catalog
and doing it's happening on episodes where we don't even ask
for it to happen. It's like people, Lex has a has
an episode in the middle of one of our recordings.
And the next time that goes live, people are like, oh, Lex
needs to hear that. It's a lot.
We should. I love our listeners.
Yeah, they're the best. They're the best.
I'm not going to touch that because I have I'm supposed to
have a good working relationship with content creators, so I
won't say how I feel about people who took that
offensively. You can like I wasn't I like I
feel. Just going to let them live in
their little boxes. OK.
All right. Now, now I kind of want to now I
wonder who you were talking to on the last weekly lever.
I'm sure you record those live, though.
I could possibly figure that out.
No, no, no relation. No relation.
Just coincidence. Anyways, that's going to do it
for us today. I've got some housing to get
back to. One thing I definitely want is
after I finish talking with you, Lex, Sean, I want a picture of
your house and we're going to make it the.
We're going to make it the thumbnail, the with the long
haul, the Viking long haul, that is going to be the thumbnail for
this episode. But until next time guys, may
all your hits be good.