Yeah, I I don't consider the the workforce part of like your main
play the. Employees aren't people.
For capitalism, no. Corporate Manny is here for the.
Karen Tour. For.
Pandaria for calendar. To the.
Burning. Region.
For Gilnaeus, but has not died. For the Lich King, for the
Sindori. For the Alliance, for the Horde.
For Azeroth. Hello everybody, and welcome
back to another episode of For Azeroth.
I am one of your hosts, Manny, AKA the true villain Manny, and
joining me today are two parts of The Triumphant completing the
trifecta. We will start with, of course,
Lex. Lex, how are you and how's the
World of Warcraft been treating you?
Oh, the World of Warcraft's been treating me so well, Manny.
I've been popping right along. I've been having the time of my
life. This is spoiler alert.
I guess I'm enjoying the War Within.
OK, OK. And going to the absolute Sultan
of salt who may not be so salty this week.
Sean, how you doing? Manny, Manny.
Manny. Manny.
Oh Manny. I'm doing good.
I am doing good. The war within has reignited all
the fires within. That that is good to hear.
That's good to hear. And it seems like Lex is in
agreement. We should just dive right into
it because like our weekend Wow is of course, like what this
story is going to be because The War Within is here.
We've been playing it. We've been playing it through
early access. We've been playing it it in the
launch. And of course, we took a break
from that to do this episode. You guys are welcome.
I was thinking about whether I could do another delve before we
got into the episode and I was like, no, I have to log on.
It's like, oh, Sean said he was going to be late.
Maybe, maybe I could just grab Bran and jump in.
Maybe literally. That is exactly what was going
on in my head. So they like Full disclosure,
Sean is not skipping meals he did eat before this podcast.
So at least we got that that in. I, I, I've just been really
enjoying it. So let's break this down.
Let's do this chronologically, OK, right.
So we get through with the show. Thursday rolls around and guys,
it's go time for those with the early access.
So when I ask each of you, what did you do with your early
access time? Like what was your kind of
structure? Did you take full advantage?
Did you miss some days? How did it go?
Let's start with you, Lex. What did you do with your early
access? So I got early access, I logged
in. I was like, this is going to be
story time. This is the the days that I'm
going to spend doing the story and only the story.
I get in, I start doing the story, I'm laser in like I am
focused. I am snapped.
There's no, you're not getting me off the story.
And then the story says, we're going to introduce you to a new
exciting thing. It's called a delve.
You can do one. And then I did the delve and
then they were like, you can, if you want to do another delve.
And I was like, are you serious? I can do another delve.
And then I finished that delve. And then they were like, if you
were so inclined and you could in fact do the same delve again.
And I was like, hey, yo, you know me.
And so I immediately got my to Tier 3 with Delves.
And then I was like, I'm going to go back in and do Tier 4.
And then they were like, there's no Tier 4.
And that was the saddest day of my life.
And then I did the story again. OK, OK, so then doing the
delves, doing the delves, getting all the way up to Tier
4, which is currently locked away, and then going back to the
story. Did you get through the story on
day one? Did you marathon?
Did you say, OK, I've got this much time to play and then come
back through? Like what was the continuating
story? You got to 80 though, right?
I did get to 80. I got to 80I thinking about
three days, like on Sunday is the day that I got to 80.
I am while I may be youthful within this group, my soul is
deeply middle-aged and so I I have set limits.
I will be going to bed at 11:00 every night and I will log off
an hour before so I can read before bed because otherwise I'm
just going to be too jittery to go to sleep.
So I've been trying to log off around 10.
So no, I did not. I did not marathon on the story
and in fact I still have the like very last chunk of story
left to do. Once I hit 80 and it stopped
giving gear and I was just giving flight stones.
It's been kind of hard for me to motivate myself to do that when
I'm like, I could go do world quest, I could go do more
delves. I am, interestingly enough,
locked out of gear from delves. I cannot gain anything from
delves except the joy of doing a delve.
Wow, I am so glad to hear that you love Delves.
I mean, like we will talk about that and that in a bit.
My experience with Dells is a different beast.
I am sorry to say. I want to say that I dislike
Dells, but it might be beyond that at this point.
Like there is like I got all the keys and such and I could get
get the upgrades and people like hey Dells, you should do it.
And I'm like, yeah, but I could also just throw it to Monday
where it's the furthest possible day away from me having to step
foot into a delve again. I, I, I think I actively loathed
Delves right now. I got, I think I got to wait for
them to get more difficult or something, 'cause it's like, I
see that smoke and I'm like, Matt might as well be a brick
wall. Turn around.
Sorry. Sorry, Lex.
OK, so you. Continue to have the time of my
life. I don't know what's going on
over there, but best of luck to you.
OK, well you know what we could do is like purely
hypothetically, we could see if your Internet works with my
account in delves just for science reasons so that I can
get that stuff done for legal reasons.
I am joking. Wow, I fully pulled a Sean on
that one. It did.
That's my line. You stole my line.
Like, wow, shades of Sean, but going to the genuine article
then Sean, what did you do with your early access?
I Manny I I'm going to steal a a quote from a friend of the show
Pico and I'm going to say that the early access weekend felt
like a spa day. It was a spa vacation.
I went in, I went in with the here.
My my plan for early access was 3 characters leveled on 80 to 80
on North America, 1 character leveled to 80 on the EUI got in.
I started doing the quests and in the in Dorne and Dornegall
there, the Isle of Dorn and immediately said, you know what,
screw all that. I threw that whole plane out the
window. And I spent the entirety of
those four days going through every quest in every zone,
getting Sojourner locked up for all three, for the three that
you could get it and then down to the two missing ones and how
a fall, which you then were able to get done up before the actual
launch and one of them. And, and I just completely, 100%
immersed myself in the story, the questing and the zones of
war within. And it was the best time.
I wasn't, I didn't even stream. I stopped streaming completely.
I was like, I'm just this is, this is for me.
This isn't for the audience, this isn't for my friends.
I'm not hanging out in discord with anybody.
This is me and these stories and I, every zone has like one major
lodge quest quest chain that just gutted me.
And I, they resonated with me and I loved them.
And up until this morning, I was ready to become a lamplighter.
I was gonna, I was forsaking mythic rating.
I was forsaking dungeons. I was going to become a
lamplighter NPC in Hallow Fall for the remainder of the war
within. That was gonna be my role.
But all of that changed today when I did the campaign quest
that unlocked globally today, unlocked in the EU today.
And that was the Storm Rider chain.
And Manny, Oh my God, I am ready to be a storm rider.
I am ready. I'm so glad that The War Within
is when you're going to discover role-playing.
Let me know if you need a vampire.
Yeah, Lex, hook me up. What is this?
Like, I'm like, OK, so Lex, what did you do?
And instead of like, oh, yeah, you know, I just meandered like
hang up with my. She's like, I was locked in on
the story. I'm like, who am I talking to?
Like what? And then I'm like, OK, OK, fine.
That is a little bit of that. Let's go over to Sean.
Sean. So what did you do Manny?
I relaxed and I went about my own Merry Wade did nothing.
Did somebody replace my Co host here guys?
Yeah, it's bizarro world I had. So at the end of the early
access, I have one character at level 80.
I have all of my other characters in Dornegall because
I went and got the crafter crafter cash that you got for
picking up crafting things there and got a bunch of enchanting
mats. And then I have 3 characters who
all happen to be blood elves who I have turned into enchanting
mules to specialize in different branches of the enchanting tree.
And that's, that's it. I, I, I actually put away alts.
I'm not gonna I I don't have any intention of playing any alts in
the war Within. I'm going to play just my
warrior who is a disenchanter and I I love it.
The story is just so good. The zones without early access,
and I know we're going to talk with this soon, but without
early access none of this would have happened.
I would have been locked in on raid prep from the beginning
that four days. Like I said, that's spa weekend.
Let me meander it. Let me to quote Pandaria slow
down. It's like you dilly dally.
That's what I've been saying. I spent all my time dilly.
Dally, dilly dally. Dilly dally dace baby wildfire
it. Was great, I loved it.
Oh, and I also hate doves. Wild.
Blowing my mind. OK, OK.
Have you have you at least done the delves needed to for the
like campaign slash get like the Rep and all that?
Have you done those? No, I stopped.
I didn't do the 2IN ashkahet, I didn't do those two and I think
I only did one of the ones in hollow fall.
I actively so I I play tank. There is.
If you play tank, there is no fail state in delves.
You cannot. I don't.
I don't even know how I got up and walked away from my desk,
came back and there was two mobs hitting me and Bran just kept
lobbing healing potions at me, keeping me alive while I wasn't
even at my desk. If you are a tank, I was just
like Bran, just let me die. Really, this feels like Nirvana
for you. It's like oh sweet I can AFK
forever in person so. That's my issue is there's no
fail state, so they just become monotonous and long.
And it's like, I know I can't lose and knowing I can't lose, I
just want you to be over. Just be done.
There's no challenge, there's no risk, and it was I hate to say
it, but you know this was only up to Level 3.
There's no challenge expect to level threes.
That's that's for those who are listening who are right now
screaming at their car radios. Of course you couldn't die.
It's a Level 3. I understand that I played them
up to a level 8 on the beta. It's the same.
There is no fail state for tanks, which then just makes
them tedious. They become a chore that I have
to do. They are Tor gassed 2 point O
for me. But the good news is once I hit
like week 4 and I've done up to a level 11 or level 13 or
whatever the Max is and gotten my achievement, I never have to
go back. OK, OK.
As for me, I obviously marathon that first day.
I went eight hours, got my first character up to level 82nd. 2nd
character took me a couple days because I actually leveled that
through mining and Irving. That was the the quote UN quote
farming mule that went all the way through.
And then the third character, my warlock, I actually only have it
76. I want it.
I ran it through dungeons to like grab a bunch of a bunch of
stuff to disenchant and everything.
And my 4th character is I think like 71 or or something like
that. But like generally it was first
get my character up to 80 be have that ready.
Second character was like maximized gold making on on the
gathering. And my goal was, oh, you know,
I'll make like 100 KA day and that will be like good.
My goodness, those first couple days just blew it out of the
water. I did miss a couple of days, of
course, because of because of the personal matters that I had
to attend to. But I, I was, and I think I
still am in just full like frenzy on trying to keep
everything going. Because as soon as I think, hey,
I'm getting on top of one thing, they unlock heroics and now I've
got to go gear up through heroics and going through that.
They have two new story chapters that came out today.
They're both amazing. I I'm only through like one of
them. You should quit your job so you
can so you can play Warcraft. That's that is an official for
as our author recommendation to everybody, you should quit your
job to play more war with it. Just be a streamer.
It works. We can all be streamers.
You can do it too. Can we get the Shawn disclaimer
before we get into? Trial for legal reasons, I am
not a career advisor. Please do not quit your jobs to
become a streamer. It's incredibly difficult to
make that a full time career. Thank you.
Oh, I honestly, I wish I had more time like I it's, it's just
a great time to be playing the World of Warcraft right now.
The there's all this stuff to do.
I haven't even had a chance to really farm mounts.
I recorded the first episode of Hail Xalatath, which is my lore
podcast because apparently I don't talk enough about Wow
here. So now I'm talking about World
of Warcraft. 3 hours a week over two podcasts plus because, you
know, we rarely keep this under an hour and it's just it.
Like I am enjoying every part of this except for Delve.
Sorry Lex, there's just a lot to do.
The auction house has just been on fire.
They had to take it down just this evening.
I don't know what's wrong with it.
We had prices all over the place when it was early access and it
was so fast that I just stopped trying to list it like I use
TSMI. Just stopped trying to list it
with TSMI, went in and I would go, OK, here's something like 5
levels down that might be like 200 or more percent over what
the current thing is. And I'm like, I'll list it there
because I know it'll sell right down to there.
I was just making so much gold and that was great.
And be an auction house goblin being fun is not something that
I have experienced for a long time since like BFA when I was
trying to get the auction house mount.
Did you guys find anything that you, well, I mean, Sean, you
just explained how you're now A1 character player.
Per region. One character per region, OK.
That would have been clear like. One character per region, OK.
But it'll be a little bit before I jump on the EU region.
But yeah, I want 1 character per region.
OK. Not including not including my
enchanting mules. Yeah, I don't consider the the
workforce part of like your main play.
The employees aren't people. For capitalism, no.
Corporate Manny is here. No, like, I mean like I've got
what, 11 level 70s or higher, right.
And I don't count them as like even alts.
They're just there because I use them to just like see lore and
stuff. I wanted to explore the story of
the of the mage and so I made it a mage and that will go through
the Legion storyline and all that stuff.
But it's like they're one sneeze away from deletion.
They don't count for anything. They've got like 5K each to
their name. Just in case I need to buy
something and I leave. I leave them there.
You have. 5000 gold on 11 level 70 characters.
Manny, do you want to give me some?
Money, Sean. Sean over there is just like
splurging on on tokens left to right.
He's like, oh you know what, I need 600 K, let me just buy up
two tokens. We're not no, we're out of we're
we're in the post Farrock mount sale season.
So I'm flush right now with gold token season doesn't come around
till like the midpoint of the the expansion.
Y'all, I reached 80,000 gold by just like working the auction
house during early access and I was like I'm so proud of myself.
This is such a big achievement. I have so much money.
So yeah. Sometimes I listen to you to
talk respectfully and I'm like, oh wow, I, I am.
I'm a casual, but joyfully I'm a joyful casual.
What about you, Sean? Have you been doing any auction
house stuff? What is what is your nest egg
saved from postphyrax season? You're like at one or three
million. I was so it was 2.1 mil total.
I had 1.4 in my war bank and then the rest on my main and 90K
on a Demon Hunter for some reason.
Just logged me in and found it. That was nice but I have not
been So everything that I've gotten so far all I have been
levelling up. Like I mentioned enchanting on 4
characters and alchemy on one character and I would just
mostly just buy the mats that I needed off of the auction house.
Obviously with enchanting I was able to disenchant a lot of
stuff that I got through the levelling process and through
the heroic dungeon spam, but I have not sold anything yet.
I've been dumping the enchant in the Gill bank for Gill this to
throw on their stuff and I probably I might I have a hard
time. I am.
I'm one of those RPG people who, at the end of every Final
Fantasy, had 99 elixirs, just in case.
So I have been fishing and I have food and meat and stuff
from from questing that I'm like, OK, I could just dump this
on the auction. Or saying people like Epidemi
and other people who are much smarter than I am, much better
at making money than I am, have said sell it now and when you're
ready to level cooking, just buy it when it's cheaper.
But my brain is like, or you keep it now so you have to buy
less later in case there's an emergency fish shortage.
No, that's true. That's true.
There could be. Tip to everybody.
I know there's like a tip section, but I have to, I have
to say this to everybody including my Co host right now.
Yeah. You sell everything now.
Even if you have to buy it all back.
Everything you sold back a week from now, you will still get
everything you sold plus a healthy margin of profit.
It's just. Keep your bag clear.
No, no, no, you guarantee, Manny, can you guarantee right
now on episode 291 and four hours are off that the fish
prices are going to go only go down from where they are?
Can you tell me that with a certainty?
There's no chance. Fish prices are going up with
certainty. Like this is the least nuanced
style bee. I am willing to pay you the
difference if they are higher than they are right now.
Pick a fish, any fish. Blizzard just released a new
blue post there cutting fishing rewards in half.
Doesn't even matter. They could do that.
It wouldn't even matter. See, Manny, what we should.
Do those are just hot fixed? We need to trade account
information, so then you can auction all of my stuff and I
can do Dallas for you. This is legal.
This is OK. OK, wait, wait.
Sean, please do the disclaimer again.
For for legal reasons, Manny and Lex will not be sharing accounts
to log in for each other. Yeah, it's sometimes like we
just we need to switch brains for a little bit so we can get
the stuff done. What you need to do is like, you
just need to go visit Manny at his house while he happens to be
logged in, and if he gets up to use the bathroom, you can move
his character so that it doesn't get killed in a delve.
That's so true. Move it right to the office.
He does have to play a Demon Hunter though.
I won't play anything else. I spent three hours playing my
priest on stream and it has convinced me that I made the
right choice switching to Demon Hunter and I will not we we got
to zoom. If you're not nooming, what are
you doing? Would you say you were not
prepared for priest? I was not prepared.
Well, I I I get the joke. It's a funny joke.
The issue potentially is that I'm like, I yeah, I was not
prepared for priest. Never mind.
I take it back. You're right.
We're just sticking with that. Thank you.
I also would have accepted. No, Sean.
No, I wouldn't say that. No, Sean, I would never say
that. OK, so then the next part of it
is with early access, people got their fun spa days, they got
their time to concentrate on the lore.
They got their time to dive into whatever money making scheme
they thought they could pull off.
But we also had other things that happened once launched, it
happened and there was a lot of unrest before the official
launch happened. A lot of people feeling like
they, like the FOMO was in full effect was really what was
happening. And it didn't actually get
better once launch came around because we had several
communities that seemed very intent on just, I guess being an
elitist full on top hat monocle. Oh ho ho you guys, you launchers
finally cobbled together the copper to finally get over to
the Isle of Dorn. And I wish I had just
spontaneously made those lines up.
But some people decided to go full transmog, wait at the wait
at the Isle of Dawn and mock launchers with this little RP
that they did on RP realms. And if that wasn't bad enough,
because that was like, you know, you could ignore it or you might
have missed it underneath all of the initial events that were
happening on PvP realms or not on PvP realms, but it people who
had war mode on. Unfortunately, when they got to
the Isle of Dorn, it wasn't the Nauruvians that were the most
dangerous threat. It was actually other players
that had decided to form up into gank squads and slaughter all
the 70s right as soon as they crashed down from Dalaran and I
wish this was a one time thing. But much like rear hunting or
farm groups, there were many listings for gank squads around
Dal to get the launchers. And that is absolutely tragic.
Lex, your eyes say that you had not heard about this.
No, I hadn't heard of any of this.
I thought we were all just happy little campers who were inviting
all of our besties back into the game.
Like, hey, you all, thank you for making launch so easy
because there was so little server pressure when we were
coming in. Now it's your turn.
Look, she's evil. Like I thought we were having a
good time. And honestly, Lex, it was, it
wasn't even the people, just the people who were partaking in it.
There were streamers out there that were like, well, you guys
are idiots. You should have turned off war
mode. What the hell were you were you
thinking? Isn't.
PvP servers like war mode required like I don't I don't
think you could on PvP. No, no.
Oh, I don't know all. Servers now have the option of
turning war mode on and off. You can only turn war mode.
Actually you can turn war mode off at any rested area.
You can turn war mode on at any major capital city like Storm
and Orgemar or places like Valdrakan or Dornegal now as
well. But when you are landing in from
Dalaran and Dalaran's no longer there for you to turn it off
there and you haven't done any of the questing so that you can
fly over to Dornegal and turn it off there, you are in a very bad
situation. Well, and also that, you know,
not to sound like someone's mom, but even if everyone who didn't
want to get ganked went in turn off war mode, that doesn't
change the fact that the people like had a goal of making
people's launch experience worse, right?
And again, I don't play PvP because I hate PvP, so I don't
fully understand the dynamics of a PvP server.
I know that you guys love killing each other.
It's your favorite activity. If everyone's happy, everyone's
happy. But if people were not having a
good time because of it, vibe's still there, you know?
It's it's a very different thing because I typically like to
level with war mode on. There's an experience bonus.
There's also a kind of increased camaraderie when you could
attack each other, but you are so both focused on what you're
doing that you don't. And like, there's also a bit a
bit of tension for when you are at like certain points and
there's that alliance group there and I might want to save
my cooldowns. Like there's, there's a lot of
reasons that playing with war mode on works for me.
And there's, there are times when it just doesn't work and I
turn it off. If I was looking back and
managed to like think about this beforehand because I didn't even
think about it, I would have been like, oh man, I would have
made sure war mode was off and I would not have done that.
But like hindsight 2020, victim blaming or whatever it is, it is
like you said, the the intent was there and the intent is what
makes it so bad. John.
Yeah, throwing it to you. What was your take on all of
this? People suck I guess is my take
there. So at first I thought the RP
screenshot that went around where the guy was like let's
welcome the launches as they scraped together their copper.
I thought it was meant to be. And I still hope part of me
still wants to believe that it was meant to be a light hearted
mean. You know what I mean?
It wasn't meant to be mean spirited.
But unfortunately, Twitter has shown, again, I, I didn't see
the names personally 'cause I have so many people muted and
blocked. But I have seen that there are
people who have given proof to the fact that they actually
believe some of these things, which is shitty because there
are so many reasons somebody might not have had access to the
early access, whether it's through funds or through
whatever disabilities. There's so many reasons why.
So we shouldn't be trying to like class divide each other in
a video game. The government does enough of
that already in real life. Sorry, that's a joke.
Actually, for legal reasons, I don't actually think that Canada
is a great government. Yeah, the PvP thing, I don't.
I like Lex. I don't PvP because I would
rather put my fist into a food compactor than the PvP because
that's how it feels. I get angry, I get frustrated.
There is no world where the extra 10% experience makes up
for the lost time in running back to my corpse, running back
to my corpse and waiting for this be able the ability to
respawn my death corpse. Crawling my way to a rested area
to turn warm mode off. Getting into the rested area,
turning warm mode off and then having to go back and find where
I was questing. Yeah, so I, I understand.
I, I, I get it. Some of those people just
wouldn't know. Some of them would have been
experienced to be peers who would know.
Hey, you know what? We're all really shitty to each
other all of the time. Maybe I should not go in here
with warm mode on? OK Lori, let me let me defend
the PvP like obviously there is the obnoxious view and with a
ten level. A10 level, anybody who was on
the beach farming level 70s, they're the shitty ones.
So if you went to the beach, you're a PvP and you went to the
beach or the landing zone to farm people loading into the
game at level 70 and have your laughs, you're you're kind of a
garbage person. But also that isn't just the one
faction that's doing it. It was both factions.
When those two people or those two groups meet up, they'll
start, they started fighting each other.
There became a protect our side versus the other one.
And that is that can be a very cool organic like let's attack
South Shore or let's attack Crossroads sort of sort of
moment where it's like, let's defend the launches against
these attacking 80s. And then it becomes this big,
this big war. And I think that can be a very
cool moment if the, if it's a reaction, it's like a counter
protest almost. And that can be a lot of fun and
redeeming for the PvP community. That's fair and I I was
wondering if there wasn't some degree of people gathering to
fight back. And like again, I want to be
clear, I don't PvP because I don't like it.
I don't like any of the vibes. I don't like the energy as in
like the I don't PvP in anything.
It's not like I only don't PvP in World of Warcraft.
So I will defer to like if PV peers want to tell me actually
this is normal and fun and we were all having a good time and
we just love to have massive repair bills.
I'm not a PV peer. No skin in the game.
Fib in our chat said it is the people, it is people hunting
people that is like bullies picking on freshmen when they
enter the school. Yeah, like that, That's the kind
of mentality that kind of started it.
And I think that like the fighting back, that is the the
redeeming part. Just one gets way more coverage
than the than the other because it is the inciting incident
really. Yeah.
I mean, I think this all to some degree kind of speaks to, I'm
jumping the gun a little bit, but I wasn't really in love with
the idea of early access. And I think that to some degree
Early Access proved that because part of the joy of a new
expansion is that you get camaraderie, right?
Everyone is having this big joyous experience together.
And we're all like hyping each other up and we're all feeling
so excited and energized and like happy.
And we're, everyone's in their discord talking away about
what's going on. And like, that's a, a thing that
the community shares. And I think what Early Access
did to that is by dividing the community, those of us who got
in early, at least in the communities I was in, it was
really exciting and energizing. But it kind of felt a little
bad, like we had to have our little spaces away from other
people. And it felt bad to know that
there were people who wanted to be there with us but couldn't be
there with us. And then the people, when you
did get into the the normal launch, I obviously wasn't
there, but my vibe was that it maybe didn't feel quite as
glorious and exciting because half the people in your group
had already done this and they'd all gone through this experience
and they're already level 80s. And so they're all doing, you
know, getting achievements that spoil parts of the story that
you didn't know. I don't know if that's true.
But like that then sometimes I got an achievement.
I'm like, whoopsie, sorry to put that on in Guild.
So like emotionally right for the the community at large.
I wasn't in love with early access technologically right.
It was so much better. It was 99 million times easier.
I like there were a couple like people sometimes disconnect when
they fly. Would they like try to launch
with dragonfly? Whatever, I'm sorry sky writing,
but overwhelmingly just everyone's experience was better
and I think part of that is because server load.
Was so. Much lower.
And then they also had a chance to test issues with a lower
server load, so that when they did have a higher server load,
it was less of like everyone's crashing out every two minutes.
So. No, to your point, Ian had said
just directly that there were issues that they were able to
catch that would have been way worse if it had been a full
release. And so early access helped
smooth out a lot of that. I had basically no issues or
like no major issues during early release.
Like I had sometimes where I couldn't interact with somebody,
so I had to like walk away from them and come come back.
But like just really small issues at best.
I actually had my first major issue on launch when the
authentication servers went down and I couldn't get back in.
I was supposed to be chaining heroics.
And I'm like, I guess, I guess that's my night out of the way,
which sucked. So I think early access
definitely helped smooth out a lot of technical issues for them
there. Sean, what about you overall?
Do you think early access yay or nay?
What's your reasoning behind it? I don't want to speak for any
community other I only speak for myself and my own experience
because anything I say to like as a generalized statement of I
think it was like this for others is going to be painted by
my own bias. For me.
I enjoyed the early access. I think like Lex mentioned and
you just mentioned, it helped a lot with preventing making
taking errors that could have been major errors and making the
minor errors. And the experience of being able
to log in and having four days before any pre season work had
to start really allowed me personally to immerse myself
more in the story of the war within that I might not have
done until months down the road. And I feel like I, I got, I got
better engaged with it. Yeah.
So I'm, I'm a big fan. Do I would I like to see it be
open to more people? Yeah.
I think I would prefer I was going to buy the Epic edition no
matter what. So to me, it never felt like buy
the Epic edition, get early access.
To me, it was, oh, you bought the Epic edition.
Well, here's some early access as a bonus.
I was going to buy that Epic edition no matter what, right.
And there's lots of people I think who are in that boat that
we're going to buy the Epic edition no matter what.
But I would like to see it be available.
I think the way Final Fantasy does it is probably what I would
feel most comfortable with from a moral standpoint where anybody
who pre-orders the game gets early access and any version of
the game gets that early access. Whether there's a cut off date
prior to by this date to get earlier or whatever.
I think that that feels a little better for me.
I I don't want it to be a case of if you can't afford to play
these four days, then you don't get to play these four days.
That would be, I think would also be a lot more joyful in my
opinion, because like the the other hand, the third hand of
all of this is that this was the first launch that I didn't feel
anxious, right. Usually when an I'm a very slow
player, I love to dilly dally. As I said, I love to go around
collecting herbs. I like doing little side
stories. I like bopping around.
I'm still at item level 553, like I just passed the level
that I'm able to do heroics. I am a very, very slow player
and usually what that means is that like the second day after
launch, people are like, wait, you're not 80 yet or you're not
like Max level yet. What's going on?
Come on, raid's coming. We got to go.
And they don't, to be fair, they
don't say it like that. To be clear, my Guild is very,
very nice, but that starts to be the energy I'm getting of like,
oh God, I'm behind. This is bad.
Everyone is so far ahead of me and I'm not going to catch up
and I'm going to be behind for the entire season if I don't
move. An early access meant that I
didn't have to do that, right? There were three days that were
just time to vibe, time to hang out.
If you want to do a delve three times in a row, do a delve three
times in a row. Like, who cares?
And. Then maybe go buy a bottle of
wine or something because you obviously need a drink.
I'm kidding. I'm sure Dell's a great.
Listen, listen, Sean, like, come on, come on.
She obviously had the drinks before because she thought of
doing Dell three times in a row. You get and then like, wait,
then you're like, it's beneficial to go look at random
places around the map because there might be a little curio or
even a chest there. Oh, it's so fun.
And then you get to pull the whole room and you get 0 I be
when everyone's dead. Oh, it's very fun.
I loved. We need a delve stream, Lex.
I just got to see the joy to like realize this is that's what
we need. I need to do another bet so you
can do another stream. That said, for me, I, I think
what I got out of it is that they need a pre season with
significant length. I remember previous expansions
where there's being like a month or more before the raid would
launch and that would allow people to like take their time
leveling up. And even if there was like, you
know, some gear that was available through like dungeons
and such, it was available on how many different resets that
you didn't feel like you had? To get it immediately and so
like with the current gear structure, maybe what they did
ahead of launch where it's like we're going to cap how far you
can get ahead. It's going to be just normal
dungeons. You can only do Dells up to this
point. Professions are capped to this
point. Maybe if they had even with the
early access, let's say they continue into early access where
they have three days, 3-4 days ahead.
If they had like a week after that where it's like now
everybody who else launches gets this initial like low period.
I like, I think it would slow it down and allow people to do what
they needed to or what they felt they wanted to without feeling
that rush. But I don't think you can have
that low period too long because then people are really just
going to get bored out of it. They're going to like the people
who are like power plays are like I need to I want to do
stuff. You can't cut out the gameplay
underneath them for too long. It has to be a Marge a a length
of time that they don't feel the stress, but they can feel like
they're they're getting ready to get into go go mode.
Because Sean, you're a person who plays at that at that mythic
level, who loves pushing yourself against difficult
content. Yes you said it was a spa day
but like there's a difference between a long spa weekend and
I've been unemployed for a month like what the hell am I supposed
to be doing? Would you agree with that?
I do 100% I think. I think the four days was the
perfect length, but I don't think you can I don't think you
can add like I don't think you can do a four day early access
and then another week of it because blizzards timelines are
just going to be too tight. They've already told us we're
getting more expansions faster. So they're they don't have the
time in the schedule to throw weeks away like that and we lose
heroic weeks. We only are getting heroic week
this season, season 2 and season three.
There is no heroic week window. It's patch launches, one week
prep raids open on all difficulties, so you're going to
be at even at a more breakneck speed then.
So I didn't hear this so. Yeah, they've said that right
from the beginning of the fact that the heroic week is only bad
for the first week because there is so much to do at the start of
the expansion and the gearing up is happening.
And that going into season 2 and season three, they do not expect
that there will be a heroic week.
Ian and Morgan Day have both given multiple interviews where
they said that. OK, I totally must have missed
that. I also love when we get into the
story and such and I'm not focused on like, oh, I've got a
blaze through this. So I can get like whatever is
that renowned 20 that we had in a marriage or cell or blaze
through this. So I get whatever power up and
then go into into the raid. So I was kind of hoping for the
heroic week. But if they say it's going to be
OK, we will see. Before we get into the next
part, we have a new patron. Sean, can I get you to read that
out? Yeah, definitely.
In the bustling markets of Stormwind, past a mat, a jovial
mage conjured enchanted noodles that spiraled through the air to
letting children and adults alike.
His magical feast not only filled their bellies but also
fortified the city's defenders, strengthening them against the
looming dark threat. The grateful citizens of
Stormwind celebrated Pastor Matt, their whimsical wizard who
nourished both their spirits and the resolve.
Pastor Matt is clearly a hero for Azeroth, for Azeroth.
We'd like to give special thanks to our new Patreon pass to Matt
and all of our patrons. FAZ will always be free, but if
you enjoy the content we produce, consider pledging to
our Patreon at patreon.com/FAZ and.
Honestly, guys, we put out two extra episodes in the last two
weeks. I'd love to keep doing that if
there is support for that. If there are people who want to
hear from that, just let us know.
You don't necessarily have to be a patron.
It just helps us a bit. Maybe get Lex a a nice little
backdrop for herself. Get Sean that that like webcam
that he wants so we can see Shadow going.
Lance is offended. She loves her backdrop.
So that was back from when you had the the women Den.
Yeah, the the we're no longer in Femden.
We have. You can actually even see my
fancy little collector, my collector's edition.
'S the, the, the, the cut off Lex?
The cut off is we can only see about this like your shoulders
and that discards OK. So if you if you want to get
something that Lex actually needs, you know, just throw some
money our way and we'll love it. Anyways, we have had a number of
things happen since launch and these have been a lot of hot
fixes, a lot of changes that they finally got the chance to
address. The biggest one I want to
address, of course, is the levelling changes.
Now, this has been a little bit controversial.
I have my own take on this, but Sean, do you want to explain
what's going on with this? Yeah, so it became very clear
early on that levelling the the scaling was a bit off.
Characters between level 70 and level 75 were like hard
carrying. Not only hard carrying dungeons,
but they were to the point that we had a level 70 Devastation of
Ochre who tanked not only the boss but also the other two
packs of mobs we had pulled with the boss.
But they were also like one shooting mobs as they were
requesting Through the War Within.
Nobody thinks that's fun. Nobody enjoys Warcraft to go in
and one shot characters as they're levelling their way up.
So Blizzard made some adjustments to balance out the
70 to 75 range, which made it instead of one shooting mobs,
now you like two or three shot them.
So it's it's a minor change, but they also fixed to the top end
because from 76 to 80 felt really bad because you didn't
you were you became much weaker over time.
So they actually balanced it out so that you feel stronger now as
you get up in levels. And then there's also some item
level scaling involved as well that adjusts the mobs health
damage based on your item level to help make it feel like an
overall more smooth and a better experience for everyone.
And the community embraced it. Oh, I'm sorry, no, I read that
wrong. The community lost their minds.
Yeah. I, I honestly think that if you
have an audience, you have a responsibility to that audience.
It is. I'm looking at you, Sean.
I'm looking at you, Lex. I feel like we were just very
fair to the audience. I I think that I think that we
were, we were fair though because we took the time to
explain it. I think that if you put a
headline out there and a lot of people just check out headlines
and they don't fully read through the article and part of
that's on them, but like maybe make your headline less
inflammatory. I had so many conversations
where there where is like Blizzard hates fun.
They're they're nerfing all the characters and everybody who was
in it was saying like I don't want to do dungeons, Like I want
to go in there and do a dungeon, but like I don't have any time.
I just have to keep racing after whoever because it didn't even
need to be the tank devastation of ochre one shot shot and
stuff. And I can't even get off a
rotation or I can't I can't even stop to loot.
Like it just feels like I am constantly doing this rush thing
and what was the point of me doing early access if I had to
rush? You guys were saying I got to
explore all the stories, I got to do these fun delves.
This is the opposite of that. This is Blizzard had to turn off
experience freezing at level 70, so trying head off the worst of
it. So we are.
So anybody who was paying attention knew something was
coming and I did a couple of a couple of normal dungeons
because I was like, oh you know, I hit 80 and then I was like you
know what, I'll come back to this character because it was
literally I could not get like 3 moves in before it was like race
and do something else. Or people would be taking every
bit of trash to the first boss. As soon as the first boss was
dead, whether there were some stragglers or not, they'd be
racing to the next one. And remember guys, stops don't
interrupt anymore. You need particular interrupts
and if and if that that doesn't happen, you've got a bunch of
casters or something like right? And the only reason that that's
not an issue is because they do zero damage to the level 70.
But guess what? I might have been 80 trying to
get a little bit of gear and so those casters can kill me.
And it was just wholly unfun, in my opinion.
And something needed to be done about it.
And I did have friends that were like, hey, yeah, I'll go grab my
paladin and I'll, I'll carry it through and you can get a bunch
of levels. Guess why my warlock got to 76?
Because I had some friends that were like, let's do this.
And I was like, OK, I'm going to do this because I want to know
how this is working. Warlocks need time to, to like
get the rotation going. Guys, it's it's not a it's, it
felt like the worst case of those paid services where it's
like, let's boost you and you just sit in the corner and I'll
get you the experience. That's what it felt like.
It I think it was either the last episode or a couple
episodes ago that I said I tried to play time running at the very
end of time running and I realized midway through that I
was just not having a good night because I was so bored.
It was the same vibe for me going going into dungeons.
The rest of the War within was crazy fun.
I had like, I've been loving it every single second of it's
incredible It yeah, I don't play World of Warcraft to jog after
somebody. And so I was also just like not
doing dungeons because I simply did not want to deal with it.
So yeah, I agree that the way it was sold didn't feel good.
I think my vibe from listening to some other people was that it
also felt particularly bad because it's happened
immediately after Early Access ended.
So the people who are already feeling kind of raw that they
didn't get to play early Access with their friends also like,
wait, are you serious? Like I also now have to do it
harder at the end of early access, which again, I think it
needed to happen. It, it was too easy, it was
boring. The the game demands some degree
of challenge. And it's not actually like it's
not. If Blizzard had never said
anything and never told anybody, and you weren't able to data
mine the number of differences, I don't think anybody would
have. I don't think anyone would have
noticed. Oh, yeah, Because it doesn't
even feel that much different. It feels pretty much the same,
except you're stronger in the back half of the leveling, which
you should be. Yeah, it's pretty much, yeah.
I don't know. I would say, like you said, it
had to happen, but it's. It was definitely not.
The sky is falling. Blizzard hates fun.
Look at them pulling the rug out from underneath these people you
had to pay to get your four days of free level and that none of
that. It's all still really easy to
level from 70 to 80 so. Yeah, and so they let us know
ahead of time. They did some further
clarifications afterwards because the narrative just went
wild on it. And they put out a Twitter post.
I've linked both of those in in the show notes.
I have been in many different discords and, and such and, and
some people who are really disliking it.
I think that the worst take I have heard and I, I want to take
the time while I have your attention guys to say this is
the people who the people who are saying this never should
have happened and why would Blizzard let let this this
through? That is a very defeatist
attitude in that I guess at this point you're hoping Blizzard
creates a time machine. I don't have that bronze dragon
flight. I don't know.
They don't have to make a machine.
For it, this is this is true. And I don't think there's any
way to make this right because unless you were going to flag
every account that is that had early accents, say you can't
play with the people that didn't have early access for these
three days while they have the power gap to make the
difference. Like I don't think there's a way
forward without just nipping this in the bud unless you want
to like give them. Like I, I just, I don't, I don't
think there's a fairway to do this.
Well, there is. They did it.
This is the fairway. Levelling feels better for
everyone. Dungeons feel better for
everyone. They saw an issue that the
player base asked them to fix and they fixed it.
And then we complained that they fixed it.
It's like someday, Wow, Twitter's gonna not cut off its
own nose to spite its face, that is not that day.
OK, I do want to say that it's clearly different segments of
the Wow Twitter space or the different, different things that
are some people like, yeah, I just needed to be fixed.
And some people are like, oh, no, this abuse that I clearly
was enjoying, it's gone. But like, yeah, it gets tiresome
sometimes. Other changes that they've made
that I thought were good adjustments, turning off tear
sets from Dragonflight, the fact that tear sets were still worth
10 to 15% of damage at level 80 and in some cases it was better
to just keep your four set despite the fact that you were
like hundreds of item levels down to be more effective was
incredibly poor and I'm glad they shut that shut that down
that seems to have gone over better.
Have you seen anybody complaining about that?
Well, that's. Usually automatic, right?
I'm kind of hearing you say this.
I, I just gave away my four piece because it's like, oh, to
yourself, go away. It's not going to work.
Clearly, we're on the new expansion.
I'm pretty sure The Sims have all been busted since War Within
started. So there's a lot of people who
were saying my SIM says this is better and those numbers are
just wrong. Yeah, there's I don't think
there's any world where 40 item levels on a piece of gear are
going to away a proc or Cdr on an item, but.
It's just it's percentage, percentage of damage that you're
you're doing. Like if you're if your proc is
every time you do this move, this move gets gets faster like
the damage versus how frequently it's happening actually does
make a difference. OK, Yeah.
They turn it off, it's good, nobody wants it.
Nobody should be still wearing Dragonflight 4 pieces at that
level. And to your question, Lex, in
many instances it becomes legacy loop because of changes that
they make to the classes. So going to Dragonflight, we got
the new the new talent system. And so a lot of the tier that
came from shadow lands was immediately made legacy and
didn't work right. But going back to the last time
we had tier, let's say Legion going into BFA, there were
particular specs, not every spec like it seems very much
overloaded this time, but something like Frost Mage had
their tier set bonus that actually was something that they
wanted to carry into old Deer. So it has had.
It has happened before. Wild.
The what was that, Sean? No, not that we're good.
I thought I banned the wrong person.
Oh, OK. The other thing is that they put
out a timeline of things coming out, so we won't get Urban
unlocked until September 3rd. I mean, there was a little bit
of complaining because we were like, oh, you said it'd be
available on launch and it's a little bit after launch.
Small, small potatoes. But we got a lot of stuff that
came in with the launch, like heroic dungeons, which are
somewhat better than normal dungeons.
I know my normal dungeon experience as I described it was
a little a little off, But in general, normal dungeons seem
quite undertuned this expansion. Heroic dungeons also feel a
little undertuned, but at least I get to see like three of the
moves before the enemy falls over.
So that's great. We got the professional sparks
and that invigorated the auction house and hey, you don't know, I
mean, looking at the auction house, that was fun and it just
it feels like this second coming of the war within now with with
the official launch, like it actually feels like a second
launch. Yeah, that feels good.
Heroics ice. So right now heroics drop a
lower item level than they will when season one starts.
I have to believe that a difficulty boost comes with them
because when you say they don't feel much difficult or much more
difficult than normals. We were running them one tank
for DPS, we weren't even using healers.
And on launch night when we were in the middle of a stone vault,
two of our players DC Ed before the third boss and we finished
the dungeon, me and two DPS. And when I say it didn't slow
down how I pull, I'm not exaggerating.
I still was pulling everything to a boss with just three of us
and no healer. So and that was the first night
of heroin. So it's not like we were like
super over gearing it. There's no way that difficult.
They're they they're supposed to be the same difficulty level of
a mythic 0 at the start of Dragonflight.
There is a zero chance that they are right now.
So in two weeks when season one opens and a blue post comes out
that says they're increasing the difficulty of heroics, please, I
beg you, don't freak out because it's going to happen because
they're gonna bump up the item level that those drop.
They have to make them more difficult.
So please, please, I'm begging community, when that happens,
when that tweet comes out, don't lose it.
I really need to start up an Etsy store for torches and
pitchforks. I could be making bank off the
Wow community but like I I agree.
I was in a in a similar situation.
We were doing literally the stone vault and part way through
disconnects happened and the team went running through.
That's where our stories differ, though.
I happen to be on the wrong side of the disconnect, so I can't
tell you if they slowed down pulling.
All I know is that my launch night was ruined for for a bit.
But they seem to have gone through the dungeon.
I got stuff in the mail that said, hey, thanks for
participating. Yeah.
And yeah, I think they got, I think they got to, they got to
like, push up the difficulty on that.
Yeah. I will.
Say anything? Go ahead and being a little bit
of a doomer here, I do sort of between how heroic dungeons are
being run now and also the item level shift.
I think that the team kind of like soft scrapped the idea that
heroic dungeons are meaningful and doesn't want to tell us
that, but I think they don't. I don't, I think the squish
didn't actually, I mean, I think the squish like happened.
I I just don't see it in any of their actions.
It doesn't feel like heroic is going to be meaningful long
term. You know, like like we were.
I was saying this on the last one of the other episodes, but
like Heroic gives the same item level as LFR.
That's not meaningful loot. Anyway, that's my tinfoil hat.
That's my rumor of the day. I I can't, Yeah, I can't, like
readily dispel that. Like with things as they are.
You could be right, Lex. OK.
All right. So I got to throw this question
to each of you. We'll start with you, Lex.
Do you have any goals for this expansion that looking forward
in the weeks to come? Do you have any goals for
yourself? I want to have fun leveling.
Oh, sorry, not leveling gearing. I think that gearing is
something that usually hits my brain as a like all right time
to make the numbers get bigger. This is going to suck.
And I think that's one of the reasons why mythic plus tends to
stress me out also because I freak out that everyone hates me
and I'm running everyone's tonight.
So I want to get rid of both of those ideas.
I want to focus on gearing off and getting ready and getting my
numbers good and high and powerful without feeling overly
panicked. And I also want to do dungeons
on a regular basis with joy and love, and not because I feel
like I have to, but because I get a new and then everyone died
here I mean. I hope having.
So much fun. You have found your calling, I
think with that Demon Hunter. I'm I'm glad for that.
OK, And Sean, what about you now?
I like. I think this question probably
has a different answer for you than before.
You found your 1 character per region calling what?
What other goals do you have for this expansion?
It's to be accepted as a storm rider and to find a Storm Rook
that chooses me as its partner just as much as I choose it,
without having to force it with bindings like the the old ways.
Sean. I will find you a storm rider
also, I'm not even kidding. Also I would like to convince my
two Co hosts on the For Azeroth podcast that we should set up a
regular for Azure authentic plus night so that Lex can do some of
those dungeons with people that she knows she's not ruining
their night because they adore her.
OK, we can get you to tank, right?
Lex, you're now at DPS. So then we just need to find
like a healer and some DPS and we're good to go.
All right then. Do you guys have any tips for
our viewers? Just tips for the early
expansion it goes. Slow down the story of the War
Within, in my unbiased opinion is the best that it has been for
main campaign and side quests which are now called local
stories. I embrace it.
It is the best that it has been since Wrath of the Lich King,
which was the end cap of everything from Warcraft one up
until, you know, that point in World of Warcraft the the quest
team absolutely blew everything they've done in the past out of
the water. So don't.
If you're somebody who normally would wait three months in
before going and getting through all the quests, don't do them
now. OK.
And Lex, do you have any tips or pointers that you would want to
put out to the For Azeroth community as a whole?
Yeah, kind of on the same vein as Sean, one thing that they've
done a lot in War Within is give us opportunities to customize
their own experience. And so play around with it and
figure out what you actually like.
I genuinely like I had been joking about how exciting I
excited I was about Delves. Like I didn't expect to love
them this much. I thought, especially after
doing them on the beta, I thought this is kind of not
actually anything that I wanted. And it's you know, I'll get
through it, but it's not going to be like, I am absolutely in
love. I have so much fun.
Every time I see Adele, I'm like, oh, I can pop right in and
I have a good time. And it's not everybody that's
apparently not my two Co hosts, which makes me think it's
probably not most of the World of Warcraft community, which is
OK, which is OK because you get to customize your experience.
And so if you're playing this and you're like, wow, I'm really
not having fun playing this way, there's probably another way you
can play and there's probably other options.
And the team, the Blizzard team is working really hard to give
us those options to play how we want.
So explore, have a good time. Do you have any tips, Mindy?
So I hope those tips do you. Have any tips?
Oh, honestly, I would say that explore things, take the time,
explore things. That's kind of a long lines what
you're saying, but like things that you may not have thought
like, oh, I'm like, I should try this.
Now is the time. It is a new expansion.
Everybody's starting fresh. If you want to try PvP, nobody's
got a huge gear advantage over you.
If you want to go and do the dungeons, there's only a handful
of people that have like done these things to death on the
beta that know the level of experience that becomes sort of
required later on. Right now is the now is the time
to try and make up that that experience gap, that knowledge
gap, because they've got the videos out there.
This is the time to do that. If you are somebody who loves
the story, there is no better time than to go through through
this. So check it out, enjoy whatever
you wanted to dabble in, find your find your passion, because
I have not seen this many guildies just logging in or I
run into them in front of it. I'm just like, hey, salute.
And then they're like, oh, hey, Manny.
That's sort of the thing. It's it is a great time to just
be in this game enjoying it with your friends.
But until next time guys, may all your hits be good.